How to start hardware modding.

[juyunseen]

I've been looking at different people's finished products for some time now, and I've finally decided that I'd like to try to mod things myself. My aim is to make a portable GameCube eventually seeing as I have a GC with a broken disk drive (I read that you can make one without the drive usinging SD cards I think) that I never use, but I'd love to see it portablized.

My experience in working with such hardware comes down to breaking calculators open to admire their insides, and opening up broken computers (of which I have three) to do the same. So obviously I have very little idea of what I'm doing.

I'm certain the more experienced of you have seen many threads similar to this kind before, but where should I start? I have many unused electronics on hand, and little bit of disposable income to spend on parts and such. Are there any common projects that could ease me into the world of modding, or is it best to try something bigger, fail, and them keep on trying until it works?

Either way, feedback would be appreciated. And I apologize if I overlooked some general "help me get started" thread.

I also apologize for any grammatical mistakes due to the fact that I'm typing this from an iPod.

-Juy

 

[superben51]

try here
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9072

 

[ttsgeb]

That doesn't really help him. It's nice to learn that information, but for me it has all been learning how to do something, not learning how to maths.

I would start out by making a few cables or fixing headphones or something.
One of my first projects was putting a male USB plug on an xbox controller to be able to use it with a PC through xbcd
once you figure out how to solder well, you pretty much have everything you need electronics-wise to make a basic portable.
Start with small, disposable projects, like desoldering and resoldering a PS/2 port on one of your dead computers, maybe even putting wires on it and "extending" it.
Once you've got the hang of that, you could keep moving up to slightly harder things... maybe moving a VGA port, or grabbing some flux and some tact switches and relocating buttons on your calculator(press screen for clear? Heck yeah!)
Once you're confident that you aren't going to break flax, you could start on projects more like what you see here... maybe something "simple", like a backlight for a gameboy, or RCA jacks on an N64...
By this point, you'll have pretty much figured out soldering. Depending on how confident you are, and how much you have to blow, you can start de-soldering chips and putting them back on, or just soldering wires to the pins of them. If you get good at this, you'll be all set to start playing with RCP rewiring, at this point, you'll probably have read a bit more of the stickies and have all the information from where other people have done the thought for you, and you can get the guts of an N64 knocked out in probably just a few hours.

Now would be a good time to start making a box to put it all it. The simplest way would be to grab a dremmel and go to town on a project box, cutting out all the purty holes you need.

So... yeah... Start out simple, with stuff you don't care to mess up, and move your way up to the bigger projects. Replacing gamecubes can get expensive, so the less you have to burn through, the better.

 

[juyunseen]

That doesn't really help him. It's nice to learn that information, but for me it has all been learning how to do something, not learning how to maths.

I would start out by making a few cables or fixing headphones or something.
One of my first projects was putting a male USB plug on an xbox controller to be able to use it with a PC through xbcd
once you figure out how to solder well, you pretty much have everything you need electronics-wise to make a basic portable.
Start with small, disposable projects, like desoldering and resoldering a PS/2 port on one of your dead computers, maybe even putting wires on it and "extending" it.
Once you've got the hang of that, you could keep moving up to slightly harder things... maybe moving a VGA port, or grabbing some flux and some tact switches and relocating buttons on your calculator(press screen for clear? Heck yeah!)
Once you're confident that you aren't going to break flax, you could start on projects more like what you see here... maybe something "simple", like a backlight for a gameboy, or RCA jacks on an N64...
By this point, you'll have pretty much figured out soldering. Depending on how confident you are, and how much you have to blow, you can start de-soldering chips and putting them back on, or just soldering wires to the pins of them. If you get good at this, you'll be all set to start playing with RCP rewiring, at this point, you'll probably have read a bit more of the stickies and have all the information from where other people have done the thought for you, and you can get the guts of an N64 knocked out in probably just a few hours.

Now would be a good time to start making a box to put it all it. The simplest way would be to grab a dremmel and go to town on a project box, cutting out all the purty holes you need.

So... yeah... Start out simple, with stuff you don't care to mess up, and move your way up to the bigger projects. Replacing gamecubes can get expensive, so the less you have to burn through, the better.

Thank you. This is more of the feedback I was looking for. I'll start messing around in the old Computer cases, see what I can take apart and put back together. Thanks for the feedback.
Also, backlit gameboy? So much want! Playing my GBC in the dark would be a dream come true!