Hi everyone
I built this last year and thought I would show some photos of the project. I bought a Retrode, which is a USB interface for SNES (and SEGA) carts and controllers. Combined with an original SNES housing and a Raspberry Pi, I built a more modern SNES. The main advantage of this is HDMI output without needing a scaler! The OS is Arch Linux and the front-end is custom. I made the Linux partition read-only so you don't have to shut down cleanly. I also modified the source code of the SNES emulator so it remounts the partition read-write before saving SRAM, and then remounts it read-only when saving is complete. That way you can still save your game but the partition is kept read-only.
The Raspberry Pi and most of the wiring fits in the bottom half of the shell. Note the Lego platform which is screwed to the motherboard mounting holes This supports the Retrode.
Close-ups of the Raspberry Pi in situ. The reset button is mounted on some Lego bricks as there is no longer any PCB there. It is connected to some of the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi. A Linux service is monitoring this for button presses which trigger a shell script and shut the SNES down. (Though the OS is running on a read-only partition so clean shut down is not actually required).
The Retrode fits in the top half of the shell. Its cart edge connector fits into the bottom of the opening in the lid of the SNES where the carts are inserted. The wires coming out of it are soldered to the controller ports on the front of the SNES.
To save space, these pins are just pushed onto the Retrode's controller interface ports. It's secure once it's all assembled. The other ends are soldered to the controller ports on the front of the SNES.
Here is the other end of the wire attaching the controller ports to the Retrode.
The effect is that you can just plug an original SNES controller into the front of the SNES
Here you can see that the Retrode aligns perfectly to the cart slot.
This original SNES cart is actually connected to the Retrode inside!
Here you can see how the ports at the back are wired up. The small green PCB is an Ethernet socket, and the black plug next to it is a female HDMI connector. The other ends of both of these wires is connected to the Raspberry Pi, allowing HDMI and Ethernet cables to be connected to the back of the SNES. The power socket is routed through the original power switch on top of the SNES so the device can be turned on and off.
The only external modification is to the backplate. The HDMI socket fits nicely within the opening for the original A/V output, but I filed out the RF output for the Ethernet port. The original power connector is still used.
The power LED on the motherboard has been replaced with another one the same colour which is powered directly off the power supply to show the power status.
I made a video showing this in action. It's too big to post here so I hosted it on my web site:
http://www.mashley.net/gameplay.mov
I built this last year and thought I would show some photos of the project. I bought a Retrode, which is a USB interface for SNES (and SEGA) carts and controllers. Combined with an original SNES housing and a Raspberry Pi, I built a more modern SNES. The main advantage of this is HDMI output without needing a scaler! The OS is Arch Linux and the front-end is custom. I made the Linux partition read-only so you don't have to shut down cleanly. I also modified the source code of the SNES emulator so it remounts the partition read-write before saving SRAM, and then remounts it read-only when saving is complete. That way you can still save your game but the partition is kept read-only.
The Raspberry Pi and most of the wiring fits in the bottom half of the shell. Note the Lego platform which is screwed to the motherboard mounting holes This supports the Retrode.
Close-ups of the Raspberry Pi in situ. The reset button is mounted on some Lego bricks as there is no longer any PCB there. It is connected to some of the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi. A Linux service is monitoring this for button presses which trigger a shell script and shut the SNES down. (Though the OS is running on a read-only partition so clean shut down is not actually required).
The Retrode fits in the top half of the shell. Its cart edge connector fits into the bottom of the opening in the lid of the SNES where the carts are inserted. The wires coming out of it are soldered to the controller ports on the front of the SNES.
To save space, these pins are just pushed onto the Retrode's controller interface ports. It's secure once it's all assembled. The other ends are soldered to the controller ports on the front of the SNES.
Here is the other end of the wire attaching the controller ports to the Retrode.
The effect is that you can just plug an original SNES controller into the front of the SNES
Here you can see that the Retrode aligns perfectly to the cart slot.
This original SNES cart is actually connected to the Retrode inside!
Here you can see how the ports at the back are wired up. The small green PCB is an Ethernet socket, and the black plug next to it is a female HDMI connector. The other ends of both of these wires is connected to the Raspberry Pi, allowing HDMI and Ethernet cables to be connected to the back of the SNES. The power socket is routed through the original power switch on top of the SNES so the device can be turned on and off.
The only external modification is to the backplate. The HDMI socket fits nicely within the opening for the original A/V output, but I filed out the RF output for the Ethernet port. The original power connector is still used.
The power LED on the motherboard has been replaced with another one the same colour which is powered directly off the power supply to show the power status.
I made a video showing this in action. It's too big to post here so I hosted it on my web site:
http://www.mashley.net/gameplay.mov