Short Stack: World’s smallest Nintendo Wii
github.com
github.com
Word of caution: many electronics are not designed for the shorts between connections which occur if you hot-plug one of those.
There are lots of connectors out there where the pins never short. The tricky thing is finding ones that can be plugged and unplugged often, while still being small. I've misused USB B connectors for this purpose; it's not common enough for someone to have the wrong cable to plug in, yet very easy to solder and to get the parts. There are also some circular connectors (M5, M6) where the connector on the device is decently small and the bulk tends to be on the cable side.
With a small crimper there are even more compact options which still handle many mating cycles, like Samtec's various Tiger Eye product lines.
The short-proof approach/strategy would be to use small magnetic pogo connectors, but I really wanted to maintain compatibility with the GC Nano!
Along with an "authentic" mini power "brick" wrapped around the middle of the USB-C cord. :)
Very nice!
Selecting games from a virtual library never has the same kick as when you insert a cartridge or a dis[ck] into a machine and have it boot from that.
Edit: I also realized you may as well cut out the memory card and just have each "fake" disc encode (perhaps optically) a little ID which the machine could read (perhaps a cheap camera) and associate to a game already stored in the machine's internal memory.
Nicely done regardless.
The issue of course would be that there aren't cards of that format that can store the amount of data required, but maybe with a bit of fantasy a micro-sd card could be embedded in it.
This is kind of a Wii ship of Theseus.
There are some nuts people out there like Redherring32 with his TinyTendo project that go above and beyond just putting the components on a new board. He designed the TinyTendo which requires cutting down the DIP-packaged CPU and PPU from the NES into a smaller package. These components were only produced for Nintendo systems of the era and are the special sauce for overall game compatiblity. https://github.com/Redherring32/TinyTendo
Of course that's really just sidestepping the challenge of "how small can you get an actual Wii".
However, the intention of these miniature builds is to preserve the original device, just in tiny form. No emulation involved. As if it was an official product.
https://www.zxc64.com/vsa100_based/0_62911_strange_god_agp_2...
I am surprised there is not more HTPC frontends which duplicate the look and feel.
It's so cool that you can just chop up the motherboard like that and it still works.
Passive cooling went away during the 80s/90s homecomputer -> PC transition. But modern tech has brought it back - provided you choose form factor & performance expectations appropriately (even though modern SBCs are crazy fast compared to Amiga or Atari ST era machines).
This looks amazing, I love all the attention to detail.