Question A "Revolution"ary idea (not really) + some questions I need answered.

[tealflip]

The Fliptendo is finally finished. That project took a lot out of me. So, that asks, what's next to build? Something even more complicated!

I've been recently inspired by @Shank 's recent attempt to make new cards for a SONY CRT. He even made one that just had a Wii on it, which got me thinking. Would it be possible to put a Wii, on a PCI-E card?

I know this sounds very insanely stupid. At that point, you may as well just shove an entire Wii inside of an extra large case. I don't think so. Heres the plan:

As far as I am aware, there is a maximum of 5V on the PCI-E adapter itself. This is fine as long as we can draw the correct amperage. Alternatively, if we use a sensor bar port too *doubtful* we can also add a PCI-E power connector to get a 12v line. However, I am extremely doubtful of this working. I am not skilled in any PCB design, and wiring the HDMI or whatever video out I decide to use will be a nightmare. Here are my questions:

1: How hard would it be to design a PCB based around this? It would likely require some vias and screwholes, *vias used to reduce the useage of long lengths of wire* and, of course, the PCI-E connector itself.

2. Is it easy to get a specific voltage and amperage from PCI-E lanes? If so, would using something like Thundervolt be good, or would it be fine to stick with the RVL-PSU from CrazyGadget?

Thanks for reading, PLEASE leave some thoughts down here before I go even try and attempt this.

 

[Shank]

PCIE primary power is 12v through the slot connector, up to 75 watts. This is well over 10x the power than the Wii requires, so that shouldn't be an issue.

The difficult part would be interfacing with the computer itself through the PCIE slot. If your primary goal is to just have it be powered by and mechanically mounted to the pcie slot, that would be easy. If your goal is to interface it with the computer itself (ie be able to see the screen in windows/Linux) that's going to be another challenge.

If it were my project, I would bolt a Wii onto a preexisting PCIE capture card with a 3d printed mount or double sided tape. Or bolt it to a USB PCIE card, and have a USB capture card wired in and bolted on as well. This way the gameplay could be pulled up on Windows, albeit with a small amount of latency.

For the former, power and mechanical only solution, you could purchase any pcie dummy card like an M.2 adapter and use it to mount stuff to. Could even get some old ewaste GPUs, strip the contents off, and use that as a foundation.

 

[Wesk]

Using a component or VGA capture card this project would be pretty straight forward tbh.

 

[tealflip]

PCIE primary power is 12v through the slot connector, up to 75 watts. This is well over 10x the power than the Wii requires, so that shouldn't be an issue.

That's great to hear. I'd likely limit it to 5V either way, I don't really wanna harvest a sensor bar port. I hate the sensor bar port.

The difficult part would be interfacing with the computer itself through the PCIE slot. If your primary goal is to just have it be powered by and mechanically mounted to the pcie slot, that would be easy. If your goal is to interface it with the computer itself (ie be able to see the screen in windows/Linux) that's going to be another challenge.

Initially the plan was to just power it off the PCIE slot. I already have a capture card, as long as I can get my Hyperkin cable to **finally** work with one of my builds, that should work fine. Although, I'm not against adding capture functionality straight into this either. It might just be out of my reach for this initial idea.

Using a component or VGA capture card this project would be pretty straight forward tbh.

Are there any good ones you recommend? From what I see atleast right now, most of them wouldn't have space for the Wii, atleast put on top of the card. I doubt I'd need another fan since my system already has four 120mm fans (3 intake, 1 exhaust) so I'd just need to reuse the Wii's heatsink.

Followup questions: Is it possible to find a PCI-E 8x card *mainly to give me space for everything* that has a protoboard layout? Almost like this, but with the PCIE connector and room for a mounting bracket.

I've had no luck finding anything so far. Either they have things that take up space, doesn't have room for PCIE 8x or 16x, or don't have room for the mounting bracket.

Thanks for reading.