Winner Announcement: Win a Xbox One S All-Digital Edition!!

Here is the Gameboy Color that I customised for my son. Nothing too drastic just a new glass screen and backlight. He mainly uses it to Play Pokemon Blu. I'd love to win the Xbox so that we can both play Minecraft together even when he's not here.

This is the very first PCB I designed for my own personal use. It was laid out using translucent red and blue tape plus black tape and via donuts - at 2X scale, then photographically reduced through colored filters to obtain 1:1 PCB artwork layers for the print shop. The high cost of making mistakes with this method is probably why I am still so meticulous about getting my PCB layouts to work on the first attempt.

The function of this circuit is to fit in-line with any joystick of the day (Atari, Sega, Colecovision, Commodore, etc.), which used DB9 connectors, and turn the trigger function into a rapid fire (machine gun) trigger.

At the time all the action games and shoot-em-ups required the trigger button to be rapidly cycled to have any success. This often led to a sore trigger finger.

The circuit still allowed single shots by "blipping" the trigger, but if the trigger was held down it would cycle the output at an optimal speed for hardware of the day.

This little circuit led to many high scores without damage to my trigger finger.

I had visions of turning this circuit into a product, but eventually expensive joysticks came out with this feature built-in.

At least that proved it was a good product idea.

It would be interesting to see how the latest generation of kids (grandkids) fares with modern X-Box technology.

There always seemed to be a gender bias in the types of games kids played and preferred. I am curious if this trend still persists. I am sure my granddaughter and grandson wouldn't "mind" the experiment.

I "might" even have a go at it myself to see how the technology and game-play has improved. I am already putting together a retro PiCade so there would be something to compare it with even if I can't get my old hardware platforms functioning.

This project turned 10 years old today and didn't get much farther than this image.

Before The raspberry pi, before easy to get ITX systems, I attempted to shove an old Pentium 2 Dell laptop into an Atari 2600 for the sole reason of being able to use it to emulate a bunch of different game consoles along with the 2600.

It emulates a 2600 pretty well. I never did get a game controller wired up to it, so I just left a USB to Playstation, Xbox, and Gamecube adapter tucked in where the floppy drive used to go.

I documented everything on Instructables years back. it's probably still up there as well.

As for what I'd use the XBox One All Digital edition for? I'll probably put it into the bedroom as a replacement for the roku that also just happens to play video games pretty well. Nice compromise. A bunch of my library is in disc form, but with Games with Gold as a part of my collection, I can probably survive. The big TV in the livingroom will still be used to play all the games on disc without complaint.

Nothing compared to others but had my original Xbox One Elite controller fail. Just didnt accept a battery. Turns out was a loose battery terminal. Knowing Id be opening it up I got some controller parts. Swapped out the silver top trim with black, new faceplate, new battery door, put on the Gears 4 PowerA Elite Accessory kit. Fixed the battery issue. Did some minor mods, installed new joysticks, was a MINOR drift, got ones with more tension so I can now do better aiming. Since I covered the 1/2 mode switch with faceplate, I actually did move it, not shown here but it's opposite of the sync button and is a push toggle button.

If I won the Xbox, Id like to see if I can upgrade the HDD with a spare SSD I have. Seen people replace the harddrives on the launch model Xbox One quite easily. So would like to try my hand at it and then give to my stepson who is a Fortnite nut and get my Gears 4 X1s back to just my usage lol

Also in rules it says:

Winners selected: 20th September 2020

Hope that's a typo

I can't tell you what I would have done for a gameboy with a backlight when I was younger! That's a great mod to a classic piece of hardware!

Good Luck

I can remember when consoles like the MegaDrive (Genesis) started having "turbo" buttons with just this functionality. Building your own with discreet hardware and etched PCB is a great mod though!

Good Luck!

I did a very similar one at about the same time, I wanted a media PC, so built old laptop parts into an old DVD player case. Looks like you have done a great job.

Good Luck!

Necessity often leads to the best mods, and the controller looks great, I bet it plays great too now!

Good luck, and thanks for the heads up on the date!

Yes! It has been updated now. Thank you for noticing it.

My chops

At some point in my life I ended up with a classic ZX Spectrum case with no PCB and no keyboard membrane. Without these two things, it was just a box that looked liked my childhood (but much emptier).

Then, years later, I got a ZX Uno board. It's a complete Spectrum (and much more) implemented flawlessly on an FPGA. Looking around for a case, I spotted my vacant Speccy case, and so in it went!

It's obviously not a perfect fit. It took some cutting and filing to achieve...

I cobbled together bits from my "I might use this one day" boxes to take VGA, power and PS/2 keyboard to the back. The SD card slot for the ZX Uno is a full sized one, so I glued an adaptor in place, and now there's a micro SD card slot easily accessible. (The video and audio out happened to line up perfectly with two existing cut-outs in this position as well - very lucky!) A speaker from an old PC is fed audio through a little amplifier circuit, and a volume wheel is added to a cut-out at the front because it got VERY loud...)

I make no excuses for the quantity of hot glue. I wasn't doing this for anyone but me

But what of the keyboard? And some kind of joystick? Glad you asked.

Using a combination of conductive copper tape, PVC insulation tape and solder (with LOTS of flux so the tip wasn't near the plastic for too long) I added a kinda membrane keyboard thing. My favourite layout for Spectrum games (QAOPM) is set up as a joypad which goes down into the 9-pin D socket. (It feels wonderful.) I have a PS/2 keyboard for everything else.

My Xbox idea

Thanks to David we've seen just how much space is wasted with the optical drive removed. LOADS! There's also HDMI pass-through, and plenty of amps hanging around the PSU. I'd drop a Pi 4B, a couple of USB 3.0 drives and a wireless keyboard/mouse dongle into the empty cavern (making sure that the wireless side of things isn't nobbled by RF shielding, naturally) and take the HDMI output to the input on the Xbox. Hey presto, one double-team home server and entertainment platform!