Gold Plating The Hard Drive

I mentioned in an earlier post that I wanted to mount the hard drive in a game cartridge and have it sit in the original NES loading bay. It needed to look great as a feature piece, it needed some bling. What better game cartridge to use then that of the gold-colored cartridge of The Legend of Zelda! Nintendo's first game to sell 1 million copies. Holding its own throughout the years, Zelda has been rated one of the best games ever to be made.

Opening of the game cartridge itself was a little interesting. Nintendo used some special screws to seal up their games for all eternity. The screws have a head on them like a reverse hex; outset instead of inset. I needed to fabricate a few tools to help me get them out. I grabbed an old flat head screwdriver and used the dremel to cut a bi of a 'V' into it. This way I could use the tips of the 'V' to grab the edges of the screws and loosen them up. To make unscrewing of the loosened screws easier, I grabbed a piece of K-Nex and melted one of its arms. Jamming the hot, bubbling plastic into the cartridge screw hole and letting it cool gave me a simple tool to use. Soon I had all the screws out.

The game board itself is larger then others I've seen. This is simply do to the fact that Zelda was one of the first games that allowed the player to save his progress. This was accomplished by an extra ROM chip and a battery, similar to the CMOS battery on a computer motherboard.

After marking out where the hard drive was to placed, I got to work with the dremel again and cut out the center screw posts on each side of the case. Then all I needed to do was cut out the plastic ridge near the opening of the cartridge. I cut it just wide enough to fit the hard drive in the center.

To make the hard drive easy to remove and yet snug when in the cartridge, I used some 3M Picture Hanging strips. They are sort of like velcro but press together instead of hook and velvet. I made sure that I put the hard drive in right side up so that I could easily remove the locking SATA cable from it if need be.

After screwing the cartridge back together it looked like the hard drive was meant to be there all along. A nice fit. I slid the cartridge into the NES loading bay and plugged in the cables.

It looked great all shiny and awesome.

Airing Out The Space

Raised Up With New Legs

Based on the amount of heat being generated from the motherboard during a full load of the CPUs cores, I knew that I would need to move some air through the system to dispense of it and ultimately cool it down.

The NES has some rubber pads on the bottom which act as stubby feet. They only lift the case an 1/8 of an inch up. The original NES motherboard didn't generate much heat and thus didn't require any extra air to flow through it for cooling. Because I had the motherboard mounted upside down in the case, this meant that the intake fan was sitting right at the bottom. Without proper space under the NES the fan would not be able to generate a  proper vortex in order to move enough air through it.

The NES case needed to be raised further up to allow proper airflow under it. To accomplish this, I recycled some of the pieces that I cut out from the inside. The original mounting posts for the NES motherboard were the perfect height. I cleaned them up a bit and leveled them out with a razor blade. The existing NES feet are positioned in optimal locations, so I drilled a small hole in the center of each and mounted  my new legs with some NES case screws. Turned out quite nice, I really like the raised look.

40mm Exhaust Fan Mounted on the Right

I also picked up a 40mm fan to exhaust the heat out the top of the enclosure. The vent I cut in the lid earlier was a perfect match to the size of the fan. The fan on the motherboard heatsink pulls cool air in from the bottom, and this new fan vents the hot air out the top.

After running a few more tests, the average temperature of the case dropped by another 10 degrees Celsius.

Microscopic Thermal Management

Cleaned up Hudson M1 in foreground, pasty CPU in rear

The Gigabyte E350 motherboard runs fairly hot; anywhere from 40 degrees to 75 degrees Celsius. To help reduce the heat, I wanted to replace the manufacturers thermal paste with some Arctic Silver 5. It has been suggested that this could increase the heat dissipation from the chips enough to drop the temperature by about 5 to 10 degrees. Every bit of thermal reduction is a bonus in computers.

Thermal paste increases heat dissipation by filling in the microscopic imperfections in the surfaces of both the microprocessors on the motherboard and the heatsink sitting on top of them, thus allowing more thermal conductivity between the two.

After removing the heatsink from the motherboard it was a bit of a task to remove the existing thermal paste. Using some 99% strength rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs, and some patience, the chips and heatsink were looking shiny and new.

A small rice grain size blob of thermal paste was applied to both the CPU and the Hudson M1 Fusion Controller Chip. The heatsink was reapplied and screwed into place.

Everything mounted and ready for power on

In order for the thermal paste to properly set, the computer had to be run for a few hours. It actually takes around 200 hours of uptime for thermal paste to get to its final consistency. This meant I needed to put the motherboard into the NES case and fire it up for the first time since installing the OS on the hard drive.

With fingers crossed I hit the power switch. A split second later the souped up NES was firing on all cylinders and booting into Windows 7. The LEDs on the front looked great as well. The green power light was nice and bright and the red hard drive activity light flickered brightly mixing with the green.

I let it run for a few hours while monitoring the temperature of the chips. It ran as hot as expected, around 55 to 64 degrees at idle and 78 degrees with a full load test of the CPUs cores. I still need to kill some heat. Looks like I'll be adding that extra exhaust fan after all.

The Loading Bay Tray

NES Game Cartridge Tray

With the motherboard only taking up half of the vertical space in the NES case, I was left with plenty of room in the top half for an idea to transpire. I wanted to put the small laptop sized hard drive inside a NES game cartridge and have the game cartridge sit in the original NES loading bay.





I separated the two parts of the NES game cartridge tray and kept the part the game sits in. There was a large plastic latch protruding an inch off the bottom of it. This would have been a potential hazard with the motherboard or wiring so I trimmed it off with the dremel.

I hot glued the tray to the inside of the top of the NES case exactly where the original one was located. Now it would be easy to load the "hard drive game cartridge" into the NES through the loading bay door.

The NES Game Cartridge Tray Mounted

Light-Emitting Diodes and The Powers That Be

Out with the Old in with the New

I took a close look at the lonesome LED sitting in the NES switch module. The poor bugger had to go. It served its purpose for over 26 years and was about to be replaced with newer, smaller, more powerful versions. The motherboard LEDs were coming to take its place. It was time for the vacuum plunger and soldering iron of doom.

The LED didn't put up much of a fight. It must have know the end was near. I heated up the solder with the iron and used the vacuum plunger to desolder the connections. It's retirement was quick and hot.

The motherboard LEDs looked just small enough that they should be able to fit into the gap left behind by the NES LED. Unfortunately, looks can be deceiving. They were just a bit too big for the hole to be comfy. A quick modification to the flanges and I had enough room to situate them angled towards center. I was hoping the lights would combine nicely in the plastic mount when seen from the front of the case. Some quick hot glue and they were in their new home.

Wired up and wrapped up

I now had a bit of a mess of wires running to the switches. I added some heat shrink tubing to the mass to give them a clean bundled look.

The mounted DC/DC power adapter

Now that I had the LEDs figured out, I focused on getting the DC/DC power adapter plug mounted on the back of the case. After all, what good was the HTPC if I couldn't plug it in. The plug came with a small nut to be used for mounting. It was a bit too small for the existing AC adapter hole in the back of the NES so I added some small washers to help keep it in place.

Mounting The Board

The mounted motherboard

It was time to add the mounting bolts for the motherboard to the NES case. I needed to find the correct sized bolts to fit the mounting holes of the motherboard and also to be just the right length. After trying a few bolts I had lying around the house I ended up using some 4" 6-32 bolts and nuts. The 4 inches of bolt meant I would have around a 1/4 inch sticking up out of the motherboard in which to put some nylon acorn nuts to tighten it down.

I put the motherboard in the case and dropped a bolt through each hole so that I could mark where to drill. Luckily, all four bolts ended up in places where there was still case (hadn't been cut out to make room for other things) and not where any of the NES case legs were. After marking the locations for the holes I drilled them out.

I threaded the bolts in through the bottom of the case and locked each one in place with a nut. I also placed a nut near the top of each bolt for the motherboard to sit on. Some careful vertical adjustment of each and the board was sitting flat as well as snug against the back of the case.

Switching It Up

Tonight I took it easy. Instead of fine tuning the fit for the motherboard connections to the back of the case a little more I opted for some soldering.

I still needed to wire up the NES buttons to the motherboard connectors. Earlier on I butchered an old computer case I had lying around and ripped out the power switch, reset switch and LED indicators.

The NES reset button is a "momentary" push-button switch. That is, you push it in and the circuit is completed only while you hold it down, and when released it pops back out again, breaking the circuit. The NES power button is a "latching" push-button switch by default. That is, you push it in and it locks, completing the circuit as long as it's latched in the "in" position. You push it again and it pops back out, breaking the circuit. This may have worked nicely for the NES but won't work for a PC. To change it to a momentary switch I had to remove a little copper tab and staple shaped pin from the top. Pretty simple.

The wiring of the NES switches is as follows:

• Power = Red + Brown
• Reset = Orange + Yellow
• LED = Red + White

A quick cut to length of the switch wires, some solder, and the cables were complete... Mostly. I hooked up the power and reset switches. Still need to figure out what to do about the power indicator LED on the NES itself.

The way the NES works is that when the power switch is in its on position (as described above) the LED is also on. The LED is powered with the same power lead from the switch and a ground wire.

With the PC setup, using the now newly configured momentary power switch, the LED would also be on only for that split second the button is depressed when turning the PC on. Ideally I would like the LED to be powered from the motherboards power indicator leads. There is also the second indicator LED from the PC for hard drive activity. I may remove the existing NES LED and see if I can squeeze both the PC LEDs into the same hole (they're smaller in size and twice as bright). If that doesn't work I'll see if I can find a two color single LED and wire it up to both the power and hard drive activity leads.

Connecting The Holes

It was time to cut the back of the NES case to allow access to the motherboard connectors. I considered using the backing plate that came with the motherboard and just cut one giant hole to house it. But that was just too simple, and wouldn't look esthetically pleasing. I wanted to have individual holes for each motherboard component cluster. This way it would look more like they were meant to be there and not just a PC sticking out the back of the case.

This of course was not going to be an easy task. I would need the holes cut in the NES case perfectly so that each motherboard cluster would line up correctly. This meant I needed a template.

Motherboard Component Cluster Template

I pulled out the old geometry kit and got to work making precise measurements of the component clusters on the motherboard and transposing the layout onto paper. After some meticulous measuring and drawing I eventually had my template. It looked perfect when set in front of the motherboard.

Template Affixed to NES with Scotch Tape

After measuring out the precise location of where I wanted the motherboard to sit at the back of the NES case all I needed to do was affix the template to the case. I used scotch tape to cover the whole template, to keep the cutting disc of the dremel from tearing it, and still allow me to see the lines. Time to cut!

After crossing my fingers and realizing it was hard to hold the dremel this way I got to work. It was slow going. The plastic on the back of the NES is surprisingly thick, and the holes were small and close together. A few hours went by and I had all the holes cut. After switching out the cutting disc with a grout remover I was able to clean up the cuts. A few small adjustments to the holes with some sandpaper and a utility knife and the motherboard lined up perfectly!

A Perfect Fit

Only two little mistakes. The bit housing of the dremel caught the side of the case and made some small notches. Minor flaws overall.

Upside Down Thinking

The motherboard in the now wrong location

After a few hours of meticulous grinding away with a dremel (around 4), I was ready to see how the motherboard would fit. Immediately I spotted a problem. As you can see, the power connector on the motherboard is located right where the NES power buttons are. The NES button module just wasn't going to fit. Not only that, the Pico PSU power connector that plugs into the motherboard sticks up a ways. It was going to interfere with the door of where the NES game cartridge is loaded. I had plans for that door. There was no way I was going to be able to fit the board the way it was; the room just wasn't there.

The NES power buttons module

This all meant a redesign, I'd have to do some upside down thinking to figure this one out. Hmmm..... Upside down. That's a great idea! I flipped the motherboard upside down and took a look.

Plenty of space for NES buttons

As you can see from this picture, there is plenty of room to fit the NES power button module. This also left enough room for the Pico PSU power adapter to now fit under the motherboard on the now opposite side. But of course this posed another problem. The RAM was sitting on the floor of the case, not ideal. Not only was it on the floor, but was sitting on the "T". This caused the whole motherboard to sit too high which resulted in the motherboard connectors also sitting partly above the top of the lower half of the NES case. I needed to make more room, this meant cutting out the "T" from the bottom of the case.

The "T" is no more

I didn't need to cut the whole "T" out. Just enough to make room for the RAM. After this "minor" adjustment (around another 2 hours), everything fit well again.

An upside down board from upside down thinking

Now that I had clearance for the board and the NES power buttons, the next step for the bottom half of the NES is to open up the back for the motherboard connectors.

X Marks The Spot

"Dry-fitting" the motherboard

I wanted the connections of the motherboard to be at the back of the NES case. This made sense logically and also by design. The side walls of the NES are slanted out, which would make lining up the motherboard connections to the case almost impossible. The back side of the NES also has some pre-existing holes for some of the connectors (power, channel switch, etc.) so this meant the only location for the motherboard would have to be the right hand side.

Marking all the posts to be removed

I lined the motherboard up to where I wanted to place it and quickly marked all the posts that would need to be removed. A fair bit of dremel work lay ahead. I was hoping I would have enough vertical space for the motherboard and its components to not have to cut the "T" out of the bottom. So far it looks like it'll fit fine.

Heat Is The Enemy

I knew I needed some proper ventilation and airflow to dissipate the heat generated from the PC. The cooler the temperature in the case, the better the system stability would be.

There is already a ventilation strip in the top half of the NES case. I figured I could mount a small case fan there to act as an exhaust port. The vent isn't really wide open. It's more of a layered design to allow air to move horizontally through it. This wasn't going to work with a forced air fan.

After taking the dremel to it I was able to open up a section just big enough to mount a 40mm fan.

After the system is up and running I'll monitor the temps to see if I need to possibly add an intake fan as well.

The Hunt for the NES

The NES was by far the hardest piece of hardware to come by... sort of. I already had an NES in the garage, but I wasn't about to butcher a fully operational retro gaming system. So I opted to find one somewhere that was no longer working.

After some searching online on various sites like Craigslist I found a posting on Kijiji by someone who lived in the local area who sold NES systems, and guaranteed they would work "or your money back". So I asked if he had any that didn't work. He said he did and that I could pick one up for $15. The only problem was that he was out of town and wouldn't be back for a week. A week went by, and so did various attempts at contacting this guy. His responses were vague and far between. After another week of the run-around I eventually gave up with this poor excuse for a businessman. During this time, all the parts for the PC came in, but I was still waiting for the most important part, the case.

And so, the hunt began again. I went back to Craigslist and did another search. After reviewing a good 150 or so adds of various NES systems for sale (working ones of course) I eventually came to an add for an NES that wasn't working. I immediately sent an inquiry to see if it was still available. Five minutes later I received a response that it was. So after some back and forth emailing, we decided to meet up that evening and make the exchange. He said he found it in his grandfather's garage and brought it home to try it out. Fortunately for me, it hadn't worked!

The NES had seen better days. It was dirty, grimy and had bits of something gooey dripping down one side. It needed a good cleaning. Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to the rescue. After a quick scrub down it looked brand new. Most NES systems become yellowed over the years of being exposed to sunlight. I think the grime and dirty garage helped keep the paint on this one protected and pristine.

Next step, gutting the NES's components inside and mock-fitting the motherboard to see what needs to be cut/trimmed/ground/sanded out.

The Hardware

After many, many hours of searching across the web, I finally decided on all the hardware necessary to build a high power Home Theater PC.

First thing to figure out was what kind of case to house all the hardware. I wanted something a little more unique then those out-of-the-box mini computer cases. Then it hit me, an NES. Not a Super NES, not an XBox but a 1985 retro style Nintendo Entertainment System. Perfect. The NES is a perfect little case for a HTPC. Its simple design and relative bulky size meant it would look good in the entertainment center and be able to house all the high performance hardware inside. I can also make use of its power switch, reset switch and power indicator light quite easily.

Now that I had the case figured out, I needed to find a motherboard to fit inside the NES. A standard ATX full size motherboard is 12 x 9.6 inches. The NES is 10 x 8 x 3.5 inches, this meant I would need to find a board much smaller then standard in order to fit it inside. I also needed to consider the extra space that would be required for housing the hard drive. I went with a laptop hard drive. They're small and typically faster then a full size desktop drive. With this in mind, I stumbled across the Mini-ITX form factor of motherboard. These boards are 7.6 x 7.6 inches and typically contain integrated graphics cards, further saving on space.

Below is a list of all the components:

• NES
• Gigabyte E350N-USB3 Motherboard
• G.SKILL Ripjaws 4GB DDR3-1600 Memory Kit
• Pico PSU 90W 12V DC-DC ATX Power Supply with 60W Power Brick
• Seagate Momentus 500GB 2.5IN SATA 7200RPM 16MB Notebook Hard Drive
• ATX Power/Reset/LED connector cables

The PC Components

Gigabyte E350N-USB3 Motherboard

Gigabyte E350N-USB3 Motherboard

Of note is the Gigabyte motherboard. A bonus of this board is that it comes with AMD Fusion™ Technology. This means that the CPU and graphics controller are built into the same physical chip! A nice bonus as I would save on cost (don't have to buy a separate CPU and graphics card) and also on space (don't need a bulky graphics card stuck in one of the PCI slots). The CPU is an AMD E-350 Dual-Core processor and the graphics controller is AMD Radeon HD 6310.

Gigabyte E350N-USB3 Motherboard Connectors

The motherboard also has these other great features for a home theater PC:

• 1 x PS/2 keyboard/ mouse port (old school keyboard/mouse connectors)
• 1 x D-Sub port
• 1 x DVI-D port
• 1 x HDMI port
• 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
• 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
• 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports
• 1 x RJ-45 port
• 6 x audio jacks (Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out/Rear Speaker Out/Side Speaker Out/Line In/Line Out/Microphone)

All I will be using is the HDMI for video, the optical for audio and a few USB ports for wireless keyboard and mouse.

Pico PSU Power Supply

Pico PSU Power Supply Adapter

There was no way I was going to fit a standard ATX power supply in the NES case. I needed another option. I found these nice little power connectors that work great for Mini-ITX boards. They plug right into the motherboard and offer a DC/DC adapter connector. You can consider this setup similar to how a laptop is plugged in for power. After a bit of research, it looked like the PC would only eat up around 40-50 Watts of power. I decided on the 60W power brick for supplying the juice. I can always upgrade this easily in the future. This particular power supply adapter has the 4-pin P4 for the CPU, 1 x SATA and 1 x Molex. Its a 20-pin adapter rather then a 24-pin. The extra 4 pins are for powering the PCI Express slot, which I won't be using. I will be running the hard drive off the SATA and possibly use the Molex for a fan.

I ordered the parts from NCIX and while waiting for some of them to be shipped to the store, I began the search for the NES.