Sometimes we get sent a tip that isn’t just a single article or video, but an entire blog or YouTube channel. Today’s channel, [Diy Otaku], is absolutely worth a watch if you want someone see giving a second life to legendary handheld devices, and our creator has been going at it for a while. A common theme in most of the videos so far – taking an old phone or a weathered gaming console, and improving upon them in a meaningful way, whether it’s lovingly restoring them, turning them into a gaming console for your off days, upgrading the battery, or repairing a common fault.

The hacks here are as detailed as they are respectful to the technology they work on. The recent video about putting a laptop touchpad into a game controller, for instance, has the creator caringly replace the controller’s epoxy blob heart with a Pro Micro while preserving the original board for all its graphite-covered pads. The touchpad is the same used in an earlier video to restore a GPD Micro PC with a broken touchpad, a device that you can see our hacker use in a later video running FreeCAD, helping them design a 18650 battery shell for a PSP about to receive a 6000 mAh battery upgrade.

These are the kinds of rebuilds you do to devices you value, and this is only reinforced by restoration videos peppered into the list. This Nintendo DS Lite restoration video is half an hour of [DiyOtaku] taking care of an old legendary handheld, with complete disassembly, cleaning the shell with a toothbrush, and then complete reassembly while not missing a single screw. Here’s a video on restoring a Nokia N73, and the next video is about giving it a USB-C charging port, so you’re not bound by old proprietary charger cabling – the kind of mod you would do for a device that matters to you.

The more we look into this channel, the more it keeps giving, and the level of care put into these devices is heartwarming. If you’re always looking for more videos to play as you solder your latest projects together, this channel is undoubtedly an underappreciated highlight, rarely breaking thousand views, but going on strong nevertheless. If devices getting a second life is what keeps you going, check out a near-hundred articles we have filed away under ‘restoration’.