Game Boy Pocket Power (gbpp) by marshallh

May 13, 2026

Progressing further with hotplate and hot air soldering, I decided to try my hand at the gbpp which was developed by marshallh. This power board is both a 5V regulator and also allows for play&charge with a lipo cell. I prefer the aesthetic of this power board as it still retains the look of a typical original power regulator as there are components on the front face of the main board. This board is a little more advanced to solder as it requires soldering on two QFN chips and more capacitors.

I had a bit of trouble soldering these at first since there were more tiny components to keep track of. Eventually I managed to finish a batch that I was proud of, but I did have a huge rookie moment in which I tested the board from the wrong side and so I kept touching up the board to “fix” it, thinking I had soldered something on incorrectly. Reading the voltage at “PIN 7” (which was actually PIN 1) with the board flipped will show a value sub-1V. Flipping it over to the right side and placing the power supply on the correct PIN 1/3 and probes I got it to measure 5V at PIN7.

Next up was wiring up a lipo cell and testing the charge function. CHG5V: wire to 5V USB-C source using a breakout board by mahko VBAT+: Lipo battery positive terminal on main board VBAT-: Lipo battery negative terminal on main board SYS: to the power input, fuse near headphone jack on the main board. It should be the same net as the pocket’s battery pos terminal *Note that this board does not provide intrinsic lipo protection. However, almost all cells available already have a BMS board pre-installed.

Checking for the charging LED to be ON when plugged in to charge the lipo cell and OFF when charging has completed.

The Build Materials