NES Retro Media Center

What is a computer without WiFi? – Nothing! So today i modified an old USB WiFi adapter to fit my mod. Just opend up the case and replaced the USB socket with a cable so it could be connected directly to the moderboard, easy and works perfectly!

Yester day I could not sleep, so what was I doing? Yes! I was soldering the secound RetroUSB chip and I also removed the big connection socket for the power button and the led.

On the other end, the end that was connected to the moder board the pinout looked like this:

1. GND
3. GND
5. USB_VD2+
7. USB_VD2-
9. +5VSUS
11. USB_VD5-
13. USB_VD5+

I used pin 9 for both of the ports and I connected them to a 2mm socket.

…and today I had time to test it and everything worked!

input: RetroUSB.com RetroPad as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:10.1/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0/input/input4
generic-usb 0003:F000:0003.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.00 Gamepad [RetroUSB.com RetroPad] on usb-0000:00:10.1-1/input0

input: RetroUSB.com RetroPad as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:10.2/usb4/4-2/4-2:1.0/input/input5
generic-usb 0003:F000:0003.0002: input,hidraw1: USB HID v1.00 Gamepad [RetroUSB.com RetroPad] on usb-0000:00:10.2-2/input0

I now have spoken to VIA Embedded on Facebook, asking about new drivers that support HD playback on the P820 board and the answed I got was:

VIA Embedded yes, we do but we don’t provide chipset driver directly to end users. If you are our customer, please contact with our sales representatives.

You many go to this web site, http://linux.via.com.tw/support/downloadFiles.action
We don’t wanna release it since there are so many Linux version and it’s not quite easy for us to maintain.

I have finally got some time over for soldering the RetroKit from RetroZone! My thought was not to do too much modifications on the outside of the NES and therefore I desided to use the standard NES controller connections so all the modifications stays on the inside. I used the wires and the connections on the NES moder board to connect to my RetroKit. I still have the second controller and finding a USB socket to do so I can connect the controller to my moder board.

Note that the purple and the blue wire are not used and it is no need to connect those pins to the connection board. You can find the wiring diagram for the RetroKit here.

The last couple of weaks I have been testing my VIA Epia P820 and the result so far is not good. My first thought was to run FreeBSD and using the OpenChrome driver but Via do not provide enough information about there boards so the OpenChrome team have not been able to make the driver fully support the VX855 chip. Because the OpenChrome driver did not work I tried the source driver VIA provided witch was using an old library from the X.org project called xf86Resources.h and from what I can see no BSD or Linux distribution is using that lib. Since all distributions did not have that library and did not support it the driver did not even compiled. Then i tried different Linux distributions with the same result. I even compiled X.org from source. And I have found out that almost every one who tries to use Linux with the EPIA-P820 & Amos 3001 fails.

Since VIA also has drivers for Windows I had to try, they work quite good you can watch movies in 480p (in the specifications 1080p should work but they do not). One of the downsides was that Windows took 5min and 4sec to boot, not so good for a media center. There is also a binary driver for Ubuntu 9.04 (current version of Ubuntu is 10.04) that I tried. After a day of work I got it to work and now I can watch DiVX movies with the CPU on 100% (do not forget that the board should support 1080p).

So how can VIA say that the EPIA-P820 & Amos 3001 with the VX855 can play HD movies up to 1080p if the do not have drivers for it? Phoronix.com and X.org calls the open source support that VIA has for a bluff, read the article here and the discussion here.

Today I got my VIA Epia P820 from Mini-ITX.de. Right now I have all the parts that I need som hopefully there will be alot of posts from now on. Lets start with the unboxing of the P820 moderboard!

Very soon I will be starting to actually do something on this project :) The 16th of February RetroZone shipped my order. Yesterday DealExtreme sent my order and on 1th of Mars Mini-ITX.de will send my Via Epia Pico P820 moderboard. Now it is only the RAM memory that is left to order. Im so excited!

Today I was put in a very hard situation, I was forced to choose if I was going to build my NES to USB converter or to buy it. I so wanted to build it my self by using a PIC microcontroller but since I did not have a programmer and was only to program two chips it was alot cheaper to buy the converters. From what I could see from forums RetroZone was the best place to go and so I did. As soon as they arrives I will put out some pictures cause I will install the converters in a special way.

Since I did a bit of reasearch on how to build and program the NES to USB converter it is ashame to let it go to waist. Ther for I will post some good links here.

• The PIC18F4550 from Microchip is a really nice microcontroller to use for this USB project.
• Microchip also have very good programmers and debugger tools, PICkit 2.
• If you like DIY, like me please have a look at this article at www.diyife.com.
• And here are some information about programming it on a Mac!
• The software and alot of more information on how to do this you can find here.
• Also if you like YouTube, MungedToastFaces has posted alot of good videos.

I know I have said it before but now I will now wait any longer. The brand new VIA EPIA-P820 with the new 64-Bit Nano processor, have a look at there homepage! Since the board is so new it is hard to find resellers that ship to Sweden but the VIA’s Facebook group have helped me a lot.

So far I think these shops will ship to Sweden:

• http://via-itx.com/via-amos-3000-series.html
• www.mini-tft.de

For a few days ago I bought a Slimline DVD drive on Tradera (Swedish Ebay) that I will use with my media center. Eventually I will by a Blue Ray writer but the price is to high right now.