Here’s an interesting setup using a GameBoy Advance as an interface and power supply for a PIC microprocessor. He’s got the PIC connected to the serial port of the GameBoy Advance and is able to pass and retrieve data for display on the screen. You can see above that he is showing two analog values from the pic. You can download the schematic and source code and see a few more pictures, but that’s about it.
[via HackedGadgets]
We love a beautiful and successful N64 portable mod, (In case that fact wasn’t already obvious). And today we would like to add [cndowning’s] Nimbus N64 to our list of favorites.
The base is made from vacuum formed plastic while the buttons come from a modified superpad and the screen is a Zenith 5inch. We couldn’t find word on battery life or weight, but for those that like a hunt, or have other questions, the build logs are available. Follow the jump for a video of the Nimbus in action.
[Thanks Fernando, and GaryC for our silly typo] Continue reading “Nimbus, Portable N64”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRKB5FT3Feg]
A bit light on the details, but we enjoyed seeing this video out device for the Nintendo Game Boy. A parallel cable connects to a modified Game Boy and transmits signals to the adapter which is housed in an old VHS cassette. We gather that some Super Game Boy hardware does the signal processing but from there your guess is probably better than ours.
[NeX] mentions that he originally wanted a screen to be included in the cassette. We’ve seen custom portables with small screens before, but he’s also developed a bare bones hand-held without a screen so that’s where the inclusion in the cassette would have been handy. We also wonder how the images will look on a big TV of the 50+ inch size. [NeX] has been pretty busy with the hacking lately, don’t miss the wire porn of his homemade Game Boy project.
[Thanks Jose]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBH6vQhKaiY]
This cool mod brings force feedback to the Nintendo DS. There’s a motor with an offset weight mounted inside the DS for vibration and some nice SMD LEDs plopped in there for good measure. The force feedback is being controlled via a picaxe mocrocontroller and triggered from the analog audio signal. While using the analog audio may not be the most precise method, he says that the results are pretty decent.
[Thanks Dan, via HacknMod]
[Hounjini] was poking around at the Game Boy Advanced bus of his Nintendo DS lite and figured out how to use it to connect an Arduino to the DS. For testing he’s soldered an IDC plug to the cartridge cover pin interface but this only requires four connections. The Arduino can both send and receive data from the DS lite as shown in the example videos after the break. The data access is made possible by making the Arduino look like a controller that the DS is happy to talk to.
There’s a warm place in our hearts for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. It’s too bad we don’t have that hardware sitting around anymore. But if you do there’s a chance it needs some TLC and there’s always room for a blue LED mod. [Raph] has a wonderful collection of NES hardware repairs and hacks that you should take a look at. These include replacing the power supply, fixing the cartridge connector, monkeying with the CIC chip, adding a reset button on the controller, converting the audio from mono to stereo, and yes, swapping in a blue LED. Oh, and as a side note, [Raph] gets a bit of extra hacker ‘cred for including “coded manually using VIM” at the bottom of his page. Classic.
[Segher] has reverse engineered the hardware and command set for the NES CIC chips. These chips make up the security hardware that validates a cartridge to make sure it has been licensed by Nintendo. Only after authentication will the console’s CIC chip stop reseting the hardware at 1 Hz. The was no hardware information available for these chips (go figure) so [Segher] had to do some sleuthing with the tools at hand which include some rom dumps from the chip pairs. He was nice enough to share his findings with us. We’re betting they’re not of much use to you but we found it an interesting read.
[Thank ppcasm]
[Photo credit: Breaking Eggs and Making Omelets]
