Hey, so there’s this wild thing I stumbled across — no idea why it grabbed me, but here we are — something about Game Boys. You know those old clunky handhelds? Well, this modder, @natalie_thenerd, decided to spin one on its head and make it, like, see-through. Who does that? Seriously! She built a Game Boy Color motherboard that you can totally see through, using a clear PCB. You can practically trace its copper circuitry with your eyes. Kinda like those old science kits with transparent frogs — except way cooler.
She blabbed on X (yeah, it’s still weird for me to call Twitter that) about sketching her own plans. Just took some fancy footwork with schematics. Clear boards usually have grounding zones, but she tossed that out. (Don’t try this at home, kids — she says the whole grounding thing’s a biggie for modern gadgets. Not here though, ‘cause, you know, simplicity and all.)
Anyway, she reverse-engineered the thing herself, but then outsourced the clear PCB creation. Some third party made it from this sorta plastic-y stuff. No kidding, it melts at a mere 200 degrees Celsius. Can you imagine the panic of soldering on that without screwing up? My hands are sweaty just thinking about it.
Jumping around here, the whole darn thing is see-through! We’re talking chips, copper lines, even the screen. Well, except for a few bits like this smaller board and the cartridge reader — a semi-transparent one from a Chinese clone, which is oddly adorable, I guess. She snatched a clear case and see-through buttons to wrap it all up. Voilà! A peek-a-boo console.
But, hold your horses. Before you whip out that wallet, know this: she made just one — like a piece of art. Fragile as all heck! Not the kinda thing you’d hand your hyper cousin who loves to rage quit Mario.
Some folks chipped in with ideas: “Hey, why not use silver instead of copper? Make it shinier!” Or, “Let’s throw in some backlights.” Pure creativity bonanza. Natalie’s part of this Modded Gameboy Club — yup, that’s a real thing — so who knows? Maybe someone’ll give one of those ideas a shot.
Others jumped on a bandwagon about clear tech being the new black (or not?). They’re eyeing gadgets like the Nothing Phone 2 for an invisibility cloak makeover. But unless clear PCBs get sturdier and less wallet-annihilating, it’s pie-in-the-sky dreaming.
Honestly, it’s a tip of the hat to Natalie — for real. Making stuff like a see-through Game Boy Color — that’s the dream, right? This is modding at its most creative, bending old tech into swanky art. Makes you wanna pick up some old junk and reimagine it, doesn’t it? Or maybe that’s just me.
