Bacteria's N64/GBA combined portable - Nintendo 64 Advance

[bacteria]

Couldn't sleep, so time for a quick update:

Pic of the speakers. I got a pair of cheap MP3 speakers from a cheap shop and extracted the speakers.



I have updated the wiring diagram as I said before I would, to reflect the changes.

I hooked up the RBG lines before (as on pic), for continuity, as my system is PAL and therefore I only get composite (thanks, Nintendo!), anyway, NTSC systems will get RGB as long as their systems are older models.

Speakers - Strip the cable from the speakers, you see a wire enclosed in its sheath, this connects to the red cable from the PSone speaker cable (see the pic above) and the bare wires from the speaker cable goes to the black PSone speaker cable. Connect the two wires for the left channel to the N64 mobo (as on pic below) and then do the same for the purple ones for the right channel. This hooks up the audio from the N64 output to the PSone inputs. (note, the PSone ground is connected to the N64 ground anyway, via the connections on the yellow square on the pic below).

Pic is updated and improved from previous version, as I said a while ago I would do:



(As always, when you solder wires together, use electrical tape to protect them and to stop the wires coming into contact with other wires and making a short).

Sound quality from these speakers is very good; downside is they take a fair bit of space, can alter your case design, and need to have an enclosure to get the best achievable sound quality. I know how I will conquer these issues on this project, as you will see as the project develops.

[Motoman]

Holy Crap, I just read through this whole thread! Keep up the fantastic work Bacteria, I'm so anxious to see the final result, plus yes, this definetly needs to become a sticky. Good luck.

[Master of Portables]

I just read through this thread, and it is very informative, but I have one question though. it seems as though you dremeled off things that could have been easily desoldered. (like the controller port, or the little slot for the mem pack/ rumble pack.) why is this?

[Triton]

lack of a desoldering iron/braid/bulb/pump perhaps? plus dremeling is a LOT faster if there are a lot of pins, just be careful not to gouge the board

[TheOnlyOneHeFears]

Pic of the speakers. I got a pair of cheap MP3 speakers from a cheap shop and extracted the speakers.

Poundland perhaps? I love that place!

All I can say is wow, pretty much. This is one awesome project, and full of really useful info. This should be in the sticky/wiki, it's really helpful. Keep it up! It's a shame PAL N64's can't output RGB, the quality of composite is not that great. Oh by the way, where do you live in the UK?

[bacteria]

Motoman - Thanks very much for your kind comments, I am pleased you find it a good read. Please keep looking!

Master of Portables - I dremeled the port off the controller to split it as I did so I had nice big soldering points to work with, I got fed up soldering to the back of the port where it was too easy for a wire to potentially touch another one. Yes I could have desoldered it, but felt like using an alternative way, and I did lower the height down to the right level...

Triton - I have desoldering braid and a pump, and I do use it. Yes, dremeling is fast, and as long as you are very careful, gives great results. I was very careful not to slice through the pins on the port otherwise it would have defeated the purpose of why I did it.

TheOnlyOneHeFears - Thanks for the kind comments. Not sure if Poundland does them, but a number of cheap shops do them. There is a "Circle Seven" near where I work, bought a pair of speakers in a cheap'n'cheerful MP3 speaker set for £3.99, then also got a similar one by chance at a charity shop for £1.49! Where I live in the UK? - Hampshire. Yes, it is a shame that the N64 doesn't do RGB, however composite is fine as the quality is good. I thought mine did RGB, wired it all up, then read somewhere that it can't as the contacts are blank! Oh well, people with non-PAL units can use my diagram for RGB while the rest of us are stuck with composite.

Thanks for the comments, guys; please keep them coming....

updates to follow...

[bacteria]

I found I had a loose contact on the battery of the memory pack; when I booted my system I was getting a memory pack error, if I kept the battery pressed a bit and booted the N64 system, it worked fine. I also discovered that the battery I was using in the memory pack (they are only a flat type battery) should have been 3v, but was actually around 0.39v! I decided to cure both issues and built a tiny battery pack with two thick watch batteries, hot glued together, wires wrapped around tiny bolts and hot glued to the terminals; the other ends of the wires were then soldered to the memory pack contacts - removing both issues. I now get a proper contact, and 3v power to it. Considering the memory pack only used a small and thin battery (to keep the data on the RAM intact), watch batteries are fine. I have a few packs of these as I bought some cheaply to power some Nintendo Game & Watches I bought a while back. A bit cheap and ugly, but does the job and the contacts are secure.



I have hot glued the memory pack assembly to the left of the controller, the rumble pack will be on the right side where there is plenty of space free (where the blank bit is at the moment); the reverse of the card will have wires soldered to make the buttons work (connected to tact switches).



A simple switch will alternate between powering the memory pack and the rumble pack - the switch below is a spare one I have, identical to the one I use on the project. It is a two way switch (no off); ideal, works fine, tested it.



As you can see from the pic below, the assembly is lower than the N64 cart itself (on left side); which is fine. The wires under the controller to connect to the tact switches will only raise the assembly by about 3mm, which means the whole controller assembly will still be less high than the N64 cart; which is what I needed to achieve.



BTW - this blog/project progress thread shows the ongoing progress and issues I encounter, and how I resolve them; when I finish the project, I will make a proper step-by-step guide based on this thread and make it available as a download; I am hoping it will also be added to the Wiki for others to benefit from.

[bacteria]

Making good progress on attaching the rumble pack. Still have several wires to hook up, taking it easy! Had a loose wire (1) which stopped the memory pack working (error again), found the rogue wire and re-soldered it back. I made my construction fairly easy to repair if needed, looks a mess, but isn't!

A couple of good points worth mentioning:

1) I thought it would be good to substitute proper electrical wire for thin wire for the power and negative wires. Bad move. The voltage was fine, but the system didn't boot reliably; must be too much resistance (?). A fair bit of headscratching and I realised my error. No problem using thin IDE cable strands for data, but not power! (logical when I realised my error). Anyway, system works fine now, boots up first time every time again. This was nothing to do with the car adapter after all, but everything to do with the wires I had been using. In fact, using my multimeter, I discovered that not using the memory pack gives 7.28v to the main line and 2.79v to the system and controller; using the memory pack 7.26v to the main line and 2.76v to the rest of the system; still within safety margin (as the system works fine!).

2) Back on the subject of IDE cable; I realised that relocating the cart ages ago with the thicker IDE cable wasn't great as it made the overall thickness of all the strands of cable a bit thick. Now the cart will be mounted at the rear of the N64 mobo, I decided it better to do the cart relocation again.

3) It is better to solder the power wires and the video lines to the front of the N64 mobo and not the back; I want to keep the rear clear.

4) The blank screen with the pic of the controller with a question mark I referred to - is from the Fifa 64 game cart itself, as it won't proceed unless a controller is connected. I am using the Fifa cart as it immediately tells you if the memory pack is working or not, rather than having to wait for the intro to run. Handy!


With all this in mind, I decided to use my "backup" N64 mobo. Nothing wrong with the old one, but hay!

All these things are a learning curve. I am learning things quickly and modifying things as I am going along. Recording my blips as I go along is great because when I finish the project, I can not only give a "how to" guide but comments on what to be careful of, and troubleshooting issues.

On my previous N64, if you remember, I dremeled off the video out cable as I felt a bit cautious about pulling it off - with this new mobo I just pulled it off and it released itself from the mobo fine. I also dremeled off the power-in plug on the top left of the pic, as I had done before with the controller ports. Original heatsinks removed from mobo.



Basically, you could get the N64 to the state as below in the pic in less than an hour from scratch, as long as you have a Nintendo screwdriver for the case, and a sidecutting diamond edged dremel bit; plus a few minutes to prepare the PSone screen, and a good 3-5 hours for the controller I am working on at the moment.

Anyway, pic below has the heatsinks placed, the wires soldered onto the pins (by the cart). Easy to work out which cable goes where, desoldered one wire from the old mobo, remembered the pin it connected to and hooked it up to its corresponding pin on the top of the mobo. Keeps things tidier having the connections at the top of the board, and also makes it far easier if you want to test voltages whilst the system is running.



It all works fine.

Progress on the controller:

Top view. The connections to the tact switches from the button contacts will be done once the rumble is finished.



Bottom view. The silver part on the top left is the watch battery pack. Only have a few more wires to go - the wires from the top row of the memory pack need to clone to the same connections on the rumble pack (as I have done so for the bottom section). Looks ugly and cluttered, but it is not too high and its width is fine; so as far as I am concerned it is perfect!

I am taking special care of this part as it is the "weakest" part of this mod as it has required so much rewiring and modding. The plug on the rumble pack (on right side) will be removed and wires will be soldered - these are the wires to the motor to make the rumble. The white part above it is most dead mobo, but no point in making it smaller. I only need to solder the positive and negative terminals to their points, and to the switch, and ready to go!

I am using the same power (my 2.76v) wire to drive the memory card connector, or rumble pack; and also of course for the rumble motor too.



It works so far.

BTW - On the pic, the black wires with the white paper tab - just the connections for the "Z" button; and the red, orange, black and brown wires are for the joystick.

[Murdok09]

I apologize for not reading this entire thread, but I saw the parts where you mentioned looking for a new power supply. I am working on a GCN mod, and I was wondering if you could use batteries instead of 1000 resistors (it seems that way on the tiny board)? If so, how?

[bacteria]

I apologize for not reading this entire thread, but I saw the parts where you mentioned looking for a new power supply. I am working on a GCN mod, and I was wondering if you could use batteries instead of 1000 resistors (it seems that way on the tiny board)? If so, how?

Not sure what you mean, please elaborate??

[bacteria]

I will be doing more on my project today and will get some more updates going.

I just had a thought, really good one I think...on the subject of relocating the cart slot...once you remove the expansion pack port and the cart slot is removed, rather than soldering to the front of the N64 mobo and dragging the wires round the back so you can mount the cart slot to a better place, if you use thin wires (like the thin and colourful IDE cables I am now using), push a wire through the hole the cart used to go through bend the wire a bit and solder to the solder joint, you save having a mound of wires to bend over the mobo. All will be clearer when I do this for real.

I finished the soldering of the controller, checked all connections visually and with multimeter, then booted up; the memory pack is working great, no errors from the rumble pack, although I can't actually test the rumble pack until I have the joystick and buttons working as I can't at the moment play a game to get a "rumble". It will be a case of waiting for a while to know and then either it works great and properly or it doesn't.

I won't make as much progress on the project today as I could as I intend to submit a controller/memory pack/rumble pack wiring diagram on this thread (which will take a while to produce); if I do it later I will forget how I did all the wiring (there is a lot). This part is the hard part of this mod project, especially as it involves so much wiring; it is important to do this mod though in making a complete system. Without the memory pack, over half of the games available will not save progress, the rumble pack completes the system. The only sacrifice is not using the 4mb RAM expansion card; I could do this relocation too, but it is rather tricky, and only is required for literally a handful of games.

I have about 50-60 games in my collection now, most of which I got cheaply on e-bay for between £1.50 and £3.50 each (inc postage), with a handful of rarer ones costing £5-£8 each (inc postage). This is one of the nice things about the N64, it had some great games; you can get the games and the console now for a song; and for the sake of a couple of quid you can buy a title you don't know much about, on the off-chance it is a half-decent title - cheap enough after all. If you don't like it you can get half your money back on e-bay anyway by re-selling it.

If anyone has the following games on PAL for sale, please PM me - can't get them on e-bay at the moment: Namco Museum 64, Kirby 64/Air Ride, Mini Racer (was that released?) Dinosaur Planet (again, was it released?); and Bomberman: the second attack.

Below are two pics:

The assembly of the controller so far - just need to attach the rumble motor; and wire in the button contacts on the front side of the board.



and the second pic, showing the wider picture - the two LED's (one to show when the rumble pack is active, the other for the memory pack), the battery pack, and the 2 way switch I am using (next to the solder pack). Ignore the solder blobs, they never get anywhere near my working parts!!



The pink wire to the switch (middle pin) is the common 3v line.

[bacteria]

I think the diagram below is right, it took quite a while to make (I didn't have any project time today as a result of drawing it):



I have colour coded the wires to make it easier to see which wire goes where. Some pins needed 1 wire connected, some 2, some 3. The black spaces indicate no wire connection needed. The mid-grey is the power line, shared between the two cards (hence it only connects to the middle switch pin).

[myuusmeow]

Kirby Air Ride and Dinosaur Planet (Star Fox Adventures) were never released on the N64, only on the GCN.

[bacteria]

Kirby Air Ride and Dinosaur Planet (Star Fox Adventures) were never released on the N64, only on the GCN.

Yes, the Kirby on the N64 was "Kirby 64: the Crystal Shards", as per Gamespot: http://uk.gamespot.com/n64/action/kirby ... index.html

That is the one I meant - anyone got it (PAL format)?

[bacteria]

I will finish the connections for the controller (ie soldering on the front of the board for the contacts for the tact switches) later, thought I would deviate and do the cart relocation again, neater this time.

Before doing this, I thought it about time I secured the heatsinks down to the N64 mobo, as they have a habit of falling off if the mobo is turned upside down. I just used hot glue to connect each end of thin wire. Ensure of course that there is no bare wire or you might make a contact somewhere you don't want to! I thought I may as well secure two parts of each heatsink going to the main processors, as they needed four heatsinks each; the heatsinks over the RAM only need normal securing to keep them in place. It doesn't matter trying to make it look pretty, you won't see it anyway when the case is made.



I will have to also hot glue wires criss-crossing over the heatsinks too, to make sure they don't lift. Will do that later.