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Editorials   My Afterburner Installation
- By Michael Loewer

On Thursday, May 30th, just as the online UPS tracking system predicted, it arrived...The Afterburner

Here, for your approval, is my account of the creation of what the Game Boy Advance always should have been -- a backlit system. Peruse the surgery as it takes place, as my GBA's guts are torn from its shell in a heinous attempt to mutate the poor creature into an enhanced, nearly god-like image of its former self.







Above are a couple of shots a little more than halfway through the operation, and there's good reason for not taking pics early on... Alright, you see that gray padding right there? That normally covers the bottom of the GBA's LCD screen. In the beginning, you have to literally pry it off the casing, leaving it completely exposed to the elements. On top of the LCD, you eventually have to place an anti-reflective film, in addition to the Afterburner light piece on top of that. These steps are extremely tense, as even barely touching the anti-reflective film, Afterburner light, or (to a degree) the LCD spells immediate disaster. The AR film and Afterburner both come with protective coverings on both sides, but once you take them off, a single fingerprint will ruin them. Most of the horror stories you'll read about during installation comes from people fiddling with these too much, not putting the AR film on at all, or trying to clean them.

No. BAD kitty.

In fact, the reason IGN originally gave this system a low review was that they claimed it severly washed out the colors. They neglected to make note that they didn't even place the AR film on correctly -- and yeah, without it, the colors are destroyed. That's why it's there, people! The instructions are not suggestions!

Anyway, I'm a little concerned that I'm infringing on property rights here by saying too much and making the installation seem difficult. If this is your first installation: be VERY patient, read the instructions, and follow them to the letter. Don't try to be a badass, and you'll be fine.




Here's a closer up shot of the main GBA motherboard. In the center there, you see the main CPU unit, and up to the left, the speaker. The brown "tape" is the display transfer system from the board to the LCD unit. At this point, much of the soldering had been completed -- some easy, some tough. In the previous pic, you saw the black and red wires coming out from under the black padding. These were leads I had soldered to the Afterburner. There's a lot of space to do it, and it's easy. The next shot, however, shows the soldering of the ohm resistor, which is a total bitch.




I actually had my Dad help me with this one, since he's far more experienced with this sort of thing than I am. You'll read about the "S2" solder in a lot of the Afterburner forums, and this is the one they're referencing. The wire leading from the ohm resistor is just about the same size as the connection on the motherboard. You have to be exceptionally careful not to touch any of the other connections on the board, or you'll cross the circuit. We made absolutely sure there was a strong connection, which is why you see that tower of liquid metal. This is just another one of those points that requires a good deal of patience. Take a deep breath, and just do a little at a time. The nice thing about liquid metal is that it cools really damn quickly. Just get enough on there to hold the ohm resistor in place, and then add a little more at a time until you're sure you've got a strong connection.




Really quick, I wanted to show you guys a shot of the instruction booklet. I've blurred the text to make sure we don't get any major complaints from the Afterburner people, but I think it's important to show the level of professionalism involved here. Tycho from Penny-Arcade had said he expected the instructions to be basically a bunch of xeroxed instructions stapled together. I concurred with this expectation, and was highly impressed to see the level of quality and detail included here. Also, because I wasn't able to include a picture of the actual Afterburner light, I've noted the illustration of it instead. Not what you expected? I find this component fascinating, because it's not a regular "light" so to speak, but instead a piece of photo-reactive film. This results in light spread evenly all over the GBA screen, instead of light just coming from the edges.




This is a shot of the back of my completed Afterburner-GBA. First of all, in the middle, you can see the extra red wiring. More importantly, at the top, you see the installation of the potentiometer. This is what controls how dim or bright the Afterburner actually is. Now, this is the only part of the installation I'm somewhat unhappy with. See, this is where the instruction manual recommends you place it. It's an interesting choice, because we found out quickly that it's rather tough to solder on plastic -- plastic tends to melt. Upon visiting the forums, I found a lot of much cooler people were installing theirs like the volume dial looks at the bottom. Indeed, if you do it that way, not only is the dimmer out of the way more, but it looks more natural, and the leads inside are easier to solder and get a hold of. Keep this in mind when you install yours -- being creative here is a good idea.



Here's the light at full power, tested with Rayman Advance. If you look closely, you can see dust specks all over the place. They don't really interfere with gameplay, but it shows why the Triton Labs boys are so forceful when it comes to doing this in a dust free environment. There are certain places where if you have dust, you're screwed. For example, once you put the AR film on the LCD screen, you're done. If you've trapped dust underneath, it's time to get a new AR film and try again. Luckily, most of the time, it's easily removable. The black bordered plastic screen on the top of the GBA pops off, and is easily cleanable. Right underneath that is the Afterburner, so just blow it with some compressed air. Lift it up by the connections (NOT the Afterburner light itself), and blow the top of the AR film with compressed air as well. This simple technique greatly reduces the level of dust -- I'll do it today. But really, it's barely an issue. How many of you have perfectly clean GBA screens anyway?

The Afterburner is an excellent product, as long as you've got experience with things like soldering and wire stripping and whatnot. Even with those skills it requires a lot of patience until you're very familiar with the procedure. There are a lot of professional installers around too, and looking at their pics on the Triton Labs forums, they're exceptionally good. You may want to consider ordering a couple of new GBA screens from Nintendo ($3.95) and a couple of extra AR screens from Triton since they're so easy to screw up. Just don't mess the Afterburner. The light itself makes up almost the entire price of the kit, so if you mess that up, it's a whole new kit for you. Also, there have been slight manual adjustments, due to some GBAs having differing numbers of screws and whatnot. Check Triton Labs to make sure you're up to date.

Happy Gaming.


Editor-in-Chief Michael Loewer, out.

GO TO: Triton Labs

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