RPi2 NES Frankenstein. (Pi-tendo)

[DaOld Man]

I have an RPi 2 now what should I do with it? I liked SlippyBlades RP1 SNES project so I thought I would do one with an old NES case.
I plan to keep track of what Im doing to help not only others, but myself, for when I forget when I am on this project.
First, I bought an old nes from a good friend.
I turned the case upside down to expose the bottom, grey part of the case.
I removed the bottom by taking out 6 Phillips screws.
The screws are marked in red circles, except lower left corner for some reason it is blue?
I also marked two screws blue that release the controller connectors. You don't have to take those out just yet but I went ahead and done it.



I then removed the shield by removing 7 Phillips screws.



I then removed 8 screws from the works. A couple of these are hidden just in this picture angle, you can see them in the real world.



I then flipped the works over and removed the plugs going to the controller connectors and the power/reset buttons.
(Not pictured is a bottom shield that you need to remove.)



Next I removed the controller connectors by simply pulling them out the front. There are two screws in the power/reset assembly that now need to be removed. (red circles)



And here is the empty bottom half of the case, after washing out a small amount of dust and letting dry:



And here are the dissembled parts. and the pill box I used to keep the screws sorted. Not pictured is the shields and the circuit board (the works).



I started thinking about how to access the SD card on the Rpi, in case it ever gets corrupted and needs to be replaced.
The NES has an expansion port of some kind on the bottom. There is an easily removable access cover, but then there is a blank plate that has to be removed. Nothing s sharp knife couldn't handle.
Here is a pic of the bottom of the case, with the access door removed (red dot) and the blank plate removed (blue dot).



I placed the RPi in the bottom half to check for clearances. I placed the power switch assembly back in for clearance check.
I also have a USB plugged laid in the approximate place. This will be for the cheap NES USB controllers to plug into. Of course there will be two, this is still a work in progress.
I think this idea will work pretty good. If SD card needs to be changed, just flip case over, remove the cover and take the card out through the hole. It wont be easy, but that could be a blessing, since teh card should not have to be normally removed.

[Peabo]

I like the idea. 

Putting the RPI in that spot would make it really hard to change out the SD card, not that you will be changing the card much.  Maybe put the access in the cartridge slot?

[reptileink]

I have two gutted NES cases in my workshop, and I had thought about doing something like this with one of them. I will be watching this thread closely because anything to do with using old console bodies gets my instant attention. Are you going to put the CP on the top of the case? Will this be a "travel" arcade?

[Jedi Master]

Really looking forward to seeing this come together!  I've no experience with the RPI but I'm about to get one and start playing with it.

[Vidiot]

This should be a fun project. I made a little console from an Atari Flashback 2 and it turned out great. I upgraded it to the RPi2 when it came out. The Pi2 is much noticeably faster!
Looks to me like the memory card could be accessed easily from that expansion port cover the way you did it. Definitely watching this one.

[DaOld Man]

Yeah, Vidiot, I think it will be fairly good to get the SDcard out. Im thinking of cutting up a Tic-Tac box or something and gluing it to the inside to act as a pan to prevent the card from falling into the case if it is dropped while removing or inserting.

Thanks Jedi Master, Im still pretty new on the RPi also, so I will be relying on the others on here that are experienced when I set the Pi up (which I should be doing pretty soon.)

Hi reptilelink. I will not be putting a CP on this, but I do plan to use the USB Nintendo controllers that you can find on ebay pretty cheap. I suppose you could put together a CP with a usb keyboard encoder, but Im not sure how that would work with the Pi.

Hi Peabo, I thought about putting the butt end of the Pi in the game cartridge door, but Im wanting to put a couple of USB plugs there, and maybe a Ethernet connector.
I was thinking that accessing the card through the bottom might discourage exploring hands from pulling the card out.

I am trying to rig up a couple of USB ports to mount in the NES controller port holes. This is harder than I thought it would be. I guess I really need to hook the Pi up and test the controllers before I put a lot of work into it. But whats the fun in that? LOL

[Peabo]

Sound thinking... small hands get everywhere

[DaOld Man]

Been thinking about how to do the controller USB plugs. I had a panel mount USB female plug with a short cord and a male plug on other end.
I thought I would try this:
First I trimmed down the rubber part of the plug to form a flange about the same thickness as the flange on the original nes connectors.
I then ground top and bottom of the metal front plate of the usb plug to about the same length as the nes controller flange.
Here is a pic after my modifications, sorry didn't get a before pic. Edit: I do have a picture of this usb plug before chopping it, look at last pic in the first post.



I then inserted the usb plug through the front of the case, in the hole where the original controller plug fits.



I then installed the connector retainer plate and it worked pretty good. It is snug and wont push in or pull out.
The only thing I don't like is the space around the usb plug. I will have to cut a piece of black poster board or thin plastic to cover the space.



Now I got to find another USB plug like this one for the player two slot.
So far I haven't cut up the case, so I could change my mind and try something else, but so far this is looking pretty good to me.

EDIT: as you can see in pic two, I did cut one of the mounting posts that was blocking player two usb plug (or will be when I do that one). This post was part of the original circuit board mount, so i shouldn't need it.
I used a pair of diagonal cutters to get it out of the way, plan to clean it up with a dremel later.

[DaOld Man]

Just a quick note. This is one of the controllers I plan to use for this project.
It is a USB SNES controller (on ebay).
I plan to use this because it has the D-Pad (joystick), a pause button, a start button, and 6 action buttons.
This should work with NES, SNES, and Mame. (using the pause button as credit button for mame.)
And probably most other emulators.
Can i pull this off with RPi? I dunno, but going to find out.

[Slippyblade]

That works just fine on a Pi, I'm using an actual SNES controller with a USB adapter and it works great.

[DaOld Man]

That works just fine on a Pi, I'm using an actual SNES controller with a USB adapter and it works great.

Thanks Slippyblade, you know Im going to be using you as a RPi resource. Hope you don't mind.

[Slippyblade]

Ugh - I don't know about that.  I don't know what the deal was but I was tripping on virtual stumbling blocks left and right.  I'd fix problem A, and problem B would crop up.  I'd fix B and C would happen.  Then when I fixed C, A would inexplicably not work.

A good part of this is that I am a total Linux newbie.

Mind you, the RetroPie image works great, I just didn't have the patience to go through the scraping process - I just REALLY wanted AttractMode to work for me and just couldn't get it right.  On Windows and normal Linux, it's great.

[Locke141]

I hope that was a non working NES.

You may want to take a look at Diet Pi buildof retro pi. It's a lighter (faster) version of the standard Pi OS.

nitrogen_widget has a cool image he made that also uses Diet Pi but with attract mode.

If It was me I would use the diet pi retro pi image if this is coming to focus on consoles emulation.   

You may want to consider a Sega Saturn USB controller. It can do the Geneses/CD/32X games, has a better 6 button Mame lay out, and is better at SNES games the SNES controllers are at Geneses games.   

[dmckean]

Just a quick note. This is one of the controllers I plan to use for this project.
It is a USB SNES controller (on ebay).
I plan to use this because it has the D-Pad (joystick), a pause button, a start button, and 6 action buttons.
This should work with NES, SNES, and Mame. (using the pause button as credit button for mame.)
And probably most other emulators.
Can i pull this off with RPi? I dunno, but going to find out.

The Buffalo Classic holds up about 1000x better than those no name controllers on ebay.

[jdbailey1206]

Nice work.  I have to start mine that consists of an Atari and a NUC.  This definitely inspires me.

[DaOld Man]

I like that buffalo controller, may have to get me two, but for now Im going with the already purchased ebay cheapies.
But it may not be long until Im forced to get better controllers. The cheapies don't look very rugged.

[DaOld Man]

I couldn't find another USB plug like I was going to use. (I used the mate to that one on "A Little Rage").
I was undecided how I was going to fill in the gap around the plug anyway.
Now I want you guys to know that I did not want to do what I am about to tell you.
Even though as far as I know, the NES didn't work (I had no way to test it for sure), the controller connectors looked to be in real good shape.
I searched the web over for some way to mount the USB plugs before I mutilated the original connectors.
I finally decided to take the knife to them. It was a very hard decision and I tossed it around for several days.
I do not have pictures of the actual mauling, but this is what I did.
I unplugged the wires from the pins.
I then used a soldering gun (the ones that get really hot), to heat the pins and push them out the front.
Then using a combination of a bench grinder, a dremel tool, and a file, I cut out the pin hole part and cut out a hole big enough to accommodate a female USB plug.
Here are pics after the crime:


This pic shows the finished NES plug and the mutilated USB plug.
The USB plug was a panel mount one. I trimmed away some of the hard rubber with a utility knife and had to cut some out to allow the metal to stick through farther.
I will have to either buy new plugs that hopefully wont require trimming as much, or solder male plugs onto these, since they are made to plug into a mother board.


Here is the USB placed into the NES plug.
Notice I trimmed off one corner of the USB plug so it will fit into the case hole. The USB plug will have to be glued to the NES plug.
I wont do that until I either buy new plugs, or solder male USB plugs to these, and of course test.

I really hated doing this, but I did do a lot of searching, and found one site where someone did basically the same thing, that's what pushed me over the edge I guess.
If anyone has a need for the removed wires, I will give them to you, if you pay shipping.
It would be nice if someone made some USB plugs in the shape of NES plugs ready to mount, but that may infringe on Nintendo's copyright or something.

[DaOld Man]

Ok, put the USB connectors on the back burner for awhile and been playing around with the mausberry switch circuit.
This switch came with no wiring diagrams and I cant find hookup diagrams on the net, except for the simple power switch and reset switch connections to the circuit.
I have not found how to hook up the LED on the NES.
All I have found is people tying it back into the I/O on the Pi.
The circuit has a pad for LED, but only one.
I turned it on and measured voltage and got about 2.5 volts between the led pad and the - pad for the reset button.
I hooked up the on the NES: orange to the led pad and white to the - reset pad. I also placed a 50 ohm resistor in the orange wire.
The led lit up pretty good. So I though it would be simple. Red and Brown wires connect to the SW pads, Yellow to reset pad, white to LED pad, and orange to the other Reset pad.
There is only one problem. The LED is reversed biased and will not light like this. (See the inset box for the NES wiring in pic below.)
I cant reverse the orange and white wires because I'm pretty sure this will mess up the reset function.
So my plan is to unsolder the LED, flip it around and solder it back. This should reverse the polarity of the LED, making the orange common for reset and - led, and the white + led.
I will also have to place the 50 ohm resistor in the white wire.



Edit, just reversed the LED on the NES power switch board. It wasn't a real big deal, just pulled LED out of the plastic holder thingy, unsoldered it, flipped it around, then resoldered it. I had to bend the LED leads back 180 degrees and re-insert the LED into the plastic thingy. That was a little hairy but not a real big deal, you just have to be careful not to break the LED leads.
Now I can solder the 5 wires into the mausberry circuit and everything should work.
From NES switch circuit to mausberry circuit:
Red: SW+
Brown: SW -
White: to 50 ohm resistor then to LED pad
Orange: Reset -
Yellow: Reset +

[DaOld Man]

Just a quick bump to say that I have the NES switch module, board, circuit, whatever, soldered into the mausberry switch circuit.

Here is the required eye candy:


I wound up using a 51 ohm resistor in the white wire, it was the closest I had to a 50 ohm. I also covered the resistor with clear heat shrink.
It comes on when I press the ON switch, and the LED lights up.
I have got to download the correct code to allow the mausberry to shutdown correctly.
I currently have PiPlay on the sd card and the commands that mausberry website says to use to download and install the script is not working. I think I need to go with a different Pi setup. This is all new to me, whats that old saying about old dogs and new tricks?
I would appreciate any suggestions.

[Peabo]

I've got nothing to add, other than to say nice work so far.  Watching and learning on this one

[jdbailey1206]

My suggestion to you would be to teach me your solder fu.  It is strong and mine is weak.

[DaOld Man]

My suggestion to you would be to teach me your solder fu.  It is strong and mine is weak.

Surely you jest!

[jdbailey1206]

If I was kidding I would say A horse walks into the bar and the bartender asks him, "Hey buddy.  Why the long face?"  HA!

But in all seriousness I need to take a class or something.  My soldering skills suck ass.

[Slippyblade]

It's all about practice.  Grab a piece of copper clad and drill about a billion holes in it, shove a wire/resistor/whatever into every hole and start soldering.  You will get better.

[ChanceKJ]

Agreed.

Mines absolute crap, but like many of my projects I want the finished product to come out better then my high standards so I forced myself to take my time and not suck. Mind you I do research theory and best practices before diving in head first. Soldering was just one of those things. I didn't want to screw up the chassis on my Sanyo 20EZ, or JAMMA harness, so I made every attempt at making it the best job I could.

[jdbailey1206]

It's all about practice.  Grab a piece of copper clad and drill about a billion holes in it, shove a wire/resistor/whatever into every hole and start soldering.  You will get better.

I would but I am out of state for work and I have no time on my hands when I am sitting at my apartment waiting for bed time.  Oh wait...

  Thanks for the idea Slippy.  When Im home next month Ill grab my soldering stuff and try that out.  Being in demo we go through about a million circuit boards and Ill just pull some out of our demo piles and practice on those. 

[DaOld Man]

I agree with the other suggestions about practice, with a side order of patience.
There are also several "how to" videos on youtube that you might find helpful. (Watch more than one or two, not everyone does it right.)
I got some practice by unsoldering components on old (bad) circuit boards, then resoldering them.
The unsoldering wick (flat wire braid), is very good for unsoldering stuff.
Also use alligator test clips between the component and the heat, clipped to the components lead, to prevent the part from being damaged from the heat.
The clip will act as a heat sink.
After a few practice runs you will be surprised how easy it can be.

[brihyn]

A huge thanks for the detailed updates. I don't know crap about the Pi other than how to load XBMC, but want to do this with a junk SNES I was given, so you're answering a lot of questions that I had in my head.

And as for soldering, yes, practice is the key. Just find a circuit board (any circuit board) that you can practice with and throw away at the end.  My first day of "Adult Work" after graduating from college (electronics repair degree) the new boss handed me a circuit board to see how well I could solder....and the answer was horribly (nervousness definitely didn't help!). He just told me to practice a bit and I spent the first hour of my adult career soldering and de-soldering resistors on a scrap board.  After a week there my solder skills were (mostly) pretty strong. Practice is definitely the key!

[DaOld Man]

Thanks brihyn!!

Ok, I got my USB plugs glued to the NES controller plugs.



Oh oh, I click on image icon and it doesn't insert the image thingy. May be something with Win10?
None of the emoticons appear to be posting either.
I will continue this post after I do some testing.


Groan.
Ok, I am posting pics by manually putting in the image tags

Here is front view of the usb plugs. I need to clean up inside a bit.


I had an old plastic project box that I decided to use.
Here is a pic of the cover, which I cut up and am going to use for Ethernet and USB ports:


I drilled holes to mount the Ethernet connector, and bored a 5/8" round hole for the plug. I was going to make the round hole square with a file, but decided to leave it as is. I think it will be ok and will probably
look better than my trying to hack out a square hole.


I then used a USB expansion bracket to cut the holes for the USB plugs.
This worked out pretty good. Havent got the USB plugs yet, I'm hoping they are the same dimensions as this bracket.


And the finished product. I plan to mount this in the NES game door.

[DaOld Man]

I glued the plate I made into the cart slot on the top of the NES case.
Here is a shot of the back side.
I first used model cement. I glued the part I had cut out so that the plugs will be facing outward. I then cut a smaller strip and glued it in the space at the bottom.
The top half of the cover is turned upside down in this pic.
I also glued 3 cut off qtips (cotton swab sticks), to the sides and top to help brace it.
I didnt trust the cement all that much (they dont make it like they used to), so I went around the whole thing with hot glue.



And here is a view from the front. I mounted the NET connector, still waiting on the USB connectors to get here.



Now I am concentrating on mounting HDMI & PWR on the bottom case back, and AV RCA connectors on the bottom side.

[DaOld Man]

I was going to mount the HDMI and the power entry block in the spot where the original power and AV converter plugged in, but there is simply not enough room.
So I decided to move the power entry to the right of the case.
Due to the mausberry switch, power cord connector, and HDMI cable taking up so much room on the Pi, I had to move the Pi towards the back of the case.
This meant I had to cut out part of the expansion slot opening to allow access to the SD card.
I also glued a tab to allow me to use a mounting screw in that corner of the Pi.
I used the tab off a Tic Tac box (you guys thought I was kidding about using a tic tac box, didnt you?)
I also found that the wall wart power supply fits rather nicely in the NES case, utilizing the mounting posts.
Here is a pic that pretty much explains what i have in the works, although nothing (except the glued tic tac tab) is permanent yet.

[firedance]

Very good so far 

[reptileink]

Wow, lots of work and inginuity here! 

[DaOld Man]

Thanks guys.
Got quite a bit done today.

Mounted the power entry connector. Not as pretty as I would have liked, but I need more practice cutting out plastic.


Also mounted the HDMI output connector. It's a little crooked, may straighten it up later, but may leave well enough alone.
I used another piece of the black plastic project box.


Mounted the modified tic tac box as a drop pan.
I also lost the tab I glued earlier. When I tried to drill a hole in it, it popped off. I think three bolts will hold the board anyway.
That cement glue is not like the glue I recall using on model cars when I was a kid. I guess drug users and glue sniffers are messing it up for everyone.
I glued the tic tac box, and a piece of cardboard on the side of it.
I also glued a piece of wooden popsickle stick across the top to keep the SD card from falling inside the case when inserting or removing it.
Not trusting the model cement, I went over it all with hot glue.


Here is how it looks from the bottom. The card will be easy to swap out.


And here is the expansion slot cover snapped in place.


I hooked it up to keyboard, mouse, and TV.
Pressed the ON button and it fired right up.


I got more work to do with this setup, turning the power button off does not shut the Pi down.

Here is how I wired the power connector to the power supply.
I soldered lamp cord to the power connector terminals, then used ring crimp terminals on the power cord ends.
Then using 4-40 bolts and nuts, I fastened the crimp terminals to the power supply plug prongs, which had holes in the ends.
I then put heat shrink over both prongs for insulation.
I fastened the power supply down with wire cable ties. the power supply is located over a vent so it should stay cool.



Now I got to work on the software while Im waiting for the front USB plugs to get here.
I also need to find a 3 rca jack AV panel for the side of the case.
This will allow me to hook it to a tv with RCA jacks.

With the Pi hooked to HDMI, I get good video but no audio, got to explore that.

[mvolke1]

I wonder why you're not getting audio with your HDMI? That's strange. You should be.

With my console, all I used was the HDMI. With my arcade, I used the 1/8'' jack to go PC speakers. Both worked fine.

[DaOld Man]

I wonder why you're not getting audio with your HDMI? That's strange. You should be.

With my console, all I used was the HDMI. With my arcade, I used the 1/8'' jack to go PC speakers. Both worked fine.

I dont know. I reformatted my card, which had PiPlay on it, and put Retro Pi on it.
I think I like retro pi better.
Right now I have it plugged into a lcd monitor through a HDMI to DVI cable, the monitor has no speakers, so I need to hook it back to my TV and see how it looks.
Will let you know when I do that.

[Locke141]

How to change the sound out put from head phone jack to HDMI can be found here:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/audio-config.md

This is coming along great.

[DaOld Man]

Just tried it on my TV and sound works just fine. (HDMI).
Ive been wasting a lot of time playing "Quake Arena". But I have to unplug my SNES USB controller and plug in a mouse to play correctly.
Guess I need to drag out my USB Controller with Dpad, analog thumb stick and the works.
Right now I have Retro Pie controlled by the SNES controller, I need to set it up to work with keyboard too, this swapping between controller and mouse is for the birds.
Of course if my panel mount USB cables ever get here I will have two more USB ports.
Here is a quick pic of Quake Arena on 50" rear projection TV, HDMI. (Yeah I know I need to upgrade, but this TV still works fine.)

[DaOld Man]

BTW, If any of you guys decide to build one with SD card access through the expansion slot cover, I highly recommend you incorporate a catch pan (AKA hacked up Tic-Tac box).
I have dropped the micro SD card twice and the pan worked just fine. It caught the card and made it very easy to retrieve.
Not patting myself on the back (well maybe I am), but I have to say it was one of my better ideas.
Also, side note, the mausberry switch circuit works great!
I will officially call this project done when I get my front USB connectors installed and come up with some sort of A/V RCA jack panel. (More pics then.)
Of course I am still in the "hammering out the software" phase.

[pbj]

Keep us updated on the software.  I've got a dusty Pi laying around.

[DaOld Man]

As far as software, I just more or less followed the guide here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Installing-RetroPieEmulationStation-onto-Raspberry/step1/Setting-Up-the-Raspbian-OS-and-your-Pi/

This is for Pi2, I think Pi B or earlier models use a different image download. The image I downloaded was Retropie-V3.0-rpi2.img.
Links are in the writeup I linked to above

I used winrar to unzip it on my desktop PC (win 10 64 bit).
I plugged the 16 GB micro SD card into a usb reader that came with the card, I suppose any reader will work.
Plugged it into my PC and ignored the message box asking what I wanted to do with it.
I used SDFormatter to format the card. (Double check to make sure you are formatting the right drive!)

I then used wim32diskimager.exe to write the unzipped retropie-V3.0 image to the SD card.
After that was done, I removed the SD card from PC and put it in the Pi.
Powered up the Pi and it booted up pretty quick.
I had to set up the buttons on my keyboard and my usb gamepad so I can navigate through the emulation station menus.
This is a manual thing that you have to do before continuing but it only asks the first time.  I think it may repeat if you plug in a new controller, but not 100% sure about that yet.
The emulation station has a lot of emulators built in. Most I will not use. (I think you can remove them by deleting the folders on the card, but havent tried it yet.)
What is missing is Mame, NES, SNES, etc.
I attached a net cable to the pi, and using my windows network connections, I move a couple of games from my pc to a folder on the pi called ROMS/Mame.
Once there was at least one game in the mame folder, the Mame emulator showed up on the emulation station menu.
When I hooked up the ethernet cable to my network, i dont remember it asking for the password for my net, that is strange. Maybe it did and I forgot?
To use my mausberry switch, I had to exit emul station by pressing F4, then I had 5 seconds to hit any key.
In the console mode, I typed these in (with pi still connected to my network).
sudo wget http://files.mausberrycircuits.com/setup.sh
Hit enter and it downloaded the script it needs pretty fast.
Then:
sudo bash setup.sh
sudo reboot

The switch did great after that, but make sure the power button is in or on before rebooting, it gets a little confused if the switch is off, I had to reboot again to straighten it out.
I have not tried NES and other emuls yet.
Will update as I go.
Note: all the programs I mentioned above are free downloads. The doom and Quake games included with Emulation Station are demos and I guess are not copyrighted.

[Slippyblade]

Doom and Quake were both released into Public Domain by Id years ago.

[jdbailey1206]

I've got a dusty Pi...

Thats whats she said.

[DaOld Man]

Doom and Quake were both released into Public Domain by Id years ago.

Thanks! I did not know that. The games on the retro pie (doom, Duke Nukem, and Quake) all say they are demos. Know where I can get the full blown editions for pi? I especially like Quake iii Arena.

Jd: LOL (No offense PBJ).

Im have a time with the scraper. Is there anyway to automatically go through all my roms without having to hit "skip" on the ones not found?
Also, how do I get the ones that dont work off the list?
I copied Castlevania over to pi Rom/NES, and now NES emulator is showing up in the list and castlevania works good, but after I played it, it shows up twice in the NES list. 

[Slippyblade]

The scraper that comes with EmulationStation SUCKS.  I had much better luck using this one (https://github.com/sselph/scraper).  It is MUCH more reliable and doesn't give a rat's ass about your file names.  It hashes the ROM and compares against an internal database.  I used the windows version and then just copied over the images and gamelist.xml files.  I did have to update the paths in the gamelist.xml files when I did that though, but this way I had all the files on my windows box for future usage. 

[jdbailey1206]

Love Quake III Arena.  Me and my buddies had many a night we stayed up and had countless frag fests with that game. 

[darthpaul]

Great job Ken as usual  , I need me to find a non-working nes console, what a great gift this would make for someone for Christmas. Since the Pi is mounted in an NES console, I would stick to just nes and maybe super nes games but that's just me.

[Slippyblade]

Darth, you could do NES and Sega Master System.  Maybe Gameboy and Gameboy Color as well.  Those all just used an A/B button setup that would work find on an NES controller.

[darthpaul]

For once I would like to keep something I build simple but it's good idea Slippyblade and worth looking into if I find the time to build this. I have to confess, I spent a great deal more time sitting in front of my TV playing NES and super SNES games than I ever did in an Arcade, so this is very nostalgic for me.

[Slippyblade]

Darth, if you use the same image we are discussing (RetroPie) which uses RetroArch as the emulator, then it is literally a matter of copying over ROMS.  Retroarch uses the same controller setup for all cores, so you wouldn't even need to remap controls. It's a situation where if you get one console working, they all work, no extra effort.

[DaOld Man]

Darth, you know what would be cool? Put a RPi in a R2D2 model.

SlippyBlade, you think retroarch is better than emulation station? Should I switch?
I googled retroarch and one write up had some bad comments about the latest update.

[Slippyblade]

EmulationStation is just the front end.  It uses Retroarch as the emulation backend.

[DaOld Man]

EmulationStation is just the front end.  It uses Retroarch as the emulation backend.

So I already have retroarch? I told you I would be needing help on this. LOL

[Slippyblade]

Yep - If you use the RetroPie image, then what you are actually getting is a Raspian distro that already has RetroArch and EmulationStation pre-installed.

[DaOld Man]

A little update.
I got my panel mount USB plugs today. Mounted them in the cart door panel.
Here they are mounted in the panel, along with the network plug. Rear view:


And here they are plugged into the Pi. Kinda sloppy looking, I will probably clean up the wiring a bit later.


And here is front view.


Now I am waiting on a 3 RCA jack panel (V L R), to mount in the space where the original A/V jacks were.
I ordered them off ebay, from china. I sure hope they left the country before the stock market crash.
Hopefully I will get them soon but I wont be holding my breath.

[DaOld Man]

My AV panel arrived yesterday! Super fast shipping considering it came from China!
I was really getting worried when the seller un-registered from ebay. (Was thinking "kiss another 4 bucks goodbye".)
But it is here and ready to become a part of my Frankenstein monster.
Here is a pic:


And here is the plate I cut out earlier (more of the black plastic project box).


You can see in the last pic, I got the center mark slightly off, but I wont know it in a hundred years.
The plate I cut is 52.88 mm X 22.95 mm. You can see my state of the art diagram on the paper.
The AV pins are 15 mm apart, center to center.
I used black electrical tape on the shiny side of the plastic to protect from scratches.
Used a thumb tack (push pin) as a center punch, now it's off to the shed to do some drilling.

As for the software, I have several mame games that wont run, but it looks like all my NES games are.
I have a question for you Pi guys, I have several games that the scraper did not find a snapshot or image for, how do I get these, and where on the Pi do I put them?

[Slippyblade]

I've had no problems with the consoles I am using on the Pi.  NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, Sega Master, and Genesis all run fine on the B+; I am running a slight overclock though to help smooth out the wonky sound.

As far as scraper missed games goes, just google image search the name of the game.  You will need to add the info to the gamelist.xml though.  I like to re-save whatever images I grab in a consistent size and format though.  I think the path for images is:

Code: [Select]

~/.emulationstation/download_images/[console]
But I might be wrong, I'm at work and can't check right now.

[DaOld Man]

Thanks slippy. I will look into that.

Blame it on wrong measured dimensions, drill bit not lining up correctly on my marks, or my p-poor skills, (if you are a betting person, I suggest you put your money on the latter), the holes came out about a couple mm too close.
I had to "wallow" out the holes a bit.
Im not sure I like this. I have already overlooked the crappy jobs I did on the power and HDMI cutouts and I dont want to keep going in that direction.
So I guess I will have to cut out another plate for the AV connector, just hope I got enough of that black plastic left.
Back to the graveyard to dig up more parts for the Frankenstein.

EDIT: Out of shame, I was not going to post this pic, but I figured what the hey, maybe someone besides me can benefit from my screwup:


Looks like total crap. I just hate loosing the work I put on this. That plastic is not as easy to cut out as one would think, although the dremmel tool does a good job, it is very hard to keep it straight.
Oh well...

[DaOld Man]

Cut out another one. This is somewhat better, guess I will go with it, even though it is scratched up a little, but I dont have much of the plastic project box carcass left.

[solar]

the holes came out about a couple mm too close.

I hate it when that happens...it seems somewhat more acceptable if you really screw up the measurements but when it's a mm it can sometimes feel like somethings taking the *&!£.

Liking this conversion though

[DaOld Man]

Thanks solar, yeah, it aggravates me when I get it wrong.

The Frankenstein has a name! Is it alive yet? Soon, very soon...

[DaOld Man]

Well I found enough plastic to hack out one more. This one turned out fairly good.


Need to square up the top a little with sandpaper.

I temp mounted it into the NES case.


It looks ok, but I think the jacks stick too far out.
Im thinking of cutting the holes in the plate big enough to allow the male RCA plugs to go in.
Then recessing the female jacks back into the case, so they look more flush on the outside when not being used.
Am I overthinking this?

[jdbailey1206]

Cut out another one. This is somewhat better, guess I will go with it, even though it is scratched up a little, but I dont have much of the plastic project box carcass left.

That looks nice and clean!  Good redo.

Thanks solar, yeah, it aggravates me when I get it wrong.

The Frankenstein has a name! Is it alive yet? Soon, very soon...

How did you reapply the name to the door?

[DaOld Man]

That looks nice and clean!  Good redo.

How did you reapply the name to the door?

Thanks JD!
I have a friend whose wife makes labels and signs. She made me the new label.
I removed the old logo with finger nail polish remover and applied the new one.

She has a facebook website. If you cant get to it let me know I will try to get alternate contact info.
https://www.facebook.com/keygraphics1

[Peabo]

It looks great!

[yotsuya]

I was hoping you weren't going to follow the typical convention of putting Pi in the name. C'est la vie! 

Project is still pretty cool!

[DaOld Man]

Thanks Yots!
My first choice was "Pi-Mame-gameboy-snes-coleco-tendo", but I didnt have enough room for the label.
 

[Vidiot]

Thanks Yots!
My first choice was "Pi-Mame-gameboy-snes-coleco-tendo", but I didnt have enough room for the label.
 

If you get a Coleco emulator running on the Pi I'm gonna need to know about that.

Project is coming along nicely by the way. Keep up the good work!

[DaOld Man]

Ok, I got a new plate cut out, holes oversized to allow the male plugs to be inserted.
I used the original plate on the inside, sandwiched it all together with 2 4-40 bolts.
I didnt have anymore of the black plastic left, so I used clear plexi.
I painted the inside of the plexi black, it didnt turn out very well, but its livable.
Anyway, here is a shot of the inside, I used hotglue to hold the outside plate.
I also cut a thin piece of plexi (painted black), and glued it to the top.


And here is the inside plate and the AV panel attached:


I attached the AV panel to the inside plate, then attached the outside plate to the inside plate with two 4-40 bolts. What is left of the original NES case in that section is sandwiched between teh two plates.

And here is an outside shot. This is the part I was talking about being livable. The paint is on the inside of the plexi, but it looks sloppy, however the camera pic looks worse than real life, I think the plexi reflected the flash and showed more of the defaults in the paint side.


Here it is with AV cables plugged in.


Not to bad I guess.
If I ever do this again, I will know to make all the parts out of the black plastic.
It looks a lot better than the painted plexi.
OK, I have AV cables ordered, since I didnt want to cut the AV cable for my camcorder that I had been using.
I will need to solder the cable wires to the AV jacks, then this baby should be ready to close up.
Im thinking about straightening that HDMI plug though.
 

[DaOld Man]

Thanks vidiot. I do not have a coleco emulator on the pi, for some reason that just came to mind when I was poking at yots.

[wp34]

Well done.   

I want one now.   

[DaOld Man]

Thanks wp34.
Will be looking forward to seeing how yours turns out.

Got the AV cables today. Now I got to solder them into the AV panel and hardware work should be done.
Pictures follow soon, so stayed tuned.

[severdhed]

looking good. i just finished up a snes pi system, but i have another pi to use...i'm trying to decide between a NES or a genesis

[DaOld Man]

Thanks severdhed. I like the way your SNES turned out, I may tackle that next.

I really dont want to go out on a limb and say this project is finished since I am still twiddling with the software. I have a lot of roms that wont run.
But the hardware is finished (even though I still have humming in my speakers, but its not really noticeable unless you turn the speaker volume real loud.)

But for now I can say It's Alive!!!!!!!


Case put together and here is finished outside shot:


Here it is with cartridge door open, exposing 2 more USB ports and the lan connector:


And here are the guts, before closing it up:


This was a fun project, but the fun is not over yet, got to finish up the software.

[Slippyblade]

Love the way the ports look under the door flap.  Great job!

[DaOld Man]

Thanks slippyblade. I owe a lot to your work.

[Locke141]

 I like it.

My only question is why not use the higher quality HDMI?

One thing I like about the pi is that its essay to try differed images. 
You may want to try one of the following:
Much better front end: http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=223.0
A faster vertions of the under line OS your using: http://fuzon.co.uk/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8
 

looking good. i just finished up a snes pi system, but i have another pi to use...i'm trying to decide between a NES or a genesis

If your going to use a original controller to USB joystick adapter like you did with your SNES, I would go with the Genesis. The 6 + L/R button  second generations Genesis controller will give you more options for games. Playing SNES games on a Genesis controller is much better then playing Genesis games on a NES or even a SNES controller. If you go USB you could just have moltible sets of controller. 

[DaOld Man]

I like it.

My only question is why not use the higher quality HDMI?

One thing I like about the pi is that its essay to try differed images. 
You may want to try one of the following:
Much better front end: http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=223.0
A faster vertions of the under line OS your using: http://fuzon.co.uk/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8
 

Thanks Locke.
I will probably be using the HDMI, but the original NES had RCA audio/video jacks on the side. I thought it would be neat to duplicate that, and also put something in that space. It stuck with me and I guess I got a little hard headed, even though it was more expense (around 10 bucks), and a lot more work, it became my obsession.
Looking back now, I probably should have put the HDMI jack there and the power plug where I put the HDMI.
But of course if I decide to go old school and use an old TV, I will need those RCA jacks. (And probably a vcr to plug them into, probably will just stay with HDMI).
Thanks for the other software suggestion, I am going to pick up a couple more SD cards and play around with those versions.

[DaOld Man]

I took it over to my sons house last night and it was put through the final test.
This is my grand daughter playing Super Mario Brothers on it.
I think it passed the test.
My son is dropping hints about me building him one. Hmmm, Christmas is coming up so.....

[Slippyblade]

Woohoo!  Nothing says "Good Job" better than having to pry the controller out of someone's hands!

[ChanceKJ]

http://youtu.be/KZefOPHAekM#t=0m18s

[emphatic]

Nice work!

[RetroGreg]

Great job! I love these projects.

[DeLuSioNal29]

I would love to see a video of it in action.  From boot, to the menu, to a game, to the menu, to another game, to shutdown.

I'm really curious how the front end and such look.

Congrats on a job well done!   

DeLuSioNaL29

[DaOld Man]

Thanks for the kind comments guys!

I will see if I can make a video, not sure how to do it with the pi, guess I could use my iphone?
I will see what i can do and hopefully post something in a couple of days.

[DeLuSioNal29]

Phone will work. Nothing fancy.

I'm debating if I should use a Pi2 to create a Nintendo Multi-.Vs setup. But I will be using a PC CRT so I'm not sure yet.

I know nothing about Pis or Linux. Nada.

D

[yotsuya]

Phone will work. Nothing fancy.

I'm debating if I should use a Pi2 to create a Nintendo Multi-.Vs setup. But I will be using a PC CRT so I'm not sure yet.

I know nothing about Pis or Linux. Nada.

D

Ugh. PC or GTFO.

[ChanceKJ]

Why not wait for one of Naz's UniVersus boards?

[DeLuSioNal29]

Was looking for a cheap option until those boards are ready. Plus I still have to overhaul the Sanyo. I figured I'd toss something cheap in there in the meantime.

[pbj]

I keep waiting... and waiting... and waiting for the software to get there with the Pis.  The problem is we've all got access to too many devices that can do too much.  You're never going to see another console get completely compromised and altered into cabinet suitability like you did the original Xbox.  PS3 collecting dust.  Xbox 360 collecting dust.  Wii collecting dust.  Can't do anything cabinet related with them.