Well I want to try and make the coolioest gba ever. I already know i want the afterburner and I know where to find it. But what kind of flash card would you guys recommed. And where can I find a clear replacement shell. Finally how would i build in a charging port? And i know how to oc it( I'm pretty sure you just have to replace the crystal). So Help?
Nonsense Man

I can help you here. For my GBC, I used the guts of a GBC rechargeable battery pack as a charging circuit. I removed the battery contacts from the GBC board and wired them to the charging circuit the same as the battery pack had been. Then I removed the EXT port for the plug for the charger. So from the outside it appears stock (if it wasn't clear purple, at least). Now I can throw a pair of NiMH AA's in it and I can charge them of play.

I also OC'd my GBC, and the way to OC a GBA is very similar, you just need a different value crystal. I changed my GBC from an 8MHz crystal to a 14MHz one and its still playable. The GBA uses a 4MHz crystal, so a 7MHz crystal is required to have a similar speed increase. Only problem is finding a 7MHz crystal, as 14MHz are in many devices so it was easy to find one, but not so with the 7MHz (or else my GBA would be OC'd).

Can't you also get the crystals at radioshacks and how would you wire up a switch for the crystal? Also I haven't opened my gba yet so if its obvious don't get frustrated.

Radioshack doesn't have any. What you do is you break the original crystal off the board and then wire a new one in its place, so you could hook up the original crystal to a switch with the new one.

Overclocking gameboys is stupid; it doesn't increase the performance like a computer, but just makes your games obnoxiously fast.

Good for long starting screens and such.

Ever had to walk a long ways on Pokemon? Now you can get there much faster. On Pokemon Yellow at 1.75x normal speed, I can walk about as fast as a normal bike, but still have the control to be able to turn around and check Pikachu's mood. In about 11.5 hours in real time, I can complete 20 hours of in game time. I dunno about you, but I'd much rather spend my time doing stuff other than walking from place to place on Pokemon.

The original question was for GBA not GBC. They are completely different.

Nonsense Man - Easy to open one up, I have opened several. If you need a pinout, look on my BigBoy Advance project. Afterburner - used one years ago, disappointed with it, looked grainy due to the light diffuser and some areas of the screen (edges) brighter than others (middle). Flash card - you can buy M3 Flashcard from Divineo.com using mini or micro SD cards. Charging port - use the port on the top of the GBA to recharge from a USB cable. Clear replacement shell - e-bay, you might need to buy complete GBA, but they are cheap enough.

Not really. To overclock them, you have to do exactly the same thing, just with a crystal with a different frequency. The only reason I haven't overclocked my GBA is that finding a suitable crystal that doesn't require you to buy 50 at a time is difficult, and I like playing GBA games better on my PSP (backlight=good).

I prefer playing GBA games on a PSone screen! backlight=great, screen=big, quality=great! Use 2" speakers=sound lovely!

How would you install a different crystal? People refer to this but I haven't seen any pics anywhere. Playing GBA games on a regular GBA is full speed anyway (designed for purpose).

Crap, I can't find the pictures I took of the internals. I'll take it apart again Thursday and take some pics (my dad is gone for work until then and has his nice camera, I'm not going take my GBC apart again unless I can take good pics).

And so what if they run full speed already (though some lag a bit when theres a ton of stuff going on), why not make them run even faster?