So here's the dill, and I know it's gunna be hard or impossible or aahhhh but I'm just lookin for the info, the insight, the wonderful people of the community to help and be the mans.
I'm building a Neo Geo Pocket Color mini-cab. Love the little guy and I wanna have a nice, backlit screen with a seimitsu stick and sanwa buttons on my desk.
This guy: http://forums.benheck.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=32874" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Did it before, and it's wonderful, but he went for a less technical approach on the screen.
I want to use a new screen. I understand it's so much easier to work with frontlighting and magnification, but that won't do. I've had enough of those days, it's time to get SERIOUS.
I have a gutted DSi XL and I love the screens on those babies, but this is the first time I've delved into modding LCD stuff. I know really nothing about that, and I know it's HAAARD, but I want to learn, and I just can't find anything that's cohesive enough to learn from. I figured I would come to you guys, because the brilliance on these forums has swept me away.
So here's the run-down:
http://i.imgur.com/qZM9q.jpg
Welcome inside the Neo Geo Pocket Color. Where all your dreams come true. Up top there is a very clearly marked video pinout:
http://i.imgur.com/04dQq.jpg
To be perfectly honest, I know a lot of what these pinouts are, like the reds and greens and vsync blah blah, but I really don't know the implications of each. I don't know what to do with them.
On the flipside of the pcb, the Neo Geo Pocket Color's LCD screen connects via a ribbon cable:
http://i.imgur.com/OzTpM.jpg
There she is next to a beautiful DSi XL lower screen. Will they become friends?
Now the other thing I really want to know is how to identify what's what and where on the pins for the DSi XL ribbon:
http://i.imgur.com/9faUv.jpg
There's a lot. There's also the backlight ribbon right underneath it. So cute. So how do I go about figuring this thing out? What should I do? How do I know? Is there a way I can just split up the ribbon and solder each line to one of the pinouts on the NGPC? I'm sure that's naive, but really, I just want to learn about this stuff. Video's video in one way or another, right? Even if I have to build a complicated workaround, it's fine. Just throw me a bone!
Also what I'm curious about is how the monitor's interpret lines. The NGPC screen is 160 x 152 while the DSi XL puts out 256 × 192. This ain't even the same ratio but how does that work, exactly? Suppose a Neo Geo Pocket Color signal were easily rigged directly to a bigger resolution like that, what would happen? Would it interpret the lines and stretch them on its own, or would it just find those pixels on the screen, use them, and ignore the rest?
In any case, I'm only using a DSi XL screen because I happened to have one. If it's easier with any other kind of screen, please, I'm all ears.
Thanks for you help guys, and please go easy on me, I promise I won't hurt nobody!