http://www.retrousb.com/ If you go there you will find USB converters. The drivers are USB drivers, imbedded in the chip, so no software is required besides a little tweaking from what is already in Windows.
http://www.retrousb.com/ If you go there you will find USB converters. The drivers are USB drivers, imbedded in the chip, so no software is required besides a little tweaking from what is already in Windows.
I'm happy to see this project back on track. I want to see this one when finished.
Wow. It's been too long since I've worked on this. Over the past two years I've been putting in token hours on this project, but my girlfriend and I now have a bet and I have to put in at least five hours a week until it's finished. Prepare for some massive updates in the next couple days.
Be excited.
Well, it's been one week since I said this mod was back online. I'll start with some of the changes I've made since posting last.
First off, here is my new Mobo. It's the Jetway 7F2WE1G5D-OC-PB. It's a pretty nice little motherboard that only requires 25W and is way easier to cool. This is a huge improvement over the P4 I was trying to cool before. In this pic you can also see the PW-200-V from mini-box.com. It's 200W, which will be more than enough.
This is as close as I can get to a complete do-over without calling it a completely new mod. Many of my ideas and design elements have stayed, so I am going to say that this is the same mod. Here is the gutted and epoxied bottom half of the NES case.
Here is the frame I am building to mount all the computer parts in. It's built out of 1.5mm sheet styrene. When it is done, the mobo, DVD drive, wireless card, HDD, and wireless keyboard/mouse controller will all be mounted to it and will be able to be lifted out of the NES without having to remove a million screws. It is a very tight fit, within a quarter of a mm, so when the lid of the NES is screwed on it will be very secure. I got the idea for this frame from here.
Here is a shot of the frame in the bottom of the NES.
These next two pics show how I will be able to disconnect what's mounted to the frame from what's permanently mounted to the NES case. So far all I have done is the power, which will be connected via a modified molex connector.
Here is the microscopic button for the slim-line slot loading DVD drive. When the Zelda disguise cartridge is on the DVD drive, this button cannot be accessed. I soldered two lead wires onto the button mounts. These wires will eventually be connected to a button at the back of the case that will be used to trigger the eject button. That button will be disguised as the "Ch3-Ch4" switch. Hopefully anyone but the truest Nintendo fan will be fooled by the outside of this case. From all angles it will still look like a stock NES.
I soldered the chips I got from retrousb.com to the controller ports and then on to USB cords. Hooray for USB Nintendo controllers!
Here is a quick look at what I have left to solder this week. I have the 1/8 jack to RCA, the small RCA extension, and the power LED. The Power and Reset buttons have to be soldered as well. I will (hopefully) make a box so that the power/reset/powerLED are all in one plug, so that I can unplug as little as possible when removing the inner case. There are the mobo mount screws. They will be attached tomorrow (hopefully) to the inner case and then I can mount the mobo for the first time.
That is it for this update. Hopefully by this time next week I will be ordering a 120Gb HD for the mod and I will be starting on the very difficult keyboard and mouse mods. Stay tuned!
Well, another day has gone by and I have put in many more hours on the mod.
To start things off I will show you that I soldered everything I needed to today except the power LED. Oh well. I built the adapter for the audio and the RCA video extension.
The 1/8in jack to female RCA.
The video extension.
And how it looks from the back of the case. I know this isn't the original position, but I chose to put the audio together because most people think that's the way it should look.
I worked pretty hard today on getting the motherboard mountable. It took a long time because I had to make sure that after things were glued in place and the motherboard was mounted, that the mobo would not interfere with anything else in the case. It turned out that as I was test fitting I noticed that the motherboard was going to hit the video out. At the time I had not yet even mounted the video out. The motherboard mounts were moved 3mm closer to the front of the case than I originally planned because of this. The benefit is that the cables from the mobo can be routed through the back of the case now, so it ended up being a plus overall.
The internal case with motherboard risers.
The motherboard mounted. You can see the power and sata cables running through the back.
I know it is hard to see, but here is where the video out is now mounted and it is about 1mm away from the PS2 ports.
Time for a test fit! I put all the yet-to-be-mounted goodies inside. This included a USB wireless card, the wireless keyboard and mouse controller, the DVD drive, the PSU, the motherboard, the NES controller to USB adapters, the audio adapter, and the video extension. Oh yeah, and the power and reset buttons.
All tossed in, you can see most of that isn't mounted yet.
Here is the mess of wires that are plugged into the motherboard, (just so I could be as close to the real thing as possible.)
And here it is with the lid on. I opened the door so you can see that there really is all the stuff in there. The lid fits well. There are no screws holding it on in this pic and there is nothing trying to push it off the bottom of the case. This is good, very good.
Afterthought:
Modding makes my room a huge stinkin mess. This is disgusting. I need to pick up.
Before:
After! This is better.
For anyone who is wondering, the poster on the wall is my gf. She is the one who I have the bet with. So far I am winning. I'm putting lots of time into my mod. She does try to keep me from winning by calling me all the time (long distance relationship), but it hasn't stopped me yet. That's right, I have a girlfriend who wants me to mod, and who likes to talk to me. My life is pretty good. Haha.
I'm out for the night.
this looks awesome! plus, I am jealous of your workspace! very nice. +rep
Centurion 5 Mod <<--- ON HOLD FOR THE WINTEROriginally Posted by Omega
Really good work man, most of the consoles i see modded into computers are hack jobs. Props for making this look stock. Also sounds like you have a great girl.
Time for another update. I took a few days off to mediate on how to proceed. I've been really scared about how to go about modding the keyboard. Back in the beginning, I said that I wanted the keyboard modded to be unmistakably Nintendo. I've decided that the keyboard will have the shape of the NES Advantage controller. The media buttons on the keyboard will be actual buttons from NES controllers.
To start off, I needed to replace the bottom keycaps so that there was no longer the slight arc. I really felt that would detract. I went to several stores looking for the right keycaps, but with no luck. I finally bought a keybaord at a thrift store for $3.00 that had square keycaps that were the same size. However, they did not fit on my keyboard. I guess this is why it is called modding.
Here is the keyboard with the unmodded kaycaps. You can see the arc. Boo!
Here are the keycaps that are the right width, but not the right height, and they aren't compatible with the keyboard.
I set up a jig on my scroll saw to cut all the keys the same. It worked pretty good if I must say so myself. Here you can see the space bar being cut.
I cut all the original keys, then adjusted the jig and cut the keys from the $3 keyboard.
I glued them together. They will be perfected later, before I paint and put new lettering on the keys. When I glued, the glue got on the pegs and made the keys stick when I typed. I spent about an hour scraping off extra glue to get them all to work properly.
For reference, go here to see the media buttons I am talking about.
As I said before, I will be replacing the media buttons with original NES controller buttons. To do this I had to trace the printed circuit board so I could know where to solder the buttons. Keyboards use a key-matrix to determine what button was pressed. Several buttons use the same contact, but no two buttons use the same two contact points. The easiest way to imagine this is like a game of Battleship. There are many points in each row, but they must be combined with a correlating column to determine a point.
I'm not sure I described that well, but here is the map to prove that I really spent all that time mapping the media buttons:
Back
2,6
Forward
2,8
Stop
1,7
Refresh
9,1
Internet
6,3
Search
11,2
Favorites
3,5
3,7
Play
6,4
Stop
12,3
Prev.
4,5
Next
4,7
The next three were on a different matrix, and I have already soldered the wires, so they have a different mapping system.
Vol Up
Yellow, Black
Vol Down
Black, Blue
Mute
Black, Red
It took me about an hour and a half to trace all the lines back to the appropriate places. It will be so worth it in the end though.
Earlier I showed that I soldered leads onto the DVD drive's eject button and I said that later I would make a new button in the back. Here's that.
The completed DVD drive with wire leads coming off it.
A "Ch3-Ch4" style switch to be modded.
Taken Apart.
A hinge type switch that it will eventually be connected to.
I used my grinder to make the plastic of the switch thinner and then glued it to the hinge switch.
I then used some scrap 1.5mm sheet styrene and glued the hinge switch assembly to the metal housing of the original switch.
I then glued that assembly to the original place inside the Nintendo.
The result is a button that looks like a switch. Neat! The button, as I said earlier, will be the eject button for the DVD drive.
That's it for this update. This week I plan on fabricating the plastic that will become the keyboard innards' home. Like I said, it will look like an oversized NES Advantage controller. Also this week I hope to go to an auto paint shop and see if I can't get some custom paint mixed to match the Nintendo case. This will be used on the keyboard and the motherboard box.
Thanks for the comments. They are very appreciated and help me to stay excited for this project. I may not get as many comments as some of the other worklogs, but I feel like my quality of work is at least just as good as most of them.
nice work on the button / ch3-ch4 selector. good idea.
Centurion 5 Mod <<--- ON HOLD FOR THE WINTEROriginally Posted by Omega