Building my N64p

usbcd36 · Post by **usbcd36** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 9:00 pm

â€¦but they still look like crap if you don't do them perfectly.

Edit: stupidist page break ever!

Post by **Triton** » Mon Aug 22, 2005 7:45 pm

lol, thats funny
EDIT: ok, i have a pic of my case after i filled some of the BIG gaps in it, around the abxy buttons, have a look at my site in a bit

usbcd36 · Post by **usbcd36** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 3:03 pm

Finally! I just received my DC-DC convertor and sync splitter chip (for getting Csync from composite) in the mail! Suprisingly, the DC-DC convertor is very small, smaller than a 7805 with a heat-sink even! It is only a centimeter wide, by 2-3 cm tall and a few millimeters thick! Now I have a question for any experts out there: how do you hook up the convertor anyway? The datasheet doesn't have any instructions for it, just specifications. (BTW, the part number is Digikey #454-1042-ND)

usbcd36 · Post by **usbcd36** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 3:43 pm

Hey, sorry again for the double post, but I have a question: where do you get ribbon cable? I can't seem to find any cheap stuff, and I don't want to buy it new from Micro Center or anything. I'm gonna need this stuff for the cartridge slot and the expansion pak. Speaking of that, what is the easiest way to wire that bugger up? There are only 16 or so pins on the pak, while there are over 30 leads on the slot! I don't want to have to work with any more surface-mount soldering than necessary. Any ideas?

daguuy · Post by **daguuy** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 6:07 pm

not sure about the rest of the stuff, but i get my ribbon cable from old computers. if you don't have any you could get some from the trading post

jtaylor0913 · Post by **jtaylor0913** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 6:11 pm

Someone probobly has on in the Traiding Post or got to you're local town dump(take a philips screw driver) and look for any computer and open it and take out the ribbon cables.

usbcd36 · Post by **usbcd36** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 11:40 am

Found my ribbon cable supplier, now I need to know something else: when relocating the expansion pakâ€¦well, how do you do it?

daguuy · Post by **daguuy** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 12:58 pm

if you can desolder the metal stuff around the exp slot and remove the plastic it should be pretty easy to bend the connectors so you can solder wires to them more easily and strip the exp pack so you can solder the wires to the corresponding pins (don't forget to give it a heat sink after you're done)

usbcd36 · Post by **usbcd36** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 2:10 pm

I know all that, here's the part that I'm having trouble with: the pak itself has about 16 pins on the card edge, but the connector for the pak has over 30 surface-mount pins.

usbcd36 · Post by **usbcd36** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 1:18 pm

Ok, got the connector off. Have some good news and bad news. First the good, the expansion pak is very small, only a little taller than the jumper pak. Now the bad, I tried desoldering the port, but it didn't come off too well (surface mount = bad) and ripped 2 traces off. Necessary traces. Found there are about 30 leads that must be connected from the pak to the board. Working on that soon, but the good news is I eliminated a massive amount of junk that won't need to be in my final design!

superdeformed · Post by **superdeformed** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 7:25 pm

Not sure if you figured out how to connect the dc/dc converter, but I found this data sheet on the manufacturer's site: http://www.astecpower.com/reference/TRN ... 02004).PDF

Looks like it tells you everything you need for hooking it up. It also looks like you're going to need a couple more parts for it

.

usbcd36 · Post by **usbcd36** » Fri Sep 02, 2005 5:01 pm

Thanks

I think those caps are just for cleaning up the power supply though, I won't bother with them unless the power isn't so great. On the other hand, I may look into some of the other features of the convertor to see how much efficiency I can squeeze out of it.

Also, more good news! I was able to repair the damage I did yesterday with a few pins from the expansion pak slot by soldering them to the closest bits of trace that I didn't rip off and extending the wires to fit in the right places. Found a better way to take the slot off though, so I'll keep that in mind if I ruin the board (or if I already did

).