Start placing your bets now! In the near future you’ll GET READY TO RUMBLE! Not even two years ago, the VCSp Rev 5 butted heads with a spitfire newcomer, the Gameboy Advance! Now, in the brave year 2003, Nintendo has launched its latest entry in the war for portable gaming dominance, the Gameboy Advance SP! (Spend Profusely)

Nothing like superfluous capitalization of words, I always say! So, welcome any and all newcomers to the site and to the hobby of “Portabilization”, which I inadvertently invented a couple years ago.

To your left, you’ll see a menu system thing. The various models of portable units I have built are displayed under -get this- MODELS! Amongst the other menus you’ll find info on hacking up your own Atari system, video clips of things in action and more!

So feel free to cruise the site and indulge yourself with my ramblings!

Ah, a personal holy grail of mine. I bought a PS One screen a while ago because, well, let’s face it, $130 for a 5-inch TFT screen? You can’t beat that!

BUT (there’s always a butt) the darn thing consumes around 1 amp (not milliamp, AMP) of power at 7.2 volts. You hook this thing onto a PSOne and it uses as much or MORE power than the game system itself.

So, where to turn… Where indeed! White LED’s! Of course, the PSOne screen has this really odd bulb thing going around the backlight plastic. It’s U-shaped and covers 3 sides of the plastic. Well, I ditched that thing and stuck in 3 LED’s, each pointing down a side, much like marching soldiers or that scene in Tron.

If any of you other tinkerers would like to give this a go, just wire (3) 3mm white LED’s in parallel off the PS One’s +7.2v power source and put a 22 ohm resistor in front of them.

Here it is, portable-lovers! In all sorts of vector file formats, the files that can be used to build a VCSp Rev 5!

Visit the Downloads page to get the WinZip file containing the goods. The WinZip archive contains:

 – HINTS & TIPS! - 

Not all of the blanks are filled in, however, for a couple reasons. One, I’m lazy. Two, if you decide to use the files and create something, you can improvise things (such as the tricky battery cover slot routing) and make changes on your own.

Front Half of Case…

You’ll notice 4 screw risers on each side of the unit. These will (more or less) perfectly fit a Radio Shack general-purpose IC PC board (catalog #276-150a) for which to place your buttons/switches/components on. How you place your video mod circuits, heat sinks and the like on this board I leave to you.

You’ll need an RCA L2501 pocket television for the screen. They are still available at Best Buy as of this writing, you can also find them used online if you do a search. The neat thing about the L2501 is the long ribbon cable connecting the main board to the screen. You can remove the screen, stick it through the hole in the front of the case, cram it into the screen riser piece, then drill holes on the 3 screen riser posts that match the holes on the screen’s PCB! (ah ha!) To save time and money, use the 3 screws that held the screen in the pocket TV. The ribbon cable can be bent at a 45 degree angle, and you can affix the main PCB of the pocket tv in sideways.

Be careful of the wires that connect to the bulb on this TV, they can be easily broken. (If you convert to white LED’s you’ll remove them anyway) Of course, you’ll have to de-solder the brightness and volume controls and connect them to the side of the unit…

Rear Half of Case…

Hm, see those mysterious holes on the left side of the unit? That’s my initials (BJH) in Braille, and also vent holes for the heat sink (a clue as to which side to put it on!) You’ll see the two screw posts where you can attach the chopped up Atari 2600 board (see below). The battery goes on the right hand side. You’ll need to affix a match plate over the battery compartment to keep it in place. For the battery contacts, I suggest drilling holes in a piece of that Radio Shack IC PC board and shoving some male molded nylon connector prongs through. (search Radio Shack for this) Those will precisely fit the holes on a Sony Info lithium battery.

So, good luck! If you have a specific question, such as “what type of heat sink?”, feel free to email and ask away, however, to pre-answer 50% of the email I get, I will not be providing a complete ‘how-to’ as I currently do not have enough time to write one up. Try the forums, (see link to left), there’s plenty of people working on portables who can also offer advice and solutions to issues regarding this hobby.

(VISIT VCSp Special Edition page)

Just when you thought I’d stopped building portable Ataris! Here it is, the first wooden portable game system that I know of. Built on consignment, this unit is truly unique! I call it “VCSp Special Edition”

For more pictures, info and babblings on this device, click here or browse the “Models” tab on your left.

I am considering building (2) more of these oak-encrusted units. Any interested parties should email me their inquiries.

During the next few days, I’m gonna remove all the Java stuff from this web site. Many Windows XP or Netscape 7 users have trouble seeing the link buttons on the left so this is an issue I must address!