Making a GBS Control video upscaler was one of my first undertakings in learning electronics and also doing 3D printing.
Looking in retrospect soldering tiny SMD capacitors or attaching wires to processor legs is not the best way to learn soldering. There were moments then I said to myself that it’s impossible and I will not do it. But then you watch the video again (were some guy make it look easy) and you manage to do it yourself. I managed to make three of these upscalers (one for me and others to my good friends), but it’s hard to say if I got better with soldering wires to tiny legs, but at least I’m confident now that I can do it.
One thing that is emphasized with GBS-C that it’s cheap as compared to buying OSSC or Retrotink. But maybe only if you are seasoned at electronics and have tools and experience. Otherwise it’s a lot of effort. So for anyone that only wants to have an upscaler I suggest buying one and not making yourself. But if you want to learn something than it’s good experience.
Originally I had an idea to also have SCART input and I even implemented custom PCB to have audio source switching using relays. This worked perfectly until testing it with actual SCART I noticed how noise is the sound to the level that you can’t use it. And here I blame bad design of SCART adapter I used, there is just too much of interference. Also there is no way to select video input, so that’s another reason I had to part with this idea. So it happens that my first GBS-C have this audio switch board installed and it is not used.
The case for this device was also the first model I made myself and one of my first 3D printed models (the first one was standard ship model). I decided to do it in Blender and it proved to be very complicated undertaking. Took me a week or so and last modifications were most complicated. So it’s a bad idea to do such models in Blender, but it’s doable. It’s better to learn Fusion360.
Speaking about image quality the GBS-S is pretty good. I’m glad that it also enables my friends to use these old consoles like Xbox OG or PS2 on modern TVs.
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