Nowadays, miniaturizing hardware is nothing special anymore. Open up any newer generation mobile phone and instead of a separate microcontroller, video chip, baseband, memory, flash etc, you see a few big chips integrating everything.
Miniaturization techniques aren't only available to big companies: with the advent of cheap PCB manufacturers, highly integrated microchips and cheap hot-air rework stations, the hobbyist also nowadays has the option of making things that used to be big, very small.
But what happens if that miniaturization process is applied to something that already had a pretty small size, like a GameBoy Color? Is it actually possible to get something working then? A GameBoy for ants? Has Science Gone Too Far?
In this talk, the methods, choices and tricks used to make possibly the smallest working GameBoy Color are discussed.
Sprite_TM, aka Jeroen Domburg, has always been interested in anything that goes on in the place where hardware meets software. He is an incredibly skilled hardware hacker, able to reverse engineer circuits and code quickly and despite almost any level of obfuscation. He shares this incredible work on his well-known website: spritesmods.com. In 2015 Sprite joined Espressif — creators of the ESP8266 — to develop high performing wireless chips at low cost; he works on the foundations of the SDK used to program the ESP32.