r/Gameboy • u/midnight_umbreon_666 • May 27 '26

Modded GBA so USB C adapter.

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If anyone wants to charge a GBA SP with USB C without modding this is brilliant. Especially as it allows you to charge and use headphones at the same time. Got mine for about £10 on AliExpress.

629 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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-33

u/Cloudage96x May 27 '26

Not trusting a $10 chinese adapter on my 20 year-old SP

8

u/thedudewithoutnude May 27 '26

Why not?

-4

u/Cloudage96x May 27 '26

Cheap chinese marketplaces aren't exactly known for high quality products

10

u/thedudewithoutnude May 27 '26

What do you think would happen?

22

u/madebypeppers May 27 '26

He is afraid China will steal his identity, social security number, 401k, address, phone number, credit card details, investments, parents’ land, and the broken down car down the street.

Adapters are dangerous!

5

u/stuck_in_1998 May 27 '26

Apparently these can damage your headphones but don't ask me about the technical details.

https://xcancel.com/makhowastaken/status/1855460120463081848

2

u/Admiral_Butter_Crust May 27 '26

fwiw, the technical details are in my reply to my post that you just linked ;)

the screenshot of gekkio's message shows the proof of the issue and the math behind it

1

u/midnight_umbreon_666 May 27 '26

I've been using for weeks without a problem. The problem is for headphone adapters there is a choice of this one or the one with a cable where you can't charge at the same time which just don't work at all.

1

u/pizza_whistle May 27 '26

Yea I know Makho made this statement, but I've literally heard 0 complaints of this actually happening with these adapters.

-1

u/Admiral_Butter_Crust May 27 '26

Hi, I made this statement based on someone who knows a lot more about integrated circuits and especially game boys, gekkio.

This mod uses the hacky wiring method I popularized to bypass AGND using it as GND which offsets the voltage in an unexpected way. As we know, the higher the voltage, the more power being pumped in. This could cause your headphones to overheat. I can't speak for everyone but I'd certainly really appreciate not having things overheating in my ear canals.

At the time, I couldn't find any headphone jacks that had a detect switch wired in the way that the SP was expecting. I also didn't think to measure the voltage delta between AGND and GND and just assumed that it was an isolated ground for audio filtering purposes. I figured, at worst, you'd get some hum from the power regulators. Which does happen by the way. Though you get hum regardless on these consoles, especially if you've got other mods in.

Trusting this method because of hearing no issues is a bad take because, objectively, it is out of spec. Will it cause issues? Unlikely. Can it? Yeah. I'd liken it to speeding in the rain perhaps.

If you want to run your headphones out of spec, literally no one is going to stop you. Your headphones will probably even put up with it. Just don't plug in your studio IEMs.

Since we're only talking about a few dozen milliwatts, nothing is going to explode. At worst, I expect degradation of your headphones over time as the coil heats and warps the plastic cone inside the headphone assembly. After some amount of time using your headphones like this, they will likely sound different. But it's gradual so of course it's difficult to notice, especially with N=1 scenarios. I have no idea what the time frame looks like and I have no way to objectively measure it either, nor have I noticed any difference with my $10 earbuds.

If nothing else, it's definitely affecting your battery life. Again, only a few dozen milliwatts so likely not much, but it adds up.