364 Worklog

[DiscoPanda]

What are the blue wires doing on our motherboard?

I'd guess that they have something to do with those traces runing around the socket that have a black marker line running across them. Perhaps the section with those traces on it is going to be trimmed off?

[hailrazer]

Suuuure.

One interesting thing I noticed this morning, though, was this.
I first saw it on the rev.3 motherboard I am going to use for this portable, but it's on my two dead rev.3's as well.

See the silvery-white dots between the RAM and jumper slot? Those are solder points. They are not there on my rev.5 or any later ones I have. Not sure about rev.4, but these solder points should make it MUCH easier to relocate the jumper pack.

The vias right above them all go to ground, most directly but 4-5 through capacitors.

Has anybody noticed this before?

Yea they are on most of the boards I've used. They don't really help because there are only 16 out of the 32 needed. Since you have to wire the other 16 anyway you might as well just use all 32 of the original points.

[Mario]

ihakr: This is a dead motherboard. The blue wires are where I accidentally cut a couple traces and had to repair them. This i snot the motherboard I am using for this project:

Hail: On the jumper pack, though, about half the traces are connected to nothing, right?

[hailrazer]

Hail: On the jumper pack, though, about half the traces are connected to nothing, right?

Umm that was what SifuF said, but then he said to connect them all to be sure. So I don't really know . LOL

3. Wire ALL of the pins (Even the multiple GND's):
This is probably not essential, but not doing so is bad practise, and could increase your chances of it not working.

[Mario]

It looks like Daftmike got it to work without wiring everything.



http://forums.modretro.com/viewtopic.ph ... 494#p40494" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[hidiosoman]

But hardwiring the jumper pak is different than wiring the RAM chip, no?

[Mario]

Well, you don't have to hardwire the jumper pack. But if you do the RAM swap, it needs a jumper pack to work. It saves a lot of space to just hardwire it.

[hidiosoman]

Oh, you're RAM swapping?

Sorry, I didn't read the thread...

[hailrazer]

It looks like Daftmike got it to work without wiring everything.

Daftmike did the Ram swap and had to wire all the traces on the ram. Then he hardwired the jumper pak. But the jumper pak only needs 12 wires.

I still have not seen anybody re-wire an expansion pak with just 16 wires. I think all 32 are needed. But I don't know that for sure.

[Mario]

Oh, geez, THAT'S what you're talking about. I guess I didn't make it clear enough that I'm doing the RAM swap.

In that situation, I am pretty sure not all the pins need be wired. But adding an expansion pack, not doing the ram swap - yes, definitely wire all of them.

[Mario]

Now that school is out, I have a lot more time to work on this! Not too much to report here. Just some measurements taken and drawn up, and I'm ready to cut the side panels.

Back, with the painted cart slot cover attached:


With cart:


Side panels marked up:

[Mario]

I heard you guys liked progress, so I made some for you.

All the sides are filed to the right dimensions:


Started on the d-pad hole (the drill chipped that corner - oops):


It turned out fine, though:


The front so far. I'm pretty sure I don't need to be making any more holes in it, so I may put the case together soon.


And just for the heck of it, here's all the IDE cable I have: