Built rebuilding my old GBA with centered display

[jonnyczi]

Incredible project, dreams do come true. Everybody thinks that this is the coolest thing they have seen. It really was a lot of fun to build.



I managed to get the display centered by cutting off most of the plastic on the left side of it. The display just barely surpasses the top, left and right bezels but it surpasses the bottom a lot. I'm thinking of getting a clear glass screen protector and spray painting the back edges of it black to make narrower bezels so that the whole display can be used. I just need to figure out what kind of paint would work well.

I find that the X and Y buttons stick out too much making it difficult to play games that require pressing them and normal buttons at the same time. I will cut them shorter to fix that once I get new ones. It doesn't look like I can get only the buttons from the store? I also need to get a larger drill bit so that the holes are perfectly round.

Does anybody have any Idea how I can get perfectly straight edges, I could not get that with a flat file, maybe some kind of guide for the file would do the trick?

If I fully tighten the screws the shoulder buttons get stuck. I tried shaving down the pivot nubs but it doesn't seem to help.

Does anybody know how to get non widescreen games working in the correct aspect ratio. I tried a bunch of settings and it either crashes the system or doesn't make a difference. In my pictures the SNES games shouldn't be so wide.

[Flavor]

Hey Jonnyczi!

I have done a quick edit to one of your photos.  It shows some places the shoulder buttons can be shaved to reduce the problem you mentioned.

When you are trying video resolution settings, you may want to plug in HDMI.  If resolutions change, the internal LCD driver will have problems, but the HDMI may continue to function.


If you want to change aspect ratio sorts of things, check here.

• • Choose “RetroPie” from the main menu
    • Retroarch (A button)
      • Configure Aspect Ratio (better full-screen LCD experience)
        • Settings (A button)
          • Video (A button)
            • Aspect Ratio (select “4:3” by cycling through options with right/left)
              
            • (hit B button repeatedly to back out)
              
      • Configurations (A button)
        • Save Current Configuration (A button)
          
        • (hit B button repeatedly to back out)
          
      • Quit RetroArch
        

[Mootikins]

When I cut out the entire display area on my CM3, I used an X-Acto to cut away the extra area, and even did a test with another shell where I used a laser cutter to cut away the same area. The laser cutter is obviously a lot easier, but is also much more limited since most people don't have them. If you decide to use an X-Acto, I recommend looking at the display's placement before the cuts to figure out what needs to be cut away (the pixel trim can be found in /boot somewhere, and with a calculator you can get the exact amount that needs to be cut from the top, bottom and the sides.

For getting the correct aspect ratio, TheFlav already gave you a good start, but I personally would recommend doing each setting on a per-emulator basis. Open a game, go to the RetroArch menu (should be hotkey + X I believe) then go to the main menu by pressing B, go down to Settings, Video, and under aspect ratio go to core provided. This will guarantee that it is the original aspect ratio of the console, and I believe even accounts for per-game resolutions such as the variable resolution that was present in SNES titles. If you go to custom, you can turn integer scaling on and get pixel-perfect scaling so long as you change your HDMI resolution in /boot/config.txt to 640x480 by setting the hdmi_mode=2.

Matthew

[jonnyczi]

Thanks for the info guys, really useful stuff.

@Flavor I don't see the edits, did you draw lines on the image?


@Mootikins When I was modding the case I tried to use an X-Acto but I couldn't cut the plastic, it was probably a low quality blade.

I tried to set the aspect ratio to core provided but the image remains wide, just about all the other settings for aspect ratio work though. I remember changing a configuration file setting with a number or two that I think was a factor of the resolution of the screen. I changed it so that I would take up the entire viewport of the GBA. I think the number was one bellow the maximum.

I live in Asia so ordering button caps from the listed sources have expensive shipping. Does anybody know the the model of the buttons so that I can find them here?

[Flavor]

To be honest, I don't know what happened to the photo I mentioned.

This link should bring you directly to the page about the shoulder buttons.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bPDw...0w5aka3cz5
The photos on the bottom of that page show the mods I think I was talking about. Notice the black marks on the shoulder. That's showing all the places that should be shaved.

For button caps, do you mean X/Y button caps or the entire GBA button set?