Miceeno's Project Phoenix

[Miceeno]

I've been itching to build another portable for a while. While taking inventory of all the parts I've got lying around I noticed I've got a lot of scraped portables. So this thread will contain a couple projects that I'm bringing back to life.

I'm not planning on working on these first ones because they are the remains of what eventually evolved into my Nintendo Sixty 4or the WiN. I'm just showing them off as a record of their existence before I get rid of them.

Here's the start of a laser cut acrylic case:

I then attached it to a polycase. The paint job was a mess because the Krylon Fusion I was using crackled between coats. When it started to crackle I panicked and started sanding the wet paint but I didn't realized I was using 60 grit before it was too late:

Here's the original N64 for this build, it's probably one of my biggest regrets. I killed at least 7 N64 perfecting this. What makes this so special is it's been RAM swapped and terminated with a jumper pak. This has the full 8MB's of RAM and an extremely low profile termination on the RAM. The next step was to do the "Relocate the RCP" or wire the cart slot straight to the CPU and RCP and trim that last chunk of the board away. Sadly this died when I got too eager with the Dremel while making some small trims. It was fully functional before I made the mistake.

I abandoned the case above when I got a huge crack in the top of the case. Apparently the epoxy I was using didn't bond well to the acrylic and it was too weak to continue. I already hated this case because of the bad paint job. So I moved on to this:

After discovering this case was too small I gave up on the Dlink case and moved on to the Netgear:

And thus was born Nintendo Sixty 4or The WiN (dat crotch shot):

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Nintendo Sixty 4or The WiN XL

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Now this is where this thread actually begins. Here are the works in progress. Starting with Nintendo Sixty 4or The WiN XL. Thats right, XL. This project is using one of the first screens I ever bought for portablelizing. It's some uncommon Taiwan screen I got on eBay for $10 shipped forever ago. Its a 4 screen that measures 7 inches diagonally. I've never used it until now because the quality is so-so and it requires 12 volts of power instead of 5:

I've got the cut for the screen roughed in and I'm now waiting for buttons to arrive from China.

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Un-Named Portable

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This is the next portable. It's not so sleek and sexy but I've got the parts so why not. Here's the very first incarnation of it:

The super-squareness of this one made it too uncomfortable to want to continue, so I did this:

After the epoxy dries we will see what this on evolves into. It's going to be pretty big because I want to use my first set of batteries I ever bought. They are a 12v 4500mah 10 cell (C size battery) NiMH pack. I don't have a picture handy but basically a monster like this:

http://www.batteryspace.com/customizenimhbattery6v5400mah10xawithjstconnector.aspx


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Kinda-Named Portable (Nintendo 64 All In One)

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And finally (for now) I'm reusing all the parts from my deceased Nintendo 64 Laptop. I made the mistake of not reusing the laptop case I stole the screen from. I instead built a vacuum forming table and tried it the hard way. I was never satisfied with the quality of the case. Here's the body I should have built from:

And here's the finished product. It worked right up until just before I took this picture. I made the mistake of having a headphone jack on this portable and not doing it right. The headphone jack came right off of the N64's DAC. The act off inserting a 3.5mm headphone into the jack shorted the audio to the ground and killed the DAC and most likely the N64. You can see the "No Signal" from the GBS8200. And the lit up N64 logo.

And here's the guts. The N64 is RGB modded and produces an RGB signal to the GBS8200. The GBS8200 converts the signal to VGA and gives it to the LCD controller board. And finally the LCD controller board converts it to LVDS and drives the LCD panel. There's alot of components in a portable like this and there's alot that can go wrong. Oh yeah, there's also a lot of hot glue in this portable:

I'm missing pictures of the back which has the 4 controller ports. In the picture above and below you can see the ports from the inside.

The N64:

The Cartridge Slot:

The GBS8200:

The LCD Controller Board:

RGB Mod:

The Version 2 of my attempt at a flatter N64. Instead of wasting time with the RAM swap I instead laid the expansion pak flat and bend the contacts down soldering and gluing in place:

This method works quite well. Although it increases the size of the foot print and it's also harder to trouble shoot a N64 that you can't remove the expansion pak on. That's why I will probably always stick to the method I used on Nintendo 64 4or the WiN. It's perfect because you will always need extra thickness for the cartridge:

Here's the reincarnation. It's much cleaner and doesn't have a weak hing. Its an All In One (AIO). To start I rearranged the layout of the boards:

From this:

To this:

I drilled and tapped standoffs because I'm NOT using hot glue. I didn't have the proper tool to tap the sheet metal right so I ended up JB welding the standoffs:

With the LCD panel:

I'd love to continue but my solder appears to have grown legs and walked off so I will have to buy some more.


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TL;DR

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This thread is for three projects so far. They are being built from scraped and dead projects. They will rise from the ashes like a phoenix.

I don't have a name for the second portable, so I'm open to ideas. The last one will probably be called something like N64AIO or N64AI1 or A11 or Nintendo Sixty 4ll in oNe.

I hope to make updates to this thread weekly, so lets see what these N64's are reborn into.

 

[Miceeno]

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Un-Named Portable

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This portable will have a long case building time because I'm starting from scratch and epoxying scrap pieces of plastic together.

There's one source of plastic, my box of shame (the corpses of those who gave their lives to my education of the N64):

And some pictures of the case so far, it's far from being done. Also the pictures aren't the highest quality because they were taken in a low light scenario:

The back side of this portable is the top side of a regular unharmed N64. I'm also planning on preserving the spring loaded cartridge door, that's why it's so big. I figure that because I'm already planning on making this big and ugly, why not add as many unnecessary features while I'm at it.


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Kinda-Named Portable (Nintendo 64 All In One)

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Here's the before and after of the monitors bezel. I still need to do more finishing but here's what I've got so far.

Before:

After:

And some of the internals. I've got the backlight inverter relocated and the GBS8200 wired in. I started by soldering a section of a VGA cable to connect the two (for the shielding), but VGA cables are super thick and hard to route without breaking soldered points. So I'm using A/V cables because they are shielded enough (no noticeable image degradation) and much more flexible.

Relocated backlight inverter:

The thick VGA cable:

The better A/V cables:

Mounted to the chassis:

And finally the No Signal from the GBS8200. This is what we are looking for, the text is white. This means the Red Green and Blue lines are connected and aren't grounding anywhere. Also there's no ghosting meaning the Horizontal and Vertical Sync are properly connected as well.

 

[Miceeno]

I've been too busy to work on these portables due to the random spurt of warm weather that made me want to rebuild by WR450F; and then there was the release of the New Nintendo 3DS XL. I put a new top end in the WR450F because it was more of a smoker than my CR250R. And while I was in the mess I repainted the frame and some other random parts. So that ate a lot of my time (and took all of the work space from the portables). And then on February 13th I finally got a DS of some sort, I was a PSP kind of kid. So while I've been waiting for bike parts in the mail and wet paint I've been playing a lot of games that I missed.


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Kinda-Named Portable (Nintendo 64 All In One)

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I've built the cartridge cradle for this portable.

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Un-Named Portable

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I've got more the case done. I added the spot for the Start button and the D-Pad.

Here's the Memory Pak / Rumble Pak spot. The extra plastic on the back will be bondo-ed and formed to give this more curves and less flat and boxy.

I like to use superglue instead of bondo on small areas because there's less sanding required. The superglue on this edge kind of crusted up.

 

[naimlessone]

They're all looking good. I kinda like how you're using that superpad controller on the project and really like how you incorporated the rumble pack slot on the back. Looks very clean so far before any bondo goes on.

Is the all-in-one part going to be just the monitor with all components mounted to the back? I like how you put the controller ports and switches on the face of it. Looks great man.


Keep it up!

 

[Miceeno]

Thanks naimlessone. I choose the SuperPad for the un-named project because I like the analog stick better than a worn out original one and the replacement GameCube style ones. A good tight original one is the best stick for the system, but they wear out so fast and are really expensive and rare to find a good replacement. The GameCube style ones for the original controller have a really bad dead zone problem (or at least the ones I've got). And they are far too sensitive for any precision like in a Zelda shooting gallery. They are pretty good for racing games though. Second best to a tight original one is a Hori Mini Pad stick, but I'm not slaughtering a $75+ controller. So that leaves me with the SuperPad sticks which are as good as it gets while being cheap and reliable.

As for the all in one project, yes it will be one unit. In fact I got most of the components mounted to the back last night. All that is left to mount is the power supply and the audio. After that it's on to more case work.


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Kinda-Named Portable (Nintendo 64 All In One)

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Here's the mostly prepared N64. I've trimmed the heat sink and the shielding to make it fit better. I'd ditch the shielding entirely but it's required as a spacer for the heat sink.

Here's a close up of the Expansion Pak. This pak is from a previous portable where I was trying to save space but didn't use it because the method used on Nintendo Sixty 4or the WiN is more compact (See somewhere above). I used a similar method to Ashen's Cartridge slot bend: http://forums.modretro.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=10246 to bend the Expansion Pak. I hope that the heat sink pads can transfer enough heat to the heat sink to make this work long term.

The RGB amplifier. I made a mistake here. I could have saved myself a lot of troubleshooting time if I had remembered to deviate from mmmonkeys RGB guide. In his guide he amplifies the signal from the resistors R8, R9, and R10. I'm sure that works great when going to SCART but I'm converting the RGBS to VGA with a GBS8200. The GBS8200 doesn't seem to pickup the RGBS signal unless it comes from the capacitors C124, C125, and C126.

Here's the correction.

Here's the mounted N64. In this picture you can see that the Sync line for the RGB is just some solid core shielded wire. Don't worry, I'm using shield wire now. I like to troubleshoot with solid core wire from a cat5e cable because it's really easy to solder to pcb pads and doesn't fray. I was troubleshooting the Sync line because I didn't remember the resistor/capacitor thing. You can actually use the Composite Video line, the Y Luma line, or the S Sync line for the RGBS signal. Of course the S Sync line is the best but like I said I was troubleshooting. You can also see a wire soldered to the Composite line. I was worried that I killed the N64 when I did the minor trim to make it fit.

Here's that composite line. It's removed now btw.

Here's everything in place.

And here's my substitue for caking it with hot glue to manage the wires.

And here's it working. The N64 is now outputting to a VGA monitor.

 

[naimlessone]

That's sweet man! I can't wait to see it all closed up and finished.

 

[Miceeno]

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Kinda-Named Portable (Nintendo 64 All In One)

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Small update, mainly case work. Case work takes a while because epoxy takes a while to cure.

Here's the start of the back half of the case.

Here's how the cartridge cradle I built earlier will function.

 

[Miceeno]

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Nintendo Sixty 4or The WiN XL

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I ended up with more time for working on projects this weekend than I originally planned. So this is a second post for this weekend's progress.

Here's the bulk of the cutting done on this portable. I wanted to limit the amount of frankencasing by using standard clicky tact switches instead of molding in parts of controllers and putting a mushy button switch behind the buttons. I'm choosing to do this because after experiencing the clicky tact switches on the 3DS I've decided that they are almost better than mushy buttons on standard controllers. And I also don't have enough room for much else because the screen is so big.

Also, below the standard Analog/Dpad and A/B/C's I've got dual Start buttons and then the holes for the speakers. I accidentally cut a start button on the wrong side, but after looking at it I liked the symmetry. As for the speakers I may file them into rectangles instead of circles.

I originally wanted to file a cross into the Dpad area and then glue a cross on top of the tact switches. I didn't do this because the buttons are so close together that an average thumb can roll across the buttons without the need of a cross pad. (Also symmetry.) It may not function as good as a Nintendo Dpad, but anything is better than an Xbox 360 Dpad.

The button cluster on the left are the shorter buttons that were going to be used with the cross pad. The cluster on the right is what I plan to use for both the C's and the Dpad.

Here's an assortment of all that will be used for controls and audio.

And finally here's the back. I'm going to go the dual Z route for symmetry as well.

 

[Miceeno]

I've haven't been keeping up on progress updates, so here are some.


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Nintendo Sixty 4or The WiN XL

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I've started painting this one, just the front face and the sides.

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Kinda-Named Portable (Nintendo 64 All In One)

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The original back side of the case was about a 3/8" too small all the way around and would required twice the epoxy as one single piece. So I went with one single piece, and and only piece of plastic big enough I had lying around just so happens to be acrylic. So I will be putting a window on the back. (There's bondo, super glue, and epoxy on the window part but I haven't peeled the protective plastic off yet so we are all good.)

The window on the back requires the inside to be more tidy so I filled the side walls with bondo to smooth them out. I still need to sand them smooth.

And I removed all the electronics from the chassis, painted it black, and put them back on. Also, no more tape, I'm going to try to use small amounts of hot glue and black vinyl decals.

I've also cut the hole for the power in and I've recycled the 64DD expansion slot cover to act as an access panel to screen controls.

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Kinda-Named Portable (Nintendo 64 All In One)

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While I had the bondo out I decided to make a mess on this portable.

 

[naimlessone]

Looking good man! I like how you're incorporating and recycling different parts of the 64 too. Very practical.

 

[Miceeno]

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Kinda-Named Portable (Nintendo 64 All In One)

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I've spent a lot of time sanding as of late on this semi-portable (and on my commission). And at this point I've started painting the inside. As soon as the black drys I will mask and paint the white.

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Nintendo Sixty 4or The WiN XL

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Here's the screen, speakers, and buttons mounted with hot glue (because it works).

Here's the screen working with an unexceptional game that I don't care about.

And here's how I've got the board for the screen and controller mounted. More about the foil tape below.

This build has been a nightmare. I found through a lot of troubleshooting that the inverter on the screen (and all associated AC wiring) is causing enough electrical interference to make the controller freak out, but only while the screen is on. The interference was causing the analog stick to wander, regardless of where the trim pots were set. And the interference was also causing random button inputs. So I ended up shielding the inverter and the controller. While this band-aid worked for about 5 minutes of testing, the 3.3 volt line randomly shorted and I lost the power supply I was using on the N64. So I will need another Superpad and a better solution to shielding (or take two steps back and attempt an LED mod).

 

[Miceeno]

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Kinda-Named Portable (Nintendo 64 All In One)

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Painted. The masking isn't as good as I'd like around the controller ports because that's a hard place to mask. And the masking isn't as good as I'd like around the window because the tape I was using sucked. I don't recommend the green Frog Tape. I paid extra for that over no-name blue tape because it's supposed to give clean edges with it's "Paint Block" technology but it didn't work. I even spent extra time massaging the tape around the window to make a clean edge.

 

[Miceeno]

While I've been watching the paint dry on my Commission for Delti90 I've made a small amount of progress on my person projects.


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Kinda-Named Portable (Nintendo 64 All In One)

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I've mounted the power supply, put the front of the case on, and put a vinyl vanity cover on the cartridge cradle and wiring. (Don't mind the crappy racing game, I don't use games I care about when I work on these kinds of projects.)

Then I put the required components behind the power and reset switches. (My white LED's seem to have disappeared, but they will be illuminating the N64 logo).

Here's the base attached.

Here's what the front will look like when it's all finished. For some reason the super glue holding the N64 logo jewel ate some of the image away. I only noticed this after it was set in stone and will now have to live with it.

Here's the back.

And the cartridge slot.

 

[Miceeno]

Here's the last picture I'm going to upload for awhile. I'm working on selling and buying houses so all my projects are getting packed.

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Kinda-Named Portable (Nintendo 64 All In One)

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As of right now this portable is almost done. All I need is for my parts to arrive to finish the audio portion. Too bad I won't be able to finish this for a while even after the parts arrive.

 

[Miceeno]

I'm finally back to working on projects.

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Kinda-Named Portable (Nintendo 64 All In One)

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I installed the audio amp and speakers. This portable is now done.

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Nintendo Sixty 4or The WiN XL

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I fixed the electrical interference by folding a shield out of the N64 original shielding. I then grounded and insulated it. And now the controller works flawlessly.

Now my focus is on the N64. I built this heat sink from copper sheets, solder, and a heat gun.