Pi in a Sega Genesis USB Hub Build

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.

briandamico

@edmaul69 got the switch today they are indeed PERFECT and if yours is not going all the way to the left and right you may need to adjust but looking at your photos i think you are all the way over one each side. i aligned the tab in the center of the on off switch and i get full movement left and right. thanks for the tip!!!

VanZan

I'm late to the party. Listen I have a fairly basic problem and it's the usb cable. Before I found this thread I watched a Youtube vid which advised to trim the tail. I did so but just could not get it trimmed enough to fit. I kept cutting but got scared when the black rubber started revealing clear plastic stuff. Anyway I squeezed the whole lot in there, re-assembled and it worked somehow!!

Thing is I didn't put any heat sinks on and am unsure whether to go back in. It's the sodding usb cable that's the problem and I'm unhappy with how I left it. My question is would the best course of action be to completely remove all the black rubber from it and insert it into the Pi's usb port OR just cut it off, buy a soldering iron and make my first go at soldering the four wires to the Pi?

edmaul69

@VanZan once you get to clear you can rip the black off. It isnt needed since this will stay hidden keeping the cable away from being moved back and forth thousands of times. But i definitelu would put in a heatsink.

FlyingTomahawk

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

-Removed splash screen and rainbow on boot screen

How did you do that?

edmaul69

@FlyingTomahawk open up /boot/cmdline.txt and delete the entire contents and replace it with this:

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty3 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait quiet loglevel=3 consoleblank=0 logo.nologo plymouth.enable=0

FlyingTomahawk

@edmaul69

Thanks! (twothumbsup)

edmaul69

@FlyingTomahawk the only thing i dont have is hiding the splashscreen. other than using a black image i dont know how to do that. i use the splashscreens myself. this hides the text and the raspberries.

VanZan

@edmaul69 Thank you...I'd better go back in then when the heat sinks I ordered arrive!

antricluc

@edmaul69 what theme are you using? Did you do a power switch? Any photos of the inside? Noone seems to have crammed a pi zero yet

edmaul69

@antricluc i will try to find pics. I did it with a power switch and a pi Zero.