New (?) idea for a cartridge relocation

[neverused]

Ok, so I honestly cannot think of this having been done before, but I find it hard to believe that I thought of it first or even proposed it first. I went out and bought a 50 pin, 2 row socket header and plugged a cart slot right into it. Admittedly, it did mean bending the pins beneath the slot a little inwards to fit the header, but it was fairly easy to thread the pins in. I used my multimeter and checked each pin and continuity wasn't an issue at all. I have considered tinning each pin ahead of time, plugging it in, checking for continuity, and then heating each pin up to flow a little solder into the header and anchor the cart slot securely, rather than relying on a purely mechanical connection and friction to hold it in place. In my opinion, this takes away quite a bit of the headache for a cart slot relocation. If you wanted to, you could even build up the area with a little epoxy or putty to make it rock solid. It all works without a hitch, hopefully I'll get a chance to post pics tomorrow.

Any thoughts?

 

[ToastBucket]

I did this originally when I first started playing with relocating N64 cart slots. I didn't really know what I was doing however, so I just relocated with wires. But yeah. It works. The only problem is that you have to know what pin goes to which wire because of the two rows and the rowlessness of the actual ribbon cable. Simple multimeter test there.

 

[Antome]

I agree on just about every front with you
It takes some of the pain away from people who've only gotten into a small amount of cart relocation, it could probably help others too. If you have all the equipment (which you pretty much should have already), this could be something quite interesting. Again, It's so weird when so few people ask or mention a simple, basic, possibly effective idea, you feel akward asking about it yourself

 

[geno whirl]

I remember watching something, I believe it was by systm, where they briefly said something about doing this. It's a good idea, but personally, I don't mind the cartridge slot relocation very much

 

[snowpenguin]

Been done before with scsi cable.

 

[βeta]

But what do you do on the other end?

 

[ToastBucket]

But what do you do on the other end?

You could either leave the EXT. ports pins in there by ripping of just the plastic thingy and do the same thing you did with the cart slot end. Or you could cut off the plug off of the mobo side and just solder directly into the pins.

 

[βeta]

Relocating the cart slot really is easy though. This seems like it would just add bulk.

 

[XCVG]

Yeah, the problem is you still have to solder the mobo side of things. A while back someone came up with a system that didn't involve soldering at all but it was never tested.

 

[neverused]

Why not just wire the ribbon cable directly to the board like normal?

 

[ToastBucket]

You could either leave the EXT. ports pins in there by ripping of just the plastic thingy and do the same thing you did with the cart slot end. Or you could cut off the plug off of the mobo side and just solder directly into the pins.

I stated both of those options.

 

[neverused]

yeah, I forgot to refresh the screen after leaving it for ah hour so so...