Pi in a Sega Genesis USB Hub Build

Koji Kenshiro

I'm thinking of making one of these as a fun little project and have a quick question? Would this power supply be a good one to get for this? https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-100V-240V-Adapter-Support-PS-5V25/dp/B00MRFR1XA/ref=nav_ya_signin?ie=UTF8&qid=1488568451&sr=8-16&keywords=5v+2.5a+usb+power+supply&

Just thought I'd ask before going and buying everything for the build? Thank you and have a good day! :)

obsidianspider

@Koji-Kenshiro That doesn't appear to have a Micro USB plug on the end, so unless you're doing something different to interface with power, that's not going to work.

Koji Kenshiro

@obsidianspider @eulogy @adamspc

I'm thinking of interfacing it with the Improved On/Off Board that eulogy used for the power switch.

eulogy

that should work as ling as u count on soldering it...raspberry pi 3 need 5v 2.5amp power supply. the one u linked to looks like my "viaboot" i have...which i believe is just a chinese ebay type thing. id just stray away grom the power supplies that have inline power switch built in.

Koji Kenshiro

@eulogy

Would a power supply like this one be better than the other one I linked since it's primarily designed for the Pi? It also has a nice length to the cord also, which will help when hooking it up. I'm planning on soldering it the the Pi via the test pads underneath the micro USB port.

Koji Kenshiro

@eulogy

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K7EF2XS/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3DV0CVGW4L6E5

eulogy

as long as its 5v 2.5 amp id say its fine..both u linked might even be the same.

Koji Kenshiro

@eulogy

I think the second one that I linked has a much longer cord than the first one does. I'm thinking of using the second one for that fact and that it is advertised to work with the Pi.

eulogy

@Koji-Kenshiro the block itself i think is similar...id go longer cord myself

Koji Kenshiro

@eulogy @obsidianspider @adamspc

That's the one I'm leaning towards as well for the same reason. If I have any more questions, I'll be sure to ask. Thank you all for being patient with me. Have a good day. :)

obsidianspider

Today I decided to upgrade the internal storage of the Genesis Pi.

Best Buy had 256GB Sandisk USB drives on sale for $65. I got two. One for the Genesis hub and another for my Super Famicom.

They're small, but not as small as the Sandisk Ultra Fit drives that are known to get so hot you can't even touch them. They're also well-reviewed.

Unfortunately, while small, the drive was a bit too big to fit inside.

No worries, I knew that the plastic case had a lot of "extra" to it, so I took the plastic off and was left with a much smaller device.

You can't see it quite from this angle, but the edge of the PCB is just about flush with the edge of the case when plugged in. That said, the case was a bit in the way, and was putting pressure on the board.

Using a file I made a notch for the PCB and its LED. I didn't want the case to put pressure on the board when it was closed.

It fit well, but after screwing things shut and powering up the Pi, the blue light from the LED was pretty annoying.

To remedy the situation I put a piece of black tape over the LED, and also to help the board blend in with the case, I colored the edge with a black Sharpie.

Now when it's powered up, if you aren't looking for it, you really can't see that the drive PCB is there.

0_1489354401728_genesis-pi-powered-on-no-blue-led-showing.jpg

I followed the instructions on the documentation site for how to set up the drive, and I found that while the directory structure and default BIOS files were copied over, the ROMs were not, and the contents of the retropiemenu folder weren't, so when I rebooted I got a message from EmulationStation that I had no systems installed. Removing the USB drive allowed the Pi to use the SD Card's data in the RetroPie folder and things worked, so to get things working I manually copied a the data from the RetroPie directory from the micro SD card to the USB drive. I then removed all of the ROMs from the Micro SD card except one, so that way it would be very obvious if the USB drive was dead when I booted, because I'd only have one game available.

SSHing in to the Pi doesn't show the USB drive, but df -h shows it's alive and well.

     .***.     Sunday, 12 March 2017,  5:08:24 pm EDT
     *****     Linux 4.4.50-v7+ armv7l GNU/Linux
     `***'     
      |*|      Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
      |*|      /dev/root        29G  4.5G   23G  17% /
    ..|*|..    Uptime.............: 0 days, 00h00m31s
  .*** * ***.  Memory.............: 590408kB (Free) / 752856kB (Total)
  *******@@**  Running Processes..: 137
  `*****@@**'  IP Address.........: 
   `*******'   Temperature........: CPU: 32°C/89°F GPU: 32°C/89°F
     `"""'     The RetroPie Project, https://retropie.org.uk

$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root        29G  4.5G   23G  17% /
devtmpfs        364M     0  364M   0% /dev
tmpfs           368M     0  368M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           368M  5.2M  363M   2% /run
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           368M     0  368M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p1   57M   21M   37M  36% /boot
/dev/sda1       232G  267M  232G   1% /media/usb0

tpuhlmann

@jackal123uk , can you tell me which is positive and which is ground on your picture? Or is it necessary? I broke my micro usb and would like to try what you did.

briandamico

@hansolo77 said in Pi in a Sega Genesis USB Hub Build:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GSE2S98/

by chance do u have a link for those slider switches?
are they able to capture a full slide to ON and then OFF or is it all one way and then half of the other way.

have not seen much sliders in various sizes

briandamico

@edmaul69 looks like we do a lot of the same stuff ED!

tell me, do u have a link for those sliders? i wanna compare to the ones i got and see if they may be better or same

edmaul69

@briandamico i posted a link somewhere but i couldnt find it. I need to contact my buddy to get a link as he was the one that ordered them.

obsidianspider

@briandamico this is the link from @edmaul69 's earlier post for the switches he used.

this is a link to the switch I used in my build.

briandamico

@edmaul69 ed does your switch open and close all the way on the hub? meaning can u push the toggle all the way to the ON side and all the way to the OFF side evenly?

edmaul69

@briandamico almost. it is really close. reeally close.

alt text

hansolo77

I couldn't get the switches to work right when I did my build. I wasn't able to get the original switch to stay attached to the switch underneath. I've got another hub in a box I'm waiting for some free time to try and do this mod again. Does anybody have any suggestions on the best way to mount the new switch so the old one still works with it?

obsidianspider

@hansolo77 Mine has been working great this whole time. I'm just using hot glue.