14 April 2009
Howdy Team!
Everyone's heard of these. NES's that have been gutted and replaced with computer innards.
I came across this idea on the Instructables site.
Here's a link:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Nintendo-NES-PC/
Has anyone else achieved something of this magnitude?
What are your thoughts?
-Mike
Seems like something that would go in the "General" section. Aside from that, I'm not sure how useful it could be.
Live CD with FCEUX, ZSNES, and some indie games perhaps?
According to the How-To:
Quote:
Here's the full list of consoles my NES PC currently has installed.
- NES
- Super NES
- Sega Mega Drive / Genesis
- Sega Master System
- MAME (Arcade)
- Game Boy (Color)
- Game Boy Advance
- Sega Game Gear
- Turbo-Grafx 16 / PC-Engine
- Sony Playstation (games run from CD drive)
- Nintendo 64
The NES PC is used without mouse or keyboard! Everything is be done using the gamepads, which makes it feel more like a console (like it should!)
On a side note: I chose to put this in NES Hardware, as it uses NES Hardware in it's design. Mainly, the case. Woop Woop!
tried to do this years ago but my PSU was too big
still have the dremeled case and PC Mobo though.. wish i had saved the NES internals :'(
I'm considering using a miniaturized mainboard.. The brand name Mini-ITX is what covers the ground here.
The majority of the boards are above the $150 mark. But they're small. And they'll fit.
Take a gander at this:
http://www.mini-box.com/Intel-Desktop-DG45FC-w-Intel-Pentium-Dual-Core-Desktop-Processor-E5200-CPU
$230, but it's 17cm x 17cm.
What be the dimensions of the NES case, inside?
-Mike, protector of adventure
I have used Intel's ATOM dual core motherboards before, they are nice, and very cheap.
Interesting!
I'm reading some reviews right now.
Some stated prices are within the $75 USD range.
Tell me, how have they worked out for you in the past?
What are your thoughts on their capabilities?
Their limitations?
I have two Mini ITX systems.
One is powered by the D201GLY2 motherboard, and includes a Celeron 220 processor.
The other is powered by the D945GCLF2 motherboard and includes an Atom 330 dual-core processor (with hyperthreading, so the OS sees 4 logical processors)
I'm running Ubuntu Linux on both boxes. 32-bit OS on the Atom, and 64-bit OS on the Celeron.
I tested Nintendulator:
45 FPS on the Celeron, 50FPS with sound disabled.
20 FPS on the Atom, 30FPS with sound disabled. It's not even getting close to 100% CPU usage, so something must be really wrong here.
Then I tested ZSNES. Native Linux ZSNES is available for 32 bit only, so I used Wine to run ZSNES on the 64 bit OS.
On the Celeron, full speed, 49FPS if using the Super 2xSai filter.
On the Atom, full speed, 52FPS if using the Super 2xSai filter.
I haven't ran Windows on either machine, so I can't tell you exactly what to expect there.
The D201GLY2 (Celeron) has no Composite or S-Video Out port, and has bad default video drivers on Ubuntu. The fixed drivers don't work on the newest versions of Ubuntu.
The D945GCLF2 (Atom) comes with a crappy motherboard fan, it went super noisy within a week. Replace it immediately. (The CPU has no fan, just a heatsink)
They both have only one PCI slot. I have a Gigabit Ethernet card in the Celeron, and a Wifi card in the atom. (atom has Gigabit Ethernet built in)
Celeron machine takes only up to 1GB of RAM, Atom machine takes up to 2GB. 2GB of RAM is about $20.
I have found that the Celeron machine jumps to 100% CPU usage during heavy disk I/O.
Prices:
D201GLY2 (Celeron): $67 to $80 depending on seller (prices exclude shipping). Newegg doesn't sell this one anymore.
D945GCLF2 (Atom): $82 (plus $7 shipping)
Dwedit wrote:
20 FPS on the Atom, 30FPS with sound disabled. It's not even getting close to 100% CPU usage, so something must be really wrong here.
My guess is that Nintendulator is single threaded, and thus can only use one cpu core.
Sounds interesting!
I would most likely be using a heavily-tweaked Windows XP.
S-video and RCA outputs are important to me.
I would go so far as to say HDMI, and turn it into a media centre, but I am not aware of any mini ITX board with that capability as of time of writing
However - For emulation, as which would be the main focus of said machine, I believe the boards you have presented to be an excellent start.
Good work mang!
Thanks! Any more ideas?
You're not going to find RCA audio outputs on anything, but there are always 1/8" stereo jack to RCA converters.
To connect S-Video and stereo 1/8" jack to composite input on a TV, I use the
converting cable from s-video.com, which costs about $17-$20.
Oh yeah, and for comparsion, a Windows Pentium III 800MHz computer (Dell Dimension 4100) runs ZSNES at 59FPS with Super 2xsai turned on.
My benchmarks are very unscientific though. The OS was changed for each test.
If you're making something like a NES PC to play emulated games on, you can get away without a hard drive if you use Linux.
I was considering that. Or possibly using a battery of USB Flash Drives as opposed to a large hard drive.
if you could mount a usb drive inside a cart, and then manage to line up the usb port with the cart slot... that would be really cool
Or if you're completely insane, rewire the pins of a USB flash drive to the cartridge slot pins, then rewire the corresponding cartridge slot pins to the USB port.
But then you'd have to blow on it to get it to work.
that would actually be kinda cool.. you could make a cart with a female usb slot on it for swappable usb disks
using the controller ports for usb is also pretty cool.. for usb controllers especially
Dwedit wrote:
To connect S-Video and stereo 1/8" jack to composite input on a TV, I use the
converting cable from s-video.com, which costs about $17-$20.
And then you might run up against motherboards with no S-Video output, only VGA or DVI, so you need a
$50 adapter to turn VGA into S-Video.
Hmm. Everything appears as if falling into place. Magnifique!
There is still the question of cooling.
I got a powerpak instead fits my entire library of games plus some and
runs on original nes hardware cpu. i guess for a project would be nice to try but as a emulator machine kind of expensive. You can get a better result with a $40.00 nintendo + $135.00 powerpak as far as having games
at your finger tips. To answer your question i made one 3 years ago ran Mame on it and was pretty cool but when you add cpu motherboard memory controller case ( old nes) + controller and operating system it can get very expensive quick, Not including a good power supply. also cooling was a issue for me, it got really hot.
alienform wrote:
You can get a better result with a $40.00 nintendo + $135.00 powerpak as far as having games
at your finger tips.
The Original Instructable wrote:
Here's the full list of consoles my NES PC currently has installed.
- NES
- Super NES
- Sega Mega Drive / Genesis
- Sega Master System
- MAME (Arcade)
- Game Boy (Color)
- Game Boy Advance
- Sega Game Gear
- Turbo-Grafx 16 / PC-Engine
- Sony Playstation (games run from CD drive)
- Nintendo 64
The NES PC is used without mouse or keyboard! Everything is be done using the gamepads, which makes it feel more like a console (like it should!)
Furthermore - NES Emulation has arrived long ago at the stage whereupon the art is not merely preserving the past but renewing it in new light
COOLING is a major issue!
Let's hear some awesome ways to cool the PANTS of that NES PC?
Let's ROCK IT team!!!
wink
-Mikey
Mike wrote:
Let's hear some awesome ways to cool the PANTS of that NES PC?
Underclocking. If you'll remember, the N64 was passively cooled. If that's not enough, a small case fan like that of the Wii may suffice.
Those mini ITX atom boards don't need much in the lines of cooling. The processor doesn't even have a fan (but the motherboard does).
The built-in motherboard fan is crap that falls apart immediately, replace it. Some people replaced it with a big passive heatsink, I just used an identically-sized fan.
The idea of an NES just sitting there and being LOUD because of fans, sounds horrible to me. I wouldn't want any fans in one, nor a mechanical disk drive.
The NES PC idea is kinda nifty but I'd much rather have a big roaring tower with a Core 2 CPU. Anything that would fit into a NES would be like a media PC, only good for less intense tasks which defeats the point with how demanding some emulators are like MAME. And besides I already have a console with a PC inside, it's called the Xbox.
Memblers wrote:
The idea of an NES just sitting there and being LOUD because of fans, sounds horrible to me.
Hence passive cooling.
Quote:
I wouldn't want any fans in one, nor a mechanical disk drive.
Would you be more comfortable with a
disk drive if it were a toploader?
Tepples! I like the way you think!
UNDERCLOCKING!
Oh crap! How did I get in Nova Scotia?!!?
MottZilla wrote:
And besides I already have a console with a PC inside, it's called the Xbox.
I was just thinking.. you might be able to fit a dreamcast inside of a NES case lol.. then you could run a nes emu and windowsCE even
MottZilla wrote:
The NES PC idea is kinda nifty but I'd much rather have a big roaring tower with a Core 2 CPU. Anything that would fit into a NES would be like a media PC, only good for less intense tasks which defeats the point with how demanding some emulators are like MAME. And besides I already have a console with a PC inside, it's called the Xbox.
MAME runs pretty nice on the desktop version of the intel Atom, and that's available as a Mini-ITX board. There is even a dual-core version now for those willing to spend $85 instead of $70 for the mobo+cpu. (the regular version is only hyperthreaded)