Weekend rest.

OK, so if you have been wondering what I was doing the last weekend - the answer is - relaxing at last. 

Recently (because of some YouTube videos, as always) I started to get interested in retro games. And especially Nintendo / GameBoy stuff that I totally missed. I wanted especially to try some of the GameBoy Advance and early DS 2D, pixel art games.

Time for some DIY then! I didn't want just to go and buy a retro console to play those games but still wanted to use legal game cartridges. Repairing a console, or better making one from ones too far gone to be used would be an excellent weekend project! This also ties up nicely with the "refurbishing" theme I have been thinking about with Kana recently.

First step: electronic junk shop then! Here I found about ten DS Lite consoles in the "junk" section. I tried to test them all to see if they can be used for parts.

I tried to put a charged battery in all of them to see if they would turn on. Some did, but most had broken screens, hinges, or missing parts. That's OK. I ended up buying about seven broken consoles for plenty of parts to make two nice, working ones for Kana and me. 

Next, dismantling, deciding which parts to use and testing components. We decided to use the dark blue ones as bases (because they showed the use the least) but to insert blue and pink buttons to make them more attractive. 

Next was the cleaning. Only when the consoles are all dismantled like this, you can clean them up thoroughly with scrubbing, water, alcohol wipes and strong isopropyl alcohol with cotton swabs. 

And, finally putting things together. I sadly broke one of the screens that we wanted to use, and some of the main electronic boards turned to be broken or corroded but because we bought a lot of parts I could put together two full DS Lite consoles and even one more DS mod with only the bottom screen for playing just GameBoy Advance games. We still have some case parts left so I can do repairs if needed.

This was a great thing to do during a weekend, and I had a lot of fun giving "new life" to things that would otherwise end up thrown away. Now I can play some Chrono Trigger or Zelda.

I also did print some neat stickers for my DS to make it look even cooler ;)

PS: if you would like to try something like this yourself, it's actually quite straightforward after watching just three or four YouTube tutorials. Go fo it! In the end we paid less for the consoles and few used games than we would have to give for just two consoles of good working condition.