Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Overview

Here are the main parts of the game boy unit:

The second block diagram (from patent 5134391) shows that the LCD controller is split into two parts.

and here is the main PCB from a real game boy:



You can see the main CPU in the middle, the two SRAM chips  used for display and work memory and I think the fourth chip amplifies the sound. At the bottom you can see where the cartridge (game pak) connector has been removed.

In the block diagram "6-pin subconnector" is the link cable port, here are pinouts for it and the cartridge connector


I think that the CPU itself outputs a stream of pixels which the two LCD chips (see the schematics) then decode into vertical and horizontal lines. You can see both those chips (covered in a glob) one behind the screen in this image, and the other on the flexible PCB below the screen:

Sources:

1 comment:

  1. Dear, I have a pcb board where some orange capacitors are broken. How could I know their capacity to replace them?

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