daftmike N64p progress

[thewise1]

Once again you have done a very good looking job, do you work with electronics for a living or how long have you had this hobby?

[bacteria]

Ha, ha! Friendly competition!!

Let's both document all we can for the benefit of the community here and help each other out if we get stuck!

I'm going to slice my board in two too, to make it smaller still - do you plan that too?

[palmertech]

I'm going to slice my board in two

I thought we completely flamed a guy for saying and arguing this was possible?

...If you can do that, then we owe him an apology.

[thewise1]

I remember saying that I want to size down the board and some guy thought I meant cutting it in half. Even though I obviously said trimming.

[daftmike]

@bacteria:
My pinout should be all you need to at least cut the top off the board, if people need a step-by-step guide then it's probably beyond their capabilities to try.
I'm not sure how much more help I could be, if you follow the pinout i posted earlier it should be a fairly straightforward wiring job.

In theory, cutting the board and re-wiring shouldn't be a problem as long as you stay away from the high-speed traces. With some work you could get it down to 90 x 90mm quite comfortably, i only need it to be about 140 x 90mm though, which just means trimming the edges and cutting off the cart slot.

[asdfjkl;]

I'm going to slice my board in two

I thought we completely flamed a guy for saying and arguing this was possible?

...If you can do that, then we owe him an apology.

oh gawd that was a long time ago!

[bacteria]

I'm going to slice my board in two

I thought we completely flamed a guy for saying and arguing this was possible?

...If you can do that, then we owe him an apology.

Proof is in the pudding, no point someone saying something can be done when it hasn't been done before if they aren't willing to give it a go to prove or disprove it.

To be honest, there is no easy place to slice the card in two as you have to be careful with the capacitors on the back of the card, which are quite close together, and on the front of the card there are many, many traces to work with. The favorite position I can see is a line from about pin 21 of the cart slot downwards, just to the right of the expansion pack port. This could make my system board 90x90mm. I think there is a path I can use, but will probably have to wire a fair bit - using kynar wire of course, and will keep the wires as short as I can. I have no idea, even if I get the wiring perfectly done if the system will be dead afterwards or will spring to life. First job is the cart trace rewiring.

daftmike - Out of interest, I had an NTSC N64 board I bought a year ago by mistake, someone had tried an RGB mod on the back of the board, so might have damaged it maybe, I didn't have an NTSC game cart to try the system out with; desoldered a PAL PIF(P) chip and replaced it from the NTSC PIF chip as you mentioned, I got the system taking PAL carts, however I only got a black and white screen, and the top 10% of the image was a bit wavy and distorted. Did you get that problem or did yours work fine? I'm not bothered about it as I am happy with composite, just thought I would give your mod a try out of curiosity.

[daftmike]

Had some fun with a dremel this afternoon, and after some(a lot of) re-wiring here's the result:



It's a little messy but works fine, I still need to relocate the jumper pak, i think i will solder the termination resistors straight to the board, failing that i will wrap it around the backside of the mobo.

@bacteria
It sounds like your PIF chip transplant was successful but as you suspect maybe the previous owner damaged the video circuits, it's a shame because RGB really does look lovely in some games. I'm working on a DAC for the n64 that should allow RGB on any board version, the circuit will be a little large so it's probably not suitable for portables, i'll post it here when it's finished.

[bacteria]

Yeah, I think the previous owner damaged it because when I left his circuit in place, the whole image was very shaky and bad; clipped off his wiring and it was better but wavy at the top and also black and white only. Never mind!

Like your work BTW.

[Skyone]

Your work looks great! I've yet to see many solder directly to the processor to get rid of the original space for the cart slot. Commendable job, keep us updated.

[jjhammerstein]

Your work looks great! I've yet to see many solder directly to the processor to get rid of the original space for the cart slot. Commendable job, keep us updated.

SifuF did it in his Sixtyfree Light.

[Skyone]

Your work looks great! I've yet to see many solder directly to the processor to get rid of the original space for the cart slot. Commendable job, keep us updated.

[jjhammerstein]

My post still stands.
He's the only one I've seen do it.

[thewise1]

That makes me wonder though how many people make portables using the info on this site but don't document it here and we never know about it.

[bacteria]

That makes me wonder though how many people make portables using the info on this site but don't document it here and we never know about it.

Probably not many if any. This is a rather niche hobby after all, and things tend to go onto the net on Engadget and other sites as people like to show off their achievement - the fact (to my knowledge) almost all portable consoles seem to come from here that get posted onto modding sites is probably testimony.