Do we have room for another N64P? (t64 WIP)

[runkillerrabbit]

what i meant was

if you look at the n64 pcb board. not the one you made.

well on the back side of it there all these risisters? caps? im not sure how did you add theese in to YOUR board?

illl post some pics if you still dont get it.

[OhSnap!]

wow it works!!!

[runkillerrabbit]

this is really nice mannnnnn i wanna make something this crazy!!!

[kibble]

what i meant was

if you look at the n64 pcb board. not the one you made.

well on the back side of it there all these risisters? caps? im not sure how did you add theese in to YOUR board?

illl post some pics if you still dont get it.

Ok, to try to answer your question, I will try two ways:

If you mean how did I remove the caps and resistors from the n64 to add to my board, I just unsolder them and re-solder them to my board wherever I need them. I take turns quickly heating up both sides of the component until it comes loose.

If you're talking about the design and how I got these on there, I used EAGLE.

Hopefully one of these answers your question.

Mucking around with the controller and the memory and rumble lead me to discovering that apparently, even though the rumble is working, I don't quite have the system wired the way I thought I could control its operation. I was hoping that if I disabled one of the chip enable pins from the memory, /CE to be exact, or disabled the pin on the rumble chip that leads to that same pin on the controller, that I would be able to select between the memory or rumble while in a game. apparently, this pin doesn't work as so on the rumble chip. even though I pulled it high, disconnected it from the controller's pin and hoped it would disable the chip, the rumble still continued working. So it looks like I will have to do some more research on this particular issue before making the next board design. I also thought that maybe I should make this part of the system modular and have a couple of headers where you could attach a dautherboard containing either just memory, rumble or both. The motor would then have to be attached elsewhere in the system. I'll do some more testing with these two later.

I guess I should stop wasting time with trying to get these two working properly for now and move on and build another part of the system. I'll continue with the AVDC-NUS portion of the system and test its operation. This part should be easy to get through as there's nothing really complicated going on. Ill probably follow with PIF testing.

[vskid]

Have you thought of selling memory cards with the FRAM in them? I know I would like to be able to save games and not worry about losing them because of a dead battery.

[runkillerrabbit]

yea that was it... more simple then i thought! hahah thanks man!

[XCVG]

This project is really awesome.

I hate Eagle though.

[BENFTW]

I hate Eagle though.

I understand that completely.

[marshallh]

I hate Eagle though.

I understand that completely.

That's just cause you aren't man enough for it

[BENFTW]

I hate Eagle though.

I understand that completely.

That's just cause you aren't man enough for it

lol

[XCVG]

The biggest problem I find with Eagle is that it is cumbersome and counterintuitive. I could elaborate but I don't feel like it right now.

I used expressPCB for a while before upgrading to DipTrace, which is what we use at school. DipTrace is a lot more powerful and compatible, and comparable to Eagle. Only problem is that the free version has a 250 pin limit, which is fine for me but would not let you redesign an N64 or anything like that.

To each their own I guess.

[flax]

Awww, I've just spent + 1 hour reading the whole thread. Was hoping that it would be up and running by page 19!

It was one hour well spent though! My electronic skills are nothing compared to your, but still, if you can do this, I have to be able to do my genesis portable I'm working on!

Really inspiring thread! Keep up the good work, you will get there.

I think it has been mentioned before, but is it really safe to have the rumble-pack on the motherboard? Isn't it quite a tear on the components the soldering points in the long run? I don't know really, but anyway.

Sincerely
flax

[kibble]

I think it has been mentioned before, but is it really safe to have the rumble-pack on the motherboard? Isn't it quite a tear on the components the soldering points in the long run? I don't know really, but anyway.

It's really not as bad as you'd think. It's only a little bit stronger than the rumble on the Wiimote. If I can't get the memory working properly I may have to make all that stuff as a sort of add-on though. We'll see, I still have to mess with it more.

I haven't updated this thread in several days because I haven't had time to work on it. A bunch of stuff going on has consumed a lot of my time and work has been a little bit crazier than usual. I had also spent a little bit of time putting together a sort of "development station" for my projects where I have a power supply, microcontroller development boards, breadboards, lcd's etc. to make working on my projects easier and so I don't have to go and scrounge up components every time I want to experiment with something. I'm hoping to get back to the 64 again sometime this week.

[collinE]

I'm so happy I didn't continue reading this thread back when it first started. lol I thought to myself "mmhmm. what a noob. next he's going to say he made a 360 the size of a dollar bill" and I never looked back till now.

I think I would have died if I had to sit and wait for each post. congrats on coming this far, man. really amazing to read through all of it and see your progress. and I'm soo happy I'm discovering it at what I hope is the tail end of the project.

[runkillerrabbit]

i am need of a
"work station" too...

good luck

get that ish done fast so we can some good n64 makin!