I’ve been working on my novel outline, and I’ve allowed myself to tinker with an Arduboy Devboard.
When I was first looking into a way to house the Arduboy I decided to repurpose an Atari Flashback Blast! I bought on clearance for $6 last year. The Atari games are a bit too old to be truly engaging, so I don’t anticipate using it. Originally I’d hoped there might be a way to mod it. There is not a lot of information on these devices online, ETA Prime’s teardown video determined the units were designed to be trashed and not reflashed or otherwise used so there was no way to reset the board.
Anyway, I took it apart and built a 4-button d-pad replacement for it, but I cut out too much of the interior shell and had difficulty with the fit. I later decided I’d be better off finding a controller I could rewire.
In the meantime I started working on a basic devboard. This is a $0 project, my goal is to work with components I already own. The last time I soldered, when I was modding my Playstation Classic, I had a ton of issues with that PCB and wondered if I’d somehow forgotten how to solder. Well, worry not, soldering the protoboard has been a breeze. I wired the buttons today, soldering them to jumpers so the pins can be easily changed, and broke out a few extra 5V for the FTDI cable. I also put together a little buzzer module for sound, I didn’t think it was too important until I heard the Team ARG Chiptune Demo and was like ok I need that how could I ever doubt.
I did make a mistake. I accidentally soldered the Nano headers 1 space too close to the left side of the protoboard. My intention was to leave enough room on that side to use female headers to swap in a larger OLED. I’ll figure something out, it’s just annoying.
My goal is to add a larger screen and possibly a joystick, but I’m most interested in the larger OLED. The 0.96" screen is so tiny I have trouble playing more detailed games. Also considering volume control and buttons that aren’t so clicky.