sjm4306's first portable: The Super Retro Uno Portable

[sjm4306]

I found a "broken" retro duo at a used game store for $4 so I couldn't say no. I took it home and immediately tested it to find that the SNES side was still fully operational but the NES side was kaput. Ok this worked for me because I ordered a free sample of a small enclosure from OKW awhile ago that is almost the exact size of a SNES cart so I've been wanting to make a tiny portable SNES. So I set out to trim the retro duo SNES board to fit in said enclosure. Here are some progress videos.

Progress Video 1

Progress Video 2

Progress Video 3

Progress Video 4


I'm in the process of shaving off another few mm from the top in order to fit it in the case (just need to relocate the video amp circuitry and bypass and filter caps for the audio). I have work tonight so that'll have to wait till tomorrow. I'll be sure to regularly post updates on how this project is going. I'm feeling really good about this project and hope that this will be the smallest portable SNES in the world (but I'm not gonna hold my breath ). I plan on having an internal rechargeable lithium ion battery (already have the batteries, step up regulator and charging circuitry on hand), RGB led with custom programmed microcontroller for battery life and charge indication, av out, and external controller connectors. Anyway let me know what you guys think and any ideas about features I could add.

 

[sonictimm]

I love the upgraded workspace at the beginning of update 4. Any more updates before summer ends?

 

[sjm4306]

Thanks. I've been looking for a 3.5" lcd off ebay that works. I purchased one and low and IGNORE the video is unstable and rolls but works perfectly with my other game systems. I've had problems with these screens before. I partially reverse engineered an older lcd screen (the driver is simply driven by an atmel mcu over an i2c interface to initialize the settings) and came to the conclusion that the decoder and lcd driver chip is misidentifying the video signal possibly as pal or some other standard. I noticed when I fed in a nice clean working ntsc signal into channel one with channel two plugged into the retro duo and cut the feed on channel one, it would revert back to channel one with a perfect image for a second before it started rolling. This tells me that the detection logic is screwy. I downloaded the driver chip datasheet so I would need to flash my own mcu to send initialization commands over i2c to force the standard settings to ntsc video. And that is where I left off. I'm heading back to school soon so I wont get to do too much in progressing this project but I'll do what I can. I have a ton of projects that I'm working on (nintoaster, el backlit gameboy pocket, laser projector, class d amplifier) that I keep putting off. In addition this is my last year of college so I need to do a senior design project. Looks like I will have to wait till winter break Oh well. I'll keep updates going if I make any progress.