GameBoy
Welcome to the GameBoy community on Lemmy and Kbin!
A community dedicated to Nintendo's line of classic handheld consoles. Find guides, mods, parts, help with repairs or game recommendations.
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Ah. That makes sense. So, with that changing the membrane wouldn’t change anything either would it?
The silicone membrane is pretty thin. There's not much clearance between the plastic buttons and the flat contact points.
Even with clicky switches, there's a thin silicone pad in between the button and the switch. It's needed to make sure the switch gets pushed down evenly.
It would only be able to reduce the pad by a fraction of a millimeter. Any thinner and the pad would either tear too easily, or would be unable to transfer force evenly. And even so, that's not enough to make a difference when you're pushing down with your thumb.
That's why I say the shell would need to be a little thicker. You would need enough space for the D-pad or buttons to be raised up off the switches a little bit, so there's more clearance when you're pushing down in different directions.
Also, keep in mind that new switches get soldered directly to the existing flat metal contacts. And most switches would add 1.5mm to 2mm (at minimum). So when we're talking about a device designed to be thin and portable, there's not much room inside to add that kind of thing.
Thanks for the discussion! Everything you’ve said makes sense. I’ll keep this mod in my back pocket. Maybe never to do, but it seemed like an interesting change at the time. I appreciate your insight.
You're welcome!
Fwiw I've installed a bunch of different mods in a variety of Game Boys. But I've never done this one because, even without hearing about the issues, I was worried there wouldn't be enough room in the shell.
The best Game Boy for a tactile switch mod? Probably be the DMG. There's plenty of space inside the shell, and the screen/buttons attached to a child board.
You could, in theory, use tiny plastic washers to increase the gap by one or two millimeters. It would probably be best if you had a 3D printer so you could make little brackets to hold things in place.
But this is just a thought exercise. :)
I dig it. I’m kinda surprised none of the ips screen boards for the dmg come with tactile buttons on them. It seems like it would be easy enough to do.
Cost and feel. Most people still want the original, mushy buttons. Also, it would cost more to add mechanical switches to the PCB - and they'd need to charge significantly more because not as many people would buy it.