t64 Resurrection

[kibble]

How about instead of a cookie, you cease trolling the thread and actually contribute something useful? I'm not about to turn this thread into a useless flame war. I'm an extremely patient person and It's really hard for me to dislike people, but I haven't seen an ounce of helpfulness in any of your posts, and if you think your discouraging comments are gonna persuade me to give up on the work I've been doing, you're sadly mistaken. So, unless you're actually gonna contribute to the thread in a positive manner or provide helpful advice, I'm just going to proceed to ignore your future posts. Looking through your thread about the GameCube IDE/USB interface, you seemed to be desperate to get help from anywhere you could. You didn't want people discouraging your work, did you? Lot's of our fellow members jumped onto that thread and contributed with what they could and you should be grateful for that. I'm not desperate for help or encouraging comments and I'll humbly make it known that I don't know everything about the n64, which is why I'm doing all these experiments, to help me understand it better. However, I welcome any and all useful advice that anyone can provide and lots of others that have commented have done just that and I thank them for it, even the people that post just to say good things about what's going on or show genuine interest in the project, I appreciate them. With all that said, I'll give you another chance to get on my good side, cause you're not really there at the moment.

Get it? Got it? Good...

[Electric Rain]

Huh. Two questions:

1. What the HELL are you talking about?

2. Who the HELL do you think you are?

It was a metaphorical e-cookie. It's a COMPLIMENT to your success - assuming you did in fact manage to do as you said. But it seems as though all that knowledge about the workings of N64 hardware you've obtained also came with a nice helping of a$$hole, b!tch-fit and general ignorance, yeah? I've done nothing troll-like in all my time at these forms - several times longer than you I'll add, not that seniority makes a damn bit of difference around here anymore.

Now hold on, before I go any further, and let me read back through my posts in this thread to make sure I'm not mistaken... ...Nope, that's what I thought: Not a DAMN "discouraging" word from me in this thread. What the HELL would I have to benefit by discouraging you? Do you realize how many more important things I have to do in my life than make yours miserable? I don't give a damn about you one way or another, and frankly, I'm disappointed in myself for wasting as much time on you as I have already. You've apparently taken my attempts at playful banter and shoved them up your a$$ instead. Not my fault you're all butthurt now.

I gotta give you credit for one thing though, for a guy that doesn't want to turn his thread into a flame war, you've sure got a hell of a way of preventing it. Ever heard of a PM? When you want to b!tch somebody out for no good reason, it's better to use those rather than post your freak-out on the public message board. That's kinda the best way to start a flame war, actually.

One more thing... In my time here at these forums, I've seen a$$holes like you time and time again, who think they're superiors on the forum and get pissed when their thread doesn't go exactly the way they want it to. It never turns out good for them. Nobody wants to help someone like that or, "contribute something useful" in your words.

Get it? Got it? Good...


Edit: Damn, I sure do hope I get banned for bypassing the language filters. It'd be a hell of a way to go out.

[Snow_Cat]

It's okay. I know those posts are irritating, but I don't think that any poster can help but to be who they are.

Here's what I suggest you do before reading a post by that user, click this: .

[hidiosoman]

EDIT: Needless ranting.

[Snow_Cat]

(back to the topic)
Will you be making a smaller PCB to hold the resistor/capacitor array, or do you intend to trim the jumper pack?

[Triton]

Everything posted on the internet is open to misinterpretation, I'm sure it wasnt ERs intent to piss anybody off (initially anyway) I wont lock this thread or ban anybody, unless it gets out of hand. as it stands I'm sure there can be rational discourse and any differences can be settled.

[Electric Rain]

*sigh* Okay, so yes, I tend to go overboard when I get insulted. Like, a lot. Calling me a troll will warrant a torrent of words, none of them good. Did I overreact? Yeah, apparently, as everyone seems to be telling me - on the forums and off. Was it provoked? Yeah, partially. I'll retract the statements I made in my previous post if you retract yours, Kibble.

It appears as though I've been completely misunderstood. Nothing I've said in this thread was supposed to be discouraging, or a knock on your skills. I'm still having trouble understanding how people have taken me that way. But, to clarify,

1) The cookie thing WAS supposed to be a compliment, as I mentioned earlier.

2) The "good luck" comment about relocating the resistors and caps wasn't supposed to imply that I didn't think you can do it, only that I know it's difficult because I've seen other forum members struggle a lot with it.

3) Anything I said earlier in this thread I've forgotten about, but if any of it was interpreted as insulting etc., that's not how I meant it.

I don't have a problem with you, Kibble, and what you're trying to accomplish is one of the largest and most exciting projects this forum has ever seen, and personally, as I believe I mentioned before, the second most important project to me, second only to the GC IDE/USB project. So why should I be anything but supportive?

Truce?

[kibble]

Truce?

Ok, I'll accept that, and I apologize for the troll comment and if I took anything you said the wrong way, but just so we're understood and to clarify as to why I said what I said:

Saying "good luck" and laughing afterwards appeared more to me like an undermine to my goals. Saying "See" after quoting someone else who hadn't been able to successfully accomplish the same or similar task that I'm trying to accomplish also made it sound like an undermine, as if saying that if that person couldn't do it, then neither could I. Then there was the whole cookie thing. As I've been exposed to it, usually giving someone a "cookie" is a way of sarcastically rewarding someone and not really meaning it as a reward. So, if we're ok, then let's just start again and let it go.

Will you be making a smaller PCB to hold the resistor/capacitor array, or do you intend to trim the jumper pack?

Make a smaller board. I'm going to make something similar to the cart connector board and make the solder pads slightly bigger, make sure grounding is ok, reduce the size and make the orientation so it can sit on the inside vs outwards. I'm anticipating this to be a bit more difficult than the cart connector board (which I haven't forgotten to post up the file, btw, but I'm gonna make some slight changes first so that it's fully functional the first time around) seeing as how there's the line impedance to take into consideration and the high frequency that the RAM operates at. Wish me luck...

[Bush]

I'm loving this thread. When you have a chance, do you think you could make a little guide showing exactly how you wired your cartslot? That would be amazing! I'm looking forward to more progress!

[Electric Rain]

You should be able to make a small PCB in the same footprint as the Jumper Pak connector, and solder it flat to the mobo. I think that's basically what Marshall did, or somebody anyway, except they literally laid the Jumper Pak PCB itself down against the mobo, in place of the connector, secured it in place somehow and soldered it in.

By the way, are you making your own PCBs?

[kibble]

You should be able to make a small PCB in the same footprint as the Jumper Pak connector, and solder it flat to the mobo. I think that's basically what Marshall did, or somebody anyway, except they literally laid the Jumper Pak PCB itself down against the mobo, in place of the connector, secured it in place somehow and soldered it in.

If it was double sided, it would be totally doable. But I was just gonna make it single sided, since I don't have the means to make a precision double sided board, and solder jumper wires between the two.

By the way, are you making your own PCBs?

Yeah, except I have a hard time making boards with really fine traces and small distances between traces. Sometimes they come out really well, and other times they look like @$$. But I'm going to be trying out a new method of making my boards, as soon as I get the materials for it, hopefully with greatly improved results.

[Triton]

You should be able to make a small PCB in the same footprint as the Jumper Pak connector, and solder it flat to the mobo. I think that's basically what Marshall did, or somebody anyway, except they literally laid the Jumper Pak PCB itself down against the mobo, in place of the connector, secured it in place somehow and soldered it in.

If it was double sided, it would be totally doable. But I was just gonna make it single sided, since I don't have the means to make a precision double sided board, and solder jumper wires between the two.

By the way, are you making your own PCBs?

Yeah, except I have a hard time making boards with really fine traces and small distances between traces. Sometimes they come out really well, and other times they look like @$$. But I'm going to be trying out a new method of making my boards, as soon as I get the materials for it, hopefully with greatly improved results.

so what method are you using for your etching? toner transfer? iirc people have had a lot of luck hacking up printers for direct to PCB printing for etching. hackaday has had a wealth of posts on the topic of etching PCBs

[kibble]

so what method are you using for your etching? toner transfer? iirc people have had a lot of luck hacking up printers for direct to PCB printing for etching. hackaday has had a wealth of posts on the topic of etching PCBs

I would love to do direct to PCB printing, and I have quickly skimmed through some of those posts and I can't imagine hacking a printer to be ridiculously difficult, but that would require me having a printer to hack. Actually now that I think about it I've seen them quite often for free from CL and freecycle groups. Maybe I'll jump on one of those one of these days.

Currently, I'm photo etching them using pre-sensitized boards, transparencies and my flatbed scanner-turned-into-a-light-bed device. The problem I have, which had been previously discussed in the old thread, is that the transparencies tend to have tiny holes in the toner which allow light through and totally fudge up traces. Placing three or four transparencies on top of one another helps but results tend to vary and sometimes tiny traces get really messed up and the shadows formed by the fact that the light doesn't hit the image straight on (because there's no collimator for the light) tends to form bridges in the photoresist which in turn become bridges in the copper.

Someone mentioned once about using a spray that helps darken the toner in transparencies, but I haven't acquired any of it to try it out. The toner only seems to be a problem on transparencies. On paper, the toner is quite dark and no holes are visible, but paper is kinda opaque and I'm hesitant to mess up what little amount of boards I have to do trials with it.

Vellum paper is quite transparent, but isn't as slick as transparencies, which is what I'm going to be trying out. The only problem is that I don't want to get vellum paper that's gonna melt or warp in my printer, although I can use my inkjet printer if need be. I prefer to use my laser printer because it does true 1200x1200 dpi printing so I can get extremely detailed with my traces. There is some vellum that's made for laser printers that I've seen at Staples, but it's like $12 for a small pack and I don't really wanna spend that much if I don't even know how well it's gonna work, but I'm gonna be getting a single sheet of the stuff, hopefully tomorrow, so I can try it out. If I can manage to make my transfers with only one sheet where traces don't get messed up, then I should get better results overall.

[Snow_Cat]

Have you been printing your designs mirrored, so that the toner side is resting on the PCBS?

Also, for future reference I have traced the original resistor pack.

Spoiler:

Original scans hosted by n64.icequake.com. Original PCB artwork © 1997 Nintendo.

^ - - ^ Wait a minute...

[kibble]

Have you been printing your designs mirrored, so that the toner side is resting on the PCBS?

For surface mount designs, yes. For thru hole bottom layers, no, since it's not needed.

Sweet pics! I was gonna go through and make some up but that'll save me some time, thanks!