Introduction: Nintoaster Project
This instructable is going to be a very loose ended one, so please bear with it. The reason for this is mainly to be a guide, not a step by step. The project was orgianlly posted by a youtube user by the name of vomitsaw. For this video tutorial on this, visit this link. This may become more detailed with the acceptance of vomitsaw.
Oh, and while were here....I am not an english major. But I'm not stupid, either. I just have horrid spelling. If something is so bad, you don't know what is says, please ask! Otherwise, I know. I'll buy a dictionary. Also, I know the formatting is..off...this is my first instructable, and I'm still toying with this system, so bare with me!
The basic skill set needed for this project include (but are not limited to)
-Soldering
-Reading and understand wiring schematics
-Understanding heat disapation
-Understanding house hold electiricty
Some of the items needed are:
-A NES: Mind you, you only need the board: no case, no RF mod. Controler plugs are needed, power and reset buttons recommended
-Toaster
-Perf board
-Wire: 22 gauge will work just fine
-Heat shrink tubing or other insulating wrap
-Buttons (if not salvaged from the NES)
-LED's and resistors for them: optional for a glow when the system is on
-Reostat: optional for the LED system, which is also optional
-DC brick: 12v out will work, and is the limit. No lower then 6v. This is optional, but this is how both myself and vomitsaw powered the system
-Two 10K ohm trim pot's: optional for the stereo mod (not on this yet, but will be at a later date)
-Three 1uf capacitors: also needed for the stereo mod.
-IDE cables: optional. You can use your wire, or chose to bypass this all togehter
-NES cartridge slot: you can salvage one from a gamegenie. Again, not a needed item.
-RCA port
-33 ohm resistor
-220 ohm resistor
-2N4401 transistor
-Glue: hot glue and some epoxy-
-Plexiglass: amount will vary from toaster to toaster
Tools needed:
-Some form of a rotary tool for drilling holes
-Soldering iron (unless you have heat vision)
-Multimeter
-Jump leads
-Desoldering tools: you can get by with soldering wick and a pump
-Third arm: not really needed, but very handy to have
-Anti-static wrist strap: again, not needed, but HIGHLY recommended to have on
-Time. And lots of it.
-Drill set
-Wire strippers/cutters
-Screw driver set
-Spare cord (either gutted from another appliance, or bought as a spare from somewhere)
Now that we have the needed stuff, we can tear down. But....before we do, i got a few pointers for this project:
-DO NOT expect this to be easy. Granted, it is, but there are some part that may really get to you *cough*RFmod*coughcough*
-Test EVERYTHING. Any part you use, check it if you can. This way, you can ensure that the board work prior to putting it all in the toaster.
-Use caution when plugging ANYTHING into household power. Not only can it hurt, it can kill if not respected. Love the outlet. Respect the outlet. But don't lick the outlet.
==TEAR DOWN==
In order to get your NES board out of the system, you will need to remove some screws from the underside of the system. Six, to be exact. You can save the screw if you want, or if you plan to use the case for something else.
Once the case is open, go ahead and looking about on the inside and find the other nine screws holding the board and RF shield and RF modulator in place. Once those 9 screw are out, you can lift off the first part of the RF shield, and get to the cartridge loader, where another 6 screw are waiting. What fun!
Remove those six screws, and you will be free to remove the cartridge loader. To do this, you will need to remove the loader frame first. Gentle shimmy the loader fram back and forth while gently pulling forward. Once the loader is out, do the same to the 72 pin connector.
Once all the shielding and loader parts or out of the way, you'll have the cord and board left. Go ahead and gently lift the board out, and unplug the three calbe going to it. None of them have snap tabs, so you can just tug them out. Put the board to one side for now, as we need to save some parts still.
The controllor ports should be straight forward to remove: all you need to do is slide of a bit of plastic from the casing, and off they'll come out. Stick these off to the side with your board for now. The reset and power button PCB is easyier, just needing a little motivating wiggle to come free.
Now, you can remove some parts off the PCB board to be used later. Personally, I would say to at least desolder the Reset button and save that. Removing these buttons a bit more tricky. You will see a piece of metal the buttons rest on, and this will have two tabs per button bent in ontp the buttons. just bend those straight again, desolder, and lift straight up. The power button is also a good one to salavge. Once the power button is off, you can pop the actually gray bit of plastic that says power off, which may be for the best. Place your buttons off to the side for later useage.
==READY THE BOARD==
This is the part that sucks: prepping the board. This will require a great deal of desoldering, so I hope your fine with that.
The two parts to come off are going to be the RF mod and the expansion port. Both will take time, as the expansion port has up to 70 odd spots to desolder, and the RF mod is just....coated in solder....
Lets start easy, and go with the expansion port. The picturs with this project will point out what each part is, as a head up. Once you locate the expansion port, find the pins on the topside of the board to remove them. You can use a desoldering iron, or using a sodlering iron and desoldering pump paired with some wick. If you are having troubles with this, go look at some desoldering videos. Thats how I learned! Once it's free, its now scrap. Feel free to keep it for something else, or just toss it.
And now the RF mod. There is a 7805 voltage regulator and heat sink on the RF mod that you will need to save. All you need is to desolder three pins and remove a screw. Save the regulator, heatsink, and screw. Now that those bits are saved, onto the fun part. As you are no doubt aware by now, theres is a heafty amount of solder here. Desolder everything holding the RF mod to the board until that sucker comes lose. you may need to wedge something between the board and mod to get that mod all the way off, as a heads up.
once you have spent some time, and said a few naughty words, you can throw that away. Honestly, it's best to save it for parts on other projects...but personally, I think burying it is a just cause.
One finally thing to do, since were at it, is to disable the lock pin. To do this, first locate it in the lower left hand corner (assuming the RF mod spot is also in the lower left hand corner). This IC will be closest to the corner of the RF mod spot. This Ic will have "Nintendo" on it, along with 18 pins. You will need to cut the fourth on in from the left, on the buttom portion (side closest to the RF mod spot). To be clear, you will have three uncut pins going from right to left, one cut pin, then four more uncut pins.
Now that the board is read, you need to make some parts!
==NEEDED CIRCUITS==
Without the RF mod, you now lose your audio out, video out, and power supply. To make up for that, we need to make a power supply circuit and a video amplifier cirucit. Well start off easy and go with the video amp.
The video amp will consist of the 2N4401 transistor, and the 33 and 220 ohm resistors. Refer to the project pictures of this wiring schematic. Yes, I will be loading a better image of all the circuits at a later (but soon!) date. I also have a picture of my video amp, for those you care to see.
Once you have the video amp done, you can focus on the powersource issue. As stated in the BOM, you can do one of two things here: you can chose to keep the brick plug system, or you can build the power supply into the toaster. Seeing as how much room you will have inside the toaster, this is best. That, an those blocks suck. If you want to keep the block, however, you can do so. You will need to get a plug for the power cord you are using, and wire it up in place of the "plug" on my circuit.
You can use a few things for the powersupply. Personally, I would just go to a theft store, and buy one from there, and gut it. The one that the NES uses is a bit bigger then those today, and it can be a pain to open. Again, you want the output DC voltage in hte 6-12 range.
Once gutted, wire the powersupply up to the system. Bare the polarity in mind!! At this point, you may have a gutted power supply with no lead (unless you jump ahead and gut the toaster). If you need a lead to test things with, you can always snag a power tool replacement cord from Wal-Mart. However: keep in mind that doing a mock set up of the board can be dangerious. Make sure things are not touching that shouldn't, and respect that outlet!! One other thing to point out is that the switch I used was the salavaged power button from earlier. This may or may not work for you, as your toaster may be diffrent, and need a diffrent button system.
The third circuit is optional: the LED arrary. This is not needed, and the toaster will work with them, or without them. I personally used them, and ended up using four of them. Red ones, each needing 100 ohms for them. I know there are better ways to do resistance drop for the LED's, but I prefer this method as it was the one I was taugh on. As you can see in the circuit picture, I have only two LED's set up: I used four in parrarell, and it results in the same needed stats. LED's vary, and so will the resistance needed. If you need help on this, here is a good place to go.
As you can see, I also placed a pot in the circuit. This will be used as a dimmer for the toaster, and will be calling the darkness dial of the toaster home.
Now that the circuit are made, you can start hooking things up to the board!
==HOOKING UP WITH THE BOARD==
Now...the board has a few things you need to keep in mind, and here they are
-The silver portions near the edges are ground. You can ground to these.
-There are five holes on the corner from the RF mod. If you lay the board down, so the RF mod spot is in the lower left hand corner, those holes will read off as such from left to right: Video out, Audio out, power in, reset, reset. Note: the two reset holes will act as a rest if they short. You can also refer to the blue above the holes for a reset.
-Player port one is the controller port on the longer of the two edges.
-The 72 pin connector sucks. You'll see why later.
-There are two ways to reset by setting a normal off momentary button (that you hopefully salavaged earlier!) to one of two spots: you can wire it up to the RF mod holes mentioned, or by wiring the buttons to pin 2 and three on that blue port that power/reset button PCB was in. The number pins refer from top being one, assumeing the RF mod spot is still in the lower left hand corner.
-When wiring thing to it, keep in mind how long you cord need to be for the toaster! I have this step first as it is easier to troubleshoot the board out of the system verus inside the toaster when all glued up
To start this party off, we should quickly wire the two circuit together. You will have a 5vDV lead on the video amp that will got to the 5v in from the power supply. At that join, stick a third wire in, that will go straight to the third hole on the board. You can also wire the ground leads to the board. If you chose to add the LED arrary, now is the best time to place it in.
Once you have those in, go ahead and hook up the RCA port. For those of you who don't know, the outer portion of the RCA port is ground. Wire up the ground portion of the RCA port to the grounding strip on the NES board. Then, respectivly wire up the video out (this will come from the video amp circuit) and audio out (straight from the board) to the RCA ports. Again, you can wire up a stero mod if you want. And, since you have all the needed gear out, I would. Here is the mod I will be using. This will need two 10k ohm trimmer pots, and three 1uf capacitors.
If you are going to have a Reset button, wire that up now aswell. Again, there are two ways to reset by setting a normal off momentary button (that you hopefully salavaged earlier!) to one of two spots: you can wire it up to the RF mod holes mentioned, or by wiring the buttons to pin 2 and three on that blue port that power/reset button PCB was in. The number pins refer from top being one, assumeing the RF mod spot is still in the lower left hand corner.
And finally, you will need to place the 72 pin adapter back on. This is to help later, by identifying what pins go to what. Although, right now, its more for testing.
For thos of you who want to skip testing, the top portion (that would be the side will all the solder points) of the cartridge slot on the board will lead to the back pins on the game.
Once you have all this wired, go a head and do a mock up of the board, to make sure things are all in working order. Snag a game, controller and controller port, and plug it all in. You can use jumper leads at points need, but again: make sure NOTHING shorts. Double check polarity BEFORE plugging into the wall, and ALWAYS be prepared for the worst. Be read to un plug quickly if need be.
If the game runs, and everything works, huzzah! Now to crame it in a toaster. If not, go over it all with a multi meter and troubleshoot it to see what went wrong, and where, and fix it.
==THE TOASTER==
The first step to this all will be gutting your toaster. Each toaster is diffrent, and you will need to do this on your own. I will try and be as helpful as possiable, but sadly, I can't make promises! Just a few thing to keep in mind:
-Make sure the heating element is gone, or close to it. Goes without saying we want to play games, not cook them
-Think before ripping it out! There may be parts of the toaster we can use to mount parts to.
-Save the cord! This will be nice, and make the toaster look even more like a real toaster, and not a transforming NES in disguise.
-Toaster are metal. Eletricity likes metal. Also goes without saying, but you will need to ensure that when mounting to the toaster, you will not be shorting out the power supply or the board
Once you have the shell of a toaster ready, start mounting! Drill holes where needed for the RCA ports, and mount the controllers and reset button into the other slot of the toaster. You can, of course, place anything wherever you wish: but this is usally the best looking.
Now...one thing I'm sure you may be wondering "Why do I need IDE cables and a spare port?" Easy: it may be easyier to mount that way. Again, each toaster will differ. You may be able to stick with the standard 72 pin connector. You may not. If you can, IDE cables are awesome for jumping from the board over to the cartridge slot. You can use a chunk of perf board to stick the cartridge slot on, and that is the better thing to do. This will not only making soldering to is easier, but you can glue that perf board in place. Again, remember the top of the board goes to the back to the game.
Once everything is mounted, and glued in place, plug her up again, and take it for a test toast!
Oh, and while were here....I am not an english major. But I'm not stupid, either. I just have horrid spelling. If something is so bad, you don't know what is says, please ask! Otherwise, I know. I'll buy a dictionary. Also, I know the formatting is..off...this is my first instructable, and I'm still toying with this system, so bare with me!
The basic skill set needed for this project include (but are not limited to)
-Soldering
-Reading and understand wiring schematics
-Understanding heat disapation
-Understanding house hold electiricty
Some of the items needed are:
-A NES: Mind you, you only need the board: no case, no RF mod. Controler plugs are needed, power and reset buttons recommended
-Toaster
-Perf board
-Wire: 22 gauge will work just fine
-Heat shrink tubing or other insulating wrap
-Buttons (if not salvaged from the NES)
-LED's and resistors for them: optional for a glow when the system is on
-Reostat: optional for the LED system, which is also optional
-DC brick: 12v out will work, and is the limit. No lower then 6v. This is optional, but this is how both myself and vomitsaw powered the system
-Two 10K ohm trim pot's: optional for the stereo mod (not on this yet, but will be at a later date)
-Three 1uf capacitors: also needed for the stereo mod.
-IDE cables: optional. You can use your wire, or chose to bypass this all togehter
-NES cartridge slot: you can salvage one from a gamegenie. Again, not a needed item.
-RCA port
-33 ohm resistor
-220 ohm resistor
-2N4401 transistor
-Glue: hot glue and some epoxy-
-Plexiglass: amount will vary from toaster to toaster
Tools needed:
-Some form of a rotary tool for drilling holes
-Soldering iron (unless you have heat vision)
-Multimeter
-Jump leads
-Desoldering tools: you can get by with soldering wick and a pump
-Third arm: not really needed, but very handy to have
-Anti-static wrist strap: again, not needed, but HIGHLY recommended to have on
-Time. And lots of it.
-Drill set
-Wire strippers/cutters
-Screw driver set
-Spare cord (either gutted from another appliance, or bought as a spare from somewhere)
Now that we have the needed stuff, we can tear down. But....before we do, i got a few pointers for this project:
-DO NOT expect this to be easy. Granted, it is, but there are some part that may really get to you *cough*RFmod*coughcough*
-Test EVERYTHING. Any part you use, check it if you can. This way, you can ensure that the board work prior to putting it all in the toaster.
-Use caution when plugging ANYTHING into household power. Not only can it hurt, it can kill if not respected. Love the outlet. Respect the outlet. But don't lick the outlet.
==TEAR DOWN==
In order to get your NES board out of the system, you will need to remove some screws from the underside of the system. Six, to be exact. You can save the screw if you want, or if you plan to use the case for something else.
Once the case is open, go ahead and looking about on the inside and find the other nine screws holding the board and RF shield and RF modulator in place. Once those 9 screw are out, you can lift off the first part of the RF shield, and get to the cartridge loader, where another 6 screw are waiting. What fun!
Remove those six screws, and you will be free to remove the cartridge loader. To do this, you will need to remove the loader frame first. Gentle shimmy the loader fram back and forth while gently pulling forward. Once the loader is out, do the same to the 72 pin connector.
Once all the shielding and loader parts or out of the way, you'll have the cord and board left. Go ahead and gently lift the board out, and unplug the three calbe going to it. None of them have snap tabs, so you can just tug them out. Put the board to one side for now, as we need to save some parts still.
The controllor ports should be straight forward to remove: all you need to do is slide of a bit of plastic from the casing, and off they'll come out. Stick these off to the side with your board for now. The reset and power button PCB is easyier, just needing a little motivating wiggle to come free.
Now, you can remove some parts off the PCB board to be used later. Personally, I would say to at least desolder the Reset button and save that. Removing these buttons a bit more tricky. You will see a piece of metal the buttons rest on, and this will have two tabs per button bent in ontp the buttons. just bend those straight again, desolder, and lift straight up. The power button is also a good one to salavge. Once the power button is off, you can pop the actually gray bit of plastic that says power off, which may be for the best. Place your buttons off to the side for later useage.
==READY THE BOARD==
This is the part that sucks: prepping the board. This will require a great deal of desoldering, so I hope your fine with that.
The two parts to come off are going to be the RF mod and the expansion port. Both will take time, as the expansion port has up to 70 odd spots to desolder, and the RF mod is just....coated in solder....
Lets start easy, and go with the expansion port. The picturs with this project will point out what each part is, as a head up. Once you locate the expansion port, find the pins on the topside of the board to remove them. You can use a desoldering iron, or using a sodlering iron and desoldering pump paired with some wick. If you are having troubles with this, go look at some desoldering videos. Thats how I learned! Once it's free, its now scrap. Feel free to keep it for something else, or just toss it.
And now the RF mod. There is a 7805 voltage regulator and heat sink on the RF mod that you will need to save. All you need is to desolder three pins and remove a screw. Save the regulator, heatsink, and screw. Now that those bits are saved, onto the fun part. As you are no doubt aware by now, theres is a heafty amount of solder here. Desolder everything holding the RF mod to the board until that sucker comes lose. you may need to wedge something between the board and mod to get that mod all the way off, as a heads up.
once you have spent some time, and said a few naughty words, you can throw that away. Honestly, it's best to save it for parts on other projects...but personally, I think burying it is a just cause.
One finally thing to do, since were at it, is to disable the lock pin. To do this, first locate it in the lower left hand corner (assuming the RF mod spot is also in the lower left hand corner). This IC will be closest to the corner of the RF mod spot. This Ic will have "Nintendo" on it, along with 18 pins. You will need to cut the fourth on in from the left, on the buttom portion (side closest to the RF mod spot). To be clear, you will have three uncut pins going from right to left, one cut pin, then four more uncut pins.
Now that the board is read, you need to make some parts!
==NEEDED CIRCUITS==
Without the RF mod, you now lose your audio out, video out, and power supply. To make up for that, we need to make a power supply circuit and a video amplifier cirucit. Well start off easy and go with the video amp.
The video amp will consist of the 2N4401 transistor, and the 33 and 220 ohm resistors. Refer to the project pictures of this wiring schematic. Yes, I will be loading a better image of all the circuits at a later (but soon!) date. I also have a picture of my video amp, for those you care to see.
Once you have the video amp done, you can focus on the powersource issue. As stated in the BOM, you can do one of two things here: you can chose to keep the brick plug system, or you can build the power supply into the toaster. Seeing as how much room you will have inside the toaster, this is best. That, an those blocks suck. If you want to keep the block, however, you can do so. You will need to get a plug for the power cord you are using, and wire it up in place of the "plug" on my circuit.
You can use a few things for the powersupply. Personally, I would just go to a theft store, and buy one from there, and gut it. The one that the NES uses is a bit bigger then those today, and it can be a pain to open. Again, you want the output DC voltage in hte 6-12 range.
Once gutted, wire the powersupply up to the system. Bare the polarity in mind!! At this point, you may have a gutted power supply with no lead (unless you jump ahead and gut the toaster). If you need a lead to test things with, you can always snag a power tool replacement cord from Wal-Mart. However: keep in mind that doing a mock set up of the board can be dangerious. Make sure things are not touching that shouldn't, and respect that outlet!! One other thing to point out is that the switch I used was the salavaged power button from earlier. This may or may not work for you, as your toaster may be diffrent, and need a diffrent button system.
The third circuit is optional: the LED arrary. This is not needed, and the toaster will work with them, or without them. I personally used them, and ended up using four of them. Red ones, each needing 100 ohms for them. I know there are better ways to do resistance drop for the LED's, but I prefer this method as it was the one I was taugh on. As you can see in the circuit picture, I have only two LED's set up: I used four in parrarell, and it results in the same needed stats. LED's vary, and so will the resistance needed. If you need help on this, here is a good place to go.
As you can see, I also placed a pot in the circuit. This will be used as a dimmer for the toaster, and will be calling the darkness dial of the toaster home.
Now that the circuit are made, you can start hooking things up to the board!
==HOOKING UP WITH THE BOARD==
Now...the board has a few things you need to keep in mind, and here they are
-The silver portions near the edges are ground. You can ground to these.
-There are five holes on the corner from the RF mod. If you lay the board down, so the RF mod spot is in the lower left hand corner, those holes will read off as such from left to right: Video out, Audio out, power in, reset, reset. Note: the two reset holes will act as a rest if they short. You can also refer to the blue above the holes for a reset.
-Player port one is the controller port on the longer of the two edges.
-The 72 pin connector sucks. You'll see why later.
-There are two ways to reset by setting a normal off momentary button (that you hopefully salavaged earlier!) to one of two spots: you can wire it up to the RF mod holes mentioned, or by wiring the buttons to pin 2 and three on that blue port that power/reset button PCB was in. The number pins refer from top being one, assumeing the RF mod spot is still in the lower left hand corner.
-When wiring thing to it, keep in mind how long you cord need to be for the toaster! I have this step first as it is easier to troubleshoot the board out of the system verus inside the toaster when all glued up
To start this party off, we should quickly wire the two circuit together. You will have a 5vDV lead on the video amp that will got to the 5v in from the power supply. At that join, stick a third wire in, that will go straight to the third hole on the board. You can also wire the ground leads to the board. If you chose to add the LED arrary, now is the best time to place it in.
Once you have those in, go ahead and hook up the RCA port. For those of you who don't know, the outer portion of the RCA port is ground. Wire up the ground portion of the RCA port to the grounding strip on the NES board. Then, respectivly wire up the video out (this will come from the video amp circuit) and audio out (straight from the board) to the RCA ports. Again, you can wire up a stero mod if you want. And, since you have all the needed gear out, I would. Here is the mod I will be using. This will need two 10k ohm trimmer pots, and three 1uf capacitors.
If you are going to have a Reset button, wire that up now aswell. Again, there are two ways to reset by setting a normal off momentary button (that you hopefully salavaged earlier!) to one of two spots: you can wire it up to the RF mod holes mentioned, or by wiring the buttons to pin 2 and three on that blue port that power/reset button PCB was in. The number pins refer from top being one, assumeing the RF mod spot is still in the lower left hand corner.
And finally, you will need to place the 72 pin adapter back on. This is to help later, by identifying what pins go to what. Although, right now, its more for testing.
For thos of you who want to skip testing, the top portion (that would be the side will all the solder points) of the cartridge slot on the board will lead to the back pins on the game.
Once you have all this wired, go a head and do a mock up of the board, to make sure things are all in working order. Snag a game, controller and controller port, and plug it all in. You can use jumper leads at points need, but again: make sure NOTHING shorts. Double check polarity BEFORE plugging into the wall, and ALWAYS be prepared for the worst. Be read to un plug quickly if need be.
If the game runs, and everything works, huzzah! Now to crame it in a toaster. If not, go over it all with a multi meter and troubleshoot it to see what went wrong, and where, and fix it.
==THE TOASTER==
The first step to this all will be gutting your toaster. Each toaster is diffrent, and you will need to do this on your own. I will try and be as helpful as possiable, but sadly, I can't make promises! Just a few thing to keep in mind:
-Make sure the heating element is gone, or close to it. Goes without saying we want to play games, not cook them
-Think before ripping it out! There may be parts of the toaster we can use to mount parts to.
-Save the cord! This will be nice, and make the toaster look even more like a real toaster, and not a transforming NES in disguise.
-Toaster are metal. Eletricity likes metal. Also goes without saying, but you will need to ensure that when mounting to the toaster, you will not be shorting out the power supply or the board
Once you have the shell of a toaster ready, start mounting! Drill holes where needed for the RCA ports, and mount the controllers and reset button into the other slot of the toaster. You can, of course, place anything wherever you wish: but this is usally the best looking.
Now...one thing I'm sure you may be wondering "Why do I need IDE cables and a spare port?" Easy: it may be easyier to mount that way. Again, each toaster will differ. You may be able to stick with the standard 72 pin connector. You may not. If you can, IDE cables are awesome for jumping from the board over to the cartridge slot. You can use a chunk of perf board to stick the cartridge slot on, and that is the better thing to do. This will not only making soldering to is easier, but you can glue that perf board in place. Again, remember the top of the board goes to the back to the game.
Once everything is mounted, and glued in place, plug her up again, and take it for a test toast!
