Our friend Matt Whitehead over at Jellybelly Customs is at it again - this time taking the Midwest Embedded backlit LCD for the Game Boy Color, studying it, and plotting how it performs. This is an update to the prior write-up where he compared the BennVenn and McWill offerings, and of course Matt gets technical to explain what’s happening and why… not just testing, but also getting into the ‘why’ of things.
Lets take a look…
MW Embedded backlit GBC LCD
Another backlit Game Boy Color LCD on the market, mainly in the USA and the time of checking he doesn’t ship internationally which is a shame. However, I got my hands on one through a friend in the states
Overall it's similar to the McWill and also the BennVenn, it does require some trimming and some soldering to install it into the shell. Also, it would suit a custom glass screen lens but the LCD metal board has been coloured black from the factory so it doesn't stand out too much. A good thing about it is that with the soldering you can get brightness adjustment so the test was done at max brightness.
One thing that instantly jumps out at me about this mod is that the PCB seems to include its own power circuit for the chips and LCD. That is a good thing in as it won’t be demanding the power from the GBC just for the batteries. So the GBC can happily work as it is intended to.
So I put it under the same tests as the other but only under the powered on tests as we know now that the games just add more strain onto things so we can predict that from the previous tests.
|
Powered on |
|
|
Volts |
Milliamps |
|
3.2 |
180 |
|
3.1 |
190 |
|
3 |
190 |
|
2.9 |
200 |
|
2.8 |
210 |
|
2.7 |
220 |
|
2.6 |
230 |
|
2.5 |
250 |
|
2.4 |
270 |
|
2.3 |
280 |
|
2.2 |
300 |
|
2.1 |
330 |
|
2 |
360 |
|
1.9 |
400 |
|
1.8 |
600 |
|
1.7 |
0 |
So what’s going on, well it’s also identical to the McWill in its consumption other than the fact the console will stay on longer all the way down to 1.9v which is good. Something is not quite right with it though.
Towards the lower end of the voltage range strange things occur, the mod circuitry demands a huge spike, the LCD goes off but the console actually stays on. Why is this?
Hang on this might get a bit deep.
Behavior like this happens when the power circuitry inductors become over saturated with current, meaning that it can’t deal with anymore so the current just spikes fast and high. Luckily modern day IC chips just cut out when this happens and it’s also good that this power spike is only coming from the batteries, not the console itself so will not damage the console.
Overall it’s a nicely done thing and will run for around 4 hours ish and is on par with the Mcwill 5 hrs ish but BennVenns consumptions are still leaps above the rest.
Again this is still a great mod and nicely done and I’m sure it’s not the last we have seen for the GBC backlight world so when I find more I will stack them all up against each other.
The original posting of this article is on Jellybelly Customs’ website at: Midwest Embedded GBC LCD Test
About Jellybelly Customs and Matt Whitehead
Started by Matt Whitehead as a hobby in 2016, as a way to reconnect with the consoles of his childhood, he was frustrated at the lack of access to the parts and equipment needed. He spends his time doing custom consoles and creating many of the parts that he and others had limited access to - definitely a positive impact in the modding community.
Profile: Jellybelly Customs
