Z's Gamecube Portable (Pending)

[Zeturi]

Well, I started this about a week ago. But firstly, I won't be adding any pics until the end of the comp. But, I will update progress and a parts list:

Psone Screen have it
Rev C Gamecube (Yay) have it
Gamecube Official Controller have it
Intec Gamecube Battery have it
Magnet Wire have it
HUGE Memory Card not yet...
7808 regulator not yet...
2-way switch have it
micro fans not yet...

I've already tested everything (all works). All connectors have been ripped off the cube's mobo, plastic of the dvd drive has been trimmed slightly, and parts are being assessed for final placement in the casing.

Soooo... I plan to start wiring the cube's dvd mobo directly to the main mobo tomorrow. I will wire back in the battery and start to wire the controller. Soon after, chop up the heatsink a little bit, install some smaller fans instead of the stock fan. Wire in the screen, batteries, and troubleshoot the system. Lastly, I'll spend a ton of time making the case. (Probably vac-formed.)

I will not give up!

EDIT: Yeah... well, two fried cubes + lack of funds + frustration... reaaallly discouraging. I don't want to throw my entry into the comp, either, so I'm going to switch to something a little simpler for now. But I say pending, 'cause I intend to start this up when I start working again when I start working at the end of august.

[Zeturi]

Sorry about the double post, but nobody was interested enough to comment.

I've only got half the wires so far (16) soldered directly from the dvd mobo to the gc mobo. (Frustrating as heck to do.) When it's finished, I'll post pics.

Also have decided to use a Madcatz Microcon GC controller instead of the official. (Though in my design it saves no space at all.)

Gonna build a vac-former sometime soon!

EDIT: my crappy grammar fixed

[kasar]

looking good, cant wait for pics

[Zeturi]

I finally realized why I was having trouble with rewiring the cube's dd. The wire was too thick, so I switched out to the thinest wire I have. I'll have it wired to the dd's mobo by this time tomorrow, hopefully.

[argelfraster]

good progress so far
You got any case ideas yet?

[Zeturi]

Okay... I had a lot of trouble today. The wire that I used to wire the dvd pcb to the gube's mobo was getting to hard to work with. So... I desoldering all 16 wires, then switched to another thinner wire. It took me about 5 hours altogether, but I finally wired it all up!

And yes, the giant glob of hot glue sort of defeats the purpose of desoldering the connector, but... I didn't want my connections to come loose! Argh, it'd better be working when I test it later!
And as for case ideas, yes I do, and it's actually why I had to desolder the mobo-dvdpcb connector in the first place. Not revealing that just yet though, gotta wait until the comp ends!
Oh, and by the way, HUGE thanks Kasar, that guide is giving me a ton of help (great diagrams), and also to Shockslayer for some of his topics, as well as techknott, who also had some good pics for me to drool at. You guys all rock! XD

[eurddrue]

Ok, for future reference test before you pour hotglue on It sucks when you have to tear it all off because you screwed it up because when you tear off all of the hot glue, half of the wires rip off too.

[Zeturi]

Ok, for future reference test before you pour hotglue on It sucks when you have to tear it all off because you screwed it up because when you tear off all of the hot glue, half of the wires rip off too.

Yeah, I know. But I was too afraid to move the boards anymore before I put the hot glue on, I would rather chance it first to make sure and if it doesn't work, then redo it over again.

[Zeturi]

Okay, Eurdrue... you're right. The cube won't start up right. It keeps telling me theres an error and I need to reset. I'm certain it's the disk drive wiring, so I'm gonna go ahead and desolder all 32 wires.

I'm hoping I'll have this done right by tomorrow night.

[Zeturi]

Sigh... well, I started to get pretty far. I soldering the screen into the gamecube's 12v supply with a 7808, and must have screwed it up. Nothing powered on.

I desoldered all my stuff and tested the cube, and... no juice. Can't see what I did wrong, so I just got a cheapie working cube (Rev A I think) and started on it today.

So far, all stuff has been disassembled, all ports desoldered and all 32 wires ready for the dvd reallocation.
Over the period of this week I hope to wire back in the regulator board, reallocate the dvd pcb, and since this is a Rev A, try to power the system on 7.2 volts (with the help of SS and ER's discovery). I won't be screwing around with the 7808 anymore, but was a right to wire it like this?



To get the 12v, I soldered a wire to the + side of the cube's psu, which should have been 12v, I thought. Oh well, at least I got a bit more experience in soldering, plus I can rip a variable resistor from the old dvd drive. I said it before, and I'll say it again: I will not give up!

EDIT: Fixed diagram
EDIT2: Jeez, triple post... people must not like my project enough to post?

[kasar]

Jeez, triple post... people must not like my project enough to post?

you are wrong , I love your project ^^

HUGE thanks Kasar, that guide is giving me a ton of help

glad the guide helped someone

is awesome to see how "gamecube portable" topics are increasing hehe.

I also think eurddrue is right, hot glue on stuff before perform some basic functionality tests may not be a good idea at all, I also noticed it isnt xD, I can remember when hotglued the entire serial port 1 (BBA adaptor reallocation steep) at my GCP, when I tested the lan network, I noticed it didnt worked at all, and remove all hotglue is annoying and also can damage some electronic parts like small on board resistors and ofc will remove all your previus solderings at the affected zone.

I changed my method about hot glue, after the first fails, I decided to change the procedure as following:

after do a reallocation mod or soldering several wires,hot glue them "just a bit" near the mobo connection, but not over it, this basically mean to "join or put toghether" the wires, this will prevent some cable pulls.

and after you get a sucessfull results on the system, you can enforce the connections with more hotglue, but not put so much!



about your project, it is looking good

btw, what specs the intec battery have?

I heard it runs for 30 mins only, but I dont know, thats why Im asking

keep up the nice work mate

[Life of Brian]

Yes, you wired the 7808 correctly.

[Zeturi]

Jeez, triple post... people must not like my project enough to post?

you are wrong , I love your project ^^

HUGE thanks Kasar, that guide is giving me a ton of help

glad the guide helped someone

is awesome to see how "gamecube portable" topics are increasing hehe.

I also think eurddrue is right, hot glue on stuff before perform some basic functionality tests may not be a good idea at all, I also noticed it isnt xD, I can remember when hotglued the entire serial port 1 (BBA adaptor reallocation steep) at my GCP, when I tested the lan network, I noticed it didnt worked at all, and remove all hotglue is annoying and also can damage some electronic parts like small on board resistors and ofc will remove all your previus solderings at the affected zone.

I changed my method about hot glue, after the first fails, I decided to change the procedure as following:

after do a reallocation mod or soldering several wires,hot glue them "just a bit" near the mobo connection, but not over it, this basically mean to "join or put toghether" the wires, this will prevent some cable pulls.

and after you get a sucessfull results on the system, you can enforce the connections with more hotglue, but not put so much!



about your project, it is looking good

btw, what specs the intec battery have?

I heard it runs for 30 mins only, but I dont know, thats why Im asking

keep up the nice work mate

The intec battery can play the cube for almost 2 hours by itself, or at least that's what intec says. They say if you use it with the intec screen, you will get about an hour of life. I'm certain that an LED modded ps1 screen uses less power than an unmodified Intec screen, so you could probably get a good hour on full charge.

[eurddrue]

I learned my lesson relocating the n64 cartslot and covering it with hot glue, having to tear it off, rewiring and then for some reason, I put more hotglue on before testing and it still didn't work. Don't do it twice, test first.

[ShockSlayer]

Two or three things I would like to mention to you:

As far as powering the cube off of 7.2v, you need to take into account what Skyone measured because I've yet to see a regulator that can provide the 1.9v line with 6.6 amps of power, but everything else is straight forward. In theory, you should be able to use a TI pth08000 and a resistor and a capacitor, wired just like it is in the n64 section(use a chain of resistors to get exactly 1.89k, don't settle for anything else) for the 3.3v line, and a 7805 for the 5v line. While I said that the 12v line can be powered off as little as 5v, I reccomend that you give it the highest voltage you can, certain gamecube models seem to react differently: since the 12v line controls the audio, with 5v a cube may sound awful, but with 7.2v it may sound fine. Even then, a cube can work perfectly fine on 5v. You just have to experiment, but chances are no one is going to be building a GCp that just runs off of 5v, so give it 7.2v and you'll be fine.

The other thing, about your last cube: I think I know why it died. For some strange reason the red and black wires in between the little board that has the fan plugged into it and the power board don't necessarily connect to 12v and gnd, in fact, they can be the exact opposite! Strange how it works, but make sure to test it with your multimeter, its another one of those luck of the draw things, I've had cubes that had right polarity, and cubes that didn't.

Keep that in mind!

SS