Atari Punk Console... worklog? What?

[Twilight Wolf]

Holy flax, TW's actually doing an electronics project? You bet your ass I am.

I've always wanted to make an Atari Punk Console. They're fairly simple, fairly cheap, and easily within my skill range. I've just been too unmotivated until now. You see, this isn't for me -- it's gonna be a Valentine's Day gift for my wonderful girlfriend. She loves electronics (and I'm talking the guts of stuff here, boards and wires and components, the fun stuff), gaming, and electronic music, and I think she'd love to have something I made myself.

This sad-looking GameBoy will house the project. Some kid sure loved his basketball back in the day.

Picture!

Considering APCs have been made small enough to fit into Altoids tins I figure fitting one into a GameBoy shell should be doable. With some slight modification the battery compartment holds the needed 9V battery neatly and conveniently, plus the whole thing would look much cooler than just a generic Rat Shack project case. My plan is to have the board mounted where the screen would normally go, so the guts are on display but protected, and if possible I plan to reuse the original power switch and headphone jack and use the button shells on some normally-closed pushbuttons for cutting the audio out. As for where the knobs will be, I've yet to determine that.

This thing needed a thorough cleaning up, and since that was the simplest part I did that first. Looks much better now, doesn't it? (Note: nothing's holding the screen protector on except gravity. Still need to glue it back on...)

Picture!

And tonight I modded the battery compartment and door to fit a 9-volt. Fact: I don't own a Dremel. Neither does my dad. So I had to do this by hand with an Xacto wood carving kit and some sandpaper. Pain in the ass but it came out fairly well, I think, and it's just about a perfect fit. A 9-volt fits inside the compartment snugly with the door in place, so it's not gonna be moving around pretty much at all.

Another picture!

And here's the actual circuit all assembled on a piece of breadboard. I probably wasted a good half hour just playing with making sounds with it! I shall transfer it to an actual circuit board soon-ish.

Yet another picture!

I'm considering adding a few more LEDs, as well. One will be a power indicator, but I think I'll put a couple in the screen area so it lights up the board when it's turned on. Any suggestions on color for either? There's a green one in the picture but I also currently have red and yellow at my disposal.

Updates... sporadically. Just know this thing's gonna be done before Valentine's Day.

 

[ttsgeb]

Needs more basketball stickers.

 

[Mister Nickels]

Looks awesome! Can't wait to see the end results!

I believe there's a special place in Heck for the kids who put stickers all over their game consoles...

 

[Ashen]

From what I know about APC's they are just kinda novelty noisemakers right? Being that you're going for the DMG look, is this thing going to have a screen or some sort of display? Either way, pretty cool man. I can't wait to see more.

 

[ShockSlayer]

Red and yellow are dumb colors, green's just as bad if it's light.

ββ

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Thanks for the comments and encouragement, guys

I don't mind stickers on game systems I buy too much since they're usually easy to remove. These ones weren't too bad, in fact. I think they're just a sign it was well-loved.

Ashen: Yeah, that's basically all an APC is, just a simple sound synthesizer. As the name Atari Punk Console implies it sounds a lot like an Atari 2600, and it's awesome. As for a screen or something, I don't know if I'd be able to do anything like that without massively complicating things, sadly. For now the plan is just to assemble the circuit and mount it where the screen normally would go. That way all the fun stuff is on display but still behind the screen protector.

Okay, so, an update:



FFFFFFFFF*Can'tSayThisOnTV*

I unplugged my soldering iron tonight after doing some work. I went upstairs to my room to grab my phone to take pictures of my progress. When I went back to my work area it smelled like burning plastic. This is why.

I don't know what happened for sure, but I think the case must have slid off my toolbox where I set it and landed there. By the time I found it the iron had cooled off completely so the shell was basically glued to it. I pried it off.

*Can'tSayThisOnTV*.

That's a perfectly good shell and several hours of pain-in-the-ass work wasted. Son of a Sega.

Nonetheless I did make some progress, and I got much of the circuit assembled on a board before taking a break. Protip: RadioShack circuit boards are cheap pieces of flax. That and not having a great workspace made this harder than it should have been. Picture

I went through my pack of LEDs and I found what I thought were white ones and I decided I'd use them to light up the board. Plugged one into my breadboard to check... nope. They're actually a nice amber color instead. This picture doesn't really do it justice, but you can tell it's not *quite* just yellow. I decided I'd stick one on the board before my shell got ruined, but it turns out it might work even better than I anticipated -- my awesome sister kindly volunteered the use of her black GameBoy as a case since she never uses it anyway. Picture

I hate to gut it since it still works fine, but as I don't have the funds for another one right now... well, what else am I supposed to do?

On a related note, the knobs I originally bought for the two big pots aren't gonna work that well on a GameBoy shell. They're metallic so they clash with the GameBoy look too much, plus they're huge so it really limits my options for positioning them. However, I bought a pack of smaller ones, which I was originally gonna use for the volume pot, but I think they'd look better as they're black plastic, and if I'm using a black GameBoy shell, well, that's even better. It turns out the 8-ohm speaker I bought for this project fits perfectly where the GameBoy's original speaker went, too, and I can install a 9-volt battery clip in the battery compartment without having to drill any holes. I think this should be an excellent case, though I would have preferred to not ruin the back half of my first one. ._.

 

[Mister Nickels]

I have actually done that exact same thing and burned holes in my toolbox, desk, Gameboy Color case and fingernails. I'm sure everyone else has too, so don't feel too bad about it.

 

[ttsgeb]

Adds character. Use it anyway, put the stickers back for added effect. Finally, draw an eighth note on the faceplate in sharpie. Be sure to make it real pretty, then smudge it a bit.

 

[ShockSlayer]

I'm sure bibin has plenty of gameboy shell's and wouldn't mind parting with one.

Also, probably not as bad as stepping on a soldering iron.

SS

 

[bud]

I've got a back shell and the front piece. No battery cover,but you can have it if you pay for flat rate shipping.