b_w_NES

[b_w_johan]

Okee, so one year after i got the idea of making my own portable i have mostly all the stuff i need.

My plan is now, keep you guys posted on what i've got, what i'm doing and what i'm spending.
This first post will contain the shoppinglist.

NES portable spend so far:
€043,33 - PS1 LCD screen
€020,00 - NES donorsystem including controllers (maybe i'll try to find a NOAC later but first i wanna see if this works)
€004,50 - Random gamecart to test the system
€000,00 - Old radio provided a small piece of bord to solder on and provided 7 switsches wich i used 4 for the D-Pad
€002,00 - Nicely colored cable parts to connect the D-Pad to the controllerchip (stripped it from a huge cabletree)
€000,00 - Broken PC-PSU provided 2 resistors, it could be another PC part, i'm almst sure i was looking at a PSU part;)
€035.00 - batteries, holder and a 2n4007 diode (and some reserve caps and transistors but biggest bit was the batteries )
€009,70 - 2 more batteries + holder, project needs 6 rechargable(1.2V) AA batteries.
--------+
€112,53 - total spend so far.

[b_w_johan]

This post is reserved to put the pictures and story of building the project.

(thanks everyone for all the posts so far on the forum and bens manual, without this i'd never would have come up with this nice hobby/idea)

Wednesday I can finally start on my project!

[b_w_johan]

So all the parts are in, school's out, so I have 2 full weeks (beside those 4 days to spend on christmas and new year) to start working on putting the parts to one product.

Although I got negative reply about the FIMO clay, i'm gonna use that for my first attempt.
(not ignoring the feedback, i just need something easy to use for the case. Fimo is what i have laying here, and well even if it will break eventually it will look nice till i have a better more permanent solution, and then again... maybe i'll find out that FIMO could be a perfect solution for easy casebuilding)

I'll write a step by step (foto)log as well, and will only show major steps on this forum here.
When the project is finished i'll paste a link to the log.

[brandonk318]

Either way keep us posted because I wanna know how that fimo clay works out. Should be an interesting task.

[b_w_johan]

So today is the big day

I'm gonna attach the screen to the nesboard, and yesterday i've finished the controllerpart so i'm excited ifeverything will work.

One worry though, dont have a battery yet, so i'll be using the original (220V) wallpowerplugs.
Gonna do some more readingon what voltage is required(ps1 screen = 7.5V, NES = 9V), but if someone gets here with a reply before i'm finished soldering that would come in really handy haha

Pictures will be available via my blog realy realy soon i've put them on my computer / localwebsite but the images are still uncompressed and huge so can't upload 'm yet.

[b_w_johan]

Today i bought the batteries
(we can't buy the li-ion stuff in The Netherlands, thats sort of illegal, we can only buy them when they are already in a box everything connected etc and then its €150,- ...... thats quite a difference, i saw some US site talking about 15 dollar for 4000mah?!)

So for replacement, penliteshaped batteries 2700mAH x5 including a nice battery holder.

now gonna solder the new 7.5V > 5V adapter, the oldone only smoked a little when i tried to test output voltage XD nah i'm just kidding, it didn't worked, so instead of using parts i desoldered from old printplates i bought brand new ones.

I'll let you guys know when i've tested the new setting (also let you know if the replacement transistors works out correct)

[b_w_johan]

Something's not working

So this is what happens, everythings connected properly, power is turned on, the screen turns on i see a flash of super mario 3 and the screen turns off

So i have 1 possible fix, gonna try thatone one now.

1) i used normal AA Penlites instead of the 2700mAH batterys i bought yesterday, forgot to charge them, so tested the setup with regular batteries. (the batteries are charging now, hope it doesn't take to long)

2) the replacement transistor provided by the electronics shop doesn't work.

3) did i missed some step with the screen? somewhere i read the screen turns on when the ps1 turns on, but in my case the screen is on for about 2 seconds and then it goes off (if the NES is on/off doesn't make any differences) now its just 7.5V + audio + video connected to the screen

-- edit --

was reading around a bit, the green bars(volume etc) only show up in the first second, after that the green fades to black and its "off" my dad suspects its the batteries, still waiting for them to be charged XD

--edit 2 --

its an original ps1 screen, didn't do letmodding, or soldering anything on the printplate, i used the original connectorpart on the screen to whire audio video and power.

--edit 3--

+5 volts output
This isn't really needed, but I have heard a few monitors require 5 volts to stay on, so it's not entirely useless. You can also connect low-amperage things here, such as power LEDs. All you need to do is wire up what you need to pin 10. Don't forget to ground what you are using this for if you want it to work.
- http://portablesofdoom.org/video.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
could this be the trick??
i found some pinout - http://english.cxem.net/pinout/pinout28.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
so pin 10 gets 5V to stay on, pin1 goes to the negative pole then? can i tap the power from the NES board i guess?

or should i first wait till the batteries are loaded and see if it works then?

-- edit 4--

Pinout for ps1 is confusing :S i guess its not correct, pin 12 is something like XXX_V (video, pin 11 and 10 should be XXX_L and XXX_R for audio left/right...

-- edit 5--

I'm gonna make a new pinout for the ps1 connection on the screen XD i got completely confused, so i retraced every line from the playstation input to connectors on the screenboard XD

[b_w_johan]

in addition to edit#1 in previous post;

I've added the 5V line to the screen as suggested by the website in edit#3.

This keeps the screen "alive" the brightness and volume DO work now, but the backlight is switched off now instead of the whole screen turning off, any suggestions to keep the backlight on thistime?

-- additional info; its the normal PAL screen without any ledmods etc, i've used the original wires --

So the screen stays on now without backlight (this flashes on when adding power then goes off instantly)

--edit--

could it be this problem? http://forums.benheck.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29140" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; i'm now gonna test this fuse if its still working or indeed burned XD

--edit 2--
Tested the fuse, seems to be working like it should ...
So what could be causing the backlight to not work, in my next pinout i'll draw a sketch of the total setup.



Okee its a bit messed up on the NES part, i used the steps from mario's instructable so that should be all fine, these are all the parts i've used, including the replacementparts te shop reccomended.

The screen flashes, turns black and in the bakground you can see the mario bros a little, the sound/brightnessbars show p as well very dark in the background, i've tested the fuse, seems to be OK.

What else do i need to do?!

i'll draw a step 2 in a few seconds to show how i connected the ps screen whires.



Hope this clears the NES to PS1 screen a bit better, i've put the screen LCD facing down, counting the pins from the left port 1, the right port starting 11

Could someone confirm i've connected everythings right?

[b_w_johan]

ITS WORKING !!!!!!!

The batteries where charged during the night, connected everything and its working

one minor thingy, the colors on the screen are well not as good as on the TV, this would be the fault of the transistor/video amp i guess? or any other thing that could cause the screen to look faded/strangecolorlikeXD

(i don't have an original NES anymore XD so can't put it on the TV yet XD)

QUESTION: shouldn't the video go to ground as well?

i planned to include a composit out connector on the case so i could loop to a normal TV, but in schematics on the internet it says this should be grounded, but ... to the ps1 screen i only feed 7.5V(+7.5v ground) to work, 5V(+5v ground) to stay on and video and audio but i think the video needs ground to is that correct?

[b_w_johan]

Figured out why the screen looked faded out, and why it stopped working after a few attempts.

Rechargable AA batteries provide only 1.2V while i expected 1.5V so that caused the problem.

Bought a new battery and the project works just perfect!
(6 batteries total now)

I'll be making the fimo casing now, expect tomorrow to be ready to put on some pictures.

[brandonk318]

Figured out why the screen looked faded out, and why it stopped working after a few attempts.

Rechargable AA batteries provide only 1.2V while i expected 1.5V so that caused the problem.

Bought a new battery and the project works just perfect!
(6 batteries total now)

I'll be making the fimo casing now, expect tomorrow to be ready to put on some pictures.

Thats great news! What design have you decided to go with the case?