I've been around the forums for a few months now, popping up here and there. I've always admired the things I see here and have slowly been acquiring the parts needed for me to take a stab at it myself. I finally have most of the tools, the system, and the screen. Enough that I figured I could get started. And so it begins.... I'll be back at the end of the night with whatever I manage to get done. Wish me luck

Good luck!

Well, so far I managed to remove the reset and power switches, stick the console in the "on" position, and desolder/extend/resolder the capacitors a la Ben's book for making the board smaller. Only problem is, I get no picture now. I still get audio just fine but can't see anything. Suggestions?

EDIT: I figured it out, a connection had come loose inside some electrical tape.

I was looking at batteries this morning to get a cost estimate and the battery is going to cost around $75 shipped. Is that good/bad/average?

I was looking at buying two of these cells, this PCB, and this charger. (I think these may be the same batteries lovablechevy used/is using for her Retro Duo portable)

Are those worth getting/compatible? I don't want to go blowing myself up and the batteries make me pretty nervous. Let me know what you all think!

I absolutely recommend those batteries. At that price for that capacity, it would be hard to beat it unless you find some deal on eBay. I've used the exact same batteries in some of my projects and they're awesome, small, and thin.

Potential problem. I wanted to get a little more done before I went in to work, so I figured I'd desolder the controller ports. Using Ben's method in the book (desolder, rock, repeat and pry if necessary) I got the controller ports off. Everything seemed to be going well until the ports came off. It looks like the contact rings came of with some of the pins (about 4 in all). Is this going to be a big problem? Will I still be able to wire a controller to this?

Just wire to the traces.

Well, by a stroke of luck, the LEDs are wired and working! Even though they are a bit ghetto.... Anyway, I tried bypassing the CV23 on the back of the board to make it brighter, but it really didn't seem to make a difference... I'll have to tinker with it a bit more. I was wondering, is there a way I can wire the system and screen together to test them but since I don't have batteries yet, I want them to be powered through the SNES AC adapter? I think I might hold off on that and try to rewire the cartridge slot... a grand undertaking.

The cartridge slot is now removed...


...and I find myself at an impasse. I don't think it would be prudent to rewire the cartridge slot without have a case design first, so that's a dead end. I was going to wire the system to the screen to try and get that to work, but without batteries, I don't see much use in that (plus no cartridge slot now). So I have to either decide on a case and get it started, or get batteries and work on that (neither of which do I have money for).

Order your batteries, and then design your case. Once you've made your case, continue your work on the electronics. It's the only way to go. If you rewire the cartridge slot at this point in time and it turns out what you did won't work with the case you want, then you would have to redo your work and that would be a waste of time.

Noted and much appreciated. I will see if I have enough money to order batteries next week after I pay my bills...

The main reason I suggest getting the batteries first is so you can design your case with their size and placement in mind. Nothing makes a project look more amateur than slapping some batteries on back with some velcro after the case has been made. I know this because I've done it myself a couple of times...

But, if you do get those li-po batteries, it shouldn't be too hard to find some space for them inside your case because they are nice and thin.

I had a quick question and figured I'd post it in here along with a tiny update. If I want to have an AV out (I plan to use the standard Nintendo AV cable outlet from the mini SNES), is it as simple as having the wires attached as they were to begin with and just having two wires attached to the pins going to the screen? Or is it more complicated than that?

The small update consists of me planning on ordering batteries at the end of this week and possibly the case. I'm thinking of using the ZN-40 case for convenience (sorry Bacteria, if you're reading this. I know you prefer to see more original case work). In all honesty, I would love to do a more custom case but just don't have the funds to spend to build the vacuum table and all that...

It's as easy as that. Mods seem a lot less complicated when you know how to use a soldering iron, don't they? Some people like to put a switch to turn off the screen when connecting to a TV, but it's not that big a deal. The screen on your portable will get a bit darker when you connect to a TV is all that will happen.

Update and a couple quick questions:

I ordered my ZN-40 case and the batteries, should be here sometime next week. Then I can get back to work

The questions I had were what the benefit of buying a different regulator are. Why buy another one as opposed to using the 7805 that's on the board?

My other question is whether I should go with RGB or composite video output. I read a the first few search hits and they said on older systems it doesn't matter, but then I was reading worklogs and most people tend to go with RGB. What are the pros and cons of each?

As always, thanks for any info in advance!