Bacteria's portable DreamCast handheld console - IntoDream

Promised update - here it is...

Firstly, getting the last bit of life from my soldering iron, I seem to go through one iron (and a bit on the next one) per project - here you see the iron's protection has gone and the iron is eating itself to death! :roll: Never mind, they only cost about £5 each on ebay including postage!



Completed the wiring of the controller, plastic sheet to lower the wiring fits nicely, and also provides a nice ledge for the DC board to sit on.

You will now see how snug everything is:



Here is my (spare) DC board, the plugs trimmed to remove the bits that stick out, slight trim on the opposite end, two corners trimmed and a tiny strip of board (no traces on it) too. All this is needed so the board fits, and the rumble motor doesn't touch the board. It is an extremely tight fit, my calculations ages ago were literally bang on, there was no room for error on this.



You can see the layers on the controller (4 layers), and the "step" between that and the DC board. The controller is secured in place by just one screw, through a piece of card to stop any chance of a short.

Apart from the 5 wires from the d-pad, all the other wires stretch to the opposite side of the case, that is so the controller can be easily removed for any repairs if needed.





All that is needed is the controller 6 wires to be wired to the DC, wire the audio cables to the PSone screen, final inspection, a few misc tests, then I should be able to test the DC working with the joystick, start and d-pad buttons. All being well, the DC can be installed into the case, after testing the system to RGB instead of composite as at the moment. RGB will not only give crisper graphics and more accurate colours, but also be compatible with more NTSC titles.

Not going to do this testing work today, out of time, will do in a couple of days.

 

I have my fingers crossed that everything works.

 

It's almost like a form of courage, although it isn't; like a mixture of fear/excitement/anticipation!

Tested the setup with a normal DC controller, all ok. Great.

Then swapped cable for the controller wired into my portable - shaking a bit, adrenaline....

YAY - all works fine - the memory card binged into action, didn't expect that as it wasn't connected to power, although I knew the VMU works fine without its internal batteries when connected to the controller; giving a pic on the small screen, as you see in the photo. Unlike when I had the other DC controller with no memory pack installed, it gave a message on the screen about needing a VMU for 5 memory blocks, this time it didn't, went straight in - so the VMU works great! Tested the start button, and the red button, d-pad and joystick - all seem to work great! :icon_bigg

Have more testing to do, tomorrow or Thursday, however seems to show I did all the wiring right, and system works! YAY



(game BTW is PenPen)

Need to test the other buttons, the orientation of the joystick; rumble pack, other buttons, shoulder buttons (forgot to wire them, will have to do that!).

 

Oh man, using a PAL Dreamcast has really ruined it Those black boarders are right off putting to me. Still, apart from me being a fussy bastard this is a really cool system you're putting together.

Yakumo

 

He can still flash it to an NTSC one...

 

Ahh, all is good then. That really needs to be done. A hand held / portable with a squashed screen is not what you want. :nod:

 

PAL Dreamcast can still output 60Hz. Guess he'd just need a swap disc or something.

 

I think the border is because of the title screen rather than actual game (you get that sometimes). In PenPen, I didn't start the game proper, only navigated the initial screens; in Quake 3 I did have the actual game running - it was full screen as expected. Here was an early project pic:



(not a good pic, but proves the point). Also full screen on the intro to Sonic Adventure and also Ecco - I think therefore that PenPen has the border on purpose, I just happened to try that game out as it was my latest purchase, the disc was very scratched, so wanted to test it ran ok, which it did.

 

Actually, I just booted Sega Sports Tennis 2k2 on my PAL Dreamcast and it had borders! Good job I have a PAL HKT-3030 in a NTSC-J shell (weird car boot find) - flashed to NTSC-J settings.

 

My Japanese Pen Pen is full screen as you can see fro the video on my site. 1 thing to remember is that not all PAL games will run in 60htz mode so you will come across these boarder problems from time to time. The best thing to do is install a 60htz mod switch for those games which were not enhanced for PAL.

 

PAL on 60Mhz on a PSone screen scrolls the image, as designed for 50Mhz (that's my understanding anyway), NTSC PSone screens are 60Mhz, although of course if you use that on a PAL console you get a b&w picture not colour. That means I have to put up with a border if a game has one.; it isn't an issue though! ;-)

 

I take my hat off to you for this build. It's amazing. Congratulations in some amazing workmanship and skills.

 

Thanks! I greatly appreciate the comments.

Just tested the rig with alternating the grounds - turns out that although my continuity tester doesn't make a "beep" to indicate that the ground from the d-pad on the controller is connected to the ground on the screen, it does work in practice. That means back to original idea, of using the two existing switches to alternate between the screen functions and the slanted d-pad. Nice!

Also, rewired the joystick to how it should be, works fine now.

I know this is only a small update, although worth posting, time is short today as off to work soon.

 

Great job, it looks really good.

How is the battery life in practice?

and

Is you next project the portable Game Cube?

 

Battery life - Li-ions are charged and ready but waiting until the console is in the casing before connecting, then running system to see how long it all runs for.

Next project - promised people N64 - relatively easy project, a few people want to make an N64 portable from my guides, so I will make a start > end compilation of videos as the WIP guide for it. After that, probably do ColecoVision, as a challenge: it not only uses -5v, 5v and 12v but needs modding to do composite video too. Might also be able to trim the board a bit too. I will do a GameCube, as well as a variety of other systems too over the next couple of years.

 

Well, the 4 buttons for the rotating d-pad work / screen controls; great! Just need to check I orientated them fine for Q*Bert (I did anticlockwise, think that is right!?). Wired to two spare identical switches to those in the case base; I only have to move the wires to the other switches and job done.

Tested Quake 3, couldn't fire weapon as controller not wired to the shoulder buttons, did it to check the rumble pack - worked great - as ran over a weapon and picked it up, got a quick red light flash and slight rumble; went into training room, immediately got fragged (as wanted), rumble really kicked in to give quite a strong rumble; and light worked nicely during that time. In other words, rumble motor and light work great!

 

If my memory serves me right, Coleco is a somewhat big system, is the hardware inside it so tiny that it can be a decent portable?

 

Haven't opened up a Coleco yet, although pics I have seen seem to show the board to only occupy half the space in the console. Not sure if the board can be trimmed much or not. That is part of the fun of a project - experimenting.

 

The shifted d-pad should have been rotated clockwise not anticlockwise, so resoldered 4 wires to correct this.

Interesting thing - Q*Bert (a burned CDR game) doesn't read my VMU, says it needs 8 blocks and the card is full! Checking the card, there were 5 blocks used only from PenPen so 195 left. Loaded up Quake 3, saved some custom settings, like naming the character, it saved the 25 blocks needed fine, reporting correctly 170 blocks on the VMU remaining. Tried Q*Bert again, still doesn't read the VMU. Not an issue, but I am curious as to why!

Did the part of the project I was dreading for a while, trimmed bits off the corners of the DC board and sloped parts, so it will fit in the case ok. This is where it is indespensible to have a spare board - I could check what was ok to remove and what isn't easily, which I then did on the proper board. Used a fair bit of compressed air to blow out any metal shavings from this work (which could cause a short), tested system again, works fine.

Next job will be to secure the two case halves together with the "H" shaped plastic (looking forward to that actually); connect RGB and check that works ok, connect the audio, connect the switch connections to the case backing, connect the shoulder buttons, then trim the daughter board from the DC to the controller (the one with the ribbon connecting), then fix the fans, secure the system in place, connect the battery power, check the system closes properly, do so, test.

 

When you use a vacuum formed case, or a tupperware box trimmed to size, you have two case halves that need to be secured together properly. You also have the issue that each section is fairly weak as a structure. You therefore need to find a way to not only strengthen but also secure the sections together.

Here is a pic so far of it half done. I will complete the rest tomorrow morning (UK time), and will then post a "how-to" as another PDF document on my site as it is ideal material for a guide.

Ignore the jagged bits in the corners, they will be covered when the other case half is secured in place.

What did I use? general purpose glue, hot glue, duct tape and the most important ingredient - "H" piece car windscreen replacement plastic strip parts!



I will of course post a new topic here, with a couple of pics on the work in this thread and set up a new thread for the mini guide, as before.