Reading real cartridges (Update - IT LIVES! - video)

[abrugsch]

I had this SAME idea about a custom PiBoy Zero build. Will you be putting this up in the market? I would totally buy one.

Yeah once i get the pcb design tested a bit. I've already had to make a revision tonight which will need hand modifying on these first boards...

[abrugsch]

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They're coming!

[abrugsch]

They're here!

[Camble]

Lovely stuff! Have you started assembling yet?

[abrugsch]

Lovely stuff! Have you started assembling yet?

Grrrr....
I tried to put the IC's on tonight at the hackerspace. They've run out of flux... Making it pretty impossible to solder SSOP package 23017's so no. I didn't get them done tonight. Hopefully they'll have some for next week when I'm next down.

[144TECH]

LoL , so now we have to takeout our Retropie GB cart, and we''ll be able to shove a GB cart in there and run it ?
It's nice it's possible... but it's a little reinvention of the wheel. no offence, i like the pcb's

[abrugsch]

Well it also means if you have carts with savegames on then you can use them in the emulators and write them back to the cart after you make progress.
And you don't *HAVE* to do anything. Only what you want. I want to do this.

[abrugsch]

Just to let you all know, since getting the boards last week, I've started to solder one up.

well...

So I get to my hackerspace once a week for a couple of hours. last week I started with the 23017 IC's (which are fine pitch SSOP chips) and as I said earlier in the thread, there was no flux so that was 2 hours wasted

new flux arrived and I was able to crack on. except it was super busy last night with everyone wanting to use the soldering stations
I finally got on and started cleaning up the mess I made last week, and eventually got the IC's on. now to get the indicator LED's and resistors. 27 of each... in 0805 package (about 1.5mm x 2mm) which aren't SUPER tiny but small enough to be a pain when there's that many of them. to cap it all off, I have 3 different colours (orange green and red) which need different value resistors but also, despite all 3 coming from the same LED series (Omron) the marking for annode and cathode are reversed on the RED ones! GAAAAH! so what can best be described as an arrow was pointing in the direction you'd expect on orange and green, the red was pointing the wrong way, (which I stupidly didn't test as I went with the reds) so I had to lift them and start again... by the time all that effing about happened I was able to get 8 resistors down before I needed to head home. but at least those 8 status lights show up nicely

So next week all I have to do is the final resistors, the cartridge port and the Pi Header. And maybe a wire mod to be able to do GBA in the future as I had to make a revision after the boards were ordered and fabbed.
then TEST! I'll video it's operation as with the status lights it should be quite pretty. hopefully I haven't destroyed the IC's with all the extra heat they endured messing about getting them soldered

[abrugsch]

About halfway through the soldering

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[moosepr]

About halfway through the soldering

Wowsers that's a lot of soldering! Are you having to do them all by hand?