This is my third DSL. I love these things. It’s the most I’ve spent on a busted one so far, at $30. The last one I bought was 12, and the one before that was 5. All this one needed though was a new shell and a digitizer. Both screens are in excellent condition. The shell was very yellowed and busted.
Anyway, I had just learned recently that eXtremerate made DSL shells, and I decided I needed to try one out. I am a huge fan of the Switch Lite shell I have from them, it feels nearly OEM.
The DSL shell, not so much. The plastic is pretty soft. That’s kind of nice, since I have had issues with previous aftermarket DS shells cracking. The bottom screen bezel is molded in, which I also like. It’s hard to get the adhesive ones off without ruining the digitizer. The upper shell does not have the dual square DS logo molded into the top, which is also appreciated. The fit is also very good. No unexpected warping, everything fit together fine.
But the plastic is so soft… I’m afraid it is going to scratch very easily. Plus, it’s painted. I thought it would be gray plastic with some UV printed logos, but it is white plastic painted gray with UV logos. Sort of disappointing. If I ever re-shell it again, I’ll get one of their transparent ones. But yeah, probably the best aftermarket DS shell I’ve seen so far, overall.
Did you know there’s a decent DOS emulator for the DS? You aren’t going to be playing Doom, but you can play Oregon Trail! Or Jetpack! And lots of other earlier stuff. Bind the buttons to keys, use the stylus for mouse input.
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David Attenborough: “Once the fragments of the old carapace have fallen away, the DS lite looks and feels like a completely new creature.”
Question about the ribbon cable on the top screen. Is there a trick to getting that routed through the hinge that doesn’t involve blood sacrifice? I’d like to rehouse mine but not looking forward to that bit of torture.
Ugh. Yes. Aside from saintly patience, you need to feed the connector through the little slit in the shell by the hinge first. I use some narrow, flat tweezers to keep it coiled enough to fit through the hinge hole and ring.
Ahhh, that’s a beautiful machine. Brings back some very fond memories. I love it when people put in the love and effort to restore old machines, it makes me so happy.
I actually never had one when they were new. I had the DMG, GBC, the Tiger Game.Com, the GBA, and that’s where I stopped. Probably because that was around the time I was graduating high school (for the fat one), and I was all about PDAs from then until about 2011.
But yeah, I love keeping them going. I always have a few digitizers on hand, because that’s what I seem to ruin the most on them. I can change one in under 15 min at this point.
I’m in awe of people who do this stuff. I’ve wrecked a DS Lite and a DSi XL trying to do reshells, I’m just not delicate or patient enough for the work.
Oh, it definitely takes a lot of patience. But I love it, the whole process is therapeutic. I love the precision of it.
I feel you. I felt that way doing some soldering for things like fixing my trackball (bad left mouse button replacement) and my microwave (blown thyristor, easy fix).
I’m just not really good with small stuff and delicate parts like ribbon cable and thin wires. My eyes are old (hello presbyopia), and my hands were never the steadiest, even when I was younger.
What trackball? I’ve been keeping my T-BB18 going for 20 years now, and it’s to the point I have to start 3D printing replacement parts for the rubber stuff that’s turning to goo.
It’s an Elecom Huge wired model. I’ve owned three, had two fail on me, both to left click double clicking on single touch. First time could have been a fluke and I replaced it, but the second failed inside of four months. I said hell with it, took it apart, desoldered the switch and replaced it with a Kailh GM2.0. Worked like a charm and it’s been fine since.
Ironically, my oldest Huge is still working fine. Apparently they were originally using Japanese Omron microswitches that were quality and seem to last forever (case in point, the oldest trackball is from 2019 and no issues). With the newer ones I bought, they apparently changed to using Chinese Omron switches of poor quality.
Sucks, but I have a few spare Kailhs laying around if any of the other buttons die now.
That is a big, beautiful beast! Wow. It’s ingrained in me that the trackball is for the thumb, so I’m not sure I could use it. But I am impressed by that behemoth.
I started with a Logitech Marble Mouse back in the day, thumb-balls were never really my thing.
Ah, Logitech T-BB13 for me. My grandpa had the marble, it felt weird to me.
That looks clean! I wish I could find an aftermarket replacement or 3d print model for a 2ds shell, but nobody seems to make those for some reason.
Thanks! That’s a shame about the 2DS.
That Gameboy style looks really nice 🙂
What’s the game on image #3?
Oregon Trail
Thank you! Yeah, it’s Oregon Trail.
Nice :) I just finished re-shelling and swapping an amoled screen on my Gameboy color.
Excellent. Is that one of those laminated ones? I have not tried one of those yet. Just the Q5 mod.
Yeah, one of the Hispeedido amoled glass screens. Super happy with the results. I got it bundled with the shell designed to fit it, so I didn’t have to hack up the original one.
Also swapped out the red power led for an amber/yellow one because I thought it looked better with the atomic purple case. :p
Mine, too, is Atomic Purple. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the only color a GBC should be!
That looks great, by the way.
Trying to track down an Advanced SP next and fix it up too.
Compared to the switch lite reshell in terms of difficulty how was this one? I didn’t have too much problem with the lite just imagined you needed to do soldering or a heatgun for the DS
DS is so, so much easier. I never want to do another Switch Lite. I already had to take it back apart to put hall effect joycon replacements in, it’s not coming back apart.
No heat gun or soldering necessary for DS, yes heat gun for the Switch Lite to get the screen out. And get the digitizer off.
I do DS Lites and Gameboys for fun. Switch, Vita, and PSP are not fun.
Neato!
Thanks!
