G-Boy PCB Files?

[Dustin Fisher]

Hey all, I was hoping to make a G-Boy to get back into this hobby. I had tried to make a portable Wii in the past and got it electronically working great but my case design skills were lacking. I would like to make a G-Boy to have some fun with and I have already found the STL files posted by Gman a while back that I can use. The G-boy uses a few custom PCBs for a bunch of different things and some (like the U amp and GC+) are more custom to the G-boy in order to fit the case design. I have already looked around the forum some and went through all the questions under "G-boy Questions" to look for an answer before posting here to no avail. Does anyone know if the PCB files are available?

 

[Stitches]

The PCB files are not currently available. There are plans to release updated case and PCB files using the new GC+ 2.0, PMS-2, and PD-2 standards, but there's been no mention yet on a timeframe.

You could try your hand at PCB design and make your own clone boards using measurements from the Rev3 case files. Otherwise we just have to wait.

 

[Dustin Fisher]

Gotcha, I figured that may be the case. I am honestly down to do that but I figured I'd check first before I dug in. Thanks for the quick reply!

 

[DMDBOY]

I may be a bit late on the scene, but I have managed to find the open source PCB designs for the GC+ from Aurelio and the RVL-PMS and U-AMP from Gman.

Would the shoulder button PCB be the only one left from the OG G-Boy kit?

 

[Stitches]

I may be a bit late on the scene, but I have managed to find the open source PCB designs for the GC+ from Aurelio and the RVL-PMS and U-AMP from Gman.

Would the shoulder button PCB be the only one left from the OG G-Boy kit?

Yes, but just making sure, you do know that those board designs are old as fuck and are not drop in replacements for the GBoy boards right? You could use the files to recreate the GBoy PCBs yourself using measurements from the case and the assembly photos, but you'd be much better off using the new versions of the boards

 

[DMDBOY]

Thanks for the heads up! I wouldn’t know where to begin… I just found them and would have redirected if anyone was interested… I think I’m stuck waiting for the redesign or anyone who can recreate the old PCBs.

 

[Dustin Fisher]

I have been looking more into this and started the process of making new pcbs that will work for this application. In doing some searching I discovered a site called 4layer tech (https://4layertech.com/collections/all) that is made by some members of this community that sells some pretty vital boards for this. They have generic versions of the uamp, gc+ charging board and power management boards. They are also designed to be soldered onto a daughter board so I am attempting to make a g-boy breakout for this. There have been issues so far such as the gc+ being too big to simply place on top of the controller pcb footprint so some changes will likely need to be made to where the mounting posts are or how a few things are located or sized. Unfortunately, though the G-boy files available only mesh so it makes it difficult to edit so i may need to recreate the design to the best of my abilities to accomplish this. I hope to have this done in the next couple weeks but when I do finish I will post everything here so people can continue to make the g-boy easily

 

[Dustin Fisher]

Sorry for the radio silence! I have been working on making the pcb files from scratch and making sure that they work before I released I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I did need to modify the STL files that G-man provided as well to adjust mounting holes and I, unfortunately, needed to thicken it by 2mm to allow the audio board to clear the batteries but overall it doesn't change much beyond this. One other thing I did was adjust the lcd retainer to have mounting holes for the stock g-boy screen as well as the 480p screen (JT035IPS02-V0). I also have my BOM and links to everything I bought to help anyone who wants to make one. I will put the STL files here and the source files for fusion 360. I will also provide the files for the PCBs and their source files as well in case anyone needs to modify them. I made these pcbs in easyeda. Hope this helps!

BOM:

 

[Dustin Fisher]

So, it turns out I cant upload my fusion 360 file since its too large. is there a way around that?

 

[supertazon]

That's great work! Do you have a working GBoy with your shell and PCBs that you could show pictures of?

 

[Dustin Fisher]

Sure! I suppose I should've sent my photos with my previous post. Sorry about that.

 

[supertazon]

Very cool thank you for sharing this and good job!
For the added height, maybe you could just keep the RVL-AMP on its own and add mounts for the headphone jack and speakers so that you don’t have to have the RVL-AMP sitting on an extra PCB.

 

[THEREALTOOMUCHDOG]

what are the correct settings for the button board on jlcpcb

 

[Dustin Fisher]

should just be a basic 2 layer board. all the cheapest options should work just fine

 

[THEREALTOOMUCHDOG]

thanks so much.

also what is the size for shoulder.zip

never mind I was using the wrong one.

[MOD EDIT]
merged triple post

 

[CrazyGadget]

ok I have everything for the g boy other than the screen does anyone know where I can get one, and also the speakers

Dude, you need to make your own thread, this one is getting spammy.

 

[THEREALTOOMUCHDOG]

Ok the screen that you linked doesn't have the same driver board how would I use that for the g-boy?

 

[Dustin Fisher]

I modified the mounting plate for the driver so it has the appropriate holes for mounting the newer driver board and the older style one as well. In my final version I ended up going for an upgraded screen that I saw was recommended by many people on this forum which is why the driver board is different. The new screen takes in VGA just like the g-boy does so that's not different but a good thing to note is that it doesn't have composite video so the wii would need to be configured to accept VGA before installing this new screen. Also, another good thing to note is that this new screen doesn't need modifications to run on 5v since it does that natively unlike the original g-boy screen

 

[Customledmods]

Is the new screen better quality ?

 

[vipe_202]

Is the new screen better quality ?

the alternate version available is an ips 640x480 3.5’’ vs the 320x240 non ips