Worklog Indigo Ashida Build

[m0thm4n]

Starting my first worklog for a portable! I got my hands on this super nice looking case painted in Gamecube-ish Indigo (Pantone 7673C).

For day 1 of the project I started soldering up all the stuff for the front half since I was still waiting on my heatsinks & fan to come in. For some reason the trigger pads weren't reaching all the way to touch the contacts so I ended up fixing it by putting some carefully placed solder on the pads. Not sure if this was a tolerance issue with my brackets or what, but everything is working good now and has a solid connection with my multimeter when the triggers are fully pressed.

I also modified the screen bracket with screw holes to fit my RVL-DD board because I couldn't find one designed specifically for the new board. Also you may notice some of the scratches around the "Z" button in the second photo. I accidentally soldered the button onto the wrong side the first time so had to redo it correctly, whoopsieesss

 

[DekuNut]

Looks really good!

 

[Stitches]

Why did you tin the LR trigger contact pads? They're gold plated contacts, not jumpers. Those aren't going to work correctly now

 

[m0thm4n]

Why did you tin the LR trigger contact pads? They're gold plated contacts, not jumpers. Those aren't going to work correctly now

My triggers are offended

Jk, obviously I don't recommend what I did, but it's what ended up working for me in my situation. Either my case or my brackets had some weird tolerance thing going on which was causing the triggers to literally not reach the contacts at all (came pretty close, but still too far from touching each other for whatever reason). In hindsight, I should've probably just raised the LR boards from the brackets instead of adding extra height on the pads themselves, but I'm alright with any future consequences (and possible replacements/fixes) since this is a personal build and not for somebody else.

But they've been working great so far! Fully functioning analog range + digital press at the end



I'll post any results over time if anything does in-fact goes sour lol, it'll be a fun experiment

 

[m0thm4n]

So... over the past couple days I really cracked down and finished the portable build!
I haven't taken any final photos yet, but I'll update when I do! Below I've added a ton of gut-shots and juicy details throughout my building process

I didn't really take too many photos of my wiring process, but here's one I took after doing up the RVL-DD board and getting everything wired up to the vias on my Wii trim

After that, I focused primarily on my MX chip. I had a few lying around, so naturally I chose the ugliest one (little dremel slip through the ground plane, sanded everything to 1200 grit, and verified no shorts were present). Went "dead bug" wiring style with the 3v3 line using a couple of component leads, and scratched myself a couple of ground pads instead of soldering to other components.

After this, I got in my fan + heatsinks. Trimmed down the posts next to them juuust enough so that the CPU & GPU made full contact with the sticky thermal pads. I did it this way instead of stacking thermal pads since I wanted to make some extra clearance in case I possibly do a future WiFi relocation with a WifiFlex cable (which I was afraid would have been too close to where I mounted my MX chip once the case was closed (see further down below), but I don't think it would've been an issue after all. Although, I feel like it never hurts to have some extra case space and better heat transfer!

(and yes, before anybody asks; I got off those tiny bits of dust on the stick pads and took out that random wire scrap in the battery holder before slapping in the batteries and Wii trim).

Here's a photo of all of the final wiring and placement!
As you can see, I tried something a little different with the MX chip relocation. There was a lot of flat, empty space in the top of the case since I had the RVL-DD board so I wanted to take advantage of it Wires for the chip data are a tiny bit longer, so I decided to go with 0.2mm magnet wire, which still fit well into the Wii vias and soldered up nicely. Also mounted the battery up top next to the chip. Everything was wrapped in Kapton tape as per usual, and then mounted with this suuuuper sticky foam tape that I found a while back on aliexpress. Also put a dab of hot glue under a couple corners just as an insurance policy (not shown in photo)

After this, I plopped in the batteries, fastened down the wii, and tested her out
In my next post, I'll explain some dumb software issues I ran into lol + I'll share some final build photos (since it's all completed now!)

 

[m0thm4n]

Here are some final photos of my build! Super happy with how it looks!

I initially had some really odd RVLoader issues going on with random freezing, menu items flickering, etc. Games played fine, no freezing or any issues at all, it was only happing within RVLoader. I tried many suggestions from other forums including microsd compatibility, etc., and I also redid my data lines to be super tightly twisted and running around the perimeter of the board instead (ended up not being the issue, but nice to do anyway!). I ended up figuring out that my MX data lines and the RVL-DD's video lines were interfering in some way which was causing the glitches. So I re-relocated my MX chip and everything is totally stable now! I guess my previous 'perfect' location for the MX chip didn't end up panning out, but oh well. Maybe it'd still be a viable spot if the lines were ran on the opposite side from the video lines, but I didn't try that since I just wanted to get this thing finished since I was itching to play it.

Next up, I'm thinking I'll maybe build a G-Wii and design some custom PCBs for it since I really love PCB design

 

[clonblurmin]

That's a great looking case! What material did you decide to print in?

 

[m0thm4n]

That's a great looking case! What material did you decide to print in?

I got it printed through 3DSPRO
Chose their standard SLA white resin for the case + screen mounts, and got everything else done in black resin. Also got their painting service for the case. Only took about a week and a half to get here and costed a total of $71.55 (including tax + shipping) with a $10 off coupon. They also reached out to me with photos before shipping everything which was pretty sick!

I decided to try a different service this time after getting some pretty nasty looking Ps2 Ultra Slim cases through JLCPCB (and PCBway shipping was super expensive to my location for some reason).

 

[clonblurmin]

Never heard of them, I'll have to give them a try some time. Those are some pretty good prices, for such a nice looking result.

That's too bad about the Ps2 case, hope it didn't kill the project for you. I ordered my Ashida shell through JLCPCB about a week ago, hopefully they turn out okay haha.

Also I notice that you used the Rvl-DD; there's not a whole lot of info out on its installation, so it's kind of cool seeing it installed.

 

[m0thm4n]

Never heard of them, I'll have to give them a try some time. Those are some pretty good prices, for such a nice looking result.

That's too bad about the Ps2 case, hope it didn't kill the project for you. I ordered my Ashida shell through JLCPCB about a week ago, hopefully they turn out okay haha.

Also I notice that you used the Rvl-DD; there's not a whole lot of info out on its installation, so it's kind of cool seeing it installed.

They were still totally usable with some extra work! just think I got a weird batch lol, probably a one-off situation or maybe I ordered it with the wrong specs haha.
I've used JLC for probably thousands of PCBs by now without many issues really other than one single batch of 50~ish boards that had really bad quality control. They're usually pretty good though, and I've heard good things mostly for their 3d printing, so I think you're fine!

Also yeah! The RVL-DD is pretty sick, it looks really good. I spent hours troubleshooting though because it wasn't booting only to find out on the 4layer discord that I needed to put the bitstream file in my SD root lol