NES Retro Media Center

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.

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.