Maximum voltage input for GBA?

[Noah]

What's the max you can feed into a GBA? I have a 3.7v battery I want to use, but I'm not sure if it can take in that much power, and I don't want to kill the board.

 

[zeldaxpro]

I have a GBA SP and I powered it with a 18650 lithium ion battery (3.7v 2200mAh). On the multimeter it reads around 4.20v so any 3.7v battery should be fine I guess.

 

[vskid3]

I have a GBA SP and I powered it with a 18650 lithium ion battery (3.7v 2200mAh). On the multimeter it reads around 4.20v so any 3.7v battery should be fine I guess.

The SP comes with a lithium battery, so its kind of obvious that it would work. He means the regular, 3v from AA batteries, GBA.

Have you tried googling it? It'll probably be difficult to find anything with the SP results, but you never know. You might have to just get a junk GBA and try it.

 

[zeldaxpro]

Oh oops sorry I forgot the GBA runs on 3 volts. I'm not sure but if I find my spare GBA around I'll do some voltage testing.

 

[Hermaphroditus]

Find a fuse rated just below the maximum current draw that should be given somewhere on the GBA itself, wire it up in series with your battery, run it. If it blows it can't handle 3.7V. Loool.

 

[zeldaxpro]

Lol thanks man for the heads up and advice. All I found so far was my gameboy color so if I find my GBA I'll let you know how it works out.

 

[advancetage]

i recently installed a sp battery in a advance with a sp frontlight installed. when hooked up the frontlight lit up extra bright, the green "on" led flicked on then off and it stayed that way (frontlight is wired to vcc). when i reinstalled AAs it worked fine. im thinking i will have to lower the input voltage before it will work.

 

[superben51]

Just get a 3v reg. I'll link you to one when I'm not on my ipod

 

[Hermaphroditus]

If you can run it on 3.7V then why run it through a 3V reg? If he finds that it won't run on 3.7 then yeah, definitely use the regulator, otherwise it's kind of ignorant to waste power.

 

[advancetage]

anyone know of a 3v voltage regulator with a low voltage cutoff? that would be perfect for this project.

 

[superben51]

How about a LP 2950?

 

[advancetage]

that looks like just the unit, i'll post results when i talk my GF into letting me spend money.

 

[bentendo64]

I think it should be fine. I've used that voltage on Gameboy color without issues before.

 

[advancetage]

received and installed the voltage regulator from TI. works like a charm. the GBA will not run on the unregulated lipo from my experience. very happy with a reg though.

 

[aarcane]

Since this is a number 1 search result, I won't hesitate to share this information. Using voltage and current amps, I took some careful measurements of the GBA. The device powers on at 3.70v, and draws typically 60mA at that voltage. At about 3.78v to 3.8v, the device refuses to power on. If you're running a regulator, make sure it's output voltage is set *no higher* than 3.7v. depending on the quality of your reg, you may want to set it lower.