Official Gamecube IDE/USB interface thread (PROJECT BEGUN!)

Post by **Triton** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 10:32 pm

if and when you get this damn thing working i want one of the first boards for my GCP! even if i have to populate the damn thing by hand it would be TOTALLY worth it just to cut out nearly TWO INCHES of thickness from my gcp

Post by **marshallh** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 8:49 am

Just a note: You should change all the lettering in Eagle to Vector, not Proportional. That way when the gerbers get to your board house, they will actually be able to produce the silkscreen.

Here's why:
"D. EAGLE Proportional & Vector Fonts

Important! When designing in EAGLE, user may prefer to use Proportional fonts when text labeling the PCB layout. The CAM processor, however, does not support Proportional fonts and will instead convert it to Vector fonts prior to generating the Gerbers. Problem will arise when the Proportional to Vector font conversion causes the text phrase to be longer than anticipated and occasionally shorting out traces unintentionally.

To put it in short, if you use Proportional font for your text, it will not appear as seen on screen. When the Gerbers is generated, the text will often be longer and larger than expected. To avoid this situation, our general advice is, use only Vector font for labeling."

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 3:58 pm

Oh, that could have ended up bad... thanks...

Edit: *looks at his board again* Wait, they are set to vector... Curse you Marshall for making me doubt myself!

So, with that in mind, do you see anything else you feel should be brought to my attention? Let me know if something jumps out at you before I send the boards off. (Still no ETA on when I'll be able to do that.

)

NOTE: The part labeling is odd, I know. Long story short, I was trying to save space, so while there may be many "C1"s for example, they are supposed to be treated as groups. E.G. C1 for the FX2, or C1 for the PROM. The C1 that is nearest to a particular IC is assumed to be for that IC. This prevented me from having to go into double-digits. Plus, that's how I did it on the schematic ("C1_PROM" or "C1_FPGA"), so it would have been confusing to do it a different way.

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 10:31 pm

Wow its coming along nicely.

I checked out the screen caps on the last page. Whats up with all the capacitors in parallel at the bottom left? and again in the mid right area?

Does the schematic has a capacitor on each power pin for these devices? If so, its pretty useless to group them all together off in the corner. Ideally you would want them a few mm from the pins they belong to. Or at least evenly distribute them along your power trace.

You power trace should be as thick as possible, I dont see it. Also try to avoid snaking it all over the place and back and forth between layers. Run somewhat of a main bus (thickest) and tap lines off of it.

Putting the decoupling caps out on the end long spindly traces is somewhat counterproductive.

Check out the board ganon posted to see what i mean: you can find the power traces on the FPGA, they are thicker. each one has a cap right outside the perimeter of the chip.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 7:43 pm

You're right about the caps... they should be closer to the FPGA, I suppose. It's such a tiny board, though. You know, I probably don't even need that many. The original board (by Destop) was much larger. I have compacted this thing down to a ridiculously tiny size to save money (and just to have it be smaller for the sake of portables), so the power traces aren't as long, thus, I shouldn't need 8 decoupling caps for one, centrally located chip. Think I can cut that number down (and then put them closer to the FPGA)?

I'm not worried about the power traces. The FPGA and the FX2 will not take more than 75-100mA combined max, and 8mil traces are perfectly sufficient for that kind of draw. The HDD will suck up 500mA on the 5V line, though, so I did make that trace bigger.

dragonball345 · Post by **dragonball345** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 11:26 am

This would be something I'm willing to invest in I still have my gamecube in pieces and can never remind myself to buy some batteries. When do you think this will be done and i think you said around 120$?

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 4:51 pm

Uhh... it will be done... once I get my hands on some money...

Still working on that, but our family here is on the verge of some, I think. Meh, we'll see... that's a long story.

Right now I've got the project calculated at $65.24 for parts at Digikey, and $32.50 for the PCB from BatchPCB. Both of these include shipping. You'll also need a hard drive, though. I'm probably paying too much for this... but I'm getting an 80GB 2.5" hard drive from NewEgg for $65.54.

dragonball345 · Post by **dragonball345** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 11:10 am

well if your gonna pour 300$ or more into a project why not make it amazing and smaller for an extra 120$

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 4:27 pm

...Wait, what? How can I make it better with an extra $120? What are you saying?

By the way, no real progress yet. I will probably know if I'm getting any money in the next couple of days, though. One of our newer clients (family runs a consulting/web design business, long story short) is waiting to hear back about a loan that, while I don't know the exact amount of, is probably somewhere around $1,000,000 or more. The project this guy has in mind would take way too long to explain, but it's basically a several hundred acre Standardbred farm in New York that he's planning to turn into somewhat of an amusement park with "out in the country-type" games/events, tours of the place, pony rides, etc. Lots of stuff, anyway.

The point is that we'll be helping him set some stuff up, advertise and market for him, and we're building his website, which is for what I described above and also for his own stallions 'n broodmares 'n stuff. That's a lot of stuff, which means a pretty hefty payment per month coming to us. The loan looks like a go, but like I said, he doesn't have it yet, and if he doesn't get it, he's going to lose some of his farm among other things that he has put down as collateral for other expensive business ventures he has gone into. So, it's all of nothing, for him. If he doesn't get that money, we won't get ours, and I probably won't get mine. So, we'll see soon enough...

In other news, I've re-designed the PCB a bit to put the decoupling caps in places that actually make sense.

I just have to put the silkscreen back on there in the proper spots. But, like I said, I'll probably change it a thousand times before I actually send it off to Sparkfun, so I'll just wait until that point - when I definitely have the final version - and THEN I'll put it up here for you guys to look over.

Marshal once said I talk a lot... I'm beginning to think he may be on to something...

Post by **gannon** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 5:01 pm

I'd assume he's talking about a $300 GCp, then this board for $120

dragonball345 · Post by **dragonball345** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 11:32 am

you got it gannon.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 4:07 pm

Oh, okay, so, basically you're saying that you'll be ordering one?

It looks like I have quite a few possible customers. Too bad I haven't already built one yet to prove I can so that I could have you guys pre-order and pay me in advance so I'd actually have money to build them.

That was a long sentence. Meh.

dragonball345 · Post by **dragonball345** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 7:41 pm

if only I had the money to just send money like that. I'll buy one once I see everything working and running some beautiful games I hate having to lug around a pouch full of games anytime I wanna play stuff on the go the psp made that very clear to me. I might as well make this thing beautiful pm me when your done this thing I'm eagerly looking on.

toru173 · Post by **toru173** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 8:29 am

I CAME BACK!

Not much to say - just that this project seems to have come a little further, and now that I've had a couple of courses in VHDL under my belt (as well as digital design), I feel a little more confident in my ability to help. At the very least, I now know who I can go to in order to get that help, if it comes to that.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 1:42 pm

I don't remember... were you one of the handful of people here with actual money to spare?