Hi. So this has been done for a little while and I'm reluctant to post it since it's nothing out of the ordinary, especially compared to some of the sexy beasts people on here have whipped up. But I figured since I used a whole bunch of pictures and resources from here that I might as well post some pics for yall to look at.
Just a confused, disoriented gc board out of its shell chilling with an n64 board
Extreme pixel shot of a great game courtesy of WKF
Chopped up an official controller and a plastic box with a dremel and a rotary cutter
Tchay/SS/Ashen fan setup, had to zoom and enhance some old pics to get that fan model... But, hey, it works great and it's tiny.
Here's the thickness, I trimmed up the heatsink with a grinder and then cleaned it up with a belt sander and some heavy duty sandpaper. I ended up getting rid of the screw pegs on the bottom of the heatsink so I could get it closer to the board and make better contact with the thermal paste.
The front of the case, nothing is actually in place here yet. This was after some bondo (ugh) to fill the gaps, some sanding, and a first coat of paint.
Controller board, chopped and wired. Had a nasty short where one of the pad buttons was "stuck" and it took almost an hour of wanting to poke my iron through someone's eye to fix it. Electrical contact cleaner is some good stuff by the way.
Top half of the case with just about everything wired and expoxied/glued like crazy.
The whole mess at once. Note the absence of batteries, which I didn't include because I just don't need them, but I'm 100% certain that I could fit them in the case if I ever wanted to. I didn't even trim the board because I couldn't see how it would help here.
Front of the closed box. All the buttons are the original controller ones with membrane tacts, which feel great by the way. The ones toward the bottom obviously aren't, they're screen menu/+/- buttons and start.
On the bottom is power and an sd slot b. The case is 1.5in/3.8cm thick on the outside.
The top has a headphone/AV (it's got video on the 3rd contact so you can use those 3.5mm video cables), the WKF slot, WKF button, disc cover switch, air exhaust, external video switch, external controller 1 switch, and power. Oh and all 4 controller ports.
And the back, with Z, L, and R buttons and the air intake. The R and L buttons are DIY dual action tacts that pull up the analog data line with the first click and ground the fully pressed trigger line with the second. I spent a bunch of time making sure they were the right size and had the right action force and the right movement amount. One of the buttons was sunken in a little bit lower than the other so took it back apart and redid it so that it felt good.
So there it is. Again, not really much compared to some of the hall of famers but it's another fully functional gamecube semi-portable. I know some people are pretty adamant about having batteries, but besides pure convenience for a couple of hours and rep for having a portable that can run in a blackout, I still can't think of many situations where it's really needed. I'm far too lazy to put in something that has such a low priority to me.
Anyway, it's currently running a recent build of swiss, doesn't really ever get hot, and has held up to moderately abusive gameplay/raging so far. Thanks to everyone for the resources on here that make a project like this a whole lot more possible.
Just a confused, disoriented gc board out of its shell chilling with an n64 board
Extreme pixel shot of a great game courtesy of WKF
Chopped up an official controller and a plastic box with a dremel and a rotary cutter
Tchay/SS/Ashen fan setup, had to zoom and enhance some old pics to get that fan model... But, hey, it works great and it's tiny.
Here's the thickness, I trimmed up the heatsink with a grinder and then cleaned it up with a belt sander and some heavy duty sandpaper. I ended up getting rid of the screw pegs on the bottom of the heatsink so I could get it closer to the board and make better contact with the thermal paste.
The front of the case, nothing is actually in place here yet. This was after some bondo (ugh) to fill the gaps, some sanding, and a first coat of paint.
Controller board, chopped and wired. Had a nasty short where one of the pad buttons was "stuck" and it took almost an hour of wanting to poke my iron through someone's eye to fix it. Electrical contact cleaner is some good stuff by the way.
Top half of the case with just about everything wired and expoxied/glued like crazy.
The whole mess at once. Note the absence of batteries, which I didn't include because I just don't need them, but I'm 100% certain that I could fit them in the case if I ever wanted to. I didn't even trim the board because I couldn't see how it would help here.
Front of the closed box. All the buttons are the original controller ones with membrane tacts, which feel great by the way. The ones toward the bottom obviously aren't, they're screen menu/+/- buttons and start.
On the bottom is power and an sd slot b. The case is 1.5in/3.8cm thick on the outside.
The top has a headphone/AV (it's got video on the 3rd contact so you can use those 3.5mm video cables), the WKF slot, WKF button, disc cover switch, air exhaust, external video switch, external controller 1 switch, and power. Oh and all 4 controller ports.
And the back, with Z, L, and R buttons and the air intake. The R and L buttons are DIY dual action tacts that pull up the analog data line with the first click and ground the fully pressed trigger line with the second. I spent a bunch of time making sure they were the right size and had the right action force and the right movement amount. One of the buttons was sunken in a little bit lower than the other so took it back apart and redid it so that it felt good.
So there it is. Again, not really much compared to some of the hall of famers but it's another fully functional gamecube semi-portable. I know some people are pretty adamant about having batteries, but besides pure convenience for a couple of hours and rep for having a portable that can run in a blackout, I still can't think of many situations where it's really needed. I'm far too lazy to put in something that has such a low priority to me.
Anyway, it's currently running a recent build of swiss, doesn't really ever get hot, and has held up to moderately abusive gameplay/raging so far. Thanks to everyone for the resources on here that make a project like this a whole lot more possible.
