Sega Genesis Cartridge USB Hub Hack

Here are some photos from my most recent project. I decided to put a powered USB hub inside of a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive cartridge. It will mainly be used as an accessory for my Raspberry Pi (which is also inside of a Genesis cartridge).  I had a cartridge left over from that project and an ugly powered USB hub, so I figured that it would be fun to put the hub in the other cartridge.  Also, the hub has a 2.6A power supply, so I'll probably use the hub to power the Pi and cut down on extra power cables.

Mockups and measurements of the original Dynex USB hub.

A picture of the actual board inside of the Dynex USB hub.  It is about 65.2mm wide.

The board fit almost perfectly between the two screw holes.  I had to grind off about a millimeter on the inside edge of each screw support.

I marked the ports with an x-acto knife and ground the plastic off to fit the hub inside.

Here is a closeup of the grinding that was done.  it's not pretty, but it was effective.

An image of the hub inside its new home.  The hub probably feels like a hermit crab.

Using equal parts precision measurement and random guessing, I ground holes into the back of the cartridge to expose the top two USB ports.

A first look at the two halves together.  The space for the actual cartridge meant that I only needed to grind one half of the opening.

Now that I know the board fits, it's time to use some sugru to keep it in place!  One 5 gram package should do the job nicely.

Here is an image with the board held in place by sugru.

I went to the local hardware store to replace the 4.5mm security bit that comes standard on the cartridge with a plain Phillips screw.  I'm probably not going to be a hand model in the near future.

The screws cost me a whopping 8 cents each.  If the helpful person at the store is to be believed, they are #4 sheet metal screws, 1/4 inch long, with a combo pan head.

A closeup with the screws in place.

Verifying that the board still fits with the sugru in place.  Luckily, it fits like a glove.

The USB ports stick out of the back of the cartridge a couple millimeters, but that doesn't bother me, as long as it still fits in the case........

Hooray!  The cartridge still fits into the original case!

I haven't updated the artwork on the case or cartridge, because it's fun to open the case up to show that these two random football games are much more than meets the eye.

A tip of the hat to +Morgan Burton at Retro Reused for giving me the idea of putting the USB hub in a cartridge.  Thanks!

Many thanks go to the Appleton Makerspace, who provided all of the grinding tools and workbench space to me.  It allowed me to finish the entire project during one evening at the space!

Sega Genesis Cartridge Raspberry Pi Case Mod

Here is a case mod that I recently completed.  I decided to mount my Raspberry Pi into a Sega Genesis cartridge.

First, I found two inexpensive games that were unlikely to be missed.  I chose Madden '95 and Troy Aikman Football.  I removed the security screws using a ballpoint pen using the method I found on YouTube and posted in a previous post.

Here are the two opened cartridges, with my Raspberry Pi also in the picture for scale.  I also took a picture of the melted pen, because I was surprised it actually worked to remove the security screws.

I then created a cardboard mock-up of my Raspberry Pi and tested in the 3D printed case that I have. 

 After some love with a Dremel, I tried the mockup in the cartridge.

 I then tried out the real Raspberry Pi inside the cartridge.

 Here is the view from the back.  I decided to grind off the portion of the back so that the board would be flat inside the cartridge.

 Here are two pictures of the Raspberry Pi, inside of the cartridge, powered on.

 Here is a picture of the case for the cartridge.

 Because of the placement of the Raspberry Pi inside the cartridge, I didn't need to modify the case to use it.

NOTES ON MODDING A GENESIS CARTRIDGE:

The EA cartridge seems like a better fit, because it allowed for a vertical mounting of the Raspberry Pi. The yellow plastic clip on the side allows you to close the cartridge without messing with the security screws, but the screw on the left side can still be used if you're fairly certain that you won't be opening the cartridge in the future.  As a bonus, there are some plastic structural pieces that are almost perfectly spaced to the width of a Raspberry Pi.

This was my first major Dremel job, and I was a little too ambitious with some of the grinding.  A cardboard mockup doesn't very accurately represent the depth of the grinds that I had to make.  There was probably enough room above the headphone out that I didn't need to grind it out.  Top mounted hardware like the composite out, headphone out, and USB micro power don't really need much grinding on the bottom half.  It's possible that the Raspberry Pi board still might have fit without grinding out the curve on the back side, but I'm still happy with the result.

As an added bonus, the LED status light indicators are near the bottom right edge of the cartridge, and are pretty easy to see when the device is on.

For HDMI people, I'd probably notch out a small spot and hook up an HDMI male to female extension cable from someplace like Monoprice, and then just leave the cable connected and sticking out of the cartridge.

STILL TO DO:

From here, I will probably work on getting emulators to work in a reliable fashion on this device.  I will eagerly be watching the Super Pi Adventures website, as well as anywhere else that provides news on emulation for the RPi.

Opening up retro cartridges without special tools

I was getting quite frustrated with my old Sega Genesis carts until I found this video.  It was quite helpful in helping me get them open.

Pandora Console - More videos ...... and colored Pandora Consoles?

Seeing as there are now 12 videos from the "one vid per day" collection in the original slew of videos post, I figured that I'd start a new thread with the additional videos. Also, these videos are embedded using the iframe tag, so you should be able to watch these videos using HTML5, if you desire.

As an added surprise, recently some pictures were posted of colored Pandora case samples. No word on the actual availabilty of colored Pandora Consoles.

Video 13 (Remote Administration):


Video 14 (Homebrew Games, Part 1):


Video 15 (Homebrew Games, Part 2):


Video 16(Websurfing):


Video 17 (C64 Emulation):


Video 18 (Audio Players):


Video 19 (Neo Geo Emulation):


Video 20 (Multitasking):


Video 21 (Sega Emulation):


Video 22 (Applications, Part 1):


Video 23 (Applications, Part 2):


Video 24 (TV out Quality):


Video 25 (GBA Emulation):


Video 26 (MSX Emulation):


Video 27 (GP2X Emulation):


Video 28 (VCS2600 Emulation):

New Pandora Console Videos! More TV-Out footage!

EvilDragon has been busy, providing us with some additional footage of the Pandora Console TV-Out capability.

Without further ado, here it is!
Internet browsing over 3G using the TV-Out:


Genesis emulation via the TV-Out with Retrode Hardware: