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View topic - Game Gear replace with 3.5 inch TFT LCD(nomad LCD replace include)

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  • Joined: 08 Mar 2011
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Game Gear replace with 3.5 inch TFT LCD(nomad LCD replace include)
Post Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 10:03 am
Last edited by zythappy on Wed Apr 06, 2011 3:40 am; edited 1 time in total
sorry for my poor English.

PICTURE as below:
ad6.jpg (43.17 KB)
use GG game :samurm spirist :new LCD
ad6.jpg
ad5.jpg (52.68 KB)
use GG game :samurm spirist :old LCD
ad5.jpg
ad4.jpg (38.88 KB)
phantasy star new LCD
ad4.jpg
ad3.jpg (31.98 KB)
use SMS game :phantasy star.old LCD
ad3.jpg
ad2.jpg (71.75 KB)
add 3.5inch TFT LCD
ad2.jpg
ad1.jpg (68.86 KB)
use EPM7032 cpld chip to DA convert out RGB signal.
ad1.jpg

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Post Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 2:26 pm
你好,

Can you provide more information? Is this a hobby or commercial project? What is the LCD resolution?
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 9:38 pm
Looks nice with Phantasy Star, but it's the same old problem with GG games: the GG image is even smaller on the new LCD because nothing gets scaled from the RGB display you've tapped.
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2011 1:22 am
Maxim wrote
你好,

Can you provide more information? Is this a hobby or commercial project? What is the LCD resolution?


Hello !this is a hobby mod.

Convert out RGB signal and RGB convert to AV signal can google "game gear tv out" and you will find a web talk about this convert.

and the LCD resolution can look below
LCD's parametar:
Size:3.5inch
Resolution:320xRGBx240
Viewing area:72.0x52.56
Interface:Pararell R.G.B
Backlight: LED, Life time 10K hrs
Brightness:350
Contrast Ratio:400
Outer Dimension: 84.03(W) X 65.24(H) X 3.45 (D)
Weight: 40±5g

The LCD maybe can buy from EBAY.I buy from tabao.A chinese Online shop same as EBAY.
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2011 1:51 pm
Ah, so it's GG -> RGB -> LCD. I thought maybe it was being done in the digital domain, similar to http://home.comcast.net/~olimar/DS/jumbotron/ . I also hadn't realised it suffers from the small GG display.
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Post Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 5:37 am
zythappy wrote
sorry for my poor English.

PICTURE as below:


Hello,

I am new to this forum.

Your mod is really amazing and interesting. I think you should sell your mods for a profit (just my suggestion)
Can you please give me more detailed info about this.
like exactly which type of LCD screen? (Model No #, Serial no. etc...) how do you manage hack/mod it? where can I buy it.

I want to find someone who can help me fix and improve my Game Gear LCD and contrast. I can offer to send my Game Gear for investigation
(I heard there is someone who did service for the public to mod
the Nomad LCD and battery hack for a fee a while back). Thanks very much for any help. :)
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 2:07 am
luckygen64 wrote
zythappy wrote
sorry for my poor English.

PICTURE as below:


Hello,

I am new to this forum.

Your mod is really amazing and interesting. I think you should sell your mods for a profit (just my suggestion)
Can you please give me more detailed info about this.
like exactly which type of LCD screen? (Model No #, Serial no. etc...) how do you manage hack/mod it? where can I buy it.

I want to find someone who can help me fix and improve my Game Gear LCD and contrast. I can offer to send my Game Gear for investigation
(I heard there is someone who did service for the public to mod
the Nomad LCD and battery hack for a fee a while back). Thanks very much for any help. :)


hello:
nomad LCD mod is simple,you can look below picture.
I am a chinese.so the parcel post have little trobule and the cost will be a little high.thank for your suggestion,I will consider it.
1.jpg (63.28 KB)
test new lcd
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new LCD effect
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add new LCD to nomad
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Completion result
5.jpg
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A DIY MD flash cartridge
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all
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 7:50 am
zythappy wrote


hello:
nomad LCD mod is simple,you can look below picture.
I am a chinese.so the parcel post have little trobule and the cost will be a little high.thank for your suggestion,I will consider it.



Wow, this is really amazing mods. I can see the big improvement over the old Game Gear and Nomad LCD screens. Excellent! Keep up the great work zythappy! :-)
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gamegear 螢幕的改裝
Post Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2011 11:57 pm
你好。
我看到了你的gamegear 螢幕的改裝。 我覺得你做的改裝太厲害而我自己很想做一樣的改裝。 我好奇如果你願意寫一個說明書給我和大家。 我很想知道你如何做出那個 RGB board。 而且這個改裝似乎沒有割開gamegear合子的原裝。

謝謝,
李明學
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Post Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 4:16 pm
A surprisingly grammatical Google translation of the above, except for the zygote (!):

"Hello.
I saw your gamegear screen modification. I think you do too much modification I wanted to do the same conversion. I am curious if you are willing to write a manual for me and everyone. I would like to know how you make that RGB board. Moreover, this modification does not seem to cut gamegear original zygote.

Thank you,
Li Ming School"
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Post Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 5:16 pm
I think 合子 here means "case", as well as a kind of dumpling.
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Post Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2011 1:12 am
That looks nice
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Post Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2011 9:52 am
Had a crack at this myself using a Viletim video board. I found an LCD monitor that had a "zoom" function. Downer was it was a 4.5" monitor, thought "Ah stuff it lets give it a go!"

Got the monitor and found it wasn't a "zoom" but a ratio (4:3 vs 16:9) selection, damn-it. I should of asked the question, so my own silly fault.

Done it anyway and here are some pics.

The menu buttons for the LCD are at the top of the GG.

My glasses were crooked that day, as is the monitor, may fix it one day...
DSC01401.JPG (420.77 KB)
4.5" LCD mounted
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Castle of Illusion SMS mode
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Sonic 4:3 ratio
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Sonic 16:9 Ratio
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DSC01522.JPG (381.63 KB)
Castle of Illusion looks fantastic on the GG!
DSC01522.JPG

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More details
Post Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2011 6:15 am
Hey guys. Newb here, first post and very interested in replacing the ggs' screen with a TFT!! I Googled the author and he's created many mods it seems for different systems. I've found one of this threads in Mandarin where he details with pictures how he did the TFT mod for the Nomad. I'm guessing that the GameGear's is very similar! I'm hoping that some pros can help us translate this guide into a more usable form so that even a newb like me can do it :)

The details are in Mandarin obviously so I tried with the help of Google translate and some common sense to translate it :)

Original: http://club.tgfcer.com/viewthread.php?action=printable&tid=6175537

Introduction:

He starts by talking about the drawbacks of the Nomad screen being from 1995 sucking a lot of power and not that good quality. The he mentions that the Nomad can output AV video signal directly so he mentions that it's easy to replace with the TFT.

Parts:

The TFT + AV Board:

TFT-LCD: Taiwan-LQ035NC111 3.5-inch
Driver board power supply: 3V-12V
Operating Current: 300-100mA
Input: AV. (1Vpp.75O)
Dimensions: 76.9 * 63.9 * 3.3mm
Resolution: 320x240
Brightness: 350
Format: PAL / NTSC auto switching dual-mode

Search for this model on eBay and Taobao. Taobao prices look very very cheap!!! He gives a tip when you're looking around about the power matching: "...it is best to buy the driver board power supply 3V-12V wide power input of this board, because the nomads of the machine transformer input can be 7V ~ 12V, a better match between the two".

Step-By-Step Guide:

Setting up the parameters (brightness, contrast, etc I guess) of the screen so it's suitable for displaying Nomad games:


TFT LCD driver board connection instructions are below - very simple. We only need to connect three wires. The others do not have control as long as the nomads to find the corresponding point of connection can be:




Let's start the mod:

First, open up the Nomad. You will see the original LCD screen down welding, welding is the main LCD screen can be off-line welding, hard soldering, you must be prepared that estimate down screen wire bonding after this screen is also scrap it, honestly think clearly before you start!

The figure is a line where weld-screen map (I guess this means that he's showing where the soldering points should go):


This picture is the TFT soldered in. This screen is actually quite good - no dead pixels / bad lines:



Then connect the TFT to test the screen to see if it displays correctly. The connection method is described in detail below.

The figure is a test map, the game uses Battle Toads and Double Dragon - very fun games! :D :


Close-up shots of the display, it's hard to see from the camera but the display is really beautiful:


If there are no problems, then install the TFT screen into the Nomad casing.

The first thing is the positioning of the screen (can't make much sense of what he's talking about here. I think basically he just talks about how he positioned the screen correctly so it's aligned and how he used hot glue to fix it in place?).

Let the normal screen display game, and then the screen by the nomads of the machine by hand, from the nomads of the front TFT screen, the screen can be adjusted to the normal display up and down when not suppressed move, then a good LCD screen with hot melt adhesive positioned four feet, and other hot melt is cooled and then look at the right place, if everything goes OK, then all around the LCD screen fixed to the nomads on the use of hot melt adhesive.

As shown below:


Please note that the original Nomad screen is 3.25 inches, while the newly added TFT screen is 3.5. You might ask - will some of it be wasted therefore? Will some part of the screen be covered up? I had this question, but the actual test and found the actual TFT screen display exactly the same size as the original!!!! Outside of the area shows a large black area it's simply perfect combination.

The TFT is installed after the installing the driver board. A description of the pressure plate can not be driven directly to the back of the LCD screen, LCD screen outside because steel is conductive which could cause a short circuit that would damage the driver board so a better approach is to fix transparent adhesive tape glue to the back of the LCD screen, and then double-sided tape and drive the LCD panels are bonded together, as shown below:




After this step, the following steps are relatively easy, as long as three lines lead to the LCD driver board on it.
Driver board and power supply positive and negative leads from the map at the next figure in the switch at the nomads, the word a little paste, the left circle at the positive power supply, the right circle at negative one:



Driver board video input leads from the nomads of here, where the nomads on the left, this chip can be found CXA1645M. Red circle where the word is "CXA1645 This pin is the video output pin, 220uF capacitor connected to the LCD driver board.



Picture of all connections to see more clearly:



All connected correctly, then you can install the nomads of the circuit board back into place, the newly added LCD and driver board is not installed on the original circuit board caused by any obstruction. Note that the screws do not leak on the speaker's do not forget the plug wire, or no sound.

The figure is taken from the positive effect of the game screen, very, very good.



Coupled with the MD to do their own simple flash card:


The overall effect, everything is so beautiful, complete knock off! (haha)


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Post Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2011 9:26 am
Quote
the Nomad can output AV video signal directly

Given that, it's not so simple to do to the GG unless you also incorporate the RGB video mod.

I think a common problem with all of these mods is that the display is not 1:1 pixels and goes through an analogue stage so it's not as clear as something "original" would be. But I guess the modern TFT brightness/contrast/viewing angles compensate for that.
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Post Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2011 9:48 am
Well essentially all the existing mods are a GG with built in TV/Monitor.

I think the only way we'd see anything close to a proper LCD replacement would involve someone building a custom chip that does encoding, scaling and conversion between the necessary formats.
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Post Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2011 9:58 am
Hello, so is this scaling issue really a problem? I mean his pictures with the display look really good no? I don't know much about it but to me, on the face of it, I would much prefer this than the original screens.

Also would anyone be able to guess how much this power this TFT would drain compared to the stock screens and as a result, how much stock battery time might be achieved?
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Post Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2011 10:08 am
Well, I've seen mods where people did the conversion in the digital realm using an FPGA, but that is hard work... also, it's going to be really hard to find an LCD screen that can display not only the GG 160x144 but also the SMS 256x192, 248x192, 248x224 etc resolutions at a decent unblurred scale without it being very high DPI and expensive.
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Post Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2011 2:10 am
I have had a few pm's about how I did my gg. As above I used viletim's video out board crammed the screen in and had to either relocate a few components, namely the led, crystal and the 2 caps near the cart slot. Also had trim the legs off components where the new screen sits. Would I do it again? Nope.... As a gg the screen is to small, allthough it does look clear. As a portable master system using master system games then yes.

Note that the gg I used had a dead screen, big thick black line down one side. I also initially used a 1 asic board but it didn't like this mod, so I used a 2 asic board, same as my consolized gg, shown elsewhere on these forums.

With regards to the nomad, be aware not all the 3.5inch modern screens are suited for that mod. First one I used the monitor drew more current than the stock screen. Also some monitors don't do 240p to well and the image, well, it could be have better. I got another screen and replaced the first one, much better both in image and for battery life. Also region modded my nomad, including modding the video encoder to work in pal or ntsc. I have a thread about it on sega-16.
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Post Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2011 2:15 pm
I see - many thanks for replies. The consensus here and on other forums seems to be that the GG is a no go for LCD modding.

Could someone please take a look here: http://club.tgfcer.com/thread-6289685-1-1.html

It is the author of this thread (zythappy) with details of how he did the GG LCD mod. I can't make much sense of it but it's probably easy for someone here. From what I gather.. and from the first picture he mentions that he's using the CPLD chip to do decoding from digital to RGB signal and then convert this RGB to a video signal using the CXA1645m chip? I'm not entirely sure what that means but seems to be the crux of what he's done :)

Going by the pictures of the result achieved it does look like a significant improvement over the stock screen..
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Post Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2011 2:29 pm
Looking at the images of his results closely you can see that the Samurai Spirits shot is letterboxed but the Phantasy Star is not / is significantly less?

He mentions this fact:
Into effect after the new screen, be noted that, due to the low resolution game gear games, roughly only 190X140 look. Therefore, in 320X240 LCD screen will be left more in the surrounding black frame.

Why is there a difference in letterboxing for the games? Do some games output at different resolutions?
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Post Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2011 3:16 pm
It looks like he's using the CPLD to reproduce what's done in the GG RGB mod, i.e. to get the full 256x240ish analogue RGB display output as you'd see on a TV. The Game Gear LCD circuitry crops this internally-produced image down to the middle 160x144 pixels when playing a GG game, and scales it down when in SMS mode (causing lots of colour fringing, some letterboxing and missing edges). When you do an LCD mod like these, you get almost the reverse effect - full resolution in SMS mode, which is great quality, but letter+pillarboxing in GG mode, so the result is clearer but smaller.

The solution is to make some (complicated) device that performs the right task in each mode and performs high-quality scaling to the output screen. It'd ideally be all-digital to avoid analogue losses, and you'd still have blurriness due to any non-integral scaling.
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Post Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2011 5:49 pm
Nomad it is :)

Thanks for help
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Post Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 8:31 am
omp wrote
With regards to the nomad, be aware not all the 3.5inch modern screens are suited for that mod. First one I used the monitor drew more current than the stock screen. Also some monitors don't do 240p to well and the image, well, it could be have better. I got another screen and replaced the first one, much better both in image and for battery life. Also region modded my nomad, including modding the video encoder to work in pal or ntsc. I have a thread about it on sega-16.


omp, sounds interesting.
Would you kindly please tell me which url is it on sega-16, thanks.
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Post Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 4:49 pm
http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?19334-LCD-screen-in-Game-Gear

This i think it is
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Post Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 6:42 am
luckygen64 wrote

omp, sounds interesting.
Would you kindly please tell me which url is it on sega-16, thanks.


Here you go

http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?19082-Sega-Nomad-with-modern-LCD-and-region-switch-colour-fix
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Post Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 10:46 pm
delatroy wrote
http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?19334-LCD-screen-in-Game-Gear

This i think it is



omp wrote


Here you go

http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?19082-Sega-Nomad-with-modern-LCD-and-region-switch-colour-fix


Thanks omp and delatroy for the links. :)
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AHHH!!!!!!
Post Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2012 6:39 pm
Can someone put the SCHEMATICS on HOW to install a TFT on a game gear? Everytime I search on Google it always comes to THIS PAGE. I know I sound like a jerk but the topic specifically says "Game Gear replace with 3.5 inch TFT LCD" but it only shows how to replace the Sega Nomad (which I already did since the screen that I had had dead pixels). I've already searched everywhere and this is the closest I can get on how to replace a game gear screen with a TFT. If someone could post a tutorial on how to install a TFT on a game gear that would be GREAT and I would be foreever grateful! T^T
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Post Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2012 7:00 pm
Step 1: insert GG-TV adaptor
Step 2: insert LCD that can take RGB at TV specs
Step 3: connect to each other

Optionally, go through composite video to get worse quality. You will get massive letterboxing of the video in GG games.
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Post Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2012 6:37 am
Can a DS Lite Screen be used on the GG
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Post Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2012 7:27 am
Only if you can make an FPGA to convert between the LCD signals for each (and do scaling).
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Post Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 11:41 pm
It's been a long time since I tried it so it may not have worked, I cant remember.
What happens if you switch the resolution line on the cart slot? I remember it changed the way games displayed.
Theres a pair of jumper pads with a trace between them in the cartridge, cutting that is the easiest test.
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The GG screen can be easely chnged by a professional.
Post Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 3:17 am
GG screen can be easily changed by a cell phone technician. Any technician that knows how to change cell phone's screen, can do the job for cheap. They use a technic tha make use of soldering gel and thermal gun. Not that hard at all. Sooo... dont go saying that the GG screen cannot be changed. :)
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Post Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 7:53 am
There are no new replacement screens available.
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