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Been digging through and can't seem to find any good instructions to pro sound mod a classic GBA, could someone send a link though to a relevant post or let me know how to get this completed. The hum is killing me!

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Austin, Texas

Hey bro.

I haven't taken one apart in a while, but in theory it should be almost identical to pro sounding a Game Boy Color: You just have to connect the three points to the three points on the volume potentiometer.

I haven't been able to find my original GBA, so I can't take it apart and look, but I'm not sure how much room there is internally if you want to panel mount the jack(s). You might have to do the hanging pigtail/dongle like Trash80 did on the very first pro-sound, or like Low-Gain did on his SPs you can see in the recent interview pictures with him.

I hope that was helpful. smile Post up in here if you find any guides or schematics!

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The GBA is pretty busy inside with no room to mount a jack, but plan to have the cable hanging out.

I've done this mod to Classic Gameboys before, but the three solder points are hard to find on classic GBA!

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Austin, Texas

Like I said, I don't have one with me to check out, but I'm pretty sure it's close to the Game Boy Color. They have the same sort of volume wheel:

There's a small board-mounted potentiometer on the bottom of the unit off to one side of the screen. This is a stereo potentiometer for controlling the strength of the signal going into the headphone preamp circuit, and it connects to the board at five points. One of these is ground, two are left and right going into the potentiometer, and two are left and right coming out of the potentiometer. You can identify which is which with a continuity test feature on a multimeter.

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San Diego

Telerophon has the right idea actually. Soldering to the volume potentiometer is the easiest and safest way. Also, if you check justinthursdays website he has a pic of a GBA that he prosounded if I remember correctly. Doesn't show the solder points but he was able to fit the jack into the case.

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San Francisco

i thought there was a thread about this already... hmm. may be it was at 8bc. anyways. so soldering to the volume pot doesnt work to prosound gbas. that is because unlike the normal gameboys the amplifier (the noisey bg sound source) component comes before the volume pot. so... there are 2 resistors that come before that you can trace on the ciruit board that come before the amplifier. solder to those and add a jack and you got yourself a functioning gba prosound mod.
the problem is these ristors are tiny and come off really easy when heated really easy effectivly ffffffuuucking you shit up. also there isnt the option for volume control with the added jack.

if ou have hands of a surgeon you can probably pull it off but i have never seen or heard of anyone who has done it right.

good luck ya bunch of n00bs wink

the thing that people forget is that it is important to understand what is happening in these mods and how they work. prosound mods work by bypassing your audio signal past noisy components (amplifier) of the gameboy. the amplifer is made to prep the audio for headphones but in the process adds a litte background noise. going around this eliminates the noise but makes your signal not ideal for headphones tho it is perfectly suitable for other things.

fun fact. the original prosound was developed by the very talented trash 80 who was thinking about how to make gbcs sound better as the population of dmg modles deminished. that was a long time ago tho and you new guys probably werent around the chipscene for that... hell i wasnt even around for that yet.

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Austin, Texas

I've read the Trash80 guide. It's good.

I didn't know that about the GBA prosound, I'd like to see this article on Justin's website…

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San Francisco

i dont think there is an article to my knowledge.

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San Diego

Wasn't an article, just a pic of one. You'd have to ask him how he did it or if it was truly prosounded.

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After talking about a ProSound Mod for GBA, is there a good instruction online how to built a GBA SP Backlight into the GBA Classic, so it's frontlited?

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9-Heart wrote:

After talking about a ProSound Mod for GBA, is there a good instruction online how to built a GBA SP Backlight into the GBA Classic, so it's frontlited?

I just looked this up quickly, haven't checked it though.

http://forums.benheck.com/viewtopic.php?t=27338

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Not bad, might work. Only missing some pictured instruction.
I'll give it a try when the GBA SP arrives here.

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I registered here, just to post this.

You can in fact have a backlit original GBA. It involves transplanting the LCD from an AGS-101 GBA SP into the original GBA. The only problem, is that the cable on the backlit screen originates from the bottom, and the cable from the the original GBA originates from the top. Well, some guy in China created an extension for this (you do have to solder 1 wire that powers the actual backlight). He also sells the screen and completed GBAs as well. I modded mine myself, and thought others might enjoy the same info. Also, the mod requires some trimming of the front plastic shell, as the gba  sp screen doesn't fit. The screen is the same dimension, but there's more circuit board and metal around it.

The site you order from is in chinese. I don't speak a lick of chinese, but I was able to order via a broker site called zarmark.com. How that site works, is that you tell them what you want, you pay them (plus a few bucks in fees), and they get the item shipped to their own address, and then they ship it to you. All told, I paid ~$50USD.

The cable: http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=14045909056  115 yuan ~= $18 USD
The screen: http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=16536976988 150 yuan ~= $24 USD
Completed system:  http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=15953144032 400 yuan ~= $64 USD

Here's a pic of metroid fusion running on my backlit gba:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8456/8069 … 745b_c.jpg

Hope any of this helps.

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Tempe, AZ

oh yes it did ^^^^.  Thanks for the info.

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Oh, I also forgot to mention, there are two different models of the original gba, believe it or not. One has a 32 pin connector for the LCD, and the other has a 40 pin connector. You need the GBA with a 40 pin connector.

Luckily, you don't need to rip apart the GBA to find out if you have one with a 40 pin connector.

Take a look at this image here. The one on the left has a 32 pin connector, the one on the right has a 40 pin

There is still some variation on that number though, as the one I successfully modded says 03 5-2.

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Austin, Texas

Also, you can apparently still get Afterburner kits. I remember those being a thing circa 2002; that was a custom frontlighting system for the original GBA.

I'm not sure how well it worked, but it's another way to frontlight a classic AGB-001.

Last edited by Telerophon (Oct 9, 2012 5:24 am)