4 ms·

It blows my mind that this is what the company ended up using... Why? Normally the price is the factor that chooses what part is used in a system. Surely it wou

It blows my mind that this is what the company ended up using... Why? Normally the price is the factor that chooses what part is used in a system. Surely it would be cheaper to use literally any regular screen than to retrofit a Gameboy SP topcase into your design... Maybe one of the devs used a gameboy screen to develop on personally, and made a prototype of the product using the knowledge he already had using the gameboy. As a deadline approached and they ran the numbers comparing development cost of a new display system vs sourcing tons of gameboy screens, and gameboy screen sourcing came out cheaper with their predicted number of orders. Or maybe a dev thought it would be funny, I don't know man.

mikejmoffitt 9y ago
They didn't just take a game boy screen, this is the whole thing.
- kiddico 9y ago
  oh, you're right! That...makes even less sense.
  - moonbug22 9y ago
    Why?
  - NonEUCitizen 9y ago
    It makes even more sense. Keeps NRE costs down.
HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
It wouldn't surprise me if this is what happened. Even in medical device development it's not unusual to start out using some piece of hardware "until the real thing is available" and then get so far down the line that when the "real thing" is actually available, it makes more sense to continue with what you started with. The entire instrument has to be validated anyway, so whether you use a GBA for its display or purchase a standard display isn't really a big deal. If it's price comparable and you can manage the supply chain, go for it. I can see Manufacturing complaining, but that's about it.