NESp V1 - My first portable

Status: Complete

Table of Contents

2/21/2007 - Designing begins

It was a dark and stormy night as the crazed Engineer fumbled toward the large switch. Grasping its long wooden handle in his hand he awaited for the right moment. The room filled with white light and then a thunderouscrackle of sound as lightning struck the tower and the Engineer pulled the level down. Electricity arced around the room as the Engineer gave the most evilous of laughs. The experiment moved from under the covers and rose up. It was....The Flashing Blue Screen of Dooomm!!

Ok maybe it wasn't exactly like that but I would have to say it was pretty close. It all started when I dusted off my old NES and copy of Contra for old times sake and I got to thinking, "Why don't I play my old games as often?". The great titles of the NES where endless; Zelda, Contra, Bad News Baseball, Tecmo Bowl, TMNT. Well around this time I discovered the great website of BenHeck. via his Xbox 360 Laptop. I thought, "Wow, theres people out there that portablize consoles?!". After looking through the pages of information and schematics on the NES console I drew up some designs and ordered parts.

First I made a quick render of what the final product would look like. With this completed, I spent many hours over a hot soldering iron to complete the controller boards and the voltage regulator circuits for my portable. This was back when I was still new at soldering and this was my first major operation.

2/23/2007 - Work Begins

This is the 3 in 1 Voltage/Video Amp/Controller IC board. As you can see theres a lot of wires that will hopefully hook up to the NES, the LCD, and the front controller buttons.

And these are the controller buttons. The left one is for the D-pad and the right one is for the A/B Start/Select Buttons.

Heres a quick test with the LED modded PSone screen.

Close up of the screen. Tecmo Super Bowl ftw. I should be considered the self-proclaimed champion of Tecmo Bowl.

Jaws! Yes..I do own this awful game.

Heres the case it is about 50% done. The sides are Walnut ~3/8" thick and the top is Birch ~1/8" thick. Sorry about the lack of progress pictures but I have an excuse...they are G14 classified.

I decided to use 8 AA 1.2V 2500mAh rechargable Energizer batteries. This should give enough umph to power my portable for a good 3 or so hours with the Linear Voltage Regulators. Then I got to thinking that if I replaced the 2 Linear Voltage Regulators with some DC-DC converters then I could increase the battery life of my portable.

I used a PTH08080WAS for the 5V line (powers the NES) and a PTN78000WAS for the 7.4V line (powers the screen). You can find both of these DC-DC converters on Texas Instruments website. The DC-DC convertors gave me a 200mA reduction in total amps consumed by my NES and Screen (from 650mA to 450mA). Giving me a total estimated battery life of 5.5 hours.

2/30/2007 - Finishing up

Finally the finished NESp. For a first attempt I think it turned out pretty good. There are a few things to change like make the buttons firmer and add a completely internal battery (don't have to take it out to charge). But thats what Rev 2 is for right?

3/17/2007 - Finishing up again

After a month or so of use the design flaws of the first NESp came forth. The oil finish I originally used needed to be replaced because it did not stand up to the constant NES that it received. The finish also didn't protect the wood from my sweaty palms. The A and B buttons where a bit loose causing the buttons to miss the tact switches which resulted in many deaths and swears while playing Contra.

Well Spring Break rolled around and I decided to fix these problems. I tore apart the entire NESp and sanded off the oil finish and replaced it with a thin polyurethane coat. This seals the wood and protects it from sweat and water (it looks better to boot). I fixed the buttons by adding some rubber foam to fill the gap between the buttons and the front wall. This also happens to dampens the clicking of the tact switches. The finished NESp V1.2 can be viewed below.