Everyday hacks

After the good experience I had with the Japanese Game Boy games from Japan 4 You I decided to pickup some cheap Game Boy Pockets. They list a lot of items as 'not working' or 'read item condition' for a low price. I'm not really interested in buying perfectly fine and new hand helds, I want to fix something, so I went for three listed as 'not working' and one as 'read item condition' but with an obvious burnt front polarizer. I paid about 70 euro for the 4 Pockets, which includes 20 euro import duties for The Netherlands. It's not exactly cheap, but I guess it's decent.

When they came in I did a first inspection. There were some easy to spot corroded contacts. The removable contacts can easily be cleaned by dropping them in a bit of vinegar but the contacts are harder to clean. I used an old toothbrush and carefully cleaned most of it. I gave the cases a good clean in a soapy water and let them dry. I managed to get three out of four Pockets working again! I had to solder one speaker to another board and all four of the screens work. The last board just seems dead although I haven't tried it with a power adapter yet because I don't have one that fits.

The thing I was looking forward to the most was fixing and backlighting the burnt screen. The screens have two polarizers, one attached to the front and one attached to the back together with a reflective layer. The big black circle is a sign of a burnt front polarizer. For this project I had to remove both... Removing the back polarizer is basically the same as on the DMG, but with even less space to work with. It's really tight and you have to be very, very carefull. I had some residue left so I spent a lot of time rubbing and cleaning. The front polarizer was even worse! The burnt area leaves a thick crusty glue residue which is particularly hard to remove. I start with regular alcohol but went on to use turpentine, not sure if it was smart but it seemed to help. Also wrapping an old credit card in cleaning tissues helps scrape off everything. This whole process was really frustrating and I'm not sure if I would do it again.

For this backlighting project I ordered backlight panels directly from the factory in China. I was hoping to get a good deal if I bought 10 pieces, but they were not impressed. For 10 units including shipping and import duties I paid about 90 euro, which is ok, but probably not worth the hassle. If you were to order 100 pieces, the price per unit would come down considerably but I have no need for that, yet. It was fun trying to find the source and order in (mini) bulk!

In my cost cutting plan I also used sheets of polarizer film that were meant for iPad and Galaxy S6 phones, I just wanted to see if it would work. They were cheap but I had to cut them down to the correct size. They were adhesive, which can be tricky. You have to be really carefully when applying the film to not get air bubbles, get the orientation and alignment correct. I had to start over a few times!

When searching for the correct solder points I found quite a few different suggestions and people saying that you should use different ones. One blog  seemed pretty confident so that's the one I followed.

This mod was the trickiest one for me yet for many reasons. I bought 'broken' Game Boy Pockets from Japan, I never removed the front or back polarizer for a Game Boy Pocket, I ordered backlight panels from China and I used cheap polarizers meant for cellphones. Removing the polarizers and cleaning all the gunk was especially scary. In fact, I was so focused that I forgot to take any pictures of the process.

The Game Boy Pocket is really small and light, which is good when you want to carry it around but not so good for extended gaming sessions. The Pocket is powered by 2 AAA batteries which have less capacity than AA, resulting in less playing time. The viewing angle of my 'fixed' console is a little bit off, resulting in a less than perfect contrast. I'm thinking it has to do with the polarizer filters I used, maybe the result would be better if you only replace the back polarizer. It's decent, but not perfect.

I hang out in /r/Gameboy/ a lot and I see that quite a few people mention J4U or japan_4_you on eBay as their resource for buying Game Boy related stuff. They have a lot of good stuff and some things are just dirt cheap! While browsing I found Japanese releases of Gargoyles Quest ($6.50), Mole Mania ($5), Mario’s Picross ($2), Yoshi's Cookie ($1.30), Donkey Kong Land ($3.20), Golf and Tennis ($1 each). I decided to buy the whole bunch and threw in Tamagotchi for $1 because of the white cartridge, even though I won't be able to read anything.

It took about two weeks for the cartridges to arrive. The cartridges are in decent shape, they have some discolorations, some have markings and they all play after the mandatory blowing into the cartridge ;-). Actually all but Yoshi's Cookie, which doesn't work in my DMG, but plays fine in a GBA, so I can't really blame the seller.

During my testing of each of the carts, I found that Picross and Mole Mania wouldn't save anymore, which shouldn't come as a surprise as the batteries are more than 20 years old! I anticipated the batteries would be dead so I had already ordered some CR1616 coin cell batteries with solder tabs from AliExpress. 

Did you know that the name of these batteries describe the width and height? 1616 means 16mm diameter and 1.6mm thickness. Likewise the ubiquitous CR2032 batteries are 20mm in diameter and 3.2mm in height, cool right?

I opened up the cartridges and desoldered the batteries. The tabs on the batteries I ordered are slightly different and instead of just rotating the battery I opted for bending the tabs and making a really ugly contact. I feel like such an idiot, but I guess we learn every day!

Previously I had only reflashed single game cartridges, but it's also possible to flash multi carts! They are being sold as 22-in-1 Pokemon carts, but the names might vary.

I found that these carts need a small modification in order to work. If you don't perform this modification, it will appear as if the Joey flashes the cart but nothing really happens. My cart was labeled SD008-6810-V3, there might be different versions out there but the procedure is likely the same. You need to wipe the solder off the upper left pads and bridge the two right below it. That's it!

Now, in order to compile roms you'll need to use BennVenn's Multi-ROM compiler which you can find on his download page. Don't forget to check the 'save?' checkbox if your game has a save ability.

After you've added all your roms to the list, press 'Generate Compilation' and the program will output multiple files. The Output.GB is only for debugging, you don't need to flash it to your cart. Find the BennVenn 256M option in the menu and flash Output1.GB to Block1, Output2.GB to Block2 and so on. Follow the instructions, you’ll have to remove and insert the cartridge a few times.

The results are pretty awesome! Running in an emulator only the menu works...

But works fine on the real thing.

It's been quiet for a while, busy playing Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch. I still follow what's going on in the moddng scene, I watch other people's mods and occasionally pick up some cheap handhelds. A couple of things led me to doing a Game Boy Advance backlight mod, making it possibly the best retro handheld console there is! 1) using BennVenn's JoeyJoebags you can flash Chinese knockoff cartridges 2) I found a NES emulator/rom compiler for GBA, and 3) the GBA is backwards compatible with the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color games.

I'll go into some more detail on each.

1) I initially bought the JoeyJoebags to be able to flash homebrew to cartridges and play them on real hardware, which I'll write about later. Never did I realise that you can actually reflash the Chinese GBA Pokemon clones, and other carts too. Most likely you'll have to patch the ROM for it to work and save properly, but that's okay. However, if your clone cartridge does not have a backup battery things get more complicated, which I'll get into in again another post. Let's just assume we can flash any rom for now.

2) Pocketnes is a great emulator that runs NES games in full speed on a GBA. It has been around for a very long time, but I never came across it as I wasn't really into GBA consoles. It comes with an application that let's you select your NES roms and it will compile a GBA rom that includes both the emulator and the NES roms you chose. I created a compilation of my favourite games as a kid, flashed it to a Pokemon cart and it's absolute magic. I might write up a post specifically about Pocketnes, it's really good.

3) Because of it's compatibility with older systems you have a ton of games at your disposal. Sure, you could play GB games on a backlight modded DMG or Pocket, but what about Game Boy Color? Yes, you can mod a GBC using AGS-101 screen, but it's pretty expensive and it hardly fits into the shell. So why limit yourself to just GB and GBC? You could pickup a Game Boy Advance SP with a backlight, that's the AGS-101 model, but they are also pretty expensive and I don't really like the form factor. It's just too small for my liking. GBA it is!

I picked up a couple of GBA's on the cheap, really old and dirty ones. The one below was also missing the battery compartment lid.

You can find AGS-101 replica screens for around 25 euro nowadays. Depending on which model GBA you have, you'll also need a ribbon cable. Mine were all 40pin models, so I also ordered a couple of Type B ribbon cables. I also bought some replacement shells as you have to do some modifications and I like to keep the original shells, well, original.

So, here goes!

You have to remove some parts of the case or else the screen won't fit or not sit straight.

The screen's ribbon cable together with the converter cable end up being quite long, so in order to fit everything you will have to fold the cable into a Z-shape. No sharp folds, just gently fold and stick it down with some tape.

There is only one wire to be soldered, making it quite a convenient mod. You have to solder it to the upper left pad of DA-1.

Put everyting together and give it a spin!

I've been collecting some Game Boys and games over the past year and every now and then I see a game that I'd like to have but the prices on some retro games are hard to justify. Sure, you can download a rom and play them in an emulator, but there's no substitute for playing on real hardware. You can buy flash cards such as the EverDrive GB or the ElCheapo SD, but they can be expensive or hard to come by. Sometimes you can find cheap reproductions, or rather knockoffs, of these games online but probably not all of them. What if you could flash these cheap knockoffs with your own roms? The brilliant BennVenn has figured out a way to do it using his joey-joeybags Game Boy (Advance) cart reader! It seems these readers sell like hotcakes, because they sold out most of the time, but I managed to get a hold of one and it's really nice!

It comes with a 3D printed case and has a mini-usb port to connect it to your computer. I like the decision to go with mini-usb because it's much less fragile. This unit is built to last. I had to figure out how to get the software running on a Mac, but it's not so hard and works fine. I wrote down some instructions for those interested.

I got some Pokémon knockoffs from China and tried flashing them with a bunch of different games. Wario Land, Mega Man III, Donkey Kong, Konami Collection, they all work just fine, even the save features work. Only Mega Man V gave me a black screen after the Nintendo logo, I haven’t figured out why that happens yet.

You can use the reader to dump roms and save games from your own cartridges too.

Now all I have to do is write my own game!

I love the Nintendo DS Lite for its form factor and it's versatility. It plays DS games and GBA games and with an R4 or M3 card it can even run emulators for NES or GB/GBC. I didn't have any GBA games I could play so I wanted to get some. Actually I do have a few Japanese titles but they're in... Japanese. As a kid I loved The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past, it was unprecedented at the time. A vast world to explore, a great storyline, beautiful graphics and a return to form like the original The Legend Of Zelda. This version is a remake, but it looks very good and stays true to the original. At a local flea market (IJ-hallen) I recently found a copy of The Minish Cap but the seller asked 20 euro for it. I took a closer look and noticed that the Nintendo© logo on the back of the cartridge was in a strange font, not very Nintendo like. I told the seller "... but it's not an original", he said he knew and he still wanted 20 euro. Needless to say I passed on the deal.

I found a Chinese seller selling some of the more popular GBA games, including A Link To The Past and Super Mario Advance 4, which is actually Super Mario Bros. 3 with an extra Mario Bros. game. The games only came in a case, but no manual or anything else. They looked really good, authentic even. The strange thing was that you could specify if you wanted an EU or a USA label on your cart and you could order as many as you liked. They were going for about 6 euro each so while it smelled like piracy I decided to give it a try.

A few weeks later my games arrived and I tried them out. They work fine, including saving, altough Super Mario Advance 4 has an error before the game begins, complaining about "Saved data is corrupted". I played through most of the game in various sessions and my progress is saved, so I'm not exactly sure what's going on here.

And then it works fine...

I must admit, to the trained eye, it's easy to see that these cartridges are knock-offs: The corners of the labels are much rounder than originals, the Nintendo logo is a bit dodgy and the plastic is much softer/bendy than original cartridges. However, if you're not aware that pirate cartridges exist it's very easy to take these cartridges for the real thing! The backs look legit. The bottom one is an official cartridge.

For comparison, I also opened an original copy of "Bakuten Shoot Beyblade".

Last time I ordered backlights from deadpanrobot, I also got an orange (or amber) one because I thought it would look cool and give a nice retro feel to an already retro console.

Taking off the reflective film was very easy, I think I've really got the hang of it now and the installation of the bivert chip went pretty smooth as well. I know where the cables should go, how to route them and the like. Everything worked as expected!

However, when I started putting the case back together I noticed a piece that was a bit molten. I didn't take the board out of the case during soldering and apparently I wasn't paying enough attention to where my soldering iron was... Ouch! Luckily it's invisible during game play and just visible if you look a 90 degree angle. It could have been a lot worse.

Even though I like the orange hue, the backlight seems to be a lot less bright than the white ones I did before. If you're playing in the dark it doesn't really matter but in daylight it's not as nice as I had hoped.

After backlighting a Game Boy I was really wondering how big of a difference a bivert mod would make. In pictures you see on the internet the difference is quite dramatic, but I already thought that just a backlight looked amazing... I couldn't be more wrong.

First I installed a backlight, which I got from deadpanrobot.co.uk. With my previous Game Boy, removing the reflective and polarisation layer took a lot of time and left a lot of hard to clean residue. This time I tried to get the knife behind both layers on the first try and started to pull slowly. To my surprise I managed to remove the layers within five minutes or so, leaving no glue behind! Really happy it was so easy. I inserted the polarisation filter at a 90 degree angle in order to get the inverted look, which will be reverted again by the bivert chip.

I really liked the design of the bivert module from Hand-Held Legend. It only requires 1 wire to be soldered (and it's already included!), the pins you lifted (see video below) rest on the module and the other three connections are really easy to solder.

Make sure you get enough solder into the VCC, PIN1 and PIN3 holes, otherwise you won't get a good connection. You need to route the wire in such a way that is doesn't cover the screw hole like it does on the picture. Just make a nice "U" and route it past the solder points.

After putting everything back together I turned it on and wow... what a difference! The contrast is pretty serious. The screen does look very blue after the mod, I liked the backlight only colour better (they use the same backlight module).

One of the cool things about the Game Boy is that it uses regular AA type batteries, which are ubiquitous. However, you might not always have (charged) AA batteries lying around. Nowadays you're more likely to have a USB outlet somewhere around you.

Since the Game Boy operates over quite a wide range of voltages, it should be perfectly possible to power it using a USB cable, which is 5v.

The DC jack needed is of the fairly standard barrel type, measuring 3.5mm on the outside and 1.35mm on the inside. It's quite easy to find USB to these barrel type cables on AliExpress. I decided to order a few of these.

It took about four weeks before they arrived. When I got them I quickly plugged one into a USB power bank and into a Game Boy only to see nothing happen... Aaargh. It could be a faulty cable, but the others gave the same result so it must be something else. The Game Boy expects the inside to be negative and the outside to be positive, but the cables are the other way around, it's like putting the batteries in the wrong way!

I took one cable apart and rewired it so it would have the correct polarity. I plugged it in and it worked! It works from power banks, your computer, your iPhone charger, whatever you like.

See it in action!

With all the Game Boys I collected I sometimes received other Game Boy accessories, like a magnifying glass and a four player adapter. Most of all I got battery packs: the Nuby Snap 'n' Power™ and Naki™ Action-Pak+. 

I tried charging them but they would hardly hold any charge so I got like 5 minutes of play time. Considering these were made for the DMG, which came out in 1989, they must be pretty old. The Game Boy Pocket came out in 1996, so let's assume these battery packs are at least 20 years old...

The main battery technology used for consumer electronics up until the mid nineties was NiCd, or Nickel Cadmium, which was characterized by a rather low capacity and is very toxic. Later on the NiMH, or Nickel-Metal Hydride, batteries came to market, which has a much higher energy density, two to three times more.

As I concluded that these packs must be at least 20 years old, they're probably NiCd. Are there normal batteries in there? Only one way to find out, let's crack one open!

There are no screws so I had to pry it open. I used a metal spudger and started in one corner. I sort of chiseled the spudger along the edges and sure enough it opened pretty easily in the end.

Normal batteries! Four regular AA NiCd batteries with only 600mAh. I wonder how long you could play with this pack, it probably wasn't that long.

As you can see the batteries are useless now, they leaked pretty badly and I'm going to dispose of them properly.

In my last post I refurbished a Game Boy DMG and a Pocket, but I still had the backlight kit from Gameboymods.co.uk. The backlight mod can be tricky because you have to remove the reflective film and polarizer from the LCD screen, which are firmly attached with adhesive. I read about people cracking the screen, scratching it, making it cancerous or just cutting the ribbon cable in the process. I decided I wasn't going to risk damaging my newly refurbished Game Boys, so I had to find another way. Well, I could just get some more DMGs and have a few spares. Right. I picked up a few more, in various conditions, from Marktplaats. Some things the sellers threw in: three battery packs, a dc adapter, a magnifying glass and a 4-player adapter. Now I had 5 extra Game Boys, some were looking pretty good and I didn't want to ruin them so I cleaned them up and put them aside.

Enough with the refurbishing, I need to get modding! I took the screen with the most blank lines and used a sharpie knife to peel away the corner of the reflective layer/polarizer. The first try I got just the reflective layer so I inserted the knife again. I managed to pull away a corner with a bit of effort. I was being extra careful, not to break the screen or put to much pressure on it, but man, this is a frustrating task. Half of the layer came of sort of clean but the other half left a lot of adhesive stuck to the glass. 

I tried cleaning with alcohol using cotton swabs but it didn't work as I was hoping. In the end a microfibre cloth with alcohol worked best for me.

Next the LED panel needed to be inserted and soldered, this went pretty smooth and I turned on the system to see if it would light up. 

Bingo! Insert the polarizing film to check if there's anything on screen. 

Remove the protective films from the LED panel and polarizing film and it's time to put everything back together. Be careful that the newly added wires don't get squashed between the pcb and the screwholes, tuck them away under the LCD ribbon. I didn't do the bivert mod, but the screen is so much better than without a backlight. The photos don't do it any justice, it looks much better in real life than on camera. 

To me it's already a difference of day and night. Even though removing the reflective layer is a pain in the ass (it took me about an hour to get it cleaned up), it is worth it. I can't imagine playing on a non backlit Game Boy anymore.

After my Nintendo DS adventure I decided to go a bit more retro and look for an original Game Boy, also referred to as the Game Boy DMG. In case you're wondering, DMG stands for Dot Matrix Game Boy. As a kid I never had a Game Boy. I had an NES, SNES and N64 (well, not really a kid anymore by the time of the N64 :) but my mom thought one game system at a time was enough and she was right. But still, if you're from the 80's, you need to own a DMG, right?

I was looking on Marktplaats and a seller was offering 7 games, a green Game Boy Pocket with a missing screen cover and a DMG which he said didn't work. I decided to bid 30 euros and to my surprise I got the lot. 

The systems look dirty, there’s dust on the screens,

When the package arrived I decided to try the DMG first... It turned on! The Nintendo logo was a bit garbled, but after blowing in the cartridge slot it looked fine. There were a few dead columns and the case was pretty dirty but no serious damage.

See the dead columns on the left. Screen cover is a bit scratched.

First I took apart both Game Boys and washed the cases and buttons to get rid of all the gunk. Usually you need a tri-wing screwdriver (often referred to as Y), but it seems this Game Boy DMG was one of the earliest, which has normal screws. The Pocket did have tri-wing screws though. During the washing the screen cover of the DMG fell off, I guess the hot soapy water dissolved the glue that was keeping it together.

And here’s the pocket

I ordered a blacklight kit and two screen covers (one for the DMG and one for the Pocket) from Gameboy Mods UK.  I used acetone (nail polish remover) to remove the glue residue where the screen covers were... DON'T DO THIS! Acetone eats the ABS plastic and leaves clearly visible marks on the green Game Boy Pocket and less visible marks on the DMG. Luckily these areas will be covered by the screen covers so you won't be able to see the damage at all. Don't use acetone for any external cleaning, use rubbing alcohol like 70% isopropyl or isopropanol. The Pocket was working perfectly so I just stuck a new screen cover on it and it looks and feels great! Really happy. Here it is, the screen might look a bit matte on the picture but that's because I've left a layer of protective film on the screen cover for now.

Back to the DMG. The case was cleaned up, I had a new screen cover, how to fix the dead columns... Well, I'm not the first to attempt this, there are loads of videos that show you how to do it, but I really want to mention RetroGameTech. If you're into old consoles and like to repair stuff then go watch his videos. I really, really enjoy them, it's where I got the Game Boy fever from in the first place.

The theory for the dead columns is that the glue that keeps the ribbon cable connected to the LCD slowly degrades, resulting in faulty connections. If you heat the ribbon cable at the right spot with a soldering iron, the glue/solder will melt and connect properly again and the columns will start appearing and disappearing and should finally stay. Put in some batteries, turn the contrast all the way to dark and turn the system on. I set my iron to 300˚ celsius and only heated the cable for a few seconds at a time. Be careful not to touch the white plastic bracket holding the LCD because it will melt. You have to be patient, sometimes columns will disappear for a while after heating, then come back or the other way around. I had one column that wouldn't light up at all but when I put everything back together it would, no more dead columns! If you want to see how it works, check out RetroGameTech's video, I couldn't have done it better.

Before putting on the new screen cover, make sure there's no dust on or behind the screen because you would have to take everything apart in order to clean it.

Stuck on the new screen lens and it looks and plays great!

Nice fat fingerprint on the bottom left... doh.

Recently I bought a few Nintendo DS Lites, just to tinker with them. I didn't want to pay too much so I didn't mind if something was wrong with them. I bought three from different sellers for about 50 euros (excl. postage) in total: one has a cart slot that doesn't work 100% of the time, a broken hinge and looks like a dog had been chewing on it. Another one was fine but had dried up Coca Cola inside the slot-2 area and the slot-2 cover. A black one looked decent, but just had a broken hinge and was missing a stylus and slot-2 cover. There were also two flash carts, an R4 (seemed original) and an M3 Real Sakura with a 4Gb micro SD card. The R4 would only take a regular micro SD card (no hc or xc) and I needed to find a suitable firmware for it. LinFox Domain archives all firmwares for probably all flash carts out there, an invaluable resource! 

As I said, the black one was missing the slot-2 cover, the stylus and a broken hinge. The broken hinge is a very common problem that's not too hard to fix. Even with a broken hinge the system plays fine, but if you get excited during gameplay you might just suddenly flip the screen and close the clamshell... I think it's worth fixing.

To fix the hinge you need to replace the top frame that holds the screen. Unfortunately you have to take the whole system apart in order to replace this top frame. It seems that you can only buy entire replacement shells (on AliExpress for example, not Nintendo original obviously) and they go for 10 to 14 dollars which isn't particularly cheap if you just need the top frame. I could use a stylus and a slot-2 cover so in the end the price is ok.

As always, consult a teardown before taking things apart! The teardown at iFixit is great!

Bottom half

Top half, speakers left and right, top right is the wifi antenna, screen in the middle.

Initially I wanted to just replace the top frame and keep the original outer shell but it wouldn't fit nicely. Remember, these replacement parts are not made by Nintendo so they aren't manufactured with the same quality standards.

When I got everything back together I tried to power it on but the bottom screen would just flash white once and the system would turn itself off again. I took it apart again and tried reseating the cable that connects the top screen, which fixed the problem. It has to be seated properly. The DS looks great again and the working hinge is such a relief.

I love the design of the old iPods, especially the 3rd generation, but unfortunately it doesn’t charge over USB. I bought a second hand 1st generation iPod mini (4Gb) online for about $20. In order to make it cool it had to be upgraded, right? It uses a Microdrive for storage, which is compatible with Compact Flash. It’s 2015 and SD cards are way more common (and cheaper!) than Compact Flash so I settled on an SD to CF adapter from Tarkan. He makes really awesome adapters for upgrading your iPod!

I picked a 64Gb SDXC UHS-1 card by Transcend as it gave me the best bang for the buck. In half a year I’m pretty sure 128Gb will be your best bet.

I followed this great guide by iFixit.

Out comes the old drive, in goes the new!

Once assembled, everything is looking good!

A year and a half ago my girlfriend dropped her phone, of course I would fix it. I’m not going to write my experience here, just follow iFixit’s guide, that’s what I did.

But I do have some pictures.

Keep track of what you take out!

Some time ago I received a broken laptop (HP G62 model A18ED). When I switched it on, the power LED and fans would go on, but that’s it. I hooked up an external screen to see if anything would happen but it did not. It was really dead so I decided to strip all potentially useful parts: RAM, Processor, keyboard, Wifi module and the webcam. I cut the connector cable of the webcam and figured it must be a USB webcam. I couldn’t find much information about it, but it reads:

94V-0 CK77

CNF9049_A3

BY CHICONY

1019-AP-HF

This is the back of the webcam:

And the front:

The other end of the cable after I stripped it:

The meaning of the individual cables is clearly marked on the back and apparently this camera requires 3.9 volts instead of the normal 5 volts that USB supplies. The twisted pair contains the USB data channels. Time to build a little circuit that includes a voltage regulator!

WARNING: I’m a software engineer, electronic circuits and soldering are not my strengths! :)

There are fixed voltage regulators, but I couldn’t find one that would bring me 3.9 volts, so I needed an adjustable voltage regulator. The LM317T is just what I needed.

The LM317T let’s you adjust the output voltage by adding resistors to your circuit.

You can lookup which resistors you need here. In order to get 3.9v I needed a 470Ω resistor for R1 and a 1000Ω for R2. Also note that the green wire (GND) does not need to be connected, just the red one (SHGND). I took apart a cheap Chinese lightning cable for the USB part and made this pretty little circuit. Sorry! :D

I plugged it in and it was immediately recognised as an HP Webcam-101, made by Chicony Corp. So far, so good. Let’s start Photo Booth...

Yup, seems about right.

Just for show, I put it on a tripod. It’s actually hooked up to my MacBook Air here, but I did try it on the Raspberry Pi Model B and it’s recognised just fine under Raspbian. It’s fun to set it up as a surveillance camera using motion, but the camera quality is really bad in low light. I followed these steps, except for the ones that concern the Raspberry Camera as I’m using a plain webcam.

Recently I was given a PlayStation 3 by a friend. Not a slim one, but the old school PS3 phat. He bought a new one because the one I was given wouldn't read any discs anymore. It wouldn't even to spin the disc. This actually makes sense: if the lens is not able to focus, why bother to spin the disc at all?

I figured it should be possible to repair and it's very likely it has something to do with the lens.

Apparently you can't just replace the entire Blu-ray drive of a PS3 because drive and mainboard are linked to each other. Also, there are many revisions of PlayStation 3's, so you have to be very careful to get the lens that fits your machine version. You can find the version on the back, mine is: CECHH04.

I found my module on dx.com and they have lots of lens modules! I needed a KEM-410ACA. It's stated in the metal on the top, but you can also find more info on which lens unit you need on the Internets.

It's really easy to pop open the PS3, but it's best to follow a guide. My Blu-ray drive is actually a bit different and even easier to disassemble.

Just replace the lens unit, put everything back together et voilà!

Happy gaming.