portable gamecube help

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chairsgotoschool

Member
My main issue is the batteries right now at least. i found these

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-4pcs-18650- ... 2c7163e3ea

and another pack for 20 bucks that comes with 12

so if i get the 4 pack i will put them together for 14.8v and 5000mah. how long would that last with a gamecube and screen, i got this screen

http://www.ebay.com/itm/331012302439

i am using the original power regulator, i already have it semi rewired, just need to pick a place to have it rest.

If those batteries wont work can someone suggest some cheap ones that will?
And how would i go about charging them. i would like to have a protection circuit so i dont have to buy a smart charger, and then i could use different types of chargers.
 
chairsgotoschool said:
And how would i go about charging them. i would like to have a protection circuit so i dont have to buy a smart charger, and then i could use different types of chargers.
Click to expand...
You need a smart charger and a protection circuit. The protection circuit just keeps them from catching fire, the smart charger keeps them healthy.
 
okay, i'll look around for more reliable batteries. so how would i go about making it so they can be charged without a smart charger, maybe i'll just get a battery pack made to if its too complicated.

and sorry if i seem like i know very little, i've never dealt with batteries before. I thought it was a little weird the way i saw it before, thanks.

So since batteries are expensive, i think i'll use custom regulators and a 7.4v battery pack. the problem is i'm having trouble finding a place that sells regulators, i have 2 5v (lm7805 will work right?) regulators with me but i also need a 1.9v and a 3.4v but the only place i found only sold them in quantities of 500

thanks for the help
 
You're gonna want to use switching regulators, not linear ones. An LM7805 is very inefficient when it comes to powering parts of a GameCube because it looses a lot of power through heat. Some of the best regulators around are the PTH08080W and PTR08100 regulators. They're easy to use, and they can power a Gamecube easily. You set the voltages with a resistor. You can find those on Mouser.com or digikey.com.
 
thanks for helping me out, i generally can figure things out myself but batteries have always confused me especially lithium ones so thanks very much.

so the regulators are a lot of money (15 bucks a piece D:) so i think i'll stick with the normal regulator and get a 14.8v batter pack... or get 4 3.7v cells and put them together, that way i can more easily have them placed in the case. so i was thinking 4 of these

http://www.batteryspace.com/LG-Lithium- ... -NDGR.aspx

with this

http://www.batteryspace.com/pcbfor148vl ... ocket.aspx

and a smart charger right? the battery pack will be 14.8v and 2200mah which should last around an hour with the screen. and about the screen, i dont know if it will work on 14.8v but can i just connect it to a 12v line on the gamecube motherboard?

also what kind of smart charger would i need would this one work

http://www.batteryspace.com/Smart-Charg ... k--CE.aspx

or do i need another one... or am i completely off on all this?

thanks again!
 
Oh and the other day i went to test my gamecube without using the normal av plug, i just soldered it directly the board but when i turned it on nothing happened and not it wont work. nothing sparked or smoked did it just die, is there a way i can tell if its surely dead or if something is just messing it up?
 
Yes, there are some indicators you can use to see if your GameCube is dead. You should first test the continuity between 1.9v and ground and between 3.3v and ground. If there are no shorts on those voltage lines, and the Gamecube's processors do get warm when you turn it on (both of them), then it's not dead. So if you can determine it's not dead, there must be something going on with the AV out. Are there any shorts to ground or to 3.3v on the video line? Is there any audio out at all?

And about the regulators, yes, they are some dang expensive regulator, but unfortunately such is what it takes. it would take only one PTR08100W(1.9v) and one PTH08080W(3.3v) minimum to run a GameCube, but as long as your regulators can produce the right voltages and can handle the heavy loads you could stick with those. Just watch out for overheating, you don't want anything to catch fire :D . I also think 2200 mah at 14.8v should give you a good amount more than just one hour, as I get an hour and ten minutes from 2600 mah at 7.4v, powering the CPU and GPU separately. And, assuming your screen is one of the car backup monitors or similar, they usually have a 12v input that gets regulated to 5v or 3.3v on the screen, so you could actually find where that happens and input 5v or 3.3v! Your smart charger's fine, too. That'll work.
 
You will ALWAYS get continuity between 1.9v and ground.

You have to test the 1.9v and ground with an ohm meter. It should read around 28 ohms.
 
thanks so much for the help. saldy i'll have to wait and test the other gamecube for now. my current "muiltimeter" is around 15 years old, analog, and seems to be about 10% off when i use it. i generally only use it to test if things are connected but even then it seems pretty unreliable :(

so i guess its time to stop putting off getting a muiltimeter. i dont want to spend too much though so it will most likely be a cheap 20 dollar one. i picked the batteries i did because i figured if i really wanted to i could add another 4 and double the time but i probably wont, about an hour is good enough for me, at least for my first portable.

all thats left is to wait for some things to come in the mail (5" screen, controller, 128mb memory card which i plan to be built in, some tact switches and a dosolder pump) which should all be here by next week.

then i need to get a wiikey. i saw there is a wasp fusion which sounds like a pretty good clone of the wiikey, uses same firmware and seems to have the same compatibility but is a little cheaper( and smaller). sadly i cant seem to find one online for north america, i found one on some Chinese site for under $20 but it seemed rather scary so i'll most likely end up spending the $30 on a wiikey.

thanks again guys :D

edit: oh and is there anything special i should know about lithium ion batteries. like charging when not completely dead or first use kinda things.
 
You should know that when you connect the batteries to the protection circuit, the circuit won't output anything until you input voltage to them, with the charger. It kind of activates the circuit.
 
oh how many amps does the gamecube use, i know the power supply gives 3.25A but does it use all that? the batteries i plan to get say max discharge is 3.23A

edit: I was reading and some people say that using a balance charger and pcb is better but others say its only a big deal if you use different cells or ones that are older with newer ones.
so should i not worry about balance charging and just stick with my plan?
 
With efficient custom regulators like the ones I suggested you could get about 1.9A with one 1.7v regulator or about 1.7A if you regulate the CPU and GPU separatly (1.7v and 1.5v). I don't know about your regulators but it certainly shouldn't reach 3A.
 
okay. i'm using the stock regulator board that the rev A and B gamecubes have, i rewired all the wires to find about a little later i only needed a hand full of them so i might redo that to keep things cleaner.
 
Oh, okay. I don't think the stock regulator would draw anything near 3A either because Nintendo always likes to be super safe, giving things a more than adequate limit. They used 25v caps on the 12v line for audio.
 
well i picked up a digital multimeter just now and so i tested the 1.9v line. so there are 6 1.9v pins. on half i get around 29 ohms and on the other half its around 100 ohms and there is no continuity on ground to 3.3 or 5v or 12v. this is without any power regulator attached, should one be attached?

edit: I'm going to assume its dead, i just tested on my working gamecube and all 1.9v were giving about 25 ohms not half 29 and half 100 unless having the power regulator changes that
 
Okay so I bought some parts, a few switches, an amp, the case, a 10k pot for the audio and a headphone jack and barrel jack, and lastly the wiikey fusion. The wiikey came in the mail today but after seeing how small the contacts are i have no clue how i will get all the wires on it. I guess I will buy a breakout board but i dont know where to get them from. But to make sure it worked I connected it to my wii and it booted but it just says mouning, it doesnt show any games. I only have GC games on it and its only version 1.0 I read that it needs 1.5 is that why?

And also about the wiikey is IDE wire good enough or will it cause problems? and how long can the wires be, I know that 2 common problems with wiikeys are that the wires are too thin or too long I dont want to have to deal with lots of troubleshooting.

On another note I rewired the controller ports and led and cmos battery and instead of re-wireing all 20-ish wires on the regulator board I redid it to use 5 and it works great.
 
IDE wire is great for WiiKey wiring, it's thin enough and flexible. Wires should only be about 4 to 5 inches long (based on my own experience) if you use the breakout board, but could be longer if you somehow wire directly to the WiiKey.
A commonly used breakout board is the FFC36 from Newhavens Display: http://www.newhavendisplay.com/nhdffc36-p-2476.html
It has 36 pins total in the connector, 4 more than the 32 pins on a WiiKey, but the FFC cable will still fit as long as you move it far to the left and keep it positioned right. Good luck!
 
I figured I'd give it a shot to wire it without a breakout board. I've tried 3 times and have had 0 results. am i missing something or just doing it wrong? I wire pins 1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28 then pin 29 i wire to a spdt with pin 29 being the middle and the ground and power on the sides to act like the lid switch. then i scraped a little on the wiikey and soldered the ground connection then soldered on the power is that all, do i have bad luck or am i missing something? luckily I have a ffc cable that is the same but has 3 less pins which shouldn't be a huge issue. i was following this guide

http://www.made-by-bacteria.com/forum/v ... =40&t=2533
 
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