It's understandable that you feel that this community can seem a bit ....elitist... at times, I've seen and felt it too in the past few years of lurking here. What you need to understand though is that there is a metric-ton of information in this forum, whether it's in the guides, worklogs or videos that members post, you just need to look. The long time members can come across as arrogant because they get asked a LOT of the same questions over and over, questions that can be answered with just a little bit of research and patience.

Secondly, you say that there should be a start-to-end guide (and maybe there should be) but what you need to remember is this is not a job for a lot of the members here, it's a hobby. Be thankful for the information that is available and not disappointed for the information that's not. Maybe someone will make a full guide at some point but for now people will just need to research, learn, fail and then maybe get good.

 

There isn't really much left up to interpretation, as every point people ask about (where to wire video, where to wire controllers, etc) are all labeled in the guide. We tried to make it as thorough as possible, and for the most part, you don't have to rewire much of anything that was originally on the board.

Wiring what you do need to isn't a complex process either, you solder a wire between the point labeled on the guide and the input/output/data line of the particular part you are wiring. As for worklogs, there are many in the different console sections (such as the wii, ps2, etc), and you can also check the cutting edge section for completed projects which almost always have links to worklogs and internal wiring pictures.

Additionally, we generally have less than polite responses to people when you can find the answer to their question by typing exactly what they asked into the search bar on the top right of the site, or questions that you can find by googling them (ie the answer is within the first few results, or sometimes even highlighted by google's algorithms as the correct answer)

I've seen a few start-to-finish guides for portables in the past (kasars gamecube guide, or tchay's unfinished video guides are a couple examples) which either are outdated almost as soon as they are written, contain mistakes that will trip new, inexperienced people up, or just generally give people confidence to dive into a project they aren't fully prepared for. We aren't here to hold everyone's hand through the process step by step, and while you don't need a degree in EE, you certainly need some knowledge to be able to finish a project like a portable (albeit less so as things like gman's PMS, and the G-Wii or Louii case models being freely available cut down on the things you have to create yourself).

We are just enthusiasts who have spent years of our life dedicated to these projects that we enjoy as we try to share our hobby with others. None of us make portables or run the site as a full time career, and most of us (myself included) have not been paid a dime for all the hundreds or thousands of hours (and thousands of $$$) we spent creating the guides, documentation, and other things associated with the site.

 

It's a complicated engineering centered hobby where new techniques are being created every other week, extensive research is to be expected.

Que? It's pretty well spelled out, we got pictures with marked traces and everything. There are also a billion worklogs you can look through to see how other people wired things to give you ideas.

The worklogs you can find in the respective section for that console? You can click the little blue "Worklog" badge next to the thread name in the list and it'll filter out all other threads so you can just read through the various worklogs. We get the same questions asked so wearily often that we sometimes get tired of runing through the same spiel. We aren't a call centre, we aren't being paid to read a script day in day out, we want to help, but we also aren't going to hold your hand. We have our own shit to do, our own projects to make, lives to live, we do this out of our free time. So yes, we expect you to do your own research, spend a few DAYS reading through all the relevent information (like we all did once upon a time), make a list of questions you can't find answers to, post them in a thread, and go from there.

Then do the research and apply some common sense. We try to be as welcoming as we can, but sometimes it gets trying answering the same basic questions for the same kind of basic people who have trouble knowing which end of the soldering iron to hold, and often don't even listen to our answers when we're trying to help them. We generally follow the philosophy of "help those who help themselves". Put the effort in to doing it yourself, then when that fails ask for help and we will do our best.

Yes there is a reason. Time, money, constant advancement, quality control, reliability. That's 5 reasons, but you get the point. Techniques change constantly, so if we made an official full guide it would need changing constantly. Which would mean re-shooting, editing, paying for voiceover lines, probably buying new parts to do the video with, etc. So fuck off with your "no reason", we have in fact: reasons. Also, we never try to make it "seem easy". We CONSTANTLY tell people how difficult their plans are and try to steer new users toward the simplest techniques. This hobby isn't easy and we've never advertised it as such. Just look at the summer contest. Look at all the seasoned builders who entered, and look at how many have/are actually going to finish in time. We had several months and most will probably not finish, at least not to the full extent of what they planned for their entry. And we kinda can assume some level of knowledge, because it's ALL HERE. In worklogs and question threads galore. We do expect people to have a basic understanding of things like soldering and relocation because we have many guides with paintakingly contructed custom imagery, and links to many educational videos about soldering, what components do, how to move them, what equipment you need for certain jobs, where you can buy said parts and equipment, etc. Even if we didn't, we live in the Google age, all this and more can be discovered by asking Google if we come up empty or seemingly unhelpful.

I don't mean to be mean, but come on dude. We're a welcoming community for sure, and we want to be helpful, but we expect an amount of automomy. if hand holding is expected, you're in the wrong crowd. The passive aggressive accusations don't help either, and I'd be remiss of my position as the resident Australian if I failed to call you a cunt for having THAT as your opening post, ya cunt. Do your research, make a list of questions, make a thread, ask them there, you'll be surprised. K? K.

 

Imagine spending all of your free time and disposable income for several years dedicated to a cause of advancing your hobby and teaching others to do so, only to be told you aren't doing enough.