hey, i got myself a SNES for christmas!

[oompa loompa]

i haven't been on the board lately, and i haven't been doing much development. sorry that the beta of the noise machine isn't out yet, when i promised to release it like a month ago =P

so, on to the project --
kids, don't ty this at home!

okay, so i have this snes system: i didn't have any games for it, so i ripped the motherboard out, and replaced it with an SBC (single board computer) packed with a pentium CPU, and a slim hard drive. you know that stock sucks =P, now i can play any game i want on my SNES using emulation =D.

for pictures of the modified SNES, check out the pictures page on the main site (http://devster.monkeeh.com/pictures.html). the pictures aren't very good at all, the first 10 or so suck real bad and had to be editted =P. i'll retake photos when i get a TV scan converter, and whenever i feel like it

there's not much to the computer, i didn't want to add any removable drives like a cd-rom or floppy because i don't plan to be playing any movies or music =P (streaming might be an option). here are the specs of the computer:

- motherboard: kontron CoolMonster P3 SBC (costing $500! I got it for free though =P, and its a lot smaller than an ITX board)
- cpu: Pentium 3, 400 mhz with some cache
- memory: 128mb PC100 sdram
- hard drive: 1.3 gb
- 100mbps ethernet port
- video: ATI rage mobility something something

here's what the entire project cost me:
- 2 SNES systems and 2 controllers: $5
- Motherboard: FREE (with a little bribing)
- Hard Drive: FREE
- Power Supply: FREE
- Wires+Connectors+Switches: Probably $10, these are all parts i already have
- All the hot-glue i used: $5 (used lots of hot glue !)
- SDRAM: ? (dunno how much the memory was when it was bought)

Total: ~$25, all for converting a SNES to a PC

All that is left to do now is to build a scan converter, so that i can use a TV monitor instead of VGA (probably could get this for free too =P)

[jlf65]

That's pretty cool. Can't wait for better pictures. ;D

Those SBCs are pretty nifty, but pretty expensive. Getting one free is great if you can swing it.

[oompa loompa]

i created a logo for my "custom" super nintendo system in 15 minutes ;D



gosh, i wish i could draw =P, where can i start?

those SBC's are expensive, $500 for a pentium 3 400mhz is like the year 2001 all over again =P. i think they're kinda steep because they only make so many of those sbc's, and that they're mostly used for industrialized control processing.

too bad mine didn't have a TV-out, because now i have to find something to convert vga to composite video. i can pull off a chromtel plcc chip off one of my webpals, which will convert vga to ntsc, but i'll wait for someone to hook me up a free converter =P.

it's kinda cool though, having a SNES box that can connect me to the internet, play SNES games, and stream music, or videos . it's even more like a SNES because i use the joypad to control all mouse movements

[jlf65]

At least it was free. I've been waiting for the EPIA Nanos to come out. I've got a project I'd like to work on, and the Nano would do well for it. The latest Nanos have HDTV capability along with regular video out. They're really great for media usage.

[oompa loompa]

another good choice for small motherboards is to use a laptop motherboard. i know the sony vaio fx series motherboards work great for those small projects

[GiGaBiTe]

ehh, i dont mean to burst your bubble:

cpu: Pentium 3, 400 mhz with some cache

the slowest PIII that intel made was 450 MHz, and there were no FCPGA PII's, and i doubt a SECC1 cpu would fit inside a snes case.

[oompa loompa]

okay, the cpu on this sbc is an intel LP pentium iii 400 mhz (low profile)

here's the datasheet for my sbc:
www.kontron-emea.com/index.php?id=226&cat=52&productid=232

i dunno if the intel pentium iii LP was the same as the ones that came in the boxed package, maybe they had different cache sizes

i'll take better pics of my snes soon so that you can see how small this pentium 3 is

[GiGaBiTe]

wtf?! can you put those things in normal pcs and use them as some sort of upgrade?

and BAHAAHAHA i dont believe you got an EISA one of those, i havent seen a motherboard with EISA (not to be confused with ISA) in a decade.

[oompa loompa]

you can't really plug the sbc card into a normal motherboard because it's meant for plugging into a backplane. i think the bus is called isa-pci: an isa bus, and a pci bus are already there on that one connector

you're right, there's no eisa bus on these cards. i wonder where i mentioned EISA though x.x

[oompa loompa]

a'right, the high quality pics are up

[Tom Maneiro]

nice board! I didn't know that the SNES has too much empty space there (actually, i only saw a real SNES once...).

Windows 98? Allright, ZSNES runs sweet there, but nothing more...

And... what the heck is a Webpal?

[oompa loompa]

a webpal is like a unit that you can hook up to your TV, and use to browse the internet. has an arm7 processor on it, and it great for homebrew =P, if people are able to program flash simms

i was hoping of using just plain dos on the SNES, but then tcp/ip netowrking didn't work so well, and had intermittent problems using microsoft client. a pentium III 400mhz+windows 98+zsnes makes some games lag, like stunt race fx. but that stunt fx game never really worked right in emualtion =D

[GiGaBiTe]

admin said:

you can't really plug the sbc card into a normal motherboard because it's meant for plugging into a backplane. i think the bus is called isa-pci: an isa bus, and a pci bus are already there on that one connector

you're right, there's no eisa bus on these cards. i wonder where i mentioned EISA though x.x

there is no such thing as an isa-pci bus. the card you have there is an EISA card.

EISA is not to be confused with an ISA slot. you can plainly tell the difference when you look at the board devster has, and a sound blaster 16. the extra set of teeth on the bottom of the card is for 32 bit mode, while the top pins are for 16 bit mode.

EISA was born in 1988, when IBM refused to share their 32 bit MCA (microchannel architecture) technology, and charged hefty licencing fees for MCA's use.

the 'double deck' pins serve different purposes. the top row of pins (closest to the card) is the standard plain-jane 16 bit ISA bus. the 2nd row of pins on the card was for 32 bit operation. although it was still limited to the crippling 8~ MHz, while MCA was at 14 MHz.

essentially EISA was the commonwealth vs. IBM, and it crushed IBM. after about a year, the MCA architecture died, and the EISA standard lived on into the mid 90's where it was superceeded by the VLB (vesa local bus) and the PCI slot.

if you can manage to find a 386 or 486 motherboard that has a brown looking ISA slot (EISA) try plugging your upgrade thing into it, i guarantee it will work.

heres a pic (bad one) of an EISA slot and card.

[oompa loompa]

oh, i thought eisa slots were longer than the isa slot, as in there's an edge additional connector. look at the datasheets for my sbc, and you'll see that it's a pci-isa slot =P

[Tom Maneiro]

EISA cards were used also as riser cards for NLX (desktop) cases, these have the PCI and ISA slots of the system, and those cards are often specific per machine (see my IBM-on-Acer experiment: if i plug a EISA riser card from a Acer in a IBM motherboard, it will NOT boot)

I didn't know that EISA was also a standard expansion connector for normal cards... (server thing?)