Worklog The DVDii

[Dustin Fisher]

I'm glad I saw this before I did my build. I was gonna use different adjustable regulators. I'm sorry it didn't work out :/ I'm looking forward to more updates!

 

[DeoNaught]

Alright, I guess that's fine. It's not that much more when you really think about it. Ah, sorry I meant the chips were made by Ti. I looked up the model number on them: http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm2596.pdf they're probably far less power efficient than the PTHs though.

Yeah, they are made by TI, but not efficient, it turns the extra power into heat. they do have their uses, but we need a different type of regulator for wii voltages (PTH for example)

 

[Dustin Fisher]

makes sense, I'll look into getting some while I go to trim my Wii. I'm gonna start a build log relatively soon as to what I'm gonna do

 

[AlecM7]

Yeah, they are made by TI, but not efficient, it turns the extra power into heat. they do have their uses, but we need a different type of regulator for wii voltages (PTH for example)

makes sense, I'll look into getting some while I go to trim my Wii. I'm gonna start a build log relatively soon as to what I'm gonna do

They're still buck converters like the PTHs, not linear heat converting ones like the 1.8v line, but they're definitely less efficient than the PTHs. They'd probably be okay for something like driving a screen, but would still waste a bunch of power and generate loads of heat. Cheap voltage regulators like those also can't go below 1.5v, much less handle sustaining high load at low voltages like that.

 

[AlecM7]

Welp, this ended up being a bit more than I expected...
It's fine though, I'd rather have reliability over price
(this isn't just the PTHs, it's their supporting components and all the components I need for two GC+es)

 

[DeoNaught]

Wait, why are you using Smd Resistors? did you make a board for them? or are you just gonna wire them together?

 

[AlecM7]

Wait, why are you using Smd Resistors? did you make a board for them? or are you just gonna wire them together?

For several of the values, SMD components were my only option. I thought that it would be easier to just get all of them as SMD in that case. I also seemed to remember someone wiring theirs up with the resistors directly on the boards, but that doesn't look feasible since the voltage control pin is on the back of the board. The thing I saw must've been SMD caps on the output. I have a bunch of 100uf 25v electrolytic Nichicon caps laying around anyway, and some perfboard, plus I'm not too pressed for space, so I think it'll be fine. I'll probably just wire them together like you said.

 

[Dustin Fisher]

https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/custom-regulators-an-explanation-and-guide.754/
This is a fantastic section of this forum that helps a crap ton with regulators and such. I think it will come in handy! I'm looking at it now getting some regs

 

[AlecM7]

https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/custom-regulators-an-explanation-and-guide.754/
This is a fantastic section of this forum that helps a crap ton with regulators and such. I think it will come in handy! I'm looking at it now getting some regs

That's the page I used to find the right resistor values when I want to order my PTHs. Thanks though!

 

[bxepfhiz1c390]

My plan is to make a Wii portable in a small Toshiba portable DVD player chassis I have.
Since the original screen was 480x234, the composite input on it looked like trash, and I had to upgrade.

I ordered a new LCD yesterday. It's the same size (9") but is 800x480 instead, and has a VGA input on it, which I'm planning to use with the Wii native VGA mod.

The DVD player has a detachable 4400mah battery, which I will upgrade in the future, since it isn't very high capacity given the size of it.

I got an RVL-CPU-40 Wii off of eBay for about $15, and so far the rest of the parts (voltage regulators, LCD, 128GB Samsung USB drive, audio amp) have only been around $70. The actual DVD player was basically free, and is in great condition (though the batteries are slightly bloated, one of the other reasons why I want to replace them).

I'm planning to integrate a Gamecube controller into the body of it using 3DS sliders, and a GC+ as well as rumble functionality and WiFi for Wiimmfi WFC.

A question I have is whether there's a board I can get that will allow me to charge my 7.4v battery pack with a normal 12v source. The battery already has a BMS on it that I can probably reuse if I change the cells.

View attachment 7884 View attachment 7885

I think DiiviiDii sounds better

 

[AlecM7]

I think DiiviiDii sounds better

Going all out with the Wii portable naming memes here

 

[AlecM7]

Okay, so I have a huge update today.
Over the last week(ish) I'd been trying to get my old trim work, and after failing, I moved on to a second CPU-40 board.
After removing parental controls, getting my PortablizeMii install stable, and doing the U10 relocation, I was ready to trim the 2nd board.
I left the AV connector on for a bit to do some testing of the newly trimmed board, and everything was going perfectly, I was getting the postloader no USB error (which was to be expected, since I hadn't connected it yet).

Then I decided to trim off the AV connector... Everything went downhill for a while after that. I was having tons of issues with the board crashing and not booting, and it just kept getting worse and worse. I eventually discovered that it seemed like a mechanical problem with the solder joints on the CPU and GPU, since flexing the board upwards a tiny bit would make it display priiloader (postloader got corrupted due to all the powercycling). If I got lucky enough that the board would boot on it's own, when I bumped it at all it would immediately crash.

At this point there wasn't much going for my second board, so I decided to try reflowing the GPU, CPU, and RAM to see if that would fix the issues with mechanical instability. After wrapping the parts of the board around the CPU, GPU and RAM in aluminum foil to protect other components from heat damage, I slowly raised the temperature of the board over about three minutes with my heat gun and let it sit for about 45 minutes.

Surprisingly, that fixed literally every issue I was having with it, and after reinstalling postloader from my USB drive, it booted into PortablizeMii (I'd already wired up USB and Bluetooth), and I was able to load games I had on my drive. To fix issues with USB instability, I decided to get rid of my two tightly wrapped magnet wires, and instead replace them with a shielded wire from a laptop LVDS connector that had two tiny wires inside. This fixed all of my issues with neek2o not loading games reliably. I checked to make sure that the board was mechanically stable by pushing on the chips, and it seems to be completely fine now. I haven't had it crash once since reflowing.

In other news, I got the shipment of parts from mouser and made a board for my PTHs on perfboard that seems to be working really well. I also got my 64GB Samsung USB 3.0 drive in the mail, which I've been using for all of my testing. I'm still waiting on my GC+ boards from OSHpark.

Here's some spicy pictures of the trim working and the PTH board (Yes I know, I could've done a better job than the wire spaghetti on my board):

P.S. No "normal" glue has been used in this project so far.

 

[DeoNaught]

(Yes I know, I could've done a better job than the wire spaghetti on my board):

We all start somewhere

 

[Dustin Fisher]

I really like how you did that power regulator board! the top looks amazing! I may have to employ that tactic soon on my own build. Its actually quite impressive that you were able to reflow the solder onto he cpu/gpu. I commend thee

 

[Stitches]

Okay, so I have a huge update today.
Over the last week(ish) I'd been trying to get my old trim work, and after failing, I moved on to a second CPU-40 board.
After removing parental controls, getting my PortablizeMii install stable, and doing the U10 relocation, I was ready to trim the 2nd board.
I left the AV connector on for a bit to do some testing of the newly trimmed board, and everything was going perfectly, I was getting the postloader no USB error (which was to be expected, since I hadn't connected it yet).

Then I decided to trim off the AV connector... Everything went downhill for a while after that. I was having tons of issues with the board crashing and not booting, and it just kept getting worse and worse. I eventually discovered that it seemed like a mechanical problem with the solder joints on the CPU and GPU, since flexing the board upwards a tiny bit would make it display priiloader (postloader got corrupted due to all the powercycling). If I got lucky enough that the board would boot on it's own, when I bumped it at all it would immediately crash.

At this point there wasn't much going for my second board, so I decided to try reflowing the GPU, CPU, and RAM to see if that would fix the issues with mechanical instability. After wrapping the parts of the board around the CPU, GPU and RAM in aluminum foil to protect other components from heat damage, I slowly raised the temperature of the board over about three minutes with my heat gun and let it sit for about 45 minutes.

Surprisingly, that fixed literally every issue I was having with it, and after reinstalling postloader from my USB drive, it booted into PortablizeMii (I'd already wired up USB and Bluetooth), and I was able to load games I had on my drive. To fix issues with USB instability, I decided to get rid of my two tightly wrapped magnet wires, and instead replace them with a shielded wire from a laptop LVDS connector that had two tiny wires inside. This fixed all of my issues with neek2o not loading games reliably. I checked to make sure that the board was mechanically stable by pushing on the chips, and it seems to be completely fine now. I haven't had it crash once since reflowing.

In other news, I got the shipment of parts from mouser and made a board for my PTHs on perfboard that seems to be working really well. I also got my 64GB Samsung USB 3.0 drive in the mail, which I've been using for all of my testing. I'm still waiting on my GC+ boards from OSHpark.

Here's some spicy pictures of the trim working and the PTH board (Yes I know, I could've done a better job than the wire spaghetti on my board):

View attachment 7992 View attachment 7993 View attachment 7994 View attachment 7995 View attachment 7996 View attachment 7997

P.S. No "normal" glue has been used in this project so far.

Not bad, but I'd put some glue or something on those potentiometers. You don't want them being bumped later and changing the output voltage. Also, kapton tape is your electrically insulating friend, pop some on the bottom of that spaghetti boardinese to protect it.

 

[AlecM7]

Not bad, but I'd put some glue or something on those potentiometers. You don't want them being bumped later and changing the output voltage. Also, kapton tape is your electrically insulating friend, pop some on the bottom of that spaghetti boardinese to protect it.

Yeah, I'm planning on gluing the potentiometers, I just wanted to make sure the voltages were okay before doing that. That's a good idea with the kapton tape, I have some laying around, but I didn't think to use it for that. I was considering hot glue, but that's a pain in the butt to remove.

 

[AlecM7]

I really like how you did that power regulator board! the top looks amazing! I may have to employ that tactic soon on my own build. Its actually quite impressive that you were able to reflow the solder onto he cpu/gpu. I commend thee

Thanks! I definitely want to redo the wiring on it sometime, but it seems to be working great for now. I have to agree that the top of it looks ridiculously clean It's definitely not the easiest way to make a board for PTHs, but it's faster than designing and sending one to OSHpark.

 

[AlecM7]

Oof. It has been a LONG time since I posted on this buildlog. There's a bunch of stuff that's happened in the time between when I last posted and now, so lets get to it!

First of all, I got my screen, and dang was it packaged well!

It seems to be working fine except for a single green stuck pixel that I was trying to remove in the last picture of the GIF.


I also received my GC plus boards from OSHpark and assembled and flashed all three of them.

Soon after I completed all of that, my second board that I had heatgunned kicked the bucket, and so I was on to my 3rd trim.
On this one, I partially kept the AV port, since removing it is what seemed to mess up my first board. This makes it so much easier to wire up AV IMO.

Next, I replaced the original screen with the new one. I had to cut part of the back panel out so that the driver board would fit right, but due to the construction of the DVD player this wasn't a problem. Don't even ask about the sanded black part...

Note: This is using composite, not VGA, so it looks like garbage.

Then I went through a few revisions of cooler design:

I realized this would conflict with my button/slider configuration, which I'm hoping will be similar to Aurelio's Piiza 1.0 controller setup.
So instead I used a cooler from a 2007 MacBook that I had torn apart a few years ago. My thumb is roughly where I want the 3DS sliders to go.

As a result of the first cooling method, I had a gaping hole on the left that I filled with a port panel from a laptop I recently scrapped.

Also, earlier on I added a volume wheel to the amp I'm using, a tiny bass speaker (this really helped the sound), four GC ports, and a sensor bar port since I'm planning on adding a TRRS jack that will carry AV if you want to hook it up to a TV like a normal Wii.

I got all the buttons and things I need to make the controller part of it now too.
These are mainly for the dual tact mod:

Rubber tact switches!!!

Random stuff from this project, including the 3DS sliders, pads for them, and the plastic spacers.

The next step is designing and probably 3D printing the part that holds all of the buttons, sliders, and stuff for control of the console.
I'm not looking forward to this very much, and that's one of the many reasons why I haven't worked on it much recently.

Besides that, I now have a 15 hr per week job, plus classes, so I don't have a whole lot of time to work on it any more. Thankfully I should be able to work on it a lot more in about a month. I'll try to keep updating this with the 3D design progress for the controller section, since I'll probably be starting on that soon.

Also, you may have noticed that the case is starting to look really crappy on the outside. That's because I'm planning on painting it once it gets warm enough here, since I don't have a good way of painting things indoors. I think I might paint it orange. If anyone has suggestions for paint that's worked well on their portables, I'd be happy to hear what it is.

Hopefully the next update won't be in four months

 

[AlecM7]

Small update here, I got WiFi working finally, which was kinda holding things up since I wanted to mount the module to the back of the trim before installing it into the case. I was almost ready to give up on it, but then I found that one of the data lines was shorted to ground in a really hard to see way. That fixed the problem immediately. For anyone wondering how to test if WiFi works without potentially softbricking your trim, you can just redownload portablizemii with wifi enabled (MAC address doesn't matter, but you have to have one in the field), and replace the nands folder on your USB with the one you just downloaded (The nands folder is inside the COPY TO USB folder). If you get a black screen as soon as you try to go to the emuNAND (not even a neek2o loading screen), it means that WiFi doesn't work. If it goes to the emuNAND normally though, that means WiFi works. (Thanks a ton @Aurelio for the help with this). You can further check the stability by going to the emuNAND Wii Menu and trying to connect to a WiFi network.

I also added the MX chip trim that I did a while back. Not sure if it works yet, only time will tell.

Here's the Trim sitting on the inside of the portable in its current state:

 

[xsping]

eg

Yeah they will come out to the same price about, but I finally got a Hot air, and OhmiGosh It's a godsent. Definately worth the price.



here's the thing, they could work, but wii uses over 500ma tho, and then you also have your screen, controller, and everything else to power. you can try it, no one is stopping you, we are just warning you that it probably won't, and it's not a reliable material to use for regulation. In my experience, they consume too much, overheat in less than a minute to the point where it burns to touch. It'd be safer to buy (sadly more expensive ) reliable, and trusted regulators. (sorry if I sound mean)

exactly true, i made powermii lite by myself, but it was overheating very quickly, can not touch even though the output voltage is stable