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Worklog My First G-Boy

Teatimetim

Teatimetim

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I wasn't originally planning on building a G-Boy. After I finished with my Ashida I set my sights on building a portable N64 based of Nicholas' design. However, I have had a wii mobo sitting on my table, staring at me menacingly this entire time. I affectionately dubbed it the "Roach Wii", as I was surprised by 100s of tiny corpses (okay, I might be exaggerating here a bit) upon opening it. I had bought it as a "for parts or repair" unit from a local game store since wiimotes wouldn't connect to it but the wii would still boot. Well, I guess the little critters explained part of the problem.

I ended up throwing away the entire shell and deep cleaned the mobo and modules. After relocating the bluetooth module I was able to finally get a wiimote to connect and loaded it with RVLoader. Then it was time for beautification:

1711677011800.png

Take that roaches.

As you can see, I have decided to go overkill and relocate all the modules. I'm also going to be installing a Fuji Flex to have all the awesome video settings provided by GCVideo. Here is a great picture of where the FPGA would go, IF I HAD ONE. Thanks customs.

As I wait for the government to relinquish my chips, I have been able to at least start with putting the shell together:

1711677270983.png

So pretty and shiny.

I went with a resin print from PCB way this time after I ruined my own 3d printed cases that I had worked on for 2 weeks sanding, priming, painting.... I digress. I'm glad I went with this shell because it looks very sleek and feels great in the hands. And so the assembly begins:

1711677384379.png

Hey, don't peak!

I struggled with getting the buttons to feel good and discovered it was because the screws I was using were too short and causing the membranes to get crushed. After swapping those out the button presses feel much better.

1711677500076.png

As StezStix Fix? on YouTube would say, "Stupid buttons."

That's all for today. I'll be working on assembling the bottom half of the shell tomorrow and start on some of the wiring as well. Till next time!
 
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Teatimetim

Teatimetim

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I started assembling the bottom half and quickly learned that the PMS PD 3 is slightly larger than it's predecessor, causing the fan to not sit right. I think I can make it work with a little creativity and a hammer though.

I took a break from that to put together my Fuji Flex since I finally received my FPGA's in the mail!

1711839553985.png

1711839559100.png


The wires are just terminals so I can hook them up to program them. Working on that now.
 
nmPicard

nmPicard

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This may have been something you previously said, but where did you get the case printed/cast? I'm looking into doing this kind of project (my first) and am trying to figure this out.
 
Mr Game & Cube

Mr Game & Cube

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working on No.1
nmPicard said:
This may have been something you previously said, but where did you get the case printed/cast? I'm looking into doing this kind of project (my first) and am trying to figure this out.
Click to expand...
he got the shell resin printed from PCB Way
 
Teatimetim

Teatimetim

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The shell was fairly pricey because I also went with a color tint on it, so it was around $200 shipped along with all the buttons (minus the ds light buttons)
 
Teatimetim

Teatimetim

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It has been a while since my last post updating this project, but a lot has happened in that time and I'm thankful for everyone on discord for helping me through some of the issues I ran into.

To start things off, I managed to put together two Fuji Flex's
1712640051846.png


I also programmed them using my Steam Deck
1712640078508.png

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But sadly they didn't work. When I probed around everything seemed to check out just fine, so in a last ditch effort I tried removing one and replacing it with the other, but got the same video issues (No Signal).

1712640177057.png


I'm still not entirely sure what went wrong, but I'm not ready to give up on Fuji Flex just yet. I will be making some more to test/try out to see if I can't figure out where everything went wrong.

With that option off the table, I decided to use an AVE-HDMI I had laying around.

1712640321928.png

There is something wrong in this picture, and if you can guess it I will give you a virtual high five. Do you know what it is?

The FFC Connector has its pins on the top side, so the ribbon is upside down! Thanks to Loopj for pointing out that silly mistake.

After fixing that I finally got HDMI video!

1712640476091.png


And one quick rotation of the FFC on the driver board...

1712640504783.png


We have a working G-boy!

1712640524362.png


One thing I regret not getting pictures of was wiring a GC port to the AVE HDMI to get to the OSD. I had a spare GC port panel laying around so I just wired one of those up to it. I did that because I learned from Supertazon that the AVE-HDMI does not work with GC2+. I also learned that you can't have a GC controller and GC2+ wired to the same data line and expect it to work, who would have thought...

Anyway, the main purpose of doing that was to get to the OSD so that I could try and fix a weird video issue I was having where the screen would randomly cut out. I believe I found the culprit in a setting along the lines of "Clock Recalculation (not sure if recalculation is the right word, will edit once I find out for sure). Turning that to "Off" seems to have fixed my video issue as it's no longer cutting out.

I have verified that bluetooth and wifi relocations work great as I'm able to boot into the stock Wii OS and the MX Relocation is working and keeping time as well.

To wrap things up, I need to somehow route the antennas for wifi, fix the power button as it's not sitting right with the PMS PD 3, and figure out why I'm not getting audio. Oh, and to replace the screen because I ruined it with IPA on accident.

Sorry for the long post but just wanted to log all the progress I made over the past week.
 

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Sdouyoulink

Sdouyoulink

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Hello, I would like to ask if the wii HDMI you built was successful, I am also building this open source project, but I checked all aspects and he does not have an HDMI signal
微信图片_20240427112307.jpg
 
Teatimetim

Teatimetim

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Sadly it wasn't, but I got some more parts and different methods of putting it together that I want to try and see if I can get it working.
 
Teatimetim

Teatimetim

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My first attempts weren't, but it shouldn't matter, just need to be more careful during assembly. I did learn from Yveltalgriffin though that if you order them through JLCPCB you have to ask for a few things when they reach out for production issues. I didn't do that so it's possible my board wasn't fabricated correctly.
 
Sdouyoulink

Sdouyoulink

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Teatimetim said:
My first attempts weren't, but it shouldn't matter, just need to be more careful during assembly. I did learn from Yveltalgriffin though that if you order them through JLCPCB you have to ask for a few things when they reach out for production issues. I didn't do that so it's possible my board wasn't fabricated correctly.
Click to expand...
I didn't ask for an order from Jialichuang, so I didn't succeed either
 
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