hmm. funny you say that. the review i saw (linked in a post above) said it was the best, and also has pics of it that look comparable to the afterburner. (the review is worded like it was written about when the sp1 was released in 2003)
hmm. funny you say that. the review i saw (linked in a post above) said it was the best, and also has pics of it that look comparable to the afterburner. (the review is worded like it was written about when the sp1 was released in 2003)
Originally Posted by frankie_says_relax
Well I tried version 1 and 2 and they were complete and utter crap.
Do some more review searches , 95% say it is crap.
Ack! You're a cat! Someone let Rog know, the revolution has begun!
so the afterburner price aint so shabby afterall... hmm... *opens wallet* 8 lousy bucks. well its gonna have to wait. Nice to know that there is hope for my gba. 2 gba controllers for 4 swords adventure here I come!
that halo light can't be a s crappy and battery draining as the incandescent lights though...can it?
any other lighting suggestions?
Hey like I said they say the ones on Ebay are the 3rd series. For $28 give it a try. And yes they were better thn an external light.
i might, but, it seems like there is really no comparison to the afterburner. I might as well save up another 20 bucks for the best. or buy a halo for my gba and buy a A-GBA for cheap
david:
Is there any real advantage of a sp1 with dimmer chip over just a unmodded sp1? of course there is the 48 levels of dimming, but imo i wouldn't want an sp1 any dimmer than its single level. or would it make it brighter (doubtful)?
Ack! You're a cat! Someone let Rog know, the revolution has begun!! You saw that
wouldn't it be cool if you played the backdrop, awww... his little paw would be animated to slam down on ya with the last card.
I love that backdrop! There's a doggie one too, I'm addicted to Ultimate Card Games period. It stat tracks also.
Well it's a lot easier to install since you have more space to work with and you only have to mess with the lower part of the GBA-SP - no screwing around with the screen. It adds the five minute sleep timer for power conservation and as you said, 48 levels of dimming, that scroll smoothly. That doesn't sound like a whole lot but when my A-GBA was working 100% I did find that varying degrees of backlighting came in handy, especially when playing under different room lighting / outdoors. I suppose it COULD give the SP light more power to possibly brighten it a little, there haven't been any reports of a V4 (a Division-6 one) burning out a screen that I've ever read of.
I'm sure you've realized that playing a GBA-SP you never turn the light off, because while you might not need it 100%, even under bright light the screen is just too dim without it. Using a V4 dimmer would allow you to adjust the level of light to meet your needs and conserve battery power. Honestly I don't see why Nintendo just didn't install a brightness adjustment to begin with.
Whare do you buy the afterburner kits? I see some GBA case's for the mod on ebay, but no kits?
That will take some looking around, they're no longer being manufactured since the GBA-SP was released. That's why bare kits are usually more valuable than GBA's with them installed now days.
some dude has a stockpile of them and sells one at a time.
they are there (there is one right now), but don't expect an easy auction. I have bid on two of them over the past two weeks and had both sniped from me (one a A-GBA and the other the kit). I was happily winning at a low price, do the usual up my max bid at the last second to prevent snipes and BAM! i still get sniped. I have watched a few too and they usually end at over $50 bucks + ship
what are opinions on afterburner cases? I see the HK shops have stopped carrying them recently. those come with the dimmer switch (version?) and enough space for the afterburner. thoughts anyone?
$50+ and some shipping
I just threw down on $400 on some muffler work on the Roush, counts me out for the time being.
GOD! You gotta love to hate this hobby, it's as Frick'n bad as my AFX slot car hobby :/
I need to find a new hobby? Like thooth pick collecting.
Sign up for AuctionSniper. You get three free snipes, they don't take any credit card information, etc. and you get three free additional snipes for every person you refer. I've used it for free for over a year and it works great. My eBay User ID is thelaststarfighter in case you do sign up, I could always use more free snipes.
A lot of the HK shops have the generic dimmer chip, a V2. Division 6 never created a V2 chip, they went from V1 to V3 because of all the knock off V2's. There are also knockoff V4's that are just repackaged V2 bootlegs, check the numbers against the ones at Division 6. The premodded cases for afterburner installation for GBA's aren't worth it really, they're not as nice as the plastic your GBA is made out of to begin with. If you have a pair of wire cutters you can take out the plastic required to install the afterburner, it's really not all that much. (it's been awhile and I only did a few, but I remember using wire cutters) Most sources years ago recommended a small rotary too to make the opening for the power switch and brightness dial prior do stealth dimmers, not to modify the case for the afterburner itself.
$50+ and some shipping
I just threw down on $400 on some muffler work on the Roush, counts me out for the time being.
GOD! You gotta love to hate this hobby, it's as Frick'n bad as my AFX slot car hobby :/
I need to find a new hobby? Like thooth pick collecting.
I sure wish afterburner modded GBA's were bringing in the $200 - $300 they used to. I knew about the scene for a long time but began modding them myself toward the end of when they were super popular so I only performed and sold a handful. Heck, I wish PS1 mods were like they were when I was in high school. $_$ Now days it's US/JPN conversion for Genesis, N64, and Saturn - none of which bring in very much. :/
Try model railroading? Umm...
Then there's the RC hobby, and Rockets! *watches 2 Grand in rocket blow away*
Did they really go for $200+ woaw!
I got smart about the RC hobby, I bought a couple Mini-Z's (palm sized RC cars from Kyosho) a few years ago and stopped there. I have a Skyline GT-R and the David Coulthard McLaren 2002 F-1 (because it uses the non-cigarette smoking countries paint scheme, so the side pods, rear wing, monocoque, and driver's helmet say "David" instead of "West."Try model railroading? Umm...
Then there's the RC hobby, and Rockets! *watches 2 Grand in rocket blow away*
Yup, $200 easy, most would end around $220 that I would put on eBay, a few sold in the $300 range but weren't mine. I was selling them locally for $200 cash. Remember though, back then the GBA was still about $80 or so alone. Was still over $100 for a couple hours of work and was a nice bonus - even though I was making mad cash then... oh how things have changed.
Well I was bored for a few minutes earlier today (at like 1am) so I decided to pop open my A-GBA and take a look as to where the problem with the dimmer was.
Oh man, I don't know what the hell I was thinking when I did some of the work on this unit but it's no where up to my usual quality. Maybe I was in a rush when I did mine because I remember doing an excellent job on the ones I sold. It kind of disturbed me since I'm very professional in my mods (anyone here that has bought one from me will tell you that) but this was kind of messy. Anyway, yeah, the connection over to the point for the L button had broken free and was shorting itself out. It appears that the wire had slipped beneath the elastomer for the directional pad, eventually causing it to put stress on the connection and break. (that and this GBA used to have a permanent place in my pocket, so it got banged around pretty good) This is again another reason most people wire the brightness controls to A and B instead of L and R. I think I was in a rush when I installed the dimmer in my GBA because I was going to a LAN / gaming meetup that night or something and wanted to try to pick up more sales and had sold the other modded systems I had done. I swear my work isn't bad.
So I resoldered the connection for the dimmer and made sure the wire was out of the way of the elastomer and wouldn't be moving back. Since I was only messing with the dimmer chip and NOT the afterburner it was easy and actually brought back a lot of memories.
Pictures below show the unit open and the broken connection...
If you grab a kit and are going to install one of these yourself you really don't need to order a tri-wing screwdriver. (now if you're going to do a dozen or so as we did years ago, then you should get one) Also many of the odd bits toolkits some of us have won't have a tri-wing bit thin enough for these screws. If you have a very small flathead precision screwdriver you can use it to remove the six tri-wing screws on the back of the GBA. (don't forget the phillips one in the battery compartment and the two phillips that hold the PCB down to the front of the case) The small precision screwdriver can be pressed between two of the slots in the tri-wing screws and once you get them going they'll come out easy. I couldn't find my mini tri-wing so that's what I used to do the repairs.
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