Worklog Ampz's First GameCube Portable

Ampz

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Hey everyone! This is a worklog about my first GC portable (obviously :lol: )
to show you guys my progress, since I don't have my
soldering iron yet I'm gonna show were I am at the moment
and hopefully tomorrow I can go with my dad to the tools store to
buy me some equipment :mrgreen:

So Far...

Thursday 23rd April

Yesss, my Gamecube arrived today I haven't done anything to it
yet but I'm gonna remove the screws and open it tomorrow, can't wait!




Friday 24th April

I got one if the Gamebit screws out with a molten Barclays pen, I think
hard plastic pens work best not the glass looking ones (sorry for the poor description),
I've created a better method with these types of pens for getting the screws out.
Heat up a hard plastic pen, jam it into the screw hole and push with all your strength,
hold it for 10 seconds while still applying force then leave it for five minutes.
Come back use pliars and grip onto the side of the pen, move the pliars forward and backwards
repeatedly until the pen becomes lose then screw it out and repeat.



Sorry for the bad quality this image was taken with my phone.

Saturday 25th April

I've been successful and have been able to remove all the screws, YAY! :mrgreen:,
however i'm now stuck on some small philips screws part of the RF shielding on
the mem card ports, luckily my friends dad has a ton of philips screws and tools.




Sunday 26th April

A tremendous amount of progress was made today, got to the GC mobo and
removed all the ports, I'm gonna be getting my soldering iron and other tools.
I'll be able to continue once i have more tools.





So thats all so far i'll be regularly updating this topic with progress and
other things happening about this Gamecube portable,
hopefully all goes well :mrgreen:




May 9th 2015

I received my GC controller today and I've grown fond
of this official controller (official masterrace!!) after playing some brawl,
i've decided that i'll buy a third party controller which resemble the GC
controller greatly.






Friday 15th May


Hey everyone my Silverline 40w soldering iron came in
from argos today :mrgreen: , can't wait to use this thing, expect
frequent updates!





Such awesomeness!




28th May Thursday 2015


So I got my a/v cable in the mail today, I stripped the connector
end and removed the solder to free the wires with my soldering iron
I'm also gonna buy solder and the GC Power Cord so i can test to see
if this cube is still working, Im wiring the composite video and audio to
the cube because I forgot i'll be doing that and removed the port :oops:








12th June Friday


I opened up a battery pack I got from a friend, i'm gonna
be using this just to test to see if the GC is dead or not.
I also find out i had a laptop battery pack lying around the same
one as I opened which i threw away :oops:
Luckily, I'm getting another laptop battery pack from another friend on Friday.





24th July Saturday



I actually did this a month ago, I wired up my stock regulator
for testing purposes and since I was using a wii power supply I thought
I wired the polarity correctly but nope. So I fried it.
Instead i'll just be testing it with a ti regulator, the ones used in Zenloc's diagram.
I wasn't able to use that much solder because of what I had at the time, this time i'll make
sure to have a better amount of it :D

Pics:






It looks like one of the wires are touching ground but the solder elevates it.





I will be on a hiatus for some time because i'm moving tomorrow.
 

Ampz

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There's gonna be a lot more progress since I've actually been able to get back to it, anyways I'm gonna buy some TI regulators soon so look out for progress :D
 

Ampz

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Nice man! Looks good so far, I'll be keeping an eye on this one!

Any ideas for a case?
I was originally going for a ZN case but now I feel more like going for a vacuum formed one
(especially since my school has a vacuum forming machine).
 
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You'll probably want to go with black ABS to vacuum form if you use a laser, I imagine any other color will show burn marks from being cut without sanding making more steps along the way you can hopefully dodge with black plastic.
 

Ampz

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Ah ok, thanks for the tip, I was wondering if any other colour would show burn marks.
EDIT: Oh and one more thing, how come this only applies to ABS?
 
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Ampz

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Tuesday 24th May 2016

Since my Gamecube motherboard is literally lying in a shoe box with no ports I've decided to buy a new one.
Reason why is due to how I don't want to just get custom regs and buy find a power source to test the mobo to see if it's still working,
it was pretty bad that I didn't test it at first but I'll try to get the new cube ASAP.

EDIT: Power source could be the Wii power supply I had so this issue is mainly about the regs.
 
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