Hacker Ben Heck attempts to improve the NES.

Posted 8 minutes ago - thus I haven't watched it yet. Will tomorrow though.

 

cool, will watch this tonight along with The 4th show of the new Top Gear and the 1st show of the new Wheeler Dealers (a must show for car lovers)

 

Oh man I love his humor. I remember that from his old original design articles.


Can't wait for the next part

 

Enjoyed the innovation part of what he's doing. He did have an option though for the cart pins - when I got a JAMMA port for my Master Controller for my Unity system, the JAMMA port gripped the JAMMA boards like a vice, so I cut the thing in two carefully, then made a spacer (1mm styrene) and superglued it as a sandwich; he could take a NES cart port (eg from a GameGenie, etc), cut in half, and then use the two parts to a couple of bulldog clips that compress the cart pins to the cart board traces; then use a motor to separate. That's how i'd do it anyway!

 

Dunno if making the connector with teeth is worth the effort but I'd like that motorized loading mechanism. It should work fine with regular connector.

 

Yes, it would work fine with the regular connector, if the connector was made a millimeter or so wider (not hard to do), so would be able to insert and remove a cart board but also maintain contact with it when inside. That would be simpler and more reliable too; however sometimes modding is not always about the simple solution!

 

I like the design Ben's doing with the slot loading mechanism. I remember a friend of mine had a NES toaster years ago. Like 10 or 12. It finally died on day and we couldn't resurrect it since we had no idea what was wrong at the time. Now I wish he had kept since I now know what was wrong and could easily fix it. As had been said many times already, the cart connector was at fault. Had some bent pins in it. Probably from using the Game Genie we always used on SMB3.

Ben's loading system reminds me of slot loading optical drives.

 

Part 3 is out and it is finally done.

 

Yeah, I watched that last night. I really love his idea and it works too but as always it's as ugly as sin. It would be cool if there were two guys. Ben did all the tech stuff while the other guy would be the designer.

 

It's also huge, it reminded me of VCR from early 80's.

 

I abstained from posting anything till the last episode airs, but his solder works sucks, its a terrible technique, that will lead to dull dry joints, or at worst overheating and blowing components.

I am surprised that Element 14 is one of his major sponsors, atleast they allso back Jeri Ellsworth.

 

I'm sure in the first episode he said he was using the original case.....weird

 

I like it but the system turned out much larger than I expected. There seemed to be a lot of empty space, it makes me think he might have more plans for that system.

 

Now that the project is complete I feel bad for wasting my time watching these episodes.


His new case is somewhat larger than the original - if he mods the case it should be smaller or atleast pay tribute to the original.

Second, I believe that all the newly added moving parts will break somewhat easier than the old loading mechanism and I'd be surprised if it still works 10 years in the future.
If I was using that NES I would also be worried that the wheels/case leave scratchmarks on my cartridges - so they might not even survive this NES lifetime (though, I could be wrong, maybe this does work perfectly - hard to tell from video).

And worst of all, he turned that easy to maintain system into a maintenance nightmare by hardwiring cables all over the system and even to the jacks in the case.
Anybody trying to open this case would probably rip all solder joints loose or break cables.


Once more I did not get what benheck promised


On the other hand, however, I really like to watch him make cases.
Normally, the cases he designs look really good technically (at least from video). I wish I had a CNC machine for that.
I also like the creativity of his mods, I just wish he would put more time into one project, rather than rushing 10 projects at once (9 of which are poor marketing campaigns like the current AMD one)

Just my opinion though.

 

I didn't mind the final design though it did seem a like a prototype and, obviously, was very large. I expected him to fold the motherboard under the "drive" and make it a lot shorter... maybe that required too much engineering for his tastes, though.

 

final video has gone 'private'!?

 

Hmm, weird...

It was re-uploaded. I wonder what they changed?

 

There was a audio problem with the first video, when he was talking whilst playing the nes at his house in the first video that part of the dialogue was missing from the scene.

 

You know, I think I remember that. I was watching it with only one earbud in and assumed the voice was in the other channel.

 

That case is vomit inducing.