You’ll sometimes hear complaints from those still sporting the Classic Nintendo DS, saying that it’s a bit bulky compared to the slimmer, more compact DS Lite. After seeing this Jumbotron DS, Classic DS owners will have no room to complain.
Newlaunches has the details on a crazy-huge Nintendo DS mod called the Jumbotron DS, which is basically two 14″ touchscreen tablet PC panels connected to a DS system. With the addition of a Wacom pen and some fancy-pants circuitry, the modder is able to play supersized DS titles.
The project page shows that parts valued at almost $600 went into this modification, although the modder mentions that he had most of the spare parts on hand, so it didn’t cost nearly as much.
Here’s the technobabble for those interested:
Here’s a little project I’ve been working on. It’s a Nintendo DS hooked up to 2 Tablet PC screens, using an FPGA in between to do some translation magic. Pen input from the Tablet PC screens is sent back to the DS. It can also dump screenshots to a PC via serial port.
The FPGA takes care of pen reading and scaling up the display. No, it doesn’t do any filtering, though it wouldn’t be too hard to add. The top screen is capable of reading a pen, but of course the DS only has one touch sensitive screen so it’s not used.
I have no intention of producing these things, or selling the one I have. Unless I’m offered more than the price above, but I don’t expect anyone will be that crazy.
[thanks, JV]
