For the past week or so, I’ve been slowly gathering the materials for an Afterburner mod to my Gameboy Advance. I needed to feed my WarioWare addiction, even in low light conditions like our living room.
So, first came the Afterburner kit. Then I went to Radio Shack to get some tin solder, a screwdriver set and some canned air. Two days ago I went to the Art Store and got an XActo knife. With every purchase I thought, “Could I have just bought an SP for this money?”
Last night, I sat down at the kitchen table and set to work.
First I tried to open the case with my screwdrivers. I got 4 of the screws out, but the last three wouldn’t budge with my flathead. See, the screws are a triwing head. So I called Adam, since I knew that he was doing a GBA project at school.
He didn’t have any opening tools, but he said he might have some better screwdrivers, so I packed up all my stuff and went on up to his place.
Easiest part of the night.
I got there and set up on Adam and Todd’s coffeetable.
The other screwdrivers did work so I could move past step 1 and onto step 2. I progressed fine taking it apart until the part where you have to cut large hunks of plastic from the GBA in order to make a space for the afterburner. I learned that XActos are not all created equal. Mine was created at the weak ass end of the factory. I started cutting and I began to worry about the front screen, which was still attached. I began to cut through to the front, as the instructions said, until I noticed that my blad could slip between the front screen and the rest of the faceplate. I reread step 3. “Take off the front screen.” Heh. Mine was a bit scratched by now but Adam said I could take the one from his development GBA since he just had to give it back today and a little scrathc wouldn’t matter.
So, with a great effort, I chipped out the plastic, curl by curl. Got a few nicks on my fingers, but I figured that was the cost of being l33t.
Finally the plastic was done. Adam and Todd had grown weary of watching me chip plastic and were playing WarioWare on the development GBA (Quote: “This game is stupid.” Ten minutes later. “This game is awesome.”)
Finally it was time to solder crap. I plugged in the iron. Waited a bit. Held solder to iron. Nothing happened.
It was hot, but not hot enough. It was melting the plastic foam I was working on. I got an oven tray from their kitchen and started working on that. So what if solder is toxic??? Cranked up the iron to 30W. Now we were cooking.
The soldering went great. I was glad to see that my soldering skills hadn’t completely left me after 3 or 4 years away from the art. I was especially proud of the tiny solder joint between the resister and the main board pin (which is really tiny and right next to a bunch of pins that can’t be soldered together).
Then came the scary “peel back the film, oh God don’t touch it with your fingers ever” step. I managed to do it with no bubbles on my second try. Time was of the essence now, so as now to contaminate anything. I put it all back together except for the front screen, since we were going to use the one from the devel GBA. I called El while I was waiting for Adam to take it apart.
While chatting, I turned over the GBA to see if I’d gotten the buttons in the right places. And as I did, I placed my thumb right onto the screen, after 2 hours of NOT touching the screen, I managed to place a huge print on it with 2 minutes left in the mod.
Since I’d broken rule 1, I figured I had nothing else to lose. I tried to spread the grease out using a monitor wipe. It just smeared everywhere. I tried to make the smear uniform. I had to press really hard.
Finally I got it all back together, with my own front screen, since it wasn’t going to be perfect.
Turned it on.
Aw screw.
There were these huge black marks over the screen, probably from me pushing at it.
I was so pissed. I’d almost done it, the whole mod, and I’d cocked it up, all me, no one to blame.
This is in no way a reflection on the Afterburner (heh). I think it’s amazing that people made this product. And in some sense, I had all the skills to carry out the mod successfully (soldering, etc). Just a freakin’ careless slip. Arrgh.
Anyway, I’m getting an SP today (can’t be without WarioWare!!!). Did I get 25$ worth of fun out of the afterburner? Probably not, but hey, I got to hang out w/ Adam and Todd for a night (we played Halo afterward) so… whatever. I’m sure I can rationalize why an SP beats an afterburner mod as well as Khai rationalized me doing the mod rather than getting an SP. We geeks are good at the self deception stuff.