It’s been a while since I’ve been here.
In 2022, I attempted to preemptively solder my VB displays, but no luck. I lost a pad on the display PCB while trying to do so. Despite that, I figured attempting a new LED display, despite how large it would be, wouldn’t be too hard. I was wrong. What I am trying to do is make it so anyone with basic electronics knowledge could get them built and understand the concepts involved. No overly special hardware, nothing that would require programming knowledge.

I’ve found basic components that could replace the originals.

– A .25x.45mm (01005) LED exists that could be used as part of the LED array. The LED array would be approx 5cm in length, but I figure a 3D-printed frustrum pathway would work.
– 128-channel shift registers exist, allowing all the LEDs to be lit.
– Modern 32-channel LED drivers exist with daisy-chaining, shift registers and PWM dimming. It would require seven chips on one display, but I don’t see a problem with their 5mm size.

This is all well and good. We have several abilities already that the original had:

– Small-enough LEDs that would create a large, yet still small-enough array to fit in the Virtual Boy casing.
– Shift registers for handling incoming data.
– LED Drivers for controlling PWM dimming.

However, there’s one problem, we’re missing one ability that can’t be replicated: The LED addressing to produce the trademark four-shade “display”. Each LED was controlled by logic gates that were made especially to produce the shades. So far, no LED driver I’ve seen can replicate that concept. Even worse, I’m not a programmer, so I can’t use a Complex Programmable Logic Device to reproduce the gates.

If there are others out there who can help in this endeavor, I’d like your opinion.

You’d need an FPGA or CPLD, likely. That would be the easiest path. The first step is deriving the logic. Do you know what the logic is?