We see lots of great hardware projects here at Hackade: some are extremely clever, some are beautifully crafted, and some show the extraordinary skill of their creators. Others are just plain weird, but still manage to include some or even all of the above categories. In case of point: [kgsws]Its Wireframe Game Boy project. This is probably the weirdest game boy mode we’ve ever seen, but from a technical standpoint it’s extremely impressive.
The original idea was to take a game boy’s pocket and remove the outer shell, replacing it with a cage-like structure made of thick copper wire. That kind of sounds reasonable; Just think of those transparent game boys without the transparent plastic. [kgsws]Its video (embedded below) shows him bending a few pieces of copper wire to match the overall shape of the game boy, then adding mounts for cartridge sockets, displays, D-pads and four buttons. After that you’ll just slide into the PCB, insert some batteries and you’ll be gone, right?
Well, don’t do this [kgsws]. What he did instead was use a hot air desoldering station to remove all the chips from the motherboard and mount them directly inside the wireframe without the PCB. He then used dozens of thin copper wires to hook up the cartridge slot, CPU, RAM, buttons, and everything else to restructure the motherboard. We cried a bit when we saw him brutally cut the flat cable of the display with scissors and it was also soldered to the rest of the system via a flying wire, soldered directly to the screen.
Surprisingly, the system was able to boot and run its software after receiving a pair of fresh batteries. Despite a slightly bizarre D-pad, the Naked Game Boy has actually become fully usable, although it probably requires a bit more subtle handling than Nintendo’s famous bullet-proof hardware. We’ve seen Game Boys come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes, but nothing unusual like today. If this is your favorite wireframe construction, check out this awesome sound generator or this beautiful circuit sculpture clock.