Lengthy earlier than there was a Steam Deck or PlayStation Moveable, players lower their cellular gaming tooth on probably the greatest transportable gaming consoles of all time — the Nintendo Sport Boy. It might not have been very highly effective or had the very best graphics on its tiny grayscale display, however with extremely addictive video games like Tetris and Tremendous Mario Land, it was an enormous hit with shoppers all the identical.
Not every part within the Sport Boy universe was a roaring success, nonetheless. This was nonetheless an experimental time on the earth of cellular gaming, and Nintendo threw plenty of issues on the wall to see what would stick. A few of these concepts have been simply plain bizarre. You might be acquainted with the Sport Boy Digicam, for example, which allowed customers to snap low-resolution photos that may very well be displayed in all their pixelated glory on any Sport Boy’s display.
Maybe that’s solely reasonably bizarre when you think about that this was lengthy earlier than the period of smartphones, when even proudly owning a standalone digital digital camera was one thing of a luxurious. However one other lesser-known accent referred to as the Sport Boy Printer — which was meant for use at the side of the digital camera — was a lot stranger nonetheless. This mini thermal printer was designed for those who urgently wanted a junky bodily copy of the junky image their Sport Boy Digicam took.
Because it seems, that was not lots of people. However with nostalgia having the ability to make us see something by rose-colored glasses, the Sport Boy Printer nonetheless has a following of loyal followers to this present day. That features Raphael Boichot, who’s so smitten with the printer that he created a modern-day emulator of the gadget referred to as the TinyGB Printer. Being an emulator, it doesn’t technically print something, however quite takes a pixel-perfect screenshot of no matter is on the Sport Boy’s display earlier than displaying it on a small, exterior LCD. These screenshots are additionally saved on an SD card, making the TinyGB Printer much more helpful than the true deal in some ways.
The TinyGB Printer leverages a Raspberry Pi Pico as its predominant processing unit. It incorporates a MicroSD protect for picture storage, a 240×240 1.3-inch TFT show (elective) to view screenshots, and a 4-gate stage shifter for voltage compatibility, because the Pico’s pins are usually not (formally) 5V tolerant. A 5V DC-DC step-up converter powers the system, enabling it to run on two rechargeable AA or AAA NiMH batteries housed in a compact battery field with a change. The gadget additionally consists of an exterior hyperlink port for connection to Sport Boy units, a small push button for mode management, and an AMS1117 3.3V voltage regulator for secure operation. These elements are mounted on a customized PCB.
The set up course of for the TinyGB Printer is simple and user-friendly. After soldering all parts onto the customized PCB, one merely connects the Raspberry Pi Pico to a pc by way of USB whereas holding the BOOT button. As soon as related, the supplied UF2 firmware file should then be transferred to the "USB" folder that seems, after which the gadget will likely be prepared to make use of. For individuals who want to modify or recompile the code, the Arduino IDE with the RP2040 core is really helpful.
Coming in at beneath $20 in elements, the TinyGB Printer is effectively well worth the effort of assembling for any Sport Boy fan. And with all of the small print revealed beneath a permissive GNU Common Public License, you may copy-and-paste your means over the end line.The TinyGB Printer emulates the basic Sport Boy Printer (📷: Raphael Boichot)
The gadget’s customized PCB (📷: Raphael Boichot)
A more in-depth have a look at the {hardware}, with and with out the show (📷: Raphael Boichot)
