Making a Boxy Pixel Game Boy Macro (Nintendo DS Lite) - Part 1
Channel: makho
Date: 23/08/2019

I picked up a machined aluminum Game Boy Macro faceplate to convert a DS Lite into a single-screen handheld console. A Game Boy Macro is a cheap (a lot cheaper before the faceplate lol) way to play Game Boy Advance games on a backlit handheld. Even with this faceplate, this mod is still cheaper than the average backlight mod for GBA. One issue is that DS consoles only natively support GBA, there is no support for GB/C games. You can run emulators on a SLOT-1 flash cart (e.g. R4) though. 

The install itself is super easy, you just need to remove the entire top half of the console and then bridge two pads, LEDC2 and LEDA2, with a 330 ohm resistor. 0805 SMT sized resistors seem to fit nicely. Next, you'll need to connect one (or two) speakers and find a place to hide them in the shell. Connect one wire (or one wire from both speakers) to a ground pad on the PCB and then the left speaker to SPL0 and/or the right speaker to SPR0. Every other step beyond this is just cosmetics. You can reassemble the console as is or you can make more tweaks, e.g. cut the remainder of the hinge off and use body filler on the holes. 

This is the faceplate I got: https://www.boxypixel.com/collections/ds-lite-ndsl/products/nintendo-ds-lite-macro-aluminum-machined-shell

Here is the assembly guide from Boxy Pixel: https://www.boxypixel.com/pages/assembly-guide-ds-lite-macro

Here is a standard Game Boy Macro Assembly Guide: https://gameboymacro.com/macro-tutorial-ds-lite/



I wasn't happy with the garbage (and not working) touch panel so in part 2 I fixed that: https://youtu.be/gucFp9DWr8U