Finally, here is the much-anticipated teardown of the SteamBoy! Hopefully now it makes sense how it is possible to fit everything in. See the picture captions for details.
Let me know if you have any questions! This will also be my last SteamBoy post for now until I have more progress to show.
Just doing a quick little demo of the SteamBoy (main post here), since people wanted to see it in action. Teardown coming soon!
A few months ago I had the idea: "The steam deck motherboard seems pretty small. I wonder if you could make a steam deck the size of a gameboy?"
Well, it's not done yet, but the SteamBoy is coming along great! It has a fully functional LCD steam deck motherboard, battery, speakers, and all the face buttons you see here. No custom PCBs needed (so far), and all within the dimensions of a Gameboy.
The only thing left to get working is the screen, but this is a much harder task than any of the other parts. The screen I'm using is a 1200x1080, 90hz AMOLED panel, originally intended for VR. To make it work, I need to make a custom adapter PCB between the steam deck ribbon cable and the display. I also need to mod the bios the same way that DeckHD and Deck Sight do.
For cooling, I got a small 30x7mm fan and heatsink from AliExpress and 3D printed a custom mount for them. It actually works surprisingly well! After undervolting by -50mV on the cpu and gpu, it could keep temps in the 70s for Tunic, and temps in the 80s for Clair Obscur. Not bad for such a tiny fan!
I'll probably make a follow-up post as well went I have new progress to report. Let me know what you think!
EDIT: Check out my follow-up posts!
SteamBoy demo video: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeckModded/s/wy7Ufqaxat
SteamBoy teardown: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeckModded/s/MxIi5vXqRc
I am trying to make an adapter between a motherboard and a display for a project. Both use 4 lane MIPI DSI interfaces with 39 pin FPC connectors, but the motherboard was designed for a different display, hence the need for an adapter.
This is also my first time designing a PCB. Although I've tried to learn as much as I can for this project, it's been overwhelming, which is why I'm here looking for advice.
Overall, I need to:
- Reroute the 5 differential pairs (D0, D1, D2, D3, and CLK) between the connectors.
- Supply LED power to the display using the power IC specified the the datasheet (last picture).
- Supply 3V power to the display, stepping down from the 3.3V supplied by the motherboard.
- Fit the whole PCB in a very tight space, at most 1 inch wide.
I should also mention that this is a 4-layer board with two internal ground planes.
I don't need the PCB to be beautiful and optimized, but I would like to know if there are glaring issues with the design I have. I know that the differential pairs get messy around where meet the connector, but I don't know a better way to route them out, given that the pairs start on opposite sides of the connector.
Thanks!
I want to use the MIPI output from the deck to drive a different display that also uses MIPI DSI. However, since MIPI pin-outs are not standardized, I need to match up corresponding pins using a bridge PCB. But I can't find any documentation on the layout of the steam deck connector. It looks like this same question has been asked a few times (e.g. here), but no one has had an answer.
Has anyone figured this out yet? Since third-party screens like the Deck HD and DeckSight have successfully used the LCD steam deck output to drive a different display, I figure someone has to know this.