So this is my attempt at a full on case mod project with a work log, it's been a little while in the planning but it's now time to start! As you can probably tell from the title I'm calling this project Ion64. The basis of this project is that I want a small unit that can be used for streaming media to my TV and sound system at home, so basically a HTPC. I also work away a lot, including overseas, and so I want a system I can take with me for media use, a bit of light gaming, web use and if need be word processing and other office stuff. I want this system to be small and unobtrusive to aid portability, power efficient because of limitations I have at some of my work locations but also different and novel. And it's all going to be built using the Ion platform. And yes I know the Ion / Atom platform isn't really a gaming rig, but the next picture should give you an idea of the gaming I have in mind That's right I intend to mod an Ion system into an n64 – thus Ion64 and the gaming I have in mind is playing emulated copies of my old came carts, perhaps some old school PC games as well. My old n64 sadly passed away and so I will be using the shell as my case. The project will focus on space management and keeping as much of the exterior console looking as original as possible, particularly from the front – I want people who see it to initially believe it to be an n64. I may have some cooling issues using this case and alot of space management to do but these just some of my challenges to over come I'm going to use the Zotac Ionitx-A series board for this project. I've chosen this board because it has good reviews for a lot of my needs, particularly the media side of things. It's small size, low heat output and built in wireless makes it a good choice. What clinches it for me though is that the PSU is external in the form of a laptop power pack allowing me more room and less cables to worry about internally. Specs wise to start with we are looking at... 1.6Ghz Dual core Atom / Ion board 1Gb DDR2-800 ram 120Gb 2.5" SATA Hdd n64 Controller to USB adaptor So will it work... will it even fit!?! Follow my log to find out
So day 1 of my project begins with my dearly departed donor n64 getting ready for its makeover First things first, i need to strip out the old internals. Using a Gamebit tool braught of eBay for the task i soon had it open and a nice display of 1996 hardware avalible befor me. I soon had that out after removing a rediculous amount of screws (Nintendo really didn't intend for that board to come out did they) and was left with the two halves to work with. top bottom I then decided for the sake of my feet that i should take this outside so i wouldn't have to walk all over plastic debris on my carpet. And so comes a very important milestone in a modders life, getting his first rotary tool . Sure i've used one before, i've made do without as well on many many tasks but for this mod it was apparent i would benefit by using one and so i stummped up the cash to get myself my own. aaaaawwwwww...... well anyway it didn't stay in there for long it was soon put to work getting rid of all the old stand offs and back plastic to make room for the motherboard. My work was rough but my intention was to get the bulk of it out the way and then start work getting it neater and more refined once the bulk was out of the way. I had to stop early though because the light was fading and rain was on the way so there is still work to be done. I had initially hoped to be able to keep the old cartrige flaps operational, possibly using an old game cart as external media working via hidden USB connections but it quickly became apparent that the space and location of the plastic fittings wouldn't allow it . Still it's not the end of the world and i will still be using the dust flaps in the finished article. Another thing you can see i've started work on, in the picture of the top half off the case, is that i'm removing some of the plastic vent grill. Reasons being is that it will not be a major cosmetic change externally as the main fins will still be in place, but it will allow better air flow and also give me just that little extra clearance which in this case is invaluble. Work still to be done but it was complete enough to do an initial fitting test.... I knew it was going to be a tight fit but it was just a little bit tighter than i would have liked. The main thing here though is IT DOES FIT! For this mod i've measured and remeasured and then measured again. I've gone over and over it in my head but i'm sure many of you are aware that no matter how much you check, untill it's done and in place you will never know for sure. It was a great releif to see my measurements worked out Hopefully more soon
External HD, dvd and PSU? or are you going to use magic? Hehe. Funny mod tho! looking forward to see what your gonna do with the rest of the pc...
+1 there. I've never played an N64, but this is a pretty amazing idea. I personally thinl you could do without an optical drive, use an external for ripping media etc. As for the hard drive, it woild depend on what size you were planning on using (2.5 or 3.5). It would have been cool to somehow have put the hard drive inside an empty game cartridge and attach to the console that way, but space can be a b*****d with console conversions like this. Good luck, I'll be watching
Is that the ion board that has an external power brick? Oh and if your struggling for space for a HDD intel have a 1.8" SSD which would be easy enough to hide away somewhere, its only 80Gb though if thats enough.
This is just an incredible mod... Sub'd. A tip from my side... you could use the N64DD-Expansion Pack for containing a PSU, HDD's, drives and stuff like that. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Nintendo-64DD-expansion.jpg
N64 - 32,930,000 built; one less won't make much of a difference. DD - 15,000 built; one less will make a big difference. Plus the things were only sold in Japan. I'd put the HDD in the game cartridge, then you can have one of those HDD caddies to hot-swap them:
wow thanks for the great response guys The PSU is external, the Zotac board uses an external power brick like a laptop which plugs in just below the wifi antenna (that red cap on the right of the back pannel) As i said in my original post this was a major reason selecting this board. Power to any other devices is from a molex power connector on the board. I'm looking to put a 2.5" hard drive internally. Again it will be a tight fit but should be possible and will be located above the wireless card and SATA connectors on the motherboard. If this is not going to be possible then i was going to look at running it via a high capacity memory card with sata reader and using a larger external drive for storage. using a new SSD would be great! - less heat and power on the system - but I don't have the funds for that kind of tech at the moment. If my plans for using a 2.5" drive work then i should be able to swap to SSD at some point in the future DVD drive is never going to fit or be in keeping with the original console, When one is needed i will use an external drive or stream the media accross the network.
Update - 1st Dec 2009 Hi there, time for an update, My first job after getting back to work on the case was to finish cleaning out the old fittings for the case and get the motherboard mounted. I used the dremel to remove the remaining excess plastic and then a file to remove any rough edges before drilling out some points for the screws to go through. As you can see I am using M3 bolts mounted from the bottom of the case. The good news is that the 2 bolts at the front will not be that visible once I've mounted the feet covers back on, the third bolt at the back will be visible, but only if you're already looking at the back panel really. The third mounting bolt is a little more problematic. There is not really any way of mounting from the bottom. The problem is better explained by this pic My plan is to get a longer M3 bolt and resin the base of it in to the 'crater' with enough sticking up to mount the motherboard on. I will let you know how it goes next update (at least that's the hope) So that's the work on the bottom halve, the top halve has had some work done too! Firstly I needed to clear some more room for the RAM. The consoles power switch was getting in the way so I went to work on that. when repositioned and looked at from above you can see the RAM needing the clearance It's a little unfortunate really. I was happy to lose the reset button if needed (that also had the same problem) but I was looking to keep the power button functional. Fortunately my plans for this should still be possible (just!) although a little bit of tweaking may be needed. Hope to have more on this in the near future Also decision time came to the cart flaps. I really liked all your enthusiasm to keep them and shared it myself but it was just not going to be, with the spring mechanism / cart holder having to go in order to accommodate the hardware I had little choice but to lose them or glue them. As I wanted to keep the externals of the case as authentic as possible I opted to glue them. The flash makes the seepage look pretty bad but in real life it's far less noticeable, and with it positioned a meter away you really have to look to notice it. I admit it's far from ideal and I was hoping for a better result, unfortunately it's one of those things you can't redo once its done I've used a resin from a GRP kit, It's the same stuff I am intending to mount the fourth mounting bolt in (though that will have glass mixed in). I'm going to say now it's not finished yet, I'm going to have to grind a bit of it down some (even this addition to the inside of the case is causing some clearance issues with the heat sink) and then I will bond it in more. On too the hard drive!!! This is a 2.5" to 3.5" drive converter. I've had to trim it down a little on one side so it can still be accommodated within the case and it fits to the HDD like so and it will locate itself like this or at least that's my initial plan. I can see issues though as I am sure you guys can and if I just go ahead with it I'm not going to just be able to change my mind and remove it. The plan is that I want to resin the HDD rack in to place on the top of the case but I'm not sure about this plan. My question to you guys is will the resin (reinforced with fibre) be strong enough and bond well enough to hold the metal brackets in place? I am also going to have to do some more work on ensuring it has enough clearance from the CMOS battery that is in an upright battery holder (as I said at the start, this project is all about clearance issues and space management) My alternative is one that has been suggested to me by a friend.... Velcro. Yup his suggestion was to Velcro it in place. However I again have the issue of will it stick (both the Velcro it's self and the Velcro to the case and hdd) and will this not be a big problem for the HDD overheating (essentially giving it a woolly jumper) Any help and opinions from you guys would be really appreciated Stuart
Update - 6th Dec 2009 OK so I've been able to get a bit of work done so I thought I had better post it up It's been a hectic week for me so I was unable to achieve as much as I wanted, but very happy at the results of what I did manage to do First of all I had to seek permission from the project supervisor / SWMBO to continue with the mod a few snacks and a bit of a fuss later she kindly gave me permission before going off to sleep on the sofa while I modded on As I said in my previous post I had some plans for modding the power on switch and so that's where I started from. The switch pre-mod looked a little like this and after a little work with the dremel to shape it so it could clear the RAM it looked something like this Once in all was done I positioned the switch and secured it in place with a little resin I'm going to have to secure it in with a bit more glue in the future to make sure it doesn't fail on me but as it stands it works! sliding the original power switch now turns on the computer! so next job was the HDD. I opted to secure the HDD using only 1 rail. Initially I was worried about it being too insecure but with pads in the right place on the case it actually secures the HDD very well and allows me to upgrade / swap drives in the future. To secure the HDD rail I opted to resin the metal into place. I was aware that the resin wouldn't really stick to the metal though so I used fibreglass as well to sandwich the rail in place. Like this... next up I made some custom cabling for the HDD. SATA Power These cables give me the power and connections the drive needs but allows me to reduce the cable mess inside the limited space I have. Final pic as to how all this work goes together That's all for now folks, please leave any feedback, suggestions or questions you may have, I hope to have some more work for you in the near future
i love it man! brings so many memories back to life from back in thoose days where that console was the KING! cant wait for more updates! sub´d and +rep for the memories xD
Thanks for the support guys, glad you like it So when i came up with the idea to do this mod i did some research to see who else had done it as i was sure i would not have been the first to have done this. I found a guy online called wakayoda looking to do the same idea, well sort off. He wanted to build a much more powerfull machine into the n64 and having seen how much of a problem i've had with space I don't think his plans would have worked, it also seemed to involve having external connected modules to the n64 (there was even talk of water cooling!) rather than a contained n64 like mine. Anyway, any forums that i found that he braught the idea up in (and this was only a month or 2 ago) have showed no real world progress or results. Prior to this guy having the idea a few months ago i have found no other PC's modded into an n64 which i find suprising considering ITX boards and smaller have been around long enough. I've found an n64 being modded into a PC but not the other way around Can any of you guys find a previous example of a PC modded into an n64 or could i be looking at a first here? Stuart
looks good. did a good job getting all of the pieces to fit in the n64 case. it would have been cool to put the drive in the game slot though, with one of those vertical hot swap things... its the first n64 i have seen, the classic nes seems to be a lot more popular for sticking an itx system into.
