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

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 4:38 pm

Surface is barely tacky anymore, I got tempted, so I removed the electrical tape. Pics as below. Taking pics bigger than the actual item has a habit of intensifying any minor marks or imperfections:

On the pic above you can see the difference between the pine, the residue of the polyfiller (white) and the painted top ("Gentle fawn" colour). I thought this gives a gentle contrast in colours. dudex77 - Like it?

The flat part of the wood will be covered with reverse spray painted acetate, so no point covering it up at the moment.

minkster · Post by **minkster** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 8:12 pm

This project is really kickin! Glad to see you like the name. That'll be five dollars

Just kidding of coarse.

Post by **Skyone** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:08 pm

VERY nice job. This is turning out to be the best N64 (/GBA) portable ever created!

c_mon · Post by **c_mon** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 7:00 am

bacteria wrote:The reasons are that is better painted are:

1) The woodgrain is all over the place on pine, and some is a bit darker on the corners than the rest.

2) It is very hard to get a perfectly smooth surface without some areas being more matt than others unless you use a hard wood, which is also harder to work with, unless you have specialist tools, which I don't have.

c_mon seems to have excellent skills with his woodworking; mine are more limited.

3) Joining pieces together and having to angle them to be in line with the adjacent piece is not easy to get right. A couple of the straight edges didn't join 100% perfectly, as it was it would look imperfect - easily rectified with the polyfiller and concealed with the paint. I could have make the two offending pieces again, but I didn't need to.

4) In most places the join between the wood and plastic was seamless; in others there is about a 1/4mm gap, again, polyfiller sorts this out.

5) Pine against plastic looks home-made. The finish I am after is as professional as I can make it, the only way is to make the whole thing look seamless. I don't have vaccum forming equipment or plastic for it, so I am making it this way to make it look (hopefully) as good as if it had been, all be it different as the top of the case is painted under the plastic instead of on top.

I have just applied the first varnish coat, it needs another one later. The paint, as you may have noticed, is described as "10x diamond technology tougher" and the matt varnish is described as extra tough - it is certainly resistant to daily use on the cabinets I make a year+ ago; tough stuff.

I understand dudex77 why you would have preferred the wood left as it was, but I think you will be very impressed when I take the pics of the case top when the two varnish coats are on and dried and the electrical tape is removed; and therefore see why I decided to do the process I have done.

minkster - You may have noticed I have adopted the name you suggested; unless anyone comes in with a better name for the project!

Aha, thanks for your opinion. That's nice to hear...

dudex77 · Post by **dudex77** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 3:32 pm

bacteria wrote:On the pic above you can see the difference between the pine, the residue of the polyfiller (white) and the painted top ("Gentle fawn" colour). I thought this gives a gentle contrast in colours. dudex77 - Like it? The flat part of the wood will be covered with reverse spray painted acetate, so no point covering it up at the moment.

Fine you win, it's beautiful.

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 3:35 pm

I swear to god that I will kill you if you screw this up!

KILL YOU!

SS

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 12:55 am

I will have time during the week for this, snatched half an hour last night.

Drilled holes on top corners, so I can put wires through for the shoulder buttons (I need to make them). Decided I had enough strength in the construction to make two big holes either sides on top piece, one for the four GBA/N64 switches (left side) and right side for the main on/off switch. Cut out hole for the four GBA/N64 switches as below.

I decided it made good sense to mount all the buttons in the case before assembly, to save a lot of grief later. Basically, before I can hook everything up, I need to extend the bottom of the case, extend the top of the case (with holes for the buttons), make the shoulder buttons and mount all the control buttons - may also do same for joystick too.

I started by hot gluing each of the yellow "C" buttons to an empty 12mm tact switch to keep it in place. The side stops of the button will keep them in place under the perspex. I need to make a housing to keep the tact switch in place, elevated above the case. I will do this by drilling out a hollow area in wood, putting button though hole, tact on top; the wood hot glued to the case and the tact switch hot glued to the top of the wood. Simple and strong.

When I have done the first one, I will post a pic of the above, through clear plastic, so you see the mechanics. First stage - hot glued the buttons to the tact switches:

dudex77 · Post by **dudex77** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:50 am

Tact switches? I thought you were using your home made solution.

jedi knight · Post by **jedi knight** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:15 am

He don't need his homemade solution for the C buttons, only the ones that the N64 and GBA share.

This project is coming along so nicely that it is sheer awesome. I love the wood sides with plastic in the front.

Kyo · Post by **Kyo** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:21 am

Only for some, if I remember right...

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 7:06 am

jedi knight & Kyo- yes, you are are right. Well remembered, this was well documented before, but it was a while back. Thanks for the comments, nice you guys think it is awesome! Thanks dudex77 for conceding! Thanks Skyone, minkster & ShockSlayer for your comments, appreciated!

I have to be careful to make sure I don't damage the finish whilst doing the rest of this work. I have already had to dremel off some of the triangle supports as they got in the way, and replaced them (ref the hole in last pics). Ignore the pencil marks on that pic, it will be covered up by the acetate later.

12mm Tact switches - "C" buttons, Z, Select (GBA), slo-mo (N64). Also, I will use tact switches for the volume and contrast buttons for the PSone screen and the memory switch for the Memory Pack on the N64 (this is a 6mm tact switch).
Manual switches - D-pad
Home-made buttons (2 devices - GBA and N64 shared) - Start, A, B.
Home-made multi-switch - GBA menu (no other way to do it).
Home-made shoulder buttons (yet to make, will make them soon) - to cover the corners and part of the sides. They will be made in the same principles as my other home-made buttons - and will need to be anyway, as the left and right shoulder buttons share their contacts with the GBA and N64 systems.

I prefer to use the tact switches where I can as they are uniform, are known to last for about a hundred thousand presses or so, and are small; however I can't use them for all the contacts for the reasons covered before.

I figured if I secure everything in the case, all I have to do then is solder off the contacts from the existing tact switches from my system to the ones in the case which are secured in place. The wires from my home-made buttons will need to be cut (again) and resoldered in their final place for the same reason.

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 8:27 am

Decided to make the surrounds for the "C" buttons. After thinking about drilling holes in wood for the mount, I decided to keep options open and look for more conventional ways. I hit on the idea of using the tops off fizzy drink bottles (or "soda bottles" as I think Americans call them), they are a little big, but can be cut to size, and their plastic is strong enough for the job.

I cut out a strip across the bottle top with my dremel, leaving a strip just under the width of the inside of the tact switch.

I hot glued the tact switch to the cap, then added extra hot glue between the tact switch edges and the edges of the bottle top; then trimmed down the sides of the bottle cap so they are the same height as the top of the side bits of the button. On a normal controller, these sides bits of a button are used to slot into grooves to stop the button rotating. I don't have to worry about rotation as the hot glue sticking the button to the tact switch does the same job.

It may not be too easy to see from the pic below, but I cut out a button hole from acetate (a bit of scrap) and put the button in place for illustration.

I realised that the best way to mount these in the case was at a diagonal, so I prized off the button from the tact switch and re-glued it at a diagonal.

Hot glued the first one in place. The tact switch contacts are ready for soldering their wires to at a later time!

Two views from the back and one from the front:

Please ignore the usual stray strands of hot glue residue! I tested the button, works perfectly and so does the bottle cap plastic!!

jedi knight · Post by **jedi knight** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 8:45 am

Brilliant!

I can't wait for you to finish this thing.

Website · Post by **Life of Brian** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 9:14 am

That's really really clever!

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 9:30 am

jedi knight - Thanks for your comments, as always!

joedog86 - Thanks, I am good at thinking out of the box and making things work with things to hand (how I got my "Blue Peter" nickname on the GP2x forum)!

Finished all four "C" buttons, didn't take long. Front pic:

Back pic below. I reinforced all four buttons together with some mounting board hot glued between them for extra strength. Had to put in a piece of electrical tape to stop two of the tact switches touching neighbours. Works great!!