Hello friends! It's been a while since I've posted any of my projects, but I've decided to enter in this year's building contest with a project idea I've been toying with for a while. First, to explain!
I joined the modding scene right at the end of the Modretro days, when projects were held together with hot glue and hope, and right at the beginning of the Bitbuilt days where projects began to be less of a fire hazard and more professional looking. Nowadays we have board trimming down to a science, easily accessible 3d printed shells, fully customized circuit boards, and even customized software made specifically for portablizing.
As amazing as all of that progress and success is, I still have a strong sense of nostalgia for the days where shells were frankencased from whatever you could find laying around, and every project looked extremely unique. I have begun to lose interest in modern portablizing, because it feels like I would just be remaking the same project that someone else made (handheld wii), just in a different shell. That still requires a TON of work and creativity (and I'm definitely not knocking yall's super sexy portables at all), but that isn't the kind of project that sparked my interest in modding originally.
In this project, I'm hoping to go back in time to when projects felt weirder and wackier, and looked more like a fever dream of a console than an actual commercial product. On to the actual interesting stuff!
I found this model of Playskool cassette player at Goodwill a few years ago, and it struck me as being very N64-like all in of its primary colored glory. I just ordered a new one in good shape to do this project. My goal for this project is to convert this kids cassette player into a functional N64, hopefully with a working cassette tray where you can put carts, and a Hey You Pikachu microphone. N64 carts are obviously a good bit bigger than cassettes, but having looked this over pretty good, I think that it's very probably doable because it's so bulky.
Here are my main goals for this console:
-N64 console inside the cassette player
-Functional tray for cartridges
-4 controller ports
-Working microphone for Hey You Pikachu (this is very important)
-Internal regulators, since I dislike the bulky N64 power brick
-Generic video output cable option, such as 3.5mm jack
-Repurpose existing buttons (power, reset, etc)
Here are things I would like to add if there is time/space:
-Battery
-LCD screen and speakers in the back
-New label for buttons to denote their new uses (same color scheme)
I hope to be able to fit everything, but it is a super tight squeeze if you add in batteries, so I dont know for sure yet. Even the cartridge fit is iffy, so fingers crossed that it's doable!
Happy modding everyone! Worklog to come as parts begin arriving.
I joined the modding scene right at the end of the Modretro days, when projects were held together with hot glue and hope, and right at the beginning of the Bitbuilt days where projects began to be less of a fire hazard and more professional looking. Nowadays we have board trimming down to a science, easily accessible 3d printed shells, fully customized circuit boards, and even customized software made specifically for portablizing.
As amazing as all of that progress and success is, I still have a strong sense of nostalgia for the days where shells were frankencased from whatever you could find laying around, and every project looked extremely unique. I have begun to lose interest in modern portablizing, because it feels like I would just be remaking the same project that someone else made (handheld wii), just in a different shell. That still requires a TON of work and creativity (and I'm definitely not knocking yall's super sexy portables at all), but that isn't the kind of project that sparked my interest in modding originally.
In this project, I'm hoping to go back in time to when projects felt weirder and wackier, and looked more like a fever dream of a console than an actual commercial product. On to the actual interesting stuff!
I found this model of Playskool cassette player at Goodwill a few years ago, and it struck me as being very N64-like all in of its primary colored glory. I just ordered a new one in good shape to do this project. My goal for this project is to convert this kids cassette player into a functional N64, hopefully with a working cassette tray where you can put carts, and a Hey You Pikachu microphone. N64 carts are obviously a good bit bigger than cassettes, but having looked this over pretty good, I think that it's very probably doable because it's so bulky.
Here are my main goals for this console:
-N64 console inside the cassette player
-Functional tray for cartridges
-4 controller ports
-Working microphone for Hey You Pikachu (this is very important)
-Internal regulators, since I dislike the bulky N64 power brick
-Generic video output cable option, such as 3.5mm jack
-Repurpose existing buttons (power, reset, etc)
Here are things I would like to add if there is time/space:
-Battery
-LCD screen and speakers in the back
-New label for buttons to denote their new uses (same color scheme)
I hope to be able to fit everything, but it is a super tight squeeze if you add in batteries, so I dont know for sure yet. Even the cartridge fit is iffy, so fingers crossed that it's doable!
Happy modding everyone! Worklog to come as parts begin arriving.
