A little question.

xelion · Post by **xelion** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 3:51 pm

How did everyone get into electronics and the like? You don't just wake up one day and start making a portable game system, so how do you guys all find out about it/get into it?

I personally just found a link to ben's book, and thought it looked awesome. I still haven't tried anything, but as soon as I get some money, I'm buying a psone, a psonescreen, and a copy of ben's book, and going to town

I hope I make a lot at this yardsale :/

NES_fanatic · Post by **NES_fanatic** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 3:54 pm

I was browsing for a good picture of a NES on google images when I got a picture by Ben of a 8 track player accessory for NES. I was like, "WTF, mate?" and clicked it. Then it all began........

Sword_Gun · Post by **Sword_Gun** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 4:23 pm

Well I've been working with computer since I was 3, I had a Apple, It had windows haha.
I got addicted to windows..

But about Portable Consoles hmm, Well I like opening things up.. and hacking them.. One day Im like Hmmm Hows a GBO work?

and Baddabing Baddaboom here I am....
Or Here I was... Muahhahaha
Boo?

gamer2 · Post by **gamer2** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 4:36 pm

well a few weeks prior i found a Atari 2600 emu playable on the internet. I enjoyed it so i did a google search for it and i stumbled on to bens old site, boom i was hooked

Extreme_Jesus · Post by **Extreme_Jesus** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 4:47 pm

ive always been computer oriniatated (had one before my house had a tv buts that another story) and dad does a lot of electronics but i never really did much myself.

In DTRM (Design technolgy - resistant materials) at school we did lots of very basic electronics amoung other things but it was never really explained

At the start of my GCSE's i chose electronics, so i suppose thats how really. Got my exam next week.

As for portables the seed was sown quite early although i didnt know it

way way back (im talking a couple of years) i remember seeing a N64p from a link on milkandcookies.com which wasnt acctually that good, but to a 13 year old this was pretty impressive but i hadnt the electrical knowledge so i didnt even consider doing it.

Last year i remembered about this and thought that a SNES would be a cool thing to do, so naturally i put "Portable SNES" into google to see what came up, bens guide on extremetech came up first and i used that for a month of so, curious about the guy who made this i visted ben's site and therefore the forums

Sir Games-A-Lot · Post by **Sir Games-A-Lot** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 4:54 pm

Well as for portables specifically, I was reading my trusty Oreilly GAMING HACKS book and there was a section something to the affect of "taking classic consoles with you" it mostly talked about portable emu's (man I just realised that's a bird

) and a little about the Game Theory Admiral, but there was one line that caught my interest and that went something like "I couldn't even begin to explain how to build a portable console in this book" which I of course read as "So it is Possible". So I figured someone had to have tried this before and I googled up a storm and eventually wound up here, I think there might have been a link in the book to, too a now defunct Atari VCS portable project but I'm not sure and I can't find my copy right now.

cowsgoquack101 · Post by **cowsgoquack101** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 5:47 pm

I was looking for pictures of the SNES for computer class and found the Extremetech link to the page and soon the link to the site and the rest is history.

Ilove you guys my tech knowledge has risen 124% since joining.

psychotic_mechanic · Post by **psychotic_mechanic** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 6:08 pm

I was always taking stuff apart as a kid. Junk car engines at my dad's shop, entire cars, rotary phones, radios, cameras,etc. Sometimes I could even put it back together, but usually I would just figure out how stuff worked.

A couple years ago I thought about making a handheld NES with a computer LCD and a convertor (didn't know better at the time) and was searching the web for help with the project when I found this site.

blackbox_dev · Post by **blackbox_dev** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 6:18 pm

psychotic_mechanic wrote:I was always taking stuff apart as a kid. Junk car engines at my dad's shop, entire cars, rotary phones, radios, cameras,etc. Sometimes I could even put it back together, but usually I would just figure out how stuff worked.

Wow! A clone of myself!

As my skills increased I started making my own simple circuits and the like. I was actually looking for PSX mods when I came across this site, and well you know the rest.

I started as a kid who would take things apart on rainy days when he had nothing better to do, and went to a teenager designing his own game console using PICs!

SuperZeldaBros · Post by **SuperZeldaBros** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 6:39 pm

I was browsing some forum and stumbled across a "What will you do with your 'Cube?" thread referring to after Wii (then called Revolution) was released. Someone said that they would portablize it, just like their N64.

I thought that was the coolest thing on the planet. I googled "portable gamecube" and got all that fake mockup crap. Then I googled "portable n64" and found Ben's N64p.

The rest is history.

sock2828 · Post by **sock2828** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 6:41 pm

I was just browsing thru the tech books at barns and nobile and oop thers bens book i was like woa this is cool portable PS1 portable NES and then i found his site A year later via digg

daguuy · Post by **daguuy** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 10:34 pm

i accidentally left my GBASP on a bus so i was looking around on the internet for a replacement and found RPGTknick's N64m on hackaday and thought that was a good idea so i googled it a bit and found this site. i learned all about electronics and stuff while finding out stuff for making my N64p.

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 6:35 am

I don't remember exactly how I found this site, though I'm pretty sure it has to do with an explosion and a freak electrical accident. As a kid I'd always rip stuff apart just to look at all the little doodads. As a slightly older kid I developed an exceedingly mechanical way of thinking. As a sophomore in high school I spontaneously decided to build my first computer. Now I'm getting ready to head out to college, all three computers in the house are my own creations, as is the home network which now makes life so easy for my family, etc etc.

I guess I just stumbled onto this site while searching for DIY portable computers or some such.

These forums and the wonderful people here have taught me a great deal. Before coming here I knew very little about electronics. I knew what resistors and capacitors and transistors were, but little else. Now I can build complex power circuits with 7805 voltage regulators, among other things. I even felt unsheilded AC current for the first time as a result of this site! Good times....

Post by **Sparkfist** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 7:28 am

I had an electrionics class in high school, so that was my start. Though to be honest I have learned more in this hobby then I did in that whole class.

As portables go, Febuary 2004 I sumbled into Ben's old site. I'm not sure but really I was just looking for info on 8bit consoles and found something better.

Turbo Tax 1.0 · Post by **Turbo Tax 1.0** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 8:14 am

I was eating at an all you can eat chinese buffet with my brother and his friend, and his friend told me about thi cool sight he found with some guy who made home consoles portable. I went home i searched on google that night and found ben's page. I read almost all of the portable articles on it and found project 42 and saw that he was writing a book, so i preordered it. its funny before i got the book i tried to portabalise an old snes and well i feel bad for that snes