Bacteria project: N64³: --abandoned--

[bacteria]

No idea if there were any hi-speed traces in the cut I made, however, there is no-where else to make the cut anyway. I tested the contacts thoroughly before turning the system on; didn't fry the board as the LED shone brightly, however I just wasn't getting any video or sound, so it was clearly dead.

Hoping to be more successful with what I am doing the with the TurboGrafx, had to rewire virtually the entire cart slot and other sections too directly onto the various chip pins. Hope that system works - that work has been nearly as intense as for the N64 work! Only got a few more wires to connect on it, job for Monday morning.

[Skyone]

Pictures of the board's current state? Front and back.

[bacteria]

Pictures of the board's current state? Front and back.

Sure:

[Tibia]

Bacteria, I've heard that the N64 board has up to six layers of traces. What did you actually see when you cut into it? Was it actually just front and back? I've looked at your pics, but I can't really see much one way or another.

[bacteria]

Two traces; one at top one at bottom of board.

[bacteria]

Made an interesting discovery today - kynar wire is utter crap.

I wired my TurboGrafx cart pins using kynar wire to the chip pins, turned system on, nothing. Cut the wires off the cart slot and wired using longer 4" general wires to the pins; worked perfectly. That proves my kynar wires were properly wired (no shorts from the other wires) and the issue is the wires themselves, even though I had them short at about 3" long. I used kynar wires as they are thin and supposed to be fine for wiring electronic components, however, from the evidence above, it appears they are crap.

This is interesting - I wired about half a dozen wires on the N64 board with kynar wires to capacitors; if I change them for thicker wires, it might mean the system works - will try Monday/Tuesday and retest- nothing to lose, and this might prove the answer.

Therefore changed thread name from "...dead..." to "one last try"!

So...maybe dead or maybe live...wait for the verdict in a few days!

[ShockSlayer]

*Waits anxiously*

SS

[Dark-Aries]

Made an interesting discovery today - kynar wire is utter crap.

I wired my TurboGrafx cart pins using kynar wire to the chip pins, turned system on, nothing. Cut the wires off the cart slot and wired using longer 4" general wires to the pins; worked perfectly. That proves my kynar wires were properly wired (no shorts from the other wires) and the issue is the wires themselves, even though I had them short at about 3" long. I used kynar wires as they are thin and supposed to be fine for wiring electronic components, however, from the evidence above, it appears they are crap.

This is interesting - I wired about half a dozen wires on the N64 board with kynar wires to capacitors; if I change them for thicker wires, it might mean the system works - will try Monday/Tuesday and retest- nothing to lose, and this might prove the answer.

Therefore changed thread name from "...dead..." to "one last try"!

So...maybe dead or maybe live...wait for the verdict in a few days!

Awesome. I've also heard Kynar wire is good, maybe you just got a bad batch?

[lovablechevy]

Life of Brian stated in his n64p build thread:

Okay, keeping this project moving along. I LED modded the screen with four (supposedly - I got them from eBay) 17,000mcd LEDs and some Kynar wrapping wire. It's thin stuff, but it's sufficient for the kind of current LEDs draw.

so maybe it's only good for low voltage electronics?

i've always heard kynar wire is good for low voltage things and his comment confirmed that in my eyes. *shrugs*

[Mario]

Before ripping the old wiring off, make sure your regulator is giving the full 3.3v. On the N64 I had, it wouldn't work with the ~3.1v it gave with a 2.2k resistor.

[palmertech]

I use kynar wire for LED mods and such, and custom DS and PSP lighting. I have heard a lot of good reviews about it, but only for stuff like that.

I hope the thicker wires work!

[bacteria]

Perhaps the kylar wire is good for low requirements, like LED's; as confirmed by palmertech and LOB; after all, LEDs don't need much; but not useful for much else.

The contacts were all good, all connections were good and checked; confirmed by the fact the system worked with thicker wires (only general use wiring I add) and no shorts from existing contacts, so had to be the kylar wire. I was concerned by the fact that the TurboGrafx cost me about £40 and I didn't want to have to spend £40-£70 on a replacement! I have a stack of good games for the system now, US/UK and Japanese carts, so want to play them!

Mario - no issues with power, you may have noticed I left the cart slot intact, the controller intact and the power plug intact - for testing purposes I was running the system off the official Nintendo mains power supply. Once (if) the board works, I will bend the board back after laying electrical tape down to stop shorts, test again - all being ok, then mod the power supply, add a TI card, cut off the other controller port, remove more grounding and rewire the cart slot.

The N64 board was certainly getting enough power, the LED was bright and I checked the 12v, 3.3v and 5v voltages (there is a 7805 to the right, under the cart slot area), all fine - however no audio or video - the only wires I used kylar for were the early ones I used; reason being that kylar wire is rigid, and I wanted flexible wires to wrap around the board, so used controller wire cable; the kylar wires I connected to were from the U4 chip to a jumper area and capacitor; only four wires in total, fiddly to get to but not too bad - 10 minute job to do, then time to test. Hope that that resolves the issue and the board isn't damaged.

Perhaps this is also why I got the electrical noise before when I cut off the cart slot from the other N64 board; system worked, but not every time and the LED wasn't fully bright - bet that was all down the the kylar wire again! I used normal wires for anything to do with ground and power, and kylar wires for all signal wires. Will check that out too in due course and see if my theory is right!

This is what I meant on the Turbografx board (the black outline is where I need to cut the board so it fits in my case).

(didn't work - kylar wires)


(works, normal wires - I just need to move the wires to the solder joints on the kylar wire ends)


You might say that of course the wiring works as soldering straight to the pins, but don't forget, the kylar wires are connected to the chip pins still, and each of these wires register to their corresponding cart pins, so if the connections had any shorts at all, the re-wired cart would not work as any shorts on the kylar wiring would be as if the main wiring did the shorting themselves; if that makes sense?

[ShockSlayer]

I know this is a really lame question, but what is the difference between normal wire and kylar(kynar?) wires?

SS

[Dark-Aries]

I know this is a really lame question, but what is the difference between normal wire and kylar(kynar?) wires?

SS

Kynar wire is very fine, kind of like each line from an IDE cable, except maybe thiner, not to sure. I haven't bought wire yet at all cept for IDE cable I salvage form computers. General wire is much thicker (maybe not MUCH but thicker)

[eurddrue]

It looked to me like sifuf used kynar wire to rewire his n64 board. Maybe I'm just crazy though