Gadgetory

hey guys this is Austin the Nintendo Game Boy is probably the most important handheld console of all time but what I want to know is what happens when you deconstruct it all right so it is time as I do a few more claps for the first episode of deconstructed and what better way to start then with the original Nintendo Gameboy unlike some of the other things I may be taking apart soon this is pretty simple just a single Phillips screwdriver so the Gameboy used for double-a batteries which seems kind of crazy today but some of those old consoles had crazy terrible battery life you can get like six or eight double a's and would last you like two or three hours so we've got six screws here so we have four that are exposed and we have two underneath the battery door like I said I've actually never opened a gameboy I've only gained boys since I was six I mean this console is 25 years old no what's even older than that it's 27 years old what was your first Gameboy of you name would cover there you go my very first Gameboy I actually end up saving money which is really hard when you're 6 years old so I end up having to say my birthday money I'd saved allowance for a few months and I finally had enough to buy myself a gameboy color but I didn't have myself enough money to buy an actual Gameboy so I remember I still feel bad about this this day I went to my grandma and I kind of said oh it's been so hard to be able to save so much money to be able to get this Gameboy but I just don't have enough for a game she handed me $30 to the next day went and bought pokemon red still feel bad about that but you know getting what you got to do all right number five and so we can get this oh oh here we go okay well maybe not the moment of truth because there's still stuff holding it together but like it's kind of a part we've got the display and the speaker all right so the Gameboy is apart so we've got actually a fair bit in the front half so basically this is where the screen is we've got the main buttons we've got the contrasts which we've also got the speaker which is actually pretty big let's see we can kind of ease this out up there's more screws of course there are it's crazy how different electronics are these days I mean today this would all be glued into place do be like maybe a screw or two just remove and destroy all kinds of stuff I mean I destroy depends on if you're me or not I know it's just it's just something kind of like therapeutic about it it's like you spend so much time with technology but it's nice to be able to actually take a look and see what actually makes it work well I've got to say there are a lot of scripts in here like every time I think all about dynasty like five more screws all right the board is free let's see what we get all right Wow that is cool so basically the screen is kind of come it's all built into one board we've got all the buttons which actually come out so there's this little silicon piece where the buttons a lot actually it feels like a button I never actually realized this there's no spring there's nothing literally the entire action of what you feel when you press a gameboy button is just the rubber just kind of bouncing a little bit so if you look at the actual circuit board you can see that all it's doing is making contact right here you guys tell them having fun right now so there's a little daughter board here for the headphone jack mmm I could probably detach that but I think it's probably easier to just unscrew it so one of the things is with the original Gameboy one of the big things they touted was it had stereo sounds extra C dot matrix with stereo sound which is funny because it actually had a single speaker so if you ever play like some of the older gameboy games some of them would have an option strong stereo sound but you only actually really realize that we had headphones plugged in and that's the rest of it so these this is actually the guts of the Gameboy so on this side we can see where the display connects we also got the daughter board we've got some of the connectors if I flip it over this is the heart of the Gameboy Wow so it's four point one nine four 304 megahertz I like how they had to be very specific we've also got 64 kilobytes of RAM it's crazy to think what was on these like I know these Game Boy cartridges they were so tiny look at the amount of data and stuff that they actually were able to pack into such a small cartridge it's crazy and speaking of the cartridge we actually can see this is where it plugs in so drop it in right here there we go so when you think about the boards actually fairly compact so we've got quite a bit of stuff we've got the link cable port we've also got the switch here that's satisfying I always appreciate being able to open up electronics and really kind of understand what's inside of them and the Game Boy is it's something special like it's simple there's not a lot here it's not even something like literally one small Phillips screwdriver and you're through it in like 10 minutes or so but it's it's a really special thing to be able to kind of appreciate all the engineering and all the ingenuity that went into it especially back you know over 20 years ago so that's it for this episode of deconstructed let me know what you guys think in the comments below and if you guys want to see me do more stuff give me your suggestions whether it's new stuff old stuff whatever it is let me know and yeah I'm gonna put this back together and place a pokemon red see you guys next time