My Pi in a SNES.

Dipkid · 27 Sept 2016, 11:29

@Morph-X thank you so much. As for the ports, i measured the inside of the old controller slots, and made some blueprints/cut files in illustrator cc. The material i use is 10 mm pvc (forex plastic) Then measured the she usb ports and made holes at work w our cutting table. So everything sat pretty tight, using a digital micrometer. Then just added a tiny bit of superglue from my pvc piece to the org loose snes piece. Its rock solid now, but can still pretty easyily be removed if needed. Was super lucky with the grey color. Told the guy at the graffitti store i needed "nintendo grey" and out of a 1000 cans he matched it 99.9 percent ☺️.

Dipkid · 27 Sept 2016, 16:50

@Morph-X also, if i may ask, i have the original power switch from my snes, incl wires. Could one wire it directly to the gpio "power" pins, or at least wire it trough to the usb power cable? (it looked like you did something like that..)

Morph-X · 28 Sept 2016, 19:17

I did it as follows:

I hope my poor English is sufficient to give a proper explanation. I connected a micro-USB extension cable to the Raspi's power input. That's of course a female connector on one side and a male connector on the other. Then i stripped a small part of the cable to cut the +5V wire and soldered both ends of it to the pins of the original SNES power switch. So after connecting a power supply, the power only reaches the Raspi when the SNES power button is switched "ON".

Now this has of course some pro's and con's:

PRO: It's super cheap (an extension cable costs about $3);
PRO: It's actually way easier and less space consuming than a power block of some sort;
PRO: With an extension cable like this you're able to create a nice and corresponding female micro-USB port in your SNES case;
CON: You'll have to use EmulationStation's option to shutdown the Pi instead of a powerblock running a shutdown script or however those things work. I don't mind at all personally, because the option of shutting down is easily accessible through EmulationStation's option menu, but i can imagine one would not settle for a power switch that simply cuts power in an instant.

Hopefully it's clear to you how i did it. If not, let me know so i can elaborate it some more.

Good luck!

Dipkid · 28 Sept 2016, 19:57

@Morph-X Thanks for the info, I kinda suspected there was some soldering involved.
I dont think my china usb rocker will fit without a lot of hazzle, so i will
probably try to strip the wires and connect directly to the org snes power button, when I get some free time over.
(There something special about the real sound and push-resistance from the snes buttons, gotta have it!)

Also, heres a more like-friendly picture, since I have closed some of the holes and got the Led light to look better.

Dipkid · 5 Oct 2016, 20:08

@Morph-X Heeey.. Im about to try this soldering thing. (finally packed everything out after moveing)
About your power button solution;
Did you remove the red and black wire from the snes power switch and just solderd 1 of the 4 wires
(2 for power and 2 for data inside a usb cable right?) from the usb cable to the "small pcb" thingy that the snes red/black wires was solderd to? Sorry about going on and on, just wanna get it right..

spannernick1 · 5 Oct 2016, 20:53

Like the lights on the cartridge,nice work.

Morph-X · 5 Oct 2016, 21:16

@Dipkid

Don't be sorry, i'm glad to be of help!

I quickly made a drawing for you, obviously a lot easier than putting it into words. ;-)

This is how i did it. I just cut the white and green wire since data is not needed in this case. Hopefully it's of any use to you. And good luck!

Dipkid · 6 Oct 2016, 05:28

@Morph-X That is f**kin excellent! Just what I needed. Thank you so much.
I´ll post some pics after Im done.

edmaul69 · 6 Oct 2016, 05:33

@Dipkid just so you know, you should test the wires with a multimeter to verify they are correct. Cheap chinese cables will mix up the red, white, green and black wires.

Dipkid · 6 Oct 2016, 06:16

@edmaul69 yeah I´v been reading that, thanks for the heads up!

Morph-X · 6 Oct 2016, 06:35

You're most welcome. edmaul69 is right, you should make sure the wires are not messed up.

Looking forward to your progress!

Dipkid · 7 Oct 2016, 09:45

Done! Thanks to @Morph-X for soldering tips!
Also alot of praise to @Floob & TechTipsta for all of their YT tutorials, tips n tricks.

It works like a charm. Very satisfying. Time to play som Paper Mario this weekend.

Morph-X · 7 Oct 2016, 11:32

Excellent! Very well done and i wish you loads of fun! ;-)

iVirtualZero · 18 Jan 2022, 21:57

@dipkid Poor SNES, now it’s just a boring emulation box with input lag and no cart support. I always wonder what people do with the original OEM board. I assume they throw it in the trash since they never mention anything about it.