Pi in a Sega Genesis USB Hub Build
-
I just wish I had better plastic cutting skills. My first project, the NES, is a hellish beast of miscuts. I have a dremel, and use it the best I can, just not well enough. I just made some new cuts in my NES this evening to house 2 DB9 plugs for Atari/Sega controllers. It looks HORRIBLE. I'm ashamed to have done it. I tried using my (work supplied) Box Cutter (essentially a razor blade), but it just doesn't cut deep enough. Lots of multiple passes and it's just scratching the surface. Pulled out the dremel and made a series of drill holes, then tried to razor cut between them, but the blade just won't cut through the hard plastic. So I resorted to using the cutting wheel, which basically melts the plast away. It works, but the wheels are very hard to manuever, especially in tight spaces you need to get them into. When I look at my terrible cuts, and then look at the cut you made for the HDMI plug, they're not even in the same league. You say you're unhappy with the cut. I'd be extactic to get something that clean looking.
Do you have any tips? I'm thinking about looking to see if I can find some kind of cover to put of the edges of my cuts. Something like a rubber ring or something, that can stretch around the outer edge of the plug, but be thick enough to hide where I over-cut the edges.
Who's Scruffy Looking?
-
@hansolo77 best thing to do is get the dremel drill bit set and a set of files. The sell sets of smaller files on ebay and amazon. Draw some lines about where the cut need to be. Then drill holes around the inside of those marks until you have a hole then file it down to size. Never use a dremel disc as your final edge. Too hard to make look good.
-
@hansolo77 my best tip is to go slowly and be patient. I drilled the headphone hole with three increasingly large drill hits going VERY SLOWLY with the drill (drilling in the middle of a seam is a PITA)
The HDMI port hole was marked on either side with a pencil and filed with a flat hand file a little bit at a time. By hand. Slowly. The mods to the Pi and case took a few hours. Yeah, I was tinkering around and measured and mocked up a lot, and I'm not a pro, but it wasn't a quick process.
-
@edmaul69 said in Pi in a Sega Genesis USB Hub Build:
@hansolo77 best thing to do is get the dremel drill bit set and a set of files.
That's how I made the screen hole in my Suprr Famicom cartridge: rough cut inside the outline then hand file up to the line, stopping and checking my work all the time.
-
Another tip is to just practice. When I was making my Super Famicom screen hole I mocked it up on an old plastic light switch plate and made a hole there first to figure out how I was going to attavk the problem.
The important thing is you're trying. Find some scrap plastic and keep at it, then maybe find another broken Nintendo to re-shell your project. Heck, I have three of those Burger King toys for that build. I already messed up one of them when I was figuring out how they come apart.
-
Well, my cuts for the DB9 plugs took hours, like literally 6 of them. And it looks like sh!t lol. I think I need to get the proper tools. A hand file definitely sounds like a something handy to have in the modders' toolbelt. All I have is a dremel with a single drill bit. I have a drill bit "collection" with different sizes, but the bit holder on the dremel can only hold the largest one lol. Seems to me like the hardest part is lining up the cuts for the HDMI AND the composite plug. The only way you can mark where they're at is from the inside, but you cut from the outside. Since I grew up with a Sega Genesis, I'm going to really take my time with this one.
Who's Scruffy Looking?
-
@obsidianspider yeah it was actually a thread on here (forget which one) that made me buy 2 different file sets. I bought the set posted on here and a set of diamond files. Best investment i ever made. Before that i only had a single file to do all my work.
-
@hansolo77 you can never have too many tools. Over the years I've amassed thousands of dollars worth. As a need arises I get a tool and the collection grows.
Do you have a Harbor Freight near you? Their stuff is cheap (not just inexpensive) but for things like files, xacto knives, hot glue gun, and a lot of stuff a casual hobbiest needs, it's fine.
For things like my soldering station I went name brand (Weller WESD51), but for a few files, get some cheap Chinese stuff and you're fine.
-
@hansolo77 they sell a 4 size pack of the collet set for the dremel that lets you use all the drill bit sizes. Its a cheap price for them.
-
Lol speaking of Harbor Freight... they are on the other side of the fence where I live. :) I bought some pick tools for popping open my Xbox360 case from them a couple years ago, and more recently I bought a set of security screwdriver bits. It's a nice place to find these things, you're absolutely right.
-
@hansolo77 I made the headphone hole first. (I actually messed up and it's ~1.5mm too close to the corner) but since it sticks out farther, once that was cut I could mark where the HDMI plug was, then I filed each half separately. I'm going to try to explain how I made the two holes, but it's difficult to articulate so here goes:
With the case apart I set the Pi 3 in the bottom half and slid it up to where I'd want it to be, then I saw where the headphone plug was hitting the side of the case. With a pencil I drew marks on either side of the hole, so I knew where the outside edges were. Then I drew those lines to the outside of the case so I could see them when I put the top on.
With the case together I held the two halves together and drilled a small pilot hole in the middle of my two marks that denoted the edge of the headphone plug. I then took the case apart, slid the Pi in, saw it looked pretty lined up, then closed the case up to make another slightly larger hole.
After a second larger hole, going slowly (the two halves of the case kept wanting to separate) I took it apart again and put the Pi in and saw I was slightly off, but not terribly. Slightly bummed I continued, making the final 1/4" hole. It's not perfect because the case kept getting caught on the bit and separating, but it's ok.
I then took the case apart, slid the Pi up to the edge on the bottom half (the headphone plug now was able to poke through) and marked the outside of the HDMI port with pencil. Then I slowly filed it flat.
If you look at an HDMI port the bottom has a little dink in it where it's smaller than the top, so as I filed SLOWLY and rechecked I saw when the far top part was exposed then marked with pencil where the narrow bottom part was and then filed SLOWLY until the bottom narrower part was exposed. I cleaned up a little with an xacto knife and when I was happy with the HDMI port then I moved on to dremeling the Micro USB port flush, since I still don't trust myself to desolder SMT stuff in tight quarters. If you're going to attempt that, use a cutoff wheel and go as SLOWLY AS POSSIBLE on your variable speed on your Dremel. DON'T FORGET TO BLOW OUT THE METAL SHAVINGS. You don't want to short out the Pi with debris in the port or anywhere else.
For the top of the HDMI port it was basically like the bottom. With the Pi sitting in the case I marked the outside edges on the top and then filed inside the lines SLOWLY and checked constantly to try to keep things fairly even and to make sure I didn't go too far. You can always take more off, but you can't put the plastic back on.
Like I said, get some junk plastic to practice on. Even like an old sandwich container with a crack in it or an old switch cover or something you were going to throw out anyway.
Sorry for the rambling, hopefully that helped explain how I went about it.
-
Here's my DB9 cuts from earlier today. I just took this with my Samsung Galaxy Tab. Never did that before either. Cool. :)
Needs work.. :/ Like I said, if I can find some kind of rubber ring I can just slide over top of the outer edges of the plugs, it should be good enough to cover where I over cut. The hardest thing about this cut was that I had to do it 4 times. Twice for the black bezel, and then twice again for white bezel behind it. The black bit is just a screwed on cover, part of the NES case. So I cut the black one first, then outlined the inside on the white bit. Cut that, then spend forever trying to figure out why the plugs still wouldn't sit inside their holes. Turns out it was due to the spacing behind the white bezel, where it has some 90-degree angles for regedity, that was pulling the plugs further back. FInally got it figured out, but man, this is just a horrible job. :(
-
@hansolo77 hey, they didn't make these things for us to repurpose, so it's going to take some figuring. I have a broken NES that I got from a friend back in college. I took it apart to try to fix it a few years ago and likely made it worse by trying to rebend the pigs on the 72-pin connector. Don't feel bad about making mistakes, it's how you learn.
-
Yeah I'm not that upset about it. Nobody's really going to see it. Sorry for hijacking your thread so much though. :)
-
@hansolo77 yeah, sometimes I wish the forum had a DM feature, but I can also see it being abused where developers would be inundated with stuff. Oh well. I made these build threads to show how I'm making my projects, mistakes and all, to try to help others. Some just show off the end product, and that's fine, but I still largely have no clue what I'm doing, so if I can write up how I solved problems maybe that can help someone else learn too.
-
@obsidianspider if yo decide to add a usb audio aplifier you could make the volume slide work for a headphone jack with a 20mm slide potentiometer.
-
@edmaul69 @obsidianspider
Come on use your fantasy :) You both inspire me to do stupid things :)
Set two switches on the volume slider and connect to GPIO :)
Then you should be able to raise and lower volume .... Is that a good idea?
If it does not work via ES then it works 100% with alsa sound mixer :) -
@cyperghost if you can control the audio level through the gpio with this that would be awsome.
-
@edmaul69 That is easily possible!
# Gets a list of simple mixer controls $ amixer scontrols Simple mixer control 'Master',0then
amixer sset 'Master' 10%+Raises mastervolume to 10% ingrements and you will just need a script that read out the GPIO to raise and the GPIO to lower volume.
EDIT:
Well I would use two springs, that center the slider. Then you hold it in + position and the script ask every 0,5 seconds the status of the GPIO and then raises volume +10%. Hold the slider in - position the script asks the status of the GPIO and lowers volume -10% -
With the power on/off switch, here is a solution I'm going to try for my build, thank you @obsidianspider , definitely following your progress to lead the way for mine!! (solder station arrives tomorrow :) The LED can go straight to the genesis hub, and I'll incorporate the switch as well.
Cheers,
Contributions to the project are always appreciated, so if you would like to support us with a donation you can do so here.
Hosting provided by Mythic-Beasts. See the Hosting Information page for more information.