So, now that the plastics are done, I can start in on making this thing work.
I wanted to relocate the cartridge port to a more centered location. Having the keyboard be a toplaoder with a cart poking out of a prominent position just tickles my nerdy bits... let's just yank you out of there, eh?
Remember how I was saying there was no room for the motherboard? That was only half correct; there's room for the board, just not the things attached to it.
Now, say goodbye to the volume control, link port, power switch, and the a/c jack. In fact, I don't need any of these pieces for the rest of my build, so they'll be tossed in my parts bin.
Now it'll fit.
Now, back to my cartridge port. I needed to mount it, so I took careful measurements, and drilled some holes in my case to run some plastite screws through.
(this photo is of spectacular quality, no?)
Then I had to bend up the pins on my cartridge port.
Installation: Complete
Then there was the issue of connection back to the motherboard.
Simple, Ribbon cable... and a lot of frustrating soldering.
I'm a master of improvising. There was a short lived snag, where I had no way of running the ribbon cable from the motherboard to the cartridge port. Enter careful cutting with a small razor saw. This alone took me about 20 minutes to do, but it was well worth it.
And here's a test to make sure everything fits.
This is the part where patience and finesse come into play: Cutting out the cartridge slot. This was done with a drill, a small razor saw, a pattern file, and a large flat rasp. I wanted it to be perfect, so I really took my time, and did dozens of test fits. I was at it for almost 45 minutes.
More coming soon. I took a break to post this because I'm waiting for some epoxy to dry.
Last edited by Teh D3th St4r (Feb 1, 2013 11:08 pm)
