- Thread starter MatinatorX
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+1 looks awesome. Good luck with testing and assembly!
By the way, can you use this while in docked mode?
By the way, can you use this while in docked mode?
Last edited by Seliph,
1- Really Really nice project
2- I want to be on the list for the next batch
3- I can pre pay
4- I live in Canada
5- You are awesome @MatinatorX and thanks
XiorgON
2- I want to be on the list for the next batch
3- I can pre pay
4- I live in Canada
5- You are awesome @MatinatorX and thanks
XiorgON
Wow everyone, what an awesome amount of support I came home to today! Thanks you all so much, you guys are great!! 
To try and answer some of the more common questions:
- The second batch is pretty much a guarantee as long as the first batch goes well, and will be for 100 units available about a week after most of the first batch has been received.
- If the second batch sells well I'll do a 3rd batch of 100. I have a good parts supplier, board manufacturer and local 3D hub so I should be able to do 100 boards every 2 weeks easily without murdering my free time.
- Tindie apparently does preorders, so if and when the second batch sells out, I'll do preorders while I work on the third batch.
- If you guys somehow kill my tindie page with more preorders than I think I can handle, I'll buy my own SLA printer, part picker and a reflow oven with the money so I can keep up, and do a massive THANK YOU post with something special (that I'll have to think of) for helping me lose myself even more in my hobbies
- Other than the first batch of 10, whenever a new batch is ready I'll post the tindie link here right away.
Yes and no, DragonInjector can live and charge inside your card slot whether you're docked or not, but to inject the payload on boot you have to plug it in to the USB Type C port. Sadly there's no way to send a payload through the card slot itself.
To try and answer some of the more common questions:
- The second batch is pretty much a guarantee as long as the first batch goes well, and will be for 100 units available about a week after most of the first batch has been received.
- If the second batch sells well I'll do a 3rd batch of 100. I have a good parts supplier, board manufacturer and local 3D hub so I should be able to do 100 boards every 2 weeks easily without murdering my free time.
- Tindie apparently does preorders, so if and when the second batch sells out, I'll do preorders while I work on the third batch.
- If you guys somehow kill my tindie page with more preorders than I think I can handle, I'll buy my own SLA printer, part picker and a reflow oven with the money so I can keep up, and do a massive THANK YOU post with something special (that I'll have to think of) for helping me lose myself even more in my hobbies
- Other than the first batch of 10, whenever a new batch is ready I'll post the tindie link here right away.
Yes! That's the whole concept behind this actually. It will even charge while it's in there! (assuming it works properly in testing)
I'll be posting updates to this thread whenever there's any news, including when batches are ready or almost ready.
Yes and no, DragonInjector can live and charge inside your card slot whether you're docked or not, but to inject the payload on boot you have to plug it in to the USB Type C port. Sadly there's no way to send a payload through the card slot itself.
Dang it... had to create an account since I could not find you elsewhere (twitter/etc)... I would like to purchase 2-3 of these when they are ready, hopefully under second batch. I live in (Alajuela, Costa Rica) to check up on shipping costs. Is there a better way to get in contact other than a post on here?
==edit==
By the way, not sure why I was in such a rush to post the above, but I LOVE!!!!! your design. This is the most creative and awesome implementation of this I have ever seen. I will most likely buy 3 of these. Keep up the great work and hope everything goes well with your testing!
==edit==
By the way, not sure why I was in such a rush to post the above, but I LOVE!!!!! your design. This is the most creative and awesome implementation of this I have ever seen. I will most likely buy 3 of these. Keep up the great work and hope everything goes well with your testing!
Last edited by Only1chance,
Got another update!
So, the nice mail lady arrived about an hour ago and dropped off a package - the prototype case! I have to say, despite modelling the thing, doing comparisons, wearing out my calipers and triple-checking all my measurements, I was not prepared to see it in person. This thing is tiny. I'm not one for grandiose claims, but I think this might just be the smallest RCM jig in existence. I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I saw it.
Anyways, the case looks fantastic. I've attached some photos below. I tested the jig as best I could since the 1/8W resistors it was designed for haven't come in yet. I took a 1/4W 43 ohm I had lying around and bent the leads to the correct shape through the holes, let it hang out so it wasn't in the way and made sure AutoRCM was off. Then I tried to get into RCM with the jig.
And... it worked great! Tried it a bunch of times (probably a good 15) with 100% success rate. Mixed it with a bunch of tries with the jig removed to be sure and got 100% failure rate. So I'm pretty happy with that. Made sure the joycon pins still looked the same and my joycon was detected etc. and all is good. Despite being miniscule, it's actually pretty easy to insert and remove and has a good feel when it bottoms out. So I'd say that's a success. I will be adding two little grooves into the cap where the jig goes for the final design as it doesn't fit when the resistor is installed (oops) but other than that it looks like no changes are needed. I even tested a USB Type C jack in the lid and it's super snug but fits nice. Shouldn't be any issues getting the cart out. Woo!
Also, for those who wanted to see if this really is the size of a Switch cart, I took some pictures of the case on top of (what's left of) an actual cart. Don't mind the thickness - I had to cut it open for some tests and it wouldn't go back together so it's just the lid in the photos.
EDIT: It's a little hard to tell from the photos, but that's a dime.
So, the nice mail lady arrived about an hour ago and dropped off a package - the prototype case! I have to say, despite modelling the thing, doing comparisons, wearing out my calipers and triple-checking all my measurements, I was not prepared to see it in person. This thing is tiny. I'm not one for grandiose claims, but I think this might just be the smallest RCM jig in existence. I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I saw it.
Anyways, the case looks fantastic. I've attached some photos below. I tested the jig as best I could since the 1/8W resistors it was designed for haven't come in yet. I took a 1/4W 43 ohm I had lying around and bent the leads to the correct shape through the holes, let it hang out so it wasn't in the way and made sure AutoRCM was off. Then I tried to get into RCM with the jig.
And... it worked great! Tried it a bunch of times (probably a good 15) with 100% success rate. Mixed it with a bunch of tries with the jig removed to be sure and got 100% failure rate. So I'm pretty happy with that. Made sure the joycon pins still looked the same and my joycon was detected etc. and all is good. Despite being miniscule, it's actually pretty easy to insert and remove and has a good feel when it bottoms out. So I'd say that's a success. I will be adding two little grooves into the cap where the jig goes for the final design as it doesn't fit when the resistor is installed (oops) but other than that it looks like no changes are needed. I even tested a USB Type C jack in the lid and it's super snug but fits nice. Shouldn't be any issues getting the cart out. Woo!
Also, for those who wanted to see if this really is the size of a Switch cart, I took some pictures of the case on top of (what's left of) an actual cart. Don't mind the thickness - I had to cut it open for some tests and it wouldn't go back together so it's just the lid in the photos.
EDIT: It's a little hard to tell from the photos, but that's a dime.
Attachments
Last edited by MatinatorX,
WOW this thing has really progressed nicely and swiftly as well
I WANT ONE!
good to see you went with the super cap after all
i have a couple of questions about it
1) can you disable the cart slot charging,for example with the switch?
2) if you do and just rely on the USB C then will charge as fast as a SX pro dongle?
P.S. i finally did try out my pro dongle and it seems to work instantly
i never have had it not work yet but i only used it a few times
but it does work right away
I WANT ONE!
good to see you went with the super cap after all
i have a couple of questions about it
1) can you disable the cart slot charging,for example with the switch?
2) if you do and just rely on the USB C then will charge as fast as a SX pro dongle?
P.S. i finally did try out my pro dongle and it seems to work instantly
i never have had it not work yet but i only used it a few times
but it does work right away
Thanks man!
Unfortunately I did not build in a way to disable charging from the card slot temporarily, but you could accomplish a permanent mod pretty easily by cutting the two traces that go to the 3.3v cart slot pad and soldering a little jumper wire to the input side of the current limiting resistor (R1). This would stick the voltage regulator output (IC1) right on the current limiting resistor and cut out the 3.3v pad completely. As far as USB charging goes, I put the output of the voltage regulator before the current limiting resistor to be extra safe so both card and USB charging are the same rate. This way if you short out your USB connector or the voltage regulator burns out somehow there's no risk of shorting VCC on your USB device and damaging something besides the dongle. I'll be getting some real world numbers as soon as the board is done, but it should be pretty quick to charge. We're using 1/20th the current that the SX dongle uses (500mA versus 25mA) but our cap is also 1/5 or less the size (likely 1F versus 0.22F), so if for example the SX dongle took one second to charge, DragonInjector should take around 5. It's not quite as simple as that and they might be using a charging IC instead of resistive charging which is much more efficient (but takes up twice the space or more that we can't afford) but it should give a good ballpark figure. We'll find out for sure soon, but I don't think there'd be much of a reason for even faster USB charging.
...that being said, I know I wouldn't be satisfied with that answer, so if you DID still want to mod it for faster USB charging, the AP2112 regulator I'm using has loopback current protection, so it should be safe enough should you choose to bypass the current limiting resistor. In this case, you could just cut the one trace going from the voltage regulator to the 3.3V cart pad, desolder the resistor and run a jumper wire to the anode of D2. The diodes are rated up to 1.5A and the traces can just barely handle the 600mA max output from the voltage regulator. The only other thing is you would have to remove or replace the power switch as it's only rated for 100mA. Obviously if you were going to do this you should make darn sure your 3.3v cart pad is completely cut off from the rest of the circuit, and if anything went wrong and you burnt your Switch, started world war three or suddenly became allergic to chocolate, I'd only be able to offer you my condolences. But, it could be done.
(In case any other nerds here are interested in the current capabilities of PCB traces at different sizes, I use this calculator and it's amazing: https://www.desmith.net/NMdS/Electronics/TraceWidth.html PS: All traces are external and 0.1524mm on DragonInjector)
EDIT: Actually now that I'm looking at it, the power switch would never see the full load as the supercap is before it. It only ever sees what the ATSAMD21 and the DotStar LED use, which will never exceed 100mA. So this would actually be a pretty easy mod for those that wanted to. It'd be a good idea to cut off the cart ground pad too even though it wouldn't be doing anything anymore. Still couldn't offer much more than words if things went horribly wrong though
Last edited by MatinatorX,
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Psionic Roshambo:
But other than PC and Amiga ports I don't think Time Soldiers had any game system ports after the Master System -
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Psionic Roshambo:
Ohhh just noticed that myself I bet it makes the Master System port look amazing by comparison lol
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SylverReZ:
If you want a good system to port it to, at least have a good programmer and knowledge.+1 -
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Psionic Roshambo:
I didn't know they made an MSU cart for the Genesis.... I knew about the SNES one and the library for that is rather large but the Genesis one has very few games
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Psionic Roshambo:
I didn't know they made an MSU cart for the Genesis.... I knew about the SNES one and the...