Upcoming Projects!

Lately we have been flip flopping between a few projects and finally have a path thanks to a few funny circumstances. After taking apart a few of the PCs around the house I've realized that I will be breaking the unspoken Netflix rule with my girlfriend, said rule being that she is always able to watch it in our bedroom and in the living room. As I value my life, brainstorming solutions was first and foremost on my mind.  Well, my mother has an old roku box she doesn't use, so that's one problem solved. Now onto why you care about all of this.

I am taking the huge living room pc out to use in our console project you will read about below. Now I could put in a roku box or something similar but what fun would that be?! We have been tossing around the idea of modding an original NES and it seems like there's no time like the present! Originally it was going to a fully masked box with custom boot screens and Hyperspin running in a shell. However this Netflix-for-my-girlfriend problem presents another layer of complexity.

The challenges from the original design are:
-it needs wireless
-it needs to be able to switch between HS and Boxee (the media program I choose) with either a NES controller or a windows media remote.
- it needs to have said USB remote sensor plugged in.

I chose a Zotac G43 Mini ITX motherboard, which has a built-in wifi card,  Some of the reviews say the wireless is pretty much shit, but we're going to have to take a gamble on it.  I believe I can just put Boxee in Hyperspin as if it was an emulator, I just hope exiting out will be just as easy.  And finally, I will just have to run the USB cable for the remote sensor inside the case, as I do not want any USB ports showing on the NES.

Ok, we have a plan!  I went out and bought a dremel to remove all of the inside plastic of the NES that we don't need.  Below are before pictures.  I know we still have to remove all of the stickers from the 80s that are on there, and most likely re-paint the entire case.  By the way this is the original NES that we grew up with, received on Christmas 1987 and it is what started us on this long, long road.

So far, the mobo and CPU fan (low profile) has been ordered, as well as the USB NES controller ports.  The small power supply (called a pico PSU) has not been for complete lack of funding.  But at least with these parts we can get going on the configuration and aesthetics of the outside.

I am not going to get into the consolebox project right now, sooooooooo to be continued!

Superbox!

Even though it is already completed, I will try to explain everything about the creation of the being known as Superbox. 

Plans were create by Daniel, based off of some pictures from this guy's post.  He did do some alterations, but exactly what I can't tell you as I am not the woodworker fool.  Anyhoo, once the pieces were cut out, they were wrapped in a shelf paper type vinyl from Home Depot, and screwed together.  In retrospect we should have filled the screw holes in with putty and sanded it so everything was nice and smooth, but instead we covered the holes with circular vinyl pieces, which does not look bad at all.

Once we got that together, we put together the control panel, which wasn't as hard as we had originally thought.  Just some hole drilling and some wire daisy chaining and we were in business.  We decided to go with 4 buttons per player due to space limitations (this thing IS a mini cab), with a 1 and 2 player button, and a coin insert button on the two sides.

This is when things started to slow down a little bit as we got to the more complicated stuff.  Luckily I ordered some screw mounts from Ultimarc, the company that sells the joysticks, buttons and PC interface for them.  We were able to screw these directly into the bottom base of Superbox, ensuring that the mobo would not move around.  it was all going fine and dandy until we realized a small design flaw -

THE MONITOR WOULD NOT FIT!!!!

There was nowhere for the monitor to sit without crushing the motherboard and there was really no where else to put the monitor.  So after a few F Bombs and some quiet sobbing in the corner (AND a quick trip to the hardware store) Daniel had the wildly wonderful idea to hang the damn monitor upside down like a bat.

Thanks to a windows (or nvidia) feature to display at 180 degrees, this caused very little headache and we were back in business.  The hard drive was mounted to the back of the wood holding the monitor, and Superbox was functional, but not yet finished!

The rest of the work was mainly cosmetic and I will list it briefly here.  We got a small 12 inch florescent light to go behind the marquee.  The marquee was printed at kinkos (where I used to work) but it took a few times to get a good backlit printout with a good lamination.  That is attached to a piece of plastic, that's wedged into the top, lined with vinyl. 

We ordered 2 small (but surprisingly powerful) HP speakers from best buy and just velcro'ed them to the top sides with industrial strength velcro, complete with a small headphone volume adjuster wheel.  We left a good part of the back top open for speaker sound and for ventilation.  The bottom of the door has a small cutout where we put the small USB panel that used to be in the front of the Dell computer this thing used to be, so you could easily plug in and USB device or headphones easily.

The monitor was covered with a piece of plexiglass screwed into a wood frame and covered with, you guessed it, vinyl!  We spliced the original power button (as it wasn't practical in this box) and wired to a nice big red button that is sticking out of the bottom left side of the machine.

I apologize if this all seems rushed through, I am typing this out in one sitting trying to remember how we went about things.  I realize I have not even touched on the software side, but for now just understand that this thing is 100 percent controllable from only the buttons that are there.  Below are some pictures and expect a follow up post at some point with everything that I missed!  Thanks for reading!

 

Welcome to the first post on the Retro Fools Game Modding Blog.  First you may ask, "Who are these fools?"  We are two brothers that decided to one day build a small MAME box, after thinking about it for years.  And after we did, the realization came that there is absolutely nothing stopping us for doing some really cool stuff in the way of classic gaming builds/mods/whathaveyou.   Let me preface by saying so far nothing we have done has been completely original ideas, when we see something we think is cool we do it, borrowing from whatever good ideas the person who we originally looked at had.  After all, actual doing is most of the battle (and the fun).

So far we have completed our first project, SuperBox, which is a 2 player tabletop arcade system, with a PC inside, running a front end called Hyperspin and running many classic console (and the MAME) emulator. I will post what pictures we took, but they were not many, due to the fact that we did not really think to document it.  Future projects will be a little more in depth.  Our next project is going to be a NES case modded with a PC inside, followed by a full size arcade cabinet.

I really don't expect to see many visitors, but hey you never know, and if you see something you like or just want to say hi, feel free!