~Gamecube Fusion(s)~ Worklog

[Ashen]

Did some poking about at the battery's today and have discovered that if I "jump start" the battery pack it works fine. By this I mean if I plug in the battery's and then turn on the portable like I'm going to "play and charge" it loads the disc loader fine. I can then disconnect the battery from the wall charger and be on my merry way playing plug free. This leads me to believe that my Pin 29 to ground connection may not be strong enough for the unit to recognize the connection/connection break when running off of just the battery's. Wall power will obviously give a stronger ground connection than battery's so this is probably why it works when plugged into an outlet. Just a theory at the moment, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. I wont have time to pop the unit open for a few days to test this theory out though. I'll let you know when I do how I make out.

On a side note, I played Metroid Prime for just a hair over two and a half hours tonight from battery power before the unit died. This was with a full charge on the 11.1v "hailraizer" pack using the stock GC regulator. Not to shabby imo.

 

[bentomo]

I wonder if the charger is just overall a higher voltage than the batteries can put out. I know you said fully charged but I'm wondering if the charger is delivering a higher stronger voltage that kick starts the fusion chip.

It could be something with the stock regulator isn't giving a good voltage to the wiikey from the battery.

And when you tested with the other gamecube the regulator on that one was a better stock regulator due to a different revison.

Not a solid theory but it's my 2 cents.

 

[Ashen]

So tonight I had some time (In between Metroid Prime playsessions) to open up my portable and poke around at why the Wiikey loader wouldn't load up the boot loader when running from batteries...

After much rewiring and un-rewiring and poking around and poking at my battery packs I finally tried a different Wiikey chip and it works!! Apparently the one I stuffed into my portable was the one I shorted out a while back testing... I thought the chip was 100% ok after the short but apparently not... Doh!! Oh well... at least its fixed now and I'm not tied to the wall anymore!

 

[unicycler17]

Yay! I can't see why that worked.... I mean if it could run off the wall why wouldn't it work off batteries? Whatever, If it works, than awesome!

 

[Ashen]

Little update on what I've been doing the past week or so. Not a whole lot you guys haven't seen from the last one, but I wanted to show I'm making progress.

Got pretty much everything mounted into the front half of the case of the 2nd GameCube Fusion. Controller is 90% wired up, tested and working after a full day of fighting with it. After ripping the first controller board out of the portable and wiring up a 2nd I discovered it wasn't working proper because of a wire I had forgotten to bridge.... The back half of the case looks rather empty at the moment but I figured I'd show it this way so you can see all the wasted space on both sides of the heatsink since I decided not to include batterys :/.

I had to repaint a set of L/R buttons black because I didn't like the way the first set turned out, So that'll be the only holdup of finishing this by monday. All thats left is pretty much just mounting the MB to the heatsink and finishing wiring things together.

 

[ShockSlayer]

Liking it.

 

[PalmerTech]

That is an absurd amount of space!

 

[unicycler17]

Are you using hot glue to mount everything?

What are you using for those screw posts?

For the double z buttons, are you using the method hailrazer did for his n64boy advance? Or are those not tact switches?

 

[Ashen]

90% of the goop you see holding stuff in there is loctite plastic epoxy. Some hot glue is used to hold wires in place and such.

The screw posts are just extruded polycarbonate round stock

The double Z's are similar to hail's method. Its just a bit of lexan epoxied beneath the tacts/buttons to hold them in place. Nothing fancy.