The WiiU - Looks quite slimmable

[Tchay]

It looks very slimmable, at least on par with Wii slimmability.

The WiiU only has one heatsource, meaning they have actually COMBINED the GPU and CPU. Apparently it took numerous tests to get them optimized together. The board looks very similar to the Wii motherboard.

For more details:
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interview ... onsole/0/1

There are some really useful concepts about heat transfer that every portablizer should read in that interview.

I have some questions: why do motherboards need shielding? More specifically, on the WiiU, why did they need a shield over the heatsink to "suppress electrical waves from the board." Do they mean the chip underneath would be subject to electrical waves from the board? Can someone elaborate on this?

 

[SgtAppleXx]

Do you know the dimensions of the board?

 

[ShockSlayer]

The WiiU only has one heatsource, meaning they have actually COMBINED the GPU and CPU. Apparently it took numerous tests to get them optimized together.

Hah, neat. My computer has that too. Yay intel i5~

I have some questions: why do motherboards need shielding? More specifically, on the WiiU, why did they need a shield over the heatsink to "suppress electrical waves from the board." Do they mean the chip underneath would be subject to electrical waves from the board? Can someone elaborate on this?

Interference basically. I'm sure Herma can explain this in more depth than I can. The extent of my knowledge is that things like the disc drive and the inductors and all the components and flax create some sort of interference, and the best way to reduce it so it doesn't *Can'tSayThisOnTV* things up is to use shielding. Also, I know with the Wii they also used the shielding to control the airflow, but that might've been plastic, I dunno.

Now, as far as slimming goes, there's no way for me to tell for sure, but at a first glace you've got an obvious chip at the front and the back, so I'm guessing the wifi and junk is now actually on the board, meaning you'd have to relocate the whole thing which is dumb and annoying. I wouldn't call it close to Wii slimmability, unless you mean chopping off the grounding strips, because there isn't any Wii slimmability yet.

The size of the board, at least from looking at the AV port, looks about the same as the Wii. I don't think there's much point to trimming at all. It's highly unlikely that anyone's going to want to or be able to make a portable with this. The best solution would be an external battery pack, then put it in a bookbag and just use the screen controller thing, yeah? I don't know much about the WiiU because I haven't kept up with it, but that's my thoughts.

I mean, we haven't even done anything interesting as far as making a handheld Wii, and I'd think we'd have to get that out of the way before trying to tackle the WiiU. The father of portablizing started with the Atari, after all.

SS

 

[Gamerlolwind]

A GPU/CPU combined? Awesome

Also the wiiU's controller is like an tablet/iPad with controls which I find very interesting and highly fascinating cause it's like an (almost) portable wiiU just the controller being portable, not the system but it's awesome anyways.

 

[Tchay]

SS, can you elaborate on the electrical interference stuff?

Is it an issue for portablizing? I mean, if companies take the time to add stuff like that (and they said it was very tedious to make that metal box shield for the wiiU heatsink), isn't it somewhat vital to the lifespan of the components?

The Envision worked fine without shielding for at least 5 months before the post office decided to accidentally my wallet.

And other portables seem to last a while without proper shielding. Hmmm. DAFTMIKE! Get in here!

 

[ShockSlayer]

DAFTMIKE!

You meant to say Herma. I guarantee he probably knows, and I have him on speed dial. He's like a real EE.

isn't it somewhat vital to the lifespan of the components?

I don't think so. I mean, the NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube all also had shielding, among other consoles and we rip that flax out all the time.
I wouldn't say they NEED shielding, but it helps. I mean, same principal as using sheilded wire for video.

SS

 

[Ashen]

I'm pretty sure all the shielding in most modern electronics is more to keep the interference from getting OUT. So that your grandpa with the bad heart doesn't explode his pacemaker just because you needed your CoD fix.

 

[Prog]

I'm pretty sure it's because the inductors are electromagnets that give off an interfering electromagnetic field when in use. This can affect electrical currents, signals, and all that jazz. The same goes for the disc drive motors, which contain permanent and electromagnets.

Here's an extreme example of electromagnetic fields causing interference. The strobe's capacitor charges and discharges, and something in there is creating an electromagnetic field. This interference is picked up by the more modern alarm and you can here it coming out through the piezo element.



Of course, I'm no expert. I'm a fourteen-year-old boy whose high school has a sole course on electronics. We really need someone (Herma) with more expertise in the area to come in here. Some of this info is likely to be WRONG.

 

[grossaffe]

yes, inductors do create a magnetic field. That is how they store current. The thing with inductors is that they will interact with one another through something called Mutual Inductance. As a matter of fact, that's precisely how transformers work.

In reality, every electric current produces a magnetic field. the magnetic field flow in a circle around the wire. The way an inductor works is that it is a coil of wire, so all around the coil, the magnetic field is all going in the same direction instead of just flowing around a straight wire. Inductors interact with other inductors in a circuit through Mutual Inductance based on their size, orientation, proximity, and current. Even more than that, they will interact with inductors that have otherwise no connection to them, which is how a transformer works. A current is sent through one inductor that is placed adjacent to another inductor in it's own circuit, and the mutual inductance will drive a current in the second inductor's circuit at a voltage dependent on a number of factors including the number of turns in each coil of wire.

However, I suspect this is less about inductors and more about RF Interference of the CPU/GPU.

 

[Prog]

There's also the transformer in the PSU to consider.

 

[hailrazer]

Yes it is for rf shielding which is mandated by the fcc.

It was originally to stop different devices from interfering with each other when hooked up to the tv through rf or coax.

Like when a video game system was stacked on a vcr on a cable box. All hooked up to a TV through channel 3. Without the shielding you would get interference if more than one device was turned on.

It is not so necessary now, but it is still mandated "for our safety".

 

[samjc3]

It is not so necessary now, but it is still mandated "for our safety".

Thank Odin the government watches out for us, eh?

 

[Tchay]

Okay.

So the definitive answer is:

Shielding is kindof sorta maybe not really nonmandatory to use in electronics for the safety of commonly used VCRs and irrelevant inductors.

Whew. Glad I got that all figured out. BACK TO PORTABLIZING

 

[Hermaphroditus]

Y'all pretty much got it down.

All currents produce a magnetic field. Changing magnetic flux (which is proportional to the changing area or changing field) yield a negative voltage. or EMF (a fancy way to say voltage) = -dΦ/dt pretty much.

Now, let's say you have a processor that's being clocked at some large number, so you have a constantly varying current in pulses, so you have a constantly changing magnetic field around whatever's drawing the current. This can cause interference in many devices. What shielding in general does is pretty much disallow the magnetic field to go past it. Basically it takes in all of the induced voltages so they don't either get in (in the case of shielding signal wires) or get out (in the case of shielding processors and other devices that put out varying B fields). That's at least one way to look at it. Another is to look at the fact magnetic fields can't really get through good conductors (really more proper to look at it this way). Copper absorbs magnetic radiation, for example. There's some more math behind stuff, but yeah.

Also, if you do have an unshielded processor you can still get radio interference even today. It's just, most stuff has gone out of the analog world and into the digital world, so it's not as obvious. But if you have a radio set to a specific frequency next to a processor that isn't shielded, There's a good chance you can hear interference.

In portables shielding is nice on video lines, but that's really all you need it on.

I feel someone who has a portable that doesn't have any shielding should play it right next to a radio and vary the stations to see if you can hear any interference. Do this in the AM ranges


Edit: Happy, SS?

 

[Prog]

Yay, I was mostly right.