Portables hacked into consoles?

[MrPopo]

In the grand scheme of things getting the controller to work is relatively trivial. The work is all mechanical; you get all the buttons, tap the lines, and run it through some form of connector to the PS2 controller. Audio can be similarly tapped, with a possible amplification circuit (which is trivial). The real cockblocker is the video display.

[samsonlonghair]

Would it be any easier to use a computer monitor than an tv screen for a display?

I have a gba with no screen now, and I'd love to turn it into a console.

[AmishSamurai]

I saw one thing ages ago where a person built an arcade cabinet, and had the bottom of a DS smack dab in the middle of it, with the TV forming the top screen. It was pointless, but kinda cool.

And of course, Super Gameboy/Gameboy Player.

[noiseredux]

In the grand scheme of things getting the controller to work is relatively trivial. The work is all mechanical; you get all the buttons, tap the lines, and run it through some form of connector to the PS2 controller. Audio can be similarly tapped, with a possible amplification circuit (which is trivial). The real cockblocker is the video display.

a PSP console should be relatively easy with the controller hack and (if it's a PSP-2000 or above) the video output already available.

[pepharytheworm]

I was talking to Bacteria on the IRC our resident console to portable guy. He said he was thinking of trying this namely adding a TV out on a GBA.

[noiseredux]

bacteria has some serious skills.

[MrPopo]

In the grand scheme of things getting the controller to work is relatively trivial. The work is all mechanical; you get all the buttons, tap the lines, and run it through some form of connector to the PS2 controller. Audio can be similarly tapped, with a possible amplification circuit (which is trivial). The real cockblocker is the video display.

a PSP console should be relatively easy with the controller hack and (if it's a PSP-2000 or above) the video output already available.

I forgot the PSP-2000 had native video out. Tapping that would be easy, so you could turn a PSP into a full console. But for something like a Gameboy it's not as easy.

[bacteria]

I was talking to Bacteria on the IRC our resident console to portable guy. He said he was thinking of trying this namely adding a TV out on a GBA.

Thanks.

There are two ways with the GBA to get TV out, a GBA Transverter board and a GBA Converter board. Both were designed to output composite, however can be modded easily to output in RGB instead. Composite is bad, colours bleed, red too strong, etc; however RGB is lovely, crisp and well defined.

Problem is that the Transverter is harder to get than rocking horse shit (I have one, but damaged it, might be able to fix, might not); the Converter makes bad contact with the board as it relies on pressure put onto the back of the input plug, which sucks. Might be able to hard wire it in, when get around to it will give it a go and post the WIP logs - if this works, result will be good, and you can buy Converters on e-bay and Amazon still.

Without either of these boards you can't output from the GBA to a television - although there is another option - you can get either a plug in adaptor or extra addon unit to the GameCube that outputs GBA to television, although that needs the GameCube console attached and needs the disc in the GameCube to make it go into GBA mode. That is option 3! Might even give better output results, don't know as not tried it yet - have one sat on my floor ready to test though!

[noiseredux]

this could help.

[fast]

Ive seen this done for the GBA:
http://www.konlabs.com/articles_data/gb ... /index.htm

I thought about it, but then realized that the GBA player does the same thing and I already had one (at the time).