Interest check! New high quality Famicom mini PCBs with sockets for ppu and cpu

[80sFREAK]

Dear All,

Thank you for the replies and support! after a lot of effort I have finally managed to get the result as below and fit the PCB in very compact form:



...

Should be .ok, with no jail bars. Add some capacitors on power rails and especially around video amplifier.
Ah, made power rails at least 0.05 or wider, where possible. We talking about MOS technology, which is more hungry on power, than modern CMOS. Keep in mind old carts too.

[aarkay14]

Thank you for the response. Ok I will add some capacitors on the power line just before going in to the amp circuit. Also the Power lines are 18mil, and the rest 8mil. I will be using 2Oz copper so I think it is ok! What do you think?

-Rama

[jpx72]

So under 10x10cm? Very nice! Looking forward like crazy!!

[FamicomFamily]

Nicely done. I will be interested in few pcbs once you finish up.
This would be nice if you can make it a replacement board to replace the NOAC pcb in Famulator (i love the famulator shell design, very compact, to bad NOAC sucks and it has no RGB out)

[aarkay14]

Thank you for the support! I am near to order the pcbs and parts! Please let me know in case u have any ideas for me to add to the pcb! Or any other comments!

-Rama
Post Merge: December 13, 2018, 07:25:44 am

Nicely done. I will be interested in few pcbs once you finish up.
This would be nice if you can make it a replacement board to replace the NOAC pcb in Famulator (i love the famulator shell design, very compact, to bad NOAC sucks and it has no RGB out)

Umm I think it is too small fr this pcb!
Post Merge: December 13, 2018, 07:26:21 am

So under 10x10cm? Very nice! Looking forward like crazy!!

Thank you sir!

[prince tomato]

very excited about this thing,
and i will definitely be buying some of these,
quantity will depend on final price but i'm certainly getting me some of these.
great to see KRZY's contributions to this project.
he has drawn up some awesome boards for stuff i wanted to build, but could only do on protoboard, by hand,
but could not draw for production.
he designed the board for an external PCE RGB amp that i made this year, and i use that as RGB bypass in my SSDS3.

also, he drew up a board that connects a Famicom 60 pin edgeconnector to an NES 72 pin edge connector.
the files for this board are somewhere on the Tech board here,
and i've used it in a few Famicom-NES combo builds i did last year.
you could for instance take the 60 holes on this new famicom repro board, where you normally solder in the cartridge connector,
and connect that to the 60 pin connector on the fami-nes board , on short risers or headers, or with a bit of ribboncable (as short as possible ofcourse), or even on a plug-in kind of solution.

again, a normal 60-to-72 pin converter would also do the job,
but i really like plug-in modules on the Famicom,
and a semi-permanent dual-slot add-on is just really sexy.

[krzy]

Few suggestions:
1) Take into account that the size of A/V/DC PCB might vary and in worst case there might be just small gap (2cm or even less) between it and the main PCB so your design should not extend so much in the north direction of socket
Also there shouldn't be anything on left and rifht of the connector cause of eject mechanism


2) No idea how you're going to solder the cartridge socket to make it swappable, but if you plan to make any connector have in mind that the gap under the slot might be 1cm or even less in some consoles.
Also the pads should be larger not just tiny round holes)


I would just make place to solder regular 60pin connector cause it is most popular and if somebody wants 72 pin instead, that would be his problem (hopefully I only meet 72pins nes-clones in SP72 shells and those shells are really tall so there will be place to fit additional adapter)

3)There are few standards of how the pins between main PCB and the joypads PCB are arranged. I've found so far four kinds, yours uses 15 pins (lol)

Code Select Expand


WEIRD RINCO | GREY CONSOLE | Most consoles   | IQ 502 rev3
           | Terminator   | GLK2004         |
------------+--------------+-----------------+-------------
VCC (*)     | +5V 7805     | +5V 7805        | VCC
+5V 7805    | VCC          | VCC             | +5V 7805
$4016 D0    | $4017 CLK    | $4017 CLK       | $4016 D0
OUT0        | $4017 D4     | OUT2            | OUT0
OUT1        | OUT0         | OUT1            | $4016 CLK
OUT2        | $4017 D3     | $4017 D4        | $4016 D1
$4017 CLK   | $4016 CLK    | OUT0            | OUT1
GND         | $4017 D0     | $4017 D3        | OUT2
AUDIO       | $4016 D0     | $4016 D1        | GND
!IRQ        | !RESET       | $4017 D2        | AUDIO
$4017 D4    | GND          | $4016 CLK       | !IRQ
$4017 D3    | AUDIO (*)    | $4017 D1        | $4017 D4
$4017 D2    |              | $4017 D0        | $4017 D3
$4017 D1    |              | $4016 D0        | $4017 D2
$4017 D0    |              | !RESET          | $4017 D1
VCC         |              | GND             | $4017 D0
$4016 CLK   |              | !IRQ            | $4017 CLK
$4016 D1    |              | AUDIO           | AUDIO
!RESET      |              |                 | !RESET
GND (*)     |              |                 | GND

(*) this pin is sometimes non present or not connected to anything


4) Wouldnt't it be better to place 74373 closer (underneath?) to the PPU? Currently you route all signals to it and from it to RAM all over the board.


5) Consider putting crystal and all clock generating circuit as close the PPU as possible. If you use the original Famicom clock generator schematic then the CPU clock is buffered by transistor so the distance between clock & CPU might be longer.



But overally quite nice design

[prince tomato]

Few suggestions:
1) Take into account that the size of A/V/DC PCB might vary and in worst case there might be just small gap (2cm or even less) between it and the main PCB so your design should not extend so much in the north direction of socket
Also there shouldn't be anything on left and rifht of the connector cause of eject mechanism


2) No idea how you're going to solder the cartridge socket to make it swappable, but if you plan to make any connector have in mind that the gap under the slot might be 1cm or even less in some consoles.
Also the pads should be larger not just tiny round holes)


I would just make place to solder regular 60pin connector cause it is most popular and if somebody wants 72 pin instead, that would be his problem (hopefully I only meet 72pins nes-clones in SP72 shells and those shells are really tall so there will be place to fit additional adapter)

3)There are few standards of how the pins between main PCB and the joypads PCB are arranged. I've found so far four kinds, yours uses 15 pins (lol)

Code Select Expand


WEIRD RINCO | GREY CONSOLE | Most consoles   | IQ 502 rev3
           | Terminator   | GLK2004         |
------------+--------------+-----------------+-------------
VCC (*)     | +5V 7805     | +5V 7805        | VCC
+5V 7805    | VCC          | VCC             | +5V 7805
$4016 D0    | $4017 CLK    | $4017 CLK       | $4016 D0
OUT0        | $4017 D4     | OUT2            | OUT0
OUT1        | OUT0         | OUT1            | $4016 CLK
OUT2        | $4017 D3     | $4017 D4        | $4016 D1
$4017 CLK   | $4016 CLK    | OUT0            | OUT1
GND         | $4017 D0     | $4017 D3        | OUT2
AUDIO       | $4016 D0     | $4016 D1        | GND
!IRQ        | !RESET       | $4017 D2        | AUDIO
$4017 D4    | GND          | $4016 CLK       | !IRQ
$4017 D3    | AUDIO (*)    | $4017 D1        | $4017 D4
$4017 D2    |              | $4017 D0        | $4017 D3
$4017 D1    |              | $4016 D0        | $4017 D2
$4017 D0    |              | !RESET          | $4017 D1
VCC         |              | GND             | $4017 D0
$4016 CLK   |              | !IRQ            | $4017 CLK
$4016 D1    |              | AUDIO           | AUDIO
!RESET      |              |                 | !RESET
GND (*)     |              |                 | GND

(*) this pin is sometimes non present or not connected to anything


4) Wouldnt't it be better to place 74373 closer (underneath?) to the PPU? Currently you route all signals to it and from it to RAM all over the board.


5) Consider putting crystal and all clock generating circuit as close the PPU as possible. If you use the original Famicom clock generator schematic then the CPU clock is buffered by transistor so the distance between clock & CPU might be longer.



But overally quite nice design

yes, i agree, in an original housing it would be oretty difficult to add another pcb for dual cartridge support.
that was not what i had in mind though, with a nice board this small i will make my own console housing, as small as possible.
and i also agree that 72 pin functionality, although nice, would not be cost-effective for a project like this, and everybody can work around that with their own solutions.

for original consoles a plug-in option might be something like this:

















this also uses the PCB KRZY drew up, and in this case i cannibalized a Slotech cartridgeslot saver, which only adds a power led, and a headphone option that i never got to work anyway.
i had 2 so i don't feel bad about cutting one up for this.
but yeah, this is what i meant by semi permanent, plug-in dual slot module.

[aarkay14]

Few suggestions:
1) Take into account that the size of A/V/DC PCB might vary and in worst case there might be just small gap (2cm or even less) between it and the main PCB so your design should not extend so much in the north direction of socket
Also there shouldn't be anything on left and rifht of the connector cause of eject mechanism


2) No idea how you're going to solder the cartridge socket to make it swappable, but if you plan to make any connector have in mind that the gap under the slot might be 1cm or even less in some consoles.
Also the pads should be larger not just tiny round holes)


I would just make place to solder regular 60pin connector cause it is most popular and if somebody wants 72 pin instead, that would be his problem (hopefully I only meet 72pins nes-clones in SP72 shells and those shells are really tall so there will be place to fit additional adapter)

3)There are few standards of how the pins between main PCB and the joypads PCB are arranged. I've found so far four kinds, yours uses 15 pins (lol)

Code Select Expand


WEIRD RINCO | GREY CONSOLE | Most consoles   | IQ 502 rev3
           | Terminator   | GLK2004         |
------------+--------------+-----------------+-------------
VCC (*)     | +5V 7805     | +5V 7805        | VCC
+5V 7805    | VCC          | VCC             | +5V 7805
$4016 D0    | $4017 CLK    | $4017 CLK       | $4016 D0
OUT0        | $4017 D4     | OUT2            | OUT0
OUT1        | OUT0         | OUT1            | $4016 CLK
OUT2        | $4017 D3     | $4017 D4        | $4016 D1
$4017 CLK   | $4016 CLK    | OUT0            | OUT1
GND         | $4017 D0     | $4017 D3        | OUT2
AUDIO       | $4016 D0     | $4016 D1        | GND
!IRQ        | !RESET       | $4017 D2        | AUDIO
$4017 D4    | GND          | $4016 CLK       | !IRQ
$4017 D3    | AUDIO (*)    | $4017 D1        | $4017 D4
$4017 D2    |              | $4017 D0        | $4017 D3
$4017 D1    |              | $4016 D0        | $4017 D2
$4017 D0    |              | !RESET          | $4017 D1
VCC         |              | GND             | $4017 D0
$4016 CLK   |              | !IRQ            | $4017 CLK
$4016 D1    |              | AUDIO           | AUDIO
!RESET      |              |                 | !RESET
GND (*)     |              |                 | GND

(*) this pin is sometimes non present or not connected to anything


4) Wouldnt't it be better to place 74373 closer (underneath?) to the PPU? Currently you route all signals to it and from it to RAM all over the board.


5) Consider putting crystal and all clock generating circuit as close the PPU as possible. If you use the original Famicom clock generator schematic then the CPU clock is buffered by transistor so the distance between clock & CPU might be longer.



But overally quite nice design

Heyy Sorry for the late reply, I made the design like this to use the NESRGB board.. Please let me know if this will not work?

Also, I got some prototype PCBs for the fit test, the results are as below:






I am waiting for Kryz's response before moving any further, will this work?

Kind Regards,
Rama

[prince tomato]

that board is absolutely tiny!
again, i can't wait to get a couple of these to toy with.

[krzy]

You have to solder components to check if it works and the video quality has no interferences.
It is not a rocket science so if everything is done according to the schematic, it should work.

Another story is if it will fit to different shells. (Are you targeting only Famicom or also many Famiclones?)
For example - in my country one of the most popular Famiclones is IQ502 (the second one is MT777DX but it is made using chips so it is always fixable). Comparing your PCB to the interior of this console, I see that your PCB extends way too long in the left and right and also front direction of the slot so the ejecting mechanism might be obstructed. Also you chose 15 pin header for routing extension port. First, it should be rather 18 or 11 pin (cause it is popular in 95% consoles) and second - it should be placed rather in the center, otherwise the ribbon cable will need to be bent.

[aarkay14]

Thank you for the response Krzy!
I saw that the eject mechanism does not get hampered in iq-501 so i think it shud be ok .. also it is too difficult to make it more smaller than this I think..

[CloudGamerX]

Any further development on this project? I am very interested in one of those miniature discrete logic PCBs

[CloudGamerX]

I am guessing the project is dead? 

[aarkay14]

The project is not dead but in between.. the prototype PCBs are currently not booting...  Need to identify and fix some issue.. Patrick is working and I am supporting.. will update asap.