N64 won’t power in with rcp flex wired on.

[comer.matthew96]

I’ve got an n64 hooked up to an rvl pms 2 but when I wire in the deco flex cable the n64 stops powering on. Any idea what’s wrong?

 

[cy]

Do you have any of the PIF connections wired? It doesn't look like you do unless you connected these after taking your picture.

All of these pads need to have a wire going to a pin on the PIF or the CPU. I think there's one on the video chip too though I'd have to dig to find where exactly it'd be.

 

[comer.matthew96]

I haven’t taken the pod off the board. Is it still required? Would that cause it not to power on?

 

[cy]

I haven’t taken the pod off the board. Is it still required? Would that cause it not to power on?

I'm assuming you mean the PIF? And yes it would since the cartridge slot is no longer connected to the PIF with this flex relocation!

 

[comer.matthew96]

I'm assuming you mean the PIF? And yes it would since the cartridge slot is no longer connected to the PIF with this flex relocation!

Got it. Do you have a pinout for the pif. I can differentiate where to put the wires.

 

[cy]

The silk screen already tells you where everything needs to go, but I made a diagram to make it even more clear:

Where S goes depends on what motherboard revision you have. On Rev 01-04 boards, you can connect S to U4's 14th pin, or U5's 5th pin (either will work). Rev 05-09 use a different AVE chip, so you should be able to wire the S pad to U1's 32nd pin.

With all due respect, you should be able to read the flex and figure everything except for the S pin out by yourself.

 

[comer.matthew96]

The silk screen already tells you where everything needs to go, but I made a diagram to make it even more clear:

View attachment 42172View attachment 42173View attachment 42174


Where S goes depends on what motherboard revision you have. On Rev 01-04 boards, you can connect S to U4's 14th pin, or U5's 5th pin (either will work). Rev 05-09 use a different AVE chip, so you should be able to wire the S pad to U1's 32nd pin.

With all due respect, you should be able to read the flex and figure everything except for the S pin out by yourself.

This is much more helpful. I’m a big noob. This is just a project I’ve always wanted to do.

What I found out after removing the flex and trying to report the board is that soldering the flex onto the mobo fries something. Because I put everything back and it still wouldn’t power on. This is the second mobo this has happened to.

 

[Bubberiffic]

Doing something different for a first project might be the way to go. It seems like you're not extremely experienced with a soldering iron and soldering to pins on ICs. I wish you the best of luck, but damaging some of finite population of N64 motherboards might be not be the way to go right now.

 

[cy]

Doing something different for a first project might be the way to go. It seems like you're not extremely experienced with a soldering iron and soldering to pins on ICs. I wish you the best of luck, but damaging some of finite population of N64 motherboards might be not be the way to go right now.

Yeah... To kind of add to what Bubberiffic said here, N64 projects are more difficult and complicated than things like the Wii. I suspect you may have shorted some of the pins on your first board if you ended up killing it. These flexes aren't easy to solder, and I don't think it'd hurt to try and improve your soldering skills if you're unable to get this one working.

Your solder joints don't look too bad, but if you're killing boards you might want to reconsider or at least try bettering your soldering skills. It might help to try using some better flux, I like to use Chipquik SMD291 for all my soldering, and it's never steered me wrong.

 

[comer.matthew96]

Yeah... To kind of add to what Bubberiffic said here, N64 projects are more difficult and complicated than things like the Wii. I suspect you may have shorted some of the pins on your first board if you ended up killing it. These flexes aren't easy to solder, and I don't think it'd hurt to try and improve your soldering skills if you're unable to get this one working.

Your solder joints don't look too bad, but if you're killing boards you might want to reconsider or at least try bettering your soldering skills. It might help to try using some better flux, I like to use Chipquik SMD291 for all my soldering, and it's never steered me wrong.

I have a good amount of soldering experience. After some testing I believe the short is happening because batteries are connected while I am soldering. But that’s just my thoughts.

 

[cy]

I have a good amount of soldering experience. After some testing I believe the short is happening because batteries are connected while I am soldering. But that’s just my thoughts.

That definitely could be what happened. That's like rule #1 of electronics... You shouldn't solder to a live board...

 

[comer.matthew96]

That definitely could be what happened. That's like rule #1 of electronics... You shouldn't solder to a live board...

Mistakes were made.