the - FatBoy - handheld project

so dunno if anyone reads this sub forum but i wanna share one of my projects with you guys. This is a handheld famiclone console, a famiclone is a hardware clone of the original japanese famicom home computer that has been dumbed down and rebranded as the NES for the rest of the world. It can play both the original famicom cartridges, chinese bootleg cartridges and the NES cartridges using a NES to famicom adapter. It can run of batteries or a power adapter, it has an AV out and controller ports so you can use it as a regular console when you are at home, you can also just put it on a table and plug 2 controllers in and play it with a friend. Its kinda just like the nintendo switch lol.

So i began by taking apart several famiclone consoles and gathering the parts i need and connecting everything together to see if my idea could even work. I used a cheep car rear view monitor from china as a screen for my console along with a few other extra part for voltage regulation and a sound cirquit. Once my proof of concept worked, i began sketching the look of my console as well as laying out the whole circuitry on paper, I have also measured the dimensions of every part im going to use and made some rough quick 3D models of them with those measurements i took. I needed this to know how to model the outer shell around them and make sure they all fit inside, once i had a model ready i began 3D printing the pieces.

Pxd4qHK.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UzsoyY7awk&feature=youtu.be

Fitting all the components inside it was the most fun part, i had to fabricate a lot of the internal components as well, like a controller board with an an audio jack. I printed the main part where most of the components will be housed, first, so that i wouldnt waste any time waiting till the rest of it gets printed and began laying in all the components and connecting and testing everything (had to reprint this part 3 times with a bunch of modifications before i got it right)
First thing i made was a sound circuit that amplifies the sound signal, adjusts its volume and directs it to one of the 3 audio outputs (built in speaker, headphone jack and audio out for the TV)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU70wbFD_FQ&feature=youtu.be

Then i wired up the main board to the controller board and the video out board and connected everything to the power circuit, powering it up for the first time to try it out on a TV through the AV out. Finally all the parts were done printing and i could connect the screen and put it all together.
yJQbZLd.jpg


Things that are still left to do is to modify the screen to only require 5 volts instead of 12 so that i wouldn't need so many batteries to run it, overclocking the CPU with a higher frequency quartz oscillator (its a PAL board so it runs slightly slower than the NTSC ones), putting in a better volume controller, redesigning the battery compartment and some other small tweaks and than i can go to the next phase of this, which is to make an order with this company that can cheaply manufacture the outer shell, more professionally than i could with my terrible printer. If i manage to find someone that i can source famiclone main boards from or manufacture them for me, i might start a serial production of these, but who knows its all just a day dream for now because i still need to finish many other projects before i can get back to this.
ebMrg2e.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91jVnozbEFA

This is partially why im interested in nesmaker, i made a console, now i wanna make a game for it xD
 

chronosv2

New member
That thing looks amazing!
What I'm curious about are those three buttons above the cartridge port. What do those do?

Anyway, can't wait to see more of this down the line, and it would be really neat seeing NESMaker carts running on it.
 

dale_coop

Moderator
Staff member
Oh WOW! Awesome, man! Very nice work.
I use my original NES, I have Raspberry Pis and hacked handled consoles (PSP and my Switch) on which I play my NES games.
My your handled famiclone can actually play real cartridges, that is cool !
 

Mihoshi20

Member
SuperMar10Brothe said:
so dunno if anyone reads this sub forum but i wanna share one of my projects with you guys. This is a handheld famiclone console, a famiclone is a hardware clone of the original japanese famicom home computer that has been dumbed down and rebranded as the NES for the rest of the world. It can play both the original famicom cartridges, chinese bootleg cartridges and the NES cartridges using a NES to famicom adapter. It can run of batteries or a power adapter, it has an AV out and controller ports so you can use it as a regular console when you are at home, you can also just put it on a table and plug 2 controllers in and play it with a friend. Its kinda just like the nintendo switch lol.

So i began by taking apart several famiclone consoles and gathering the parts i need and connecting everything together to see if my idea could even work. I used a cheep car rear view monitor from china as a screen for my console along with a few other extra part for voltage regulation and a sound cirquit. Once my proof of concept worked, i began sketching the look of my console as well as laying out the whole circuitry on paper, I have also measured the dimensions of every part im going to use and made some rough quick 3D models of them with those measurements i took. I needed this to know how to model the outer shell around them and make sure they all fit inside, once i had a model ready i began 3D printing the pieces.

Not bad. I hope by next year to have myself a 3D printer, laser cutter, and hopefully also a decent sized CNC machine to start prototyping a nes development console with slot for testing carts but also drop in latch ziffs for testing eproms for the most common NES cart PCB types. Also eager to get my cart flasher in to see how well they do on famiclones. Not sure if anyone's tested the INL carts on one yet or any implementation of UNROM-512 yet.

Handheld is looking amazing though. I like how compact it is and yet still keeps the AV out.
 

darkhog

New member
Kinda offtopic, but where does one get a NES to Fami converter (the other way around is easy to find)? And would it make possible to run NM carts on a famiclone?
 

Mihoshi20

Member
darkhog said:
Kinda offtopic, but where does one get a NES to Fami converter (the other way around is easy to find)? And would it make possible to run NM carts on a famiclone?

I bought mine a few years back but I don't recall them being difficult to find or rare. Bought mine through either ebay or maybe even picked it up on amazon as I wanted to use my PowerPak on my FamiCom AV. I thought about buying another one recently and modding it for expanded audio. You do however have to make sure it is an NES to FamiCom converter for as you mentioned, it is far more common to find the opposite. As for if the INL flash carts work on famiclones, not sure yet but I am hoping they do. Is the first thing I'm going to test when my flasher and cart comes in.
 
i got mine from this dude on ebay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-NES-to-Famicom-Converter-Adapter-72-pin-to-60-pin-Good-Quality/282311629148?hash=item41bb15995c:g:LVAAAOSw0UdXqbMA:rk:2:pf:0
 
This thing is awesome!
I wanted to make a "mintypi" a while back but didn't get around to it.
Right now I play nes games on my hacked 3ds.
 

SerafukuSoftware

New member
This is bloody amazing! I absoloutely love the 80's-era Industrial design of it all. It very much reminds me of the work of AndroidArts, who does like conceptual 80's consoles and computer designs. Even down to your sketches. Fantastic!

Famiclones are fun to toy-around with, I have various models. I wanted to mod one of those educational-keyboard famiclones into a proper 8-bit desktop machine similar in design to the Atari-800, but I never got around to it. xD
 

KamDraby

New member
lol.. not so much. The rest of my PC sucks waaayy too much for it to be of any use. I tried playing CellFactor but it didnt really work. Im thinking of selling the card.

Anyone wanna buy a PhysX card? 250. xD
 
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