NES Classic Edition – Controller Mod

The Nintendo Classic Mini took the world by storm this year — finally, an NES in a cute, tiny package that isn’t 3D printed and running off a Raspberry Pi! It’s resoundingly popular and the nostalgic set are loving it. But what do you do when you’re two hours deep into a hardcore Metroid session and you realize you need to reboot and reload. Get off the couch? Never!

[gyromatical] had already bought an Emio Edge gamepad for his NES Mini. A little poking around inside revealed some unused pads on the PCB. Further investigation revealed that one pad can be used to wire up a reset button, and two others can be used to create a home switch. Combine this with the turbo features already present on the Emio Edge, and you’ve got a pretty solid upgrade over the stock NES Mini pad. Oftentimes, there’s extra functionality lurking inside products that manufacturers have left inactive for the sake of saving a few dollars on switches & connectors. It’s always worth taking a look inside.

Now, back in 2006, the coolest hack was running Linux on everything — and somebody’s already trying to get Linux on the NES Mini.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BOgj7P5ARPa/

12 thoughts on “NES Classic Edition – Controller Mod

  1. I have a limited amount of electronics experience and am self taught so far. I was wondering what technique/s were used to figure this out? Any resources you could point me to would be much appreciated as well.

    1. Watch YouTube teardowns on mikeselectricstuff, eevblog, and bigclivedotcom. These guys do a great job of reverse engineering hardware and pointing out reasons for some of the design decisions, and lab bench techniques for reverse engineering.

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