More N64 expansion pak problems!

Post by **benheck** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 10:12 am

I removed the cart edge connector and wired up an expansion pak manually (Strange - gets easier every time) And it doesn't work now!

I didn't wire some of the connections as a lot of them seemed to be ground. But maybe I should wire them ALL...

HELP!

And what was the "N64p basics" page again? Does it cover the expansion pak rewiring? I HAVE to rewire mine at a 90 degree angle for it to work (gonna put it over the main memory and a heatsink between, fan-cooled)

Post by **gannon** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 10:21 am

hmm... I guess try to wire all the connections. Even if they're all ground they might not be connected on the exp. pack itself

Also, how hard is rewiring the exp. pack? If it's not too bad I might put one in my n64p instead of the jumper pack

Post by **SpongeBuell** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 11:15 am

if the expansion pack will be internal, and you have it plugged in to a slot, and they are spaced wide enough and all, I would solder the wires right to the expansion pack. Soldering all the wires couldn't hurt, either. Also, if I can suggest it, put these threads in the Nintendo 64 forum. I don't really care, but I don't think it would set the best example for the newbies.

Post by **Gamelver** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:06 pm

yeah, as mentioned before, it'd probably be best to solder all the wires......if that still doesn't work then just double check the wiring, I guess.....

HK-47 · Post by **HK-47** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:38 pm

Also, maybe you should start a n64 blog... (Ah! The dreaded blog!)

Fabre · Post by **Fabre** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:47 pm

Sounds like an N64p is pretty difficult. Maybe you should do something easier, like an Xboxp

peppers · Post by **peppers** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 3:39 pm

Fabre wrote:Sounds like an N64p is pretty difficult. Maybe you should do something easier, like an Xboxp

unrelated rant about the xbox below

I think a desint sized xbox would probubley be harder there is lots of extra space in there and you would probubley have to mount everything on a new bord to get it down enoth

on a + almost everything is standard parts and the ones that areint are easally getable online and you could leave out the bulky disk drive sence everything runs perfectley from the hdd and you can put a larger hdd in and run plenty of games from it hay I almost forgot about xbmc and then youd have a great portable media player also and there are emulators for almost every system for the xbox also

I think I just talked myself into trying this you know what
I think im going to order a xbox motherbord and usb bord they use my xbox to flash the tsop and give it a try first ill have to see how much money I made this week to see if I can afford it

Fabre · Post by **Fabre** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:10 pm

peppers wrote:I think a desint sized xbox would probubley be harder there is lots of extra space in there and you would probubley have to mount everything on a new bord to get it down enoth

Um... I was kidding. Notice the smilie had at the end of my post? That was to show that I was kidding. I know that the Xbox is the hardest system to portablise.

peppers · Post by **peppers** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:25 pm

im no longer so sure about that

SgtBowhack · Post by **SgtBowhack** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 6:40 am

If you get rid of the HDD, it'd weigh a lot less... it's something that doesn't get written to much so you could probably replace it with a CF-IDE adapter. Just need to initialize it. And then you could get rid of some of the onboard stuff... it'd probably be no worse than some other systems out there. They need to make a smaller revision though. I dunno why Intel isn't putting out the Celerons on a 90nm process now...

Fabre · Post by **Fabre** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 7:14 pm

Celeron? You do realise that the Xbox has a Pentium 3 in it, right?

SgtBowhack · Post by **SgtBowhack** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 7:26 pm

It's actually a hybrid of the two. What you want to call it is up to you.

The CPU that powers the Xbox is a Coppermine based Pentium III with only 128KB L2 cache. While this would make many think that the processor is indeed a Celeron, one of the key performance factors of the Pentium III that is lost in the Celeron core was left intact for this core. The Coppermine core was left with an 8-way set associative L2 cache instead of the 4-way set associative cache of the Celeron. Based on what we've seen with the Coppermine and Coppermine128 (Celeron) cores we estimate that the 8-way set associative L2 cache gives this particular core a 10% performance advantage over the Coppermine128 core of the Celeron.

(taken from http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1561&p=2 if you're interested.)
So, it is in fact neither. What this is saying is that the Xbox processor is closer to the Celeron in cache size, but the same as the P3 in cache structure. You could call Celerons "Pentium III" too, since the cores are identical. But you'd be thwacked by anyone you sold it to.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 7:28 pm

Fabre wrote:Celeron? You do realise that the Xbox has a Pentium 3 in it, right?

Over at xbox-linux.org they have it labled as Celeron. I'd take their word for it as they've done more work on Xboxes then anyone else.

SgtBowhack · Post by **SgtBowhack** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 7:45 pm

I don't like their labeling of the video chipset as GeForce3 MX though... it's another hybrid that's like a mix of the GeForce3 Ti and GeForce4 Ti from everything I've heard... then again, it's sorta the predecessor to nForce.
The XBox motherboard would be cooler than one of those ITX boards to mess with, I think. Much faster, for one... but limited on BIOS options. Replace the BIOS though, and you could have a nice small computer ^_^

Post by **Sparkfist** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 7:58 pm

Ok, you know the Xbox's CPU is only rated at 733mh and ITX motherboards are as high as 1gh. I wont argue how cool it is to make the Xbox a full fledged computer, esspecally when its only $150 for a new one.