Alternate title: I'm Addicted, Pliise Send Help
So after finishing up my last Ashida, I've had a hole in my life; one that can only be filled with making another portable. I considered doing a G-Wii, and probably still will sometime in the future, but there's something amazing about the feel of the Ashida. It brings back so much nostalgia from when I was a kid and would spend hours playing Mario Kart: Double Dash!! or Smash Bros. Melee with friends on the GameCube, but anywhere you go. @Wesk really hit the ball out of the park with this one. So, I figured I'd add another Ashida worklog onto the forums!
I'm rather proud of how my previous Ashida turned out:
However, it has some issues that aren't entirely easy to fix. Allow me a brief moment of your time to explain.
It had been a year or so since the last time I had any soldering projects, and at the time I wouldn't have said I had much practice with the skill at all, only ever having to solder a few things here and there over the span of several years. In part, that is why I wanted to take on this project. There were a few minor things that I did early on that had little to no impact on the final product, but as far as professionalism goes, there was a lot to be desired. While none of the internals are too revolting, several of the solder joints revealed my inexperience. However, one of the bigger mistakes I made was when I went to attach the ribbon connector. In my hubris, I accidentally burnt off a solder pad or two on the left controller PCB, making the ribbon cable an impossible option. Not only that, I had severed the connection that ran through the connector. I ended up having to reroute the connection through extra wires to a few of the buttons. I'm not sure I did it quite properly however, as there are times that there seems to be some accidental connection between buttons and even the sticks (not to the point that games are unplayable, but sometimes there is some rather strange and inconvenient behavior).
The glaring mistake, however, was the 3D printed case. I've briefly touched on this a few times in my original thread, but I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I printed the case. Rather than doing what I should have done from the beginning and reprinting I figured I'd just grin and bear it. That is a wrong decision. I had to sand way more than I should have, several screw posts broke off and had to be glued back into place, cracks here and there causing loose internals, the whole shebang.
I think I'll fix up this project sometime in the future, but it will require printing a new case and ordering new Ashida controller PCBs, but that's the easy part. I then will need to desolder several wires as they run in the through holes under the heat sink in the case, relocating them in the new case, rewiring the controller, and a few other odds and ends. Not impossible just time consuming and I wanted to make another one anyway, so here we are.
Anyway, enough blabber and onto what we all are here for: some sexy pictures.
As is the case in many worklogs, I'm waiting on a few more components. 4Layer always comes so fast though! I'm currently waiting on my DigiKey order, but I still had one ribbon connector left over since the one I horribly botched last time was the first, and as such I didn't even attempt the second. A quick triple check that none of the pins are bridged and we are good to go!
I also of course triple checked continuity for all of the button pads and connector pins to the GC+2.0 and everything is looking great!
On to the PCB that runs along the bottom - we have our audio dial and headphone jack in, along with the U-Amp 2
Here are a few more hero shots of that bottom PCB (notice the tact and power switches are missing - they're somewhere out there waiting to be delivered).
And now... the big reveal
My original intent was just simply a black on white design kind of like piano keys, so I ordered the case in white Somos Ledo from PCBWay with #1000 sanding. I'll have to admit, seeing as I only had a vision of what it might look like in my head I was nervous that I would get everything and hate the way it looked. But as soon as I got it it far exceeded my expectations. It wasn't as white as I was expecting it to be, but I like it much more than if it would have been. Maybe it's not your cup of tea, but I think it'll end up looking pretty sick.
It really has this creamy, white chocolate look to it hence the name. That with the all black buttons that have yet to be delivered should look a lot like cookies and cream ice cream, or one of these things:
Here are some hero shots of the case:
I feel like this picture particularly shows how much it looks like you could just bite into it.
I clipped the excess guide nub, thanks to @Cyframe pointing out that it remains from the original scan. I probably would have missed that detail otherwise.
If you don't know what you're looking for you might not see it, but that's where the nub used to be.
Of course I had to check that things were lining up with the port holes in the case.
Everything is lining up as it should!
With the 3D printed buttons in you can really see how it's looking like cookies and cream.
Again, making sure that ports are lining up properly.
Oh, can't forget these bad boys. Translucent UTR-8100 from PCBWay and some of the sexiest parts of the build. Too bad they'll be inside and no one will ever see them, but this time I'm all about the flair.
Another sexy shot of those babies.
Another hero shot of the printed parts.
I think the Wii is tentatively eyeing that case. It knows what it's about to go through.
My wife liked this shot a lot from my previous build so I felt the need to do it again. That Wii is going to have to lose some weight to fit in there.
Again, some final thanks to @Wesk for the awesome design and all the awesome people at 4Layer for making this so easily accessible for everybody!
