Restoring a broken Game Gear with Raspberry Pi
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- čas přidán 5. 06. 2024
- Thanks to Zarcade and sponsor Grid Studio for helping me with this project!
Links to both of them below, and I hope you have a wonderful Christmas this year!
Mentioned in this video:
- Grid Studio's Game Gear: gridstudio.cc/products/game-g...
- Zega Mame Gear: www.zegamamegear.uk/zega-mame...
- Mame Gear CM4 Adapter: www.zegamamegear.uk/product/Z...
- Handheld Legend: handheldlegend.com
- Brady Electronics Repair: bradyrepairs.com
- RetroPie: retropie.org.uk
Videos referenced in this video:
- Mame Gear assembly videos: • Zega Mame Gear / Game ...
- How I almost ruined MrBeast's 1-100 video: • How I almost broke MrB...
- Sega Game Gear 'color' commercial: • Wow! COLOR (Sega Game ...
- Sega Game Gear 'airplane' commercial: • Video
Support me on Patreon: / geerlingguy
Sponsor me on GitHub: github.com/sponsors/geerlingguy
Merch: redshirtjeff.com
2nd Channel: / geerlingengineering
Contents:
00:00 - Christmas came early!
00:17 - Childhood dreams
01:09 - Nintendo vs Sega
02:31 - Rescuing e-waste
03:31 - Electronic art
04:33 - Gathering parts
05:44 - Build
08:01 - Will it boot?
08:39 - Hackerman
09:21 - Emulation performance
10:01 - Some issues
11:22 - Merry Christmas - Věda a technologie
its so great that the raspberry pi and retro pi have been around for so long that you can essentially just save any classic handheld and turn it into a great emulation machine, or just make an entirely new handheld gaming console. between raspberry pi and the steam deck/handheld gaming pcs it sure seems like were in a new golden age for portable gaming.
Wait till you hear about this thing called a "phone", it's INCREDIBLE.
@@SuitedGhostI can't stand retro gaming on a phone with no tactile buttons. Also it does not have the same nestalgic feel to it as you get using the same device you had as a kid.
But no one can tell you how your aloud to have fun. If that's what you enjoy then keep doing it that way. 😊
@@Phoenix_On_Fire *unless you play for nostalgia
would you rather have stuff end up in landfills? @@SuitedGhost
Cool kids had a game gear, whereas all I had was some POS worm light. I remember pining after the game gear kids.
Play some Streets of Rage.
i had both, tbh the game gear had very few compelling games. Where the GB and GBC had a library full of them.
I've never someone pining over anything before in my life. That's crazy. I thought they only did it in the song
@@SquarishLinkPokémon, that is all
@@PJxBuchwild zelda, mario, pokemon, nes ports, castlevania, etc.
Seeing Gran Turismo on what appears to be a Game Gear totally broke my brain.
😅
For future projects, might look at using a step drill. They are better for drilling through thinner material, like that, then a twist drill is.
I agree. Twist drills can bite and grab onto thin materials. The step drills are not ground the same way and do not "drill in" to the material. It's more of a shearing action like in a reaming tool.
cheers and happy holidays :)
I was thinking the exact same thing! Step drill bits save you from SO MUCH GRIEF! Absolutely the best way to get precision when quick and dirty is on the menu (e.g., you can't afford to make any mistakes, but don't have access to a stationary and/or hand drill).
Or use a cheap carbide tapered grinding bit and drill a pilot hole first then expand it with the grinding bit. EDIT: Or maybe even a hand reamer. The important part is getting the pilot hole perfectly centered first.
First video from new office. Congratulations 🎉 🥂
*technically* last week's was too, but it was a bit of a short video, mostly to make sure everything worked. This week I'm finally 'moved in' all the way, though there will still be a lot of tweaking to the space!
Agreed!! That videos shows why open source is always better! 😌😌
Oh man, some of those childhood pics give me nostalgia. I can still hear the commercial: "Crossfire. Crossfire. Crossfire. CROSSFIREEEEEE!"
Now I mostly remember all the ball bearings showing up around the basement for years after we got rid of the game, haha!
A friend of mine has just gotten himself a little emulation handheld. The SNES wasn't generally available in his country, so he's working his way through SMW, Super Metroid and Zelda.
Another good point-for most of us, we were lucky to get access to maybe one or two systems or a few arcade games growing up. Emulation lets us experience a lot of the depth of gaming that existed a long time ago. Wish publishers would embrace it more.
I'd be perfectly happy buying ROMs from Nintendo or Sega or whoever else for a buck a pop. They continue making tons of money off old IP, and I feel less like I have to pirate ROMs of games we bought decades ago.
@@JeffGeerling They would rather charge €10+ a game and enforce vendor lock in, unfortunately.
@@LeminskiTankscor or provide them as a service/ rental/ monthly fees
Thank you Jeff for not trashing an existing working Game Gear and just buying shells for your project. I hate it when tech tubers just trash a old console like that for a views.
Jeff, would love to see an update one day if/when the power delivery issues are resolved. I imagine the future CM5 would struggle even more, but would make for a really great performer here.
I've spoken to John and it sounds like he's currently doing some work on the Mame Boy kit, but may go back to an idea to build a CM4-specific drop-in board so you don't have to use the GPIO adapter board. That would also allow for some room for improvements to the power delivery, we'll see!
@@JeffGeerling Don't know how to check, this might be a stupid comment, but can the CM4 be ... unclocked ? Like the inverse of overclock, just power it down, since it probably doesn't need top performance. Though to be fair, no idea if it will impact the power problems. It should help with the battery life though.
@@Winnetou17 I'm using a Pi Zero 2W. Working well so far.
Brad point drill bits intended for wood also work really well for drilling plastic... the center point lets you get really accurate, then the outer cutters score the circle without taking chunks. They're my go-to for stuff like this.
Thanks. Video brings back loads of memories. Have a Great Christmas from us here in the UK 🥳
In my early 20's (late 90s/early 00's) I got ahold of the Sega Nomad. That thing could eat 4 AAs in about three hours, but I got to get my Phantasy Star II and IV fix on it and loved it. Sadly I've misplaced it nowadays.
The Nomad takes 6 AAs.
One of the best addons for the game gear was the TV adapter it turned your Gamegear into a portable TV which was nice and worked quite well.
0:45 CROSSFIRE!
I loved that game!
Still finding ball bearings in the basement years later :D
I have a real soft spot for the Gamegear, replacing all the old leaky capacitors in my old one was only the second time I'd ever soldered (and more importantly, the first time I'd done it without someone looking over my shoulder) and seeing it come back to life with all the sound and video working again was unbelievably satisfying. I love the form factor but it's a heavy piece of kit, something tells me this mod probably weighs a lot less than a stock console with all 6 AA batteries lol
LOVE. Blogging it next week.
Ooh nice :)
My kids seem to have settled on Sonic 1 as the game they would like to take down at some point... my 7 yo daughter especially is determined to get past Aquatic Zone lol
I also have found joy as an adult by getting myself the things I wanted as a kid. It's also a lot of fun going back to those old games you never got the chance to beat as a kid and finishing them.
Same here. And ... I can eat all the candy I want.
The Game Gear was great because they were available at every Howard Johnson's hotel for guest checkout. It definitely motivated me as a child to get my parents to stay at Howard Johnson's when I saw one during a road trip!
Indeed one of the best features of the Game Gear was it's color screen, not because you could game outside home, but because you could game inside home without keeping the only TV set occupied, with a power supply only personal time was the limit
Happy Christmas Jeff, thank you for all the positivity you’ve put out into the world this year 💚❤️ Wishing you a mega 2024
Merry Christmas @JeffGeerling thanks for all the interesting videos this year!! Have a wonderful Christmas break.
It's just like the Anbernic RG arc D that's just come out 🙏🏽
Wold love to see a FPGA version, that would be fun
just as a side-note: FPGAs are quite slow and rather for development or if slow speed / bad performance doesn't matter much but rather to get the job done
an FPGA would rather be a tool to develope an eco-system and when all is done to bake the design into an ASIC which then can run the fixed hardware way faster
using a microcontroller like a raspberry is a somewhat split between taking established hardware but giving up dedicated chips for a specific console - the reason why emulation works that well is just because modern multi-GHz cpus are fast enough to emulate those old chips which ran at quite slow MHz
@@cryptearth I was thinking MiSTer project in there, loads of retro fun
@@grahameida7163 as for the Mister project I'm only aware of its existence - I don't know about details
what I read for this reply is that the base board is designed as a development platform - and its name "nano" for me implies that it's not the best of its kind but rather on the other end of the scale
what impressed me most is the number of supported platforms - the game boy advanced used an ARM cpu at 16 2/3 MHz - the FPGA of the board the Mister project is based on only provides up to 50MHz - so it's just about 3x the required speed - and it has to deal with all the perephirals and other chips and an additional interface to emulate the physical cartridge slot in such a way it can access files stored on a filesystem
also: I'm not sure if this one FPGA even has enough gates and I/O to support all the platforms at once or if one has to re-program it everytime one changes the platform
also also: (re-)distributing source for a proprietary core design? I see potential legal issues - and boy is Nintendo one of a kind when it comes to fight bootlegging
I guess you see my point: it's not that your Idea about using an FPGA is bad in general - but it's quite a bad tool for the job you want it to get done
sure, one might try to overclock the FPGA to get a bit more performance out of it - but when comparing a chip with about 50MHz max vs a SoC in the GHz with optimized emulators which can take advantage of the modern hardware to take shortcuts to improve performance it becomes quite obvious: using a Pi already is the nerd-type level solution - using an FPGA is following the rabbit down its hole into the wonderland
Besides everything that is so great in this video - I'm digging the new studio, looks really really nice! Happy holidays Jeff
Thank you!
Thanks for sharing Jeff
For drilling holes in plastic I use a Step Drill Bits or that's what we call them in the UK.
Not a bad idea. With the move going on, I actually have my step bits at the office... so when I went home, I only had my straight bits, d'oh!
@@JeffGeerling Sounds like a "reason" to buy more tools to me! ;)
xmas present sorted then.@@BenScarboro
Oh wow. I still have a working one of these in the cupboard. Very happy to see a second life option for it.
Merry Christmas to you and yours! Great content as always 🫂
I've wanted a Game Gear for forever, and short of changing out bulbs and capacitors this sounds like a great project to make those things more usable today.
So glad you've featured John's excellent work with the Zega Mame Gear. I've made three Zega Mame Boys (DMGs) from their kits. I dont need three, but its great fun. The service is beyond good too.
Heh define 'need' :D
The gamegear has a special place in my heart. So much I bought two units and modded one with a new LCD screen and another restored to its original state.
Great vid! Being an 80’s kid I had to look at what my richer friends had. This looks a fun build.
Oh! In the new studio already! Cool! Congrats 🎉
That rocks bro. So glad you finally got one.
Love GameGear mods
My best friend and I both got Game Gears within maybe 6 months of each other. I loved Sonic and Monaco GP, he loved Sonic 2. I remember the first time I ever played a "network" connected game was when he and I linked Monaco GP together.
Fast forward more than 30 years, I'm sitting in his kitchen, at Christmas and we're preparing to go out for Christmas drinks. I'm very tempted by one of these GG remakes.
This is awesome!!! I was cleaning up my basement and found my old GG. It still works but I totally need to do this with mine. Thanks for sharing this great video.
Or you can replace the electrolytic capacitors and just put in a modern IPS screen (recommend the BennVenn screen). Shouldn't destroy a working console! The Zega one's are really for consoles that are too far gone with corrosion.
Sonic 2 was my absolute number one favourite video game back in 1990s. No contest. Memories of nostalgia..... 😌
I could never figure out flying the hang glider in the... second act? I can't remember the terminology anymore. It's the level after you fight Dr. Robotnik the first time. I still have mine floating around, perhaps I should give it another go.
I had a game gear back in the day and loved it!
Vrolijke Kerstdagen, Jeff. Nice build and great to see my favourite handheld also runs on this (Atari Lynx).
In 1991 I bought a Gamegear and smuggled it into PLDC when I was in the army. As far as I know it still works. It's in a box in my basement somewhere.
Someday someone is going to find this at a yard sale and be pissed its not actually a Sega Console.
If there's another Pi shortage though, it'll be a gold mine :)
The Steam Deck was my grown up opportunity to get the Game Gear I wish I had back in 91-94…
Thank you for this trip down nostalgia lane. I didn't know about this rebuild kits. I'm tempted to grab one for myself now :)
Merry Christmas to you Jeff and your family! I've gotten into a couple of these types of consoles with the Nespi and the Gpi. It's nice to relive those old school games we all grew up with. Even funnier to show my kids what games used to be like and have them not as impressed lol
Haha yeah even 'modern' games like Mario Kart 64 seem so outlandishly low-res compared to Mario Kart 8. It's like the difference between N64 and the original Atari!
@@JeffGeerling I'd still take the 80's and 90's over current technology
I had one of those, even use an adaptor to play the genesis games that was cheaper! Good memories!
I never was a gamer (my brother was though!) but it's super cool seeing the retrofit of old tech with new tech!!!🤗
Brilliant video, especially the part about being 3rd. Omds so true I was 3rd as well. Always had to watch and if I am lucky get to play. Wow crazy days. I loved them. 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
Trick for getting micro SD cards out of poorly positioned readers, use a USB A plug (perhaps your microSD card reader itself) to push card and unlock it,
THEN slip the end of the card into the hole in the USB A plug, like a handle.
I have a gopro max and microSD reader is fiddly in the same way.
Ah! GoPro is the same way for me too (I have a Hero 10, and it's a pain getting that thing out).
I saved every penny i got for a year for one of those. Then my parents were generous enough to buy a power adapter for the car since i couldn't afford the pallet of batteries required to keep it running.
Fun project!! I’m just falling down the Pi project hole & will be adding retro handheld to my list for 2024.
Very nice, and Happy Christmas!
For an old hand like me I tend to crack a wry smile whenever difficult N64 emulation is mentioned. I remember happily running UltraHLE on a Win98 PC that would have seriously struggled with PS1 emulation at the time. Said PC was probably less powerful than a Pi Zero for both GFX and CPU. I guess N64 emulator coders very much chase perfect accuracy rather than minimum hardware these days.
Kudos for the DIY job. For me, i went with the black Anbernic ARC-D and optimized my setup with the help of The Retro Arena Firmware.
Hey first video in the new Studio. Nice!!!!
Technically second, but last weeks video was a little more of a "is everything here?" test, not a full fledged video like this one :)
Still moving some things in place, but it's already a nice productive place!
It's amazing that the Miyoo Mini can do everything this does but better, including fitting in the pocket better.
Sweet build jeff. I also wanted one when i was a kid. I finally bought a used one years later and put it in the old collection case. I play the games now on my retropie system big screen.
this is so the right way for the world to think about stuff. upgrade and re-use!
Congratulations on the new studio!!
🌲Merry Christmas Jeff 🎄
Omg that is awesome!
If you have an old Pi lying around? Why not! This video brought back lots of old memories! Great Video! Thanks for taking us back a few years!
Heck yea! Game gear for life!
Jeff, thanks for the great video. Received my kit today and think I'll be using a stepper bit to drill the holes. It's great they give you the files to download (stl) button parts and the image for the SD boot card.
Yes! Though I am trying to get them to release more instructions for building the image, so I can replicate it on my own (and tweak it more to my liking...).
Would be very cool if the future CM5 will fit too! Maybe a new mainboard for it.
@@JeffGeerling I’m setting up a Pi Zero 2w for this and the image downloaded works but didn’t detect my generic USB game controller. I used a keyboard and found the “Enter” key will bring up the configuration menu but only the “z” key will take you to the sub menus. You must go to configure input, press “z” twice, physically remove the keyboard and replace with gamepad. Hold down any button and it will be detected. Afterward the menu of assigning each button will appear. Hope this helps others trying this.
The one thing that I am concerned about is a heatsink. Without testing how hot will the processor get while running the graphics, will it need one? I’m thinking a thin aluminum strip as wide as the processor going up and attaching to the original metal shield located between the audio and power boards.
@@dronepilotflyby9481 I think the Zero 2 W would be perfectly fine, as there's enough space within the chassis that natural convection will keep it cool.
I'm running my CM4 with no heatsink, and it only throttles after about an hour-at which point the battery is also running out a bit, so it's not too bad, haha.
For the Zero 2 W, I wouldn't worry, unless the ambient air temperature is pretty high (e.g. gaming outside on a very sunny day).
@@JeffGeerling Yes, after playing several games I found the CPU temp doesn't rise much.
I had to download the image for the original Zero to get the candy not included with Zero2 image. 😀
Back in the 90's, I purchased a white game gear system while visiting Japan. Came in a white carrying case with a power supply and TV tuner. Still works great!
Merry Christmas all!
And a Happy New Year... soon!
3:00 - Okay I absolutely love whoever dubbed the Steam Deck as "Gabe Gear", that is brilliant 😂
Catching up with what you lost out with your siblings? Nostalgia is very powerful.
Vengeance is better.
Thanx for the Video Jeff, we all love our gaming platforms we had as kids. My Father bought me a ZX Spectrum, which I played to death and then stupidly gave away when it broke. I will forever regret that decision. I did get a donated ZX81, which I will prolly do an RPi conversion on. One Day! 😂 Anyway Merry Christmas and have a wonderful new year! 🎄🎅
Wow! Although it's still raspberry mod and running Retropie, but with old components like SEGA game gear is amazing!
That is crazy! Awesome way to reuse an old game gear.
This is so cool Jeff.
One Christmas my brother, amazingly, got an Atari Lynx and the game: Blue Lightning. It was like the future had arrived. I can't remember if we mostly powered it from a power supply or batteries.
Christmas wish granted: New Jeff Geerling video
oh, fantastic video. The design of Sega Game Gear seems perfect for doing swaps like Raspberry PI.
Hehe, I bet that Sega Game Gear engineers never imagined that 30 years later people would be putting inside the shell some custom electronic just to have a bit more modern Sega Game Gear :)
Your suffering as the youngest and lowest on the totem pole in your family brought (fake) tears to my eyes 😂 Thanks for the trip down memory lane and up to infinity and beyond.
I just love these kind of videos.
Jeff Merry Christmas 🎉 and enjoy your PiSega handheld game console. Red shirt Jeff would have a ball showing young Jeff the handheld from the future…😂!
Have a great day!
A steamdeck inspired shell would be great
I’d love to try this actually on my wife’s old semi working game gear. I’m sure she’d love it
Would definitely fix any issues she may have on the backlight!
To do this you only need a shell, you can buy them new and they are cheap. Some even come with the 4 buttons. There are better mods for a genuine game gear that reuses the internals of the game gear. Those chips are no longer manufactured and should not be discarded.
@@RexBuyeo On mine, the shell came bare (someone on eBay likely resold the other parts separately), but on the blue Game Gear I haven't decided whether I want to try restoring it to original status (though with new screen), or do a swap-out.
A lot of us 80's/90's kids had the Game Gear's home console equivalent - the Master System. They were basically the same 8-bit Sega, in different form factors.
Sounds like Jeff has some childhood trama my guy needs to work out :)
when drilling thin plastic or metal for that matter, get yourself a step drill bit. It solves all the issues you described.
Use a tapered drill bit next time, it will work much better.
Loved this video
The cool factor on this one was 10/10 😎
Nice man. Really well intrigued.
Wow I literally just gutted mine and drilled the same two holes in the front, came here looking for inspiration and this will fit what I have already done perfectly!
Merry Christmas to you and your whole family.
Is that the new office/studio space? Looks great!
The world is in a bad place when Jeff can't get a CM4.
I thought it was just me that had to wait 6 freaking months after my CM4 order
I ordered in October 2022, and got this one in November 2023 :D
Good to see I have options when I finally repaur my Game Gear. I won it in some contest iirc when I was 14-15 years old. I tried it around a decade ago and it was dead and I do have a cap kit but not sure what else it may need.
In addition to replacing the caps on the main board (and cleaning any electro lyte leaking) (and maybe bridging a corroded trace), other necessary mods might be replacing the power board (there are modern that can take USB-C, and some even work with rechargeable batteries like the one used in this video) and the audio board (some support stereo if you drill an extra speaker gille and add an additionnal one). That resurected my console.
Watching you build the handheld i think you would love the PSPi, some guy designed a raspberry pi motherboard to fit into the psp 1000 shell
Crossfire! You'll get caught up in the..!
Haha all I remember is how we kept finding those little ball bearings everywhere in the basement for years after we got rid of the game lol
still have my PSP 1st gen, game gear, and game boy along with my consoles from long ago lol
The same deal for an Atari Lynx II is what I'm waiting for
My family was a 200 IQ and plugged our Game Gear to the wall sockets at home, and used a cig lighter for car trips.
Enjoyable video.
I wouldn't mind an additional select button in a reverse position to the start button on the other side of the screen and play only early handheld game consoles and numerous 8-bit consoles. The extra two buttons look very tacked on to me, detract from its aesthetics.
The Game Gear its 32 years old......damn, where did time go?
ARGHHHH NEW STUDIO ITS SO COOOOOOOOL! 😂
what an awesome build!
Merry Christmas Jeff! Great video, as always. One question though: what was the design on your favourite shirt? (As modelled at around 1:33)
I did this case hacking style sevrol years ago. This looks a lot easier! I added 4 shoulder buttons on the back as well though which is nice to have. As well as a row of buttons on the bottom to use as like hot keys for save load etc.