Ben Heck's Portable N64 Part 1 

Can you make non-portable PSP?

Why doesn't Ben use a newer screen with RGB/S-video instead of the PSONE monitor a newer monitor with rgb or s-video gives more sharper picture then a composite video

I have been coming back to this video for the past 7 years. A true gem imho.

Can you make a portable Sega GameGear ?

I've got a portable ps1, Gameboy, n64 in my pocket. it's called a phone.

+The Ben Heck Show I've always loved watching these projects ever since your 1st 360 laptop, Now even more than in past they fricken astound me. Ben&Co your channel inspired me to learn more about the subject and eventually lead me to decide to go back to school even at the ripe old of 32. From the comparatively little I've managed pick up It has given me a whole new appreciation for these builds. The fact you only use the original hardware and never settle for any kind of emulator is really where you and your crew's expertise and love for the craft shows. Keep up the great work.

Your show is so addicting and I know nothing of almost anything you say. I still can't look away. plus N64 is my favorite console. Happy to learn and see what's on the inside!

Amazin project! Just for fun, I'd like to see an Apple Pippin teardown to see what's inside and make a hardware comparison with the PS, Saturn and N64.

is there the possibility of taking a portable console and making it sedentary?

Awesome. This project seems to have more issues to overcome than others. I love seeing things not go the way you plan and having to reevaluate your plan. Very much an analogy for life :) Can't wait to see the next 2 episodes.

If you have the model number of the LCD screen in the PSONE monitor, you might be able to find an LED upgrade kit online. I once accidentally found one when looking up how to change these fluorescent bulbs from a similar screen.

So many of us love the N64 because it's both what we grew up with, thus nostalgic, but the games are also a ton of fun. Plenty of us have played Skyrim, but still return to Ocarina of Time because we still enjoy it.

watching the ram port mod I was reminded of my adventures UNbending a VGA output on a motherboard. I made a cardboard spacer to maintain pin separation and just went slow. The goal was to bring the jack inside the case for a built-in monitor.

i did something similar to this with a PS2 slim i just attached a screen and a battery to it with no other mods and it worked very well

Wait, so what killed the first N64? Did you re-check your soldering on the RAM expansion relocation? I wouldn't figure that would totally kill the entire unit. One weird quirk I've noticed with my N64 is it not powering on at all unless that thick power supply that plugs into the back is in just the right position. Since I've tried multiple bricks with multiple consoles, I think it's more at fault with the outlet on the console rather than the power brick itself. I wonder if that may have been your issue.

First a Ps1 vs N64, now making a hybrid. Good job Ben, keep it up.

Hey Ben, any chances of a Nintendo Switch tear down in the future? I personally would love to see you take apart the joy-con controllers for modding purposes (such as making custom controllers) and to understand how the HD rumble really works.

Finally, a Nintendo 64 portable! It feels like you had a lull in really interesting ideas for a while, but this looks like a great project. And, you know, we still would like to see a GameCube portable some day. :)

Crazy how things have changed! Chopping up a PS1 LCD to make a portable would seem crazy today

Many N64s died to bring us this portable.

Y'know, Ben, I am curious in terms of patents and all that; since the N64 is close to 20 years old, when do you think we will see 3rd party consoles or handhelds on the market that fully utilize N64 stuffs?

The Golden era console Nintendo 64, turned into a portable console, now that's awesome.

The most experience I've done in modding is ordering the Blinking Light Win for my NES and installing it myself. And that didn't require any real engineering expertise, just a Phillips head screwdriver to open the machine and my strongest death grip to get the original boards and ZIF socket apart that sat slotted together for 30 years.

Felix is such a chill dude

Yes! Let's use the competitor's hardware for this mod!

"I would not recommend the N64 to the beginner hacker." I wish I knew that way back when I tried my first attempt at making a portable N64 when I was 12. That system never saw the light of day ever again, haha.

Just throwing this out there but the opening title credits are 14 months old. Anyone else think it's time for them to be updated?

Man you are the god of portables, really.

So now you should have a bunch of empty N64 cases around - let's see something built in one. Media center, perhaps? With a blu-ray player that accepts discs through a rear or front slot located where the top and bottom of the N64 shells come together? Sega Genesis in an N64? Raspberry Pi with a projector that projects out through the cart slot, to put star constellation patterns / pictures on the ceiling?

Every time I watch your videos I always think about how cool it would have been to watch this as a kid along side BILL BILL BILL BILL......and Steve Erwin.

I remember seeing an article about a handheld N64 Ben made in Popular Mechanics or something like 15 years ago.

I remember when you made the N64 portable :) I've been a fan since then! always checking your site before youtube even existed :P

N64 is really fun to mod! I've done a few myself. Also destroyed a few n64's as well trying mods. Lots of wiring is included for the cartridge slot.

Felix showing his enthusiasm as usual :D

Finally! Portable 64s are the best fit for this. Cartridges!

its so funny that this is literal the mythbusters of electronics minus the mythbusting part lol

Also the RAMBUS was not just "ram on the bus", but a weird memory type that used an 9bit (!) bus at a very, very high frequency (500Mhz around in the case of the N64), so you could use less traces on the PCB and pins on the CPU that supports it etc.. But it also had the issue that non linear memory accesses were very slow, because you had to set up the address 8 bits at time. The last bit was normally used by servers etc for parity check, but in the case of the N64 it was completely unused by the CPU, but the GPU used it to mark where to blur for the edge anti aliasing and dither smoothing. Actually, there were quite a lot of circuitry dedicated to blur or smear the picture somehow in the box.

I'm originally from Wisconsin and love the fact you are too and really enjoy your channel. but those n64s are probably the ones the game xchange got for dirt cheap at that once a year sale where they took big tubs and didn't let anyone else get any games.

Love these portable builds, youre amazing at what you do please keep these types of videos coming. Some of the best content on youtube guys!

Ben is slowly turning into Brian Posehn

Video Game exchange.... brings back memories. They all closed up north of you.

Can we take up a collection and get Ben a hot air rework station?

There's a whole age range (like me) that the n64 was our first game system. I made memories with the n64. Any of the "classics" are too old for me to feel nostalgic about. I'm finally considering RetroPie since the Pi3 is fast enough to play more n64 games.

After this N64 portable project, can you guys do a portable PS2.

InterAct made a +8MB expansion pack. I remember them being incredibly expensive, even for the time, and they had their own heatspreader that replaced the topcover door.

How about using a vacuum desoldering system? I'm sure a sponsor would be more than happy to supply one. Would save a lot of time.

Wave Race! That was a classic college battle game for me and my roommates... that and Mario Kart. :-)

i've waited so long for this one

Isn't it a really bad idea to wire li-ion batteries in paralell if they didn't come that way?

so glad I found this channel. awesome, cant wait for the next 2

Would you be able to make a slimmer game cartridge to reduce the space needed?

I would love to see a 3D printed case. I just got my own 3D Printer, and I would love doing a project like this! I don't have a CNC machine or anything like that handy, so it would be be awesome to see what 3D printing can do!

3s of 18650s would give you sufficient voltage to directly drive the display, and only one buck converter would be needed for the 3.3v rail. Would also reduce the needed cells to 3 and lighten the amp draw 8)

So glad i found this channel

The 12v line only goes to a 7905 to become 5v for the audio, the N64 only runs on 5v and also 3.1v-3.4v . But there again you should know that as you used to be a pioneer in console modding. The 3.1v-3.4 is easily achieved with a tiny step down regulator. The bending down of the port has been done many times over the years in different ways, as also has the game cart port which can be also bent over along the grounding. If using PSone screen, not a lot of benefit to RGB modding the console.

You, Sir, are a tech God.

You don't actually need the full 12V to run the N64. You can just use the 7.4V from the batteries directly to power the screen and the console.

Ben is a retro superweapon. It is as if thousands of N64s cried in terror and then were silenced.

Awesome. I've been thinking about doing this myself as well. Might just watch you fist before I dive in.

6:03 - "Heat up, push, get a little movement, let cool, release, heat up, push, get a little movement, let cool, release..." I'm thinking, when is the beat gonna come in?

my favorite console (N64) In my favorite Form (Portable) IS THIS HEAVEN OR WHAT?

Hey Ben, I've got an insane idea: taking an old LCD game from Tiger Electronics, and replacing it with better hardware and making it into an updated portable gaming unit.

Every episode I still sing the Sesame Street song 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 during the pinball intro

+The Ben Heck Show Prob too early to ask, but can you do GameCube next? lol

Ben. The N64 does not need 12V to run. 7.4 on the 12V rail works just finer and makes the system run cooler. This is an old N64 modder trick. I did this myself. Got a 3.3V regulator put internally and ran the system off a 7.4V PS1 supply. Worked fine and ran cooler. You should have done this instead of the 12V stepup. Like this so Ben sees it.

Wave Race BABY!! love that simple game =D

Nice production quality mate. Especially for a video game tech channel.

Hey Ben, you probably won't see this, but maybe you could take apart one of the new shield TV's and make some sort of shield nintendo switch tablet. Like the Shield K1 tablet put with the hardware of the shield X1 TV and maybe even some joy-con remotes on the sides like the nintendo switch. Just an idea.

Note for the RAMbus mod, I don't think soldering new wires onto the traces was a good idea. I would have designed and ordered up a custom thin PCB and placed the additional ram there.

Why not use a ultra hdmi mod instead of rgb amp

Cool, but can I somehow add a portable built-in disc drive into the system? I'm assuming the circuit board and disc drive would be the most important bits and then we could just hard wire the expansion ports together...

Sad thing is, he mentions multiple times that an N64 is not for beginners. Honestly it is very forgiving if you avoid the Memory. What I did to make the memory seem Smaller coming out the back was to add a fan right above it. This allows the cooling off all the components while hiding the extruding PoS.

waiting for this so long Ben

14:05 you said "Hot glue the heck" haha very funny!

Wow going back to the classics, I see ;)

Actually the terminator for the RAM does not "tell" the board that there is no more RAM installed - it makes the bus function - it does not function without (Ben knows this, it's just dumbed down for the video i guess)

been playing through conkers the last week. hilarious.

It was good to see even experienced modders like Ben Heck can slip up.

Maybe the reason People like the N64 is it's because a lot of the viewers you have were kids of that era?

What was wrong with the N64P from 2005? I have an idea for the screens, since there are those who like to complain about the PSone screen being expensive... Portable DVD players, which the screen innards are the same as what you'd get with the PSone screen. You get the screen (possibly sharper) at roughly 7-8 inches, the internal speaker setup. Plus some of the older portable DVD players featured composite output.

Are you going make Nintendo Switch Portable? ;) jk lol

It's been about 7 years since I tried portablising an n64, but I thought you could run the 12v line off of 7.6 volts.

I'd be interested to see Ben do a portable GCN

GOLDENEYE 4 DAYZ soooo many good memories :)

Fun fact: the N64 was actually designed with the same framework as the Silicon Graphics Inc's O2 workstation

Owning a working portable gamecube would make my day lol

N64 is the best console of all time!

Another Ban Heck N64 portable?! I didn't think I'd see the day after reading about his last one.

You totally suit the Riker beard Mr Heck!!

Ben heck, you're my hero :D

Did you know that pod racer could use 2 controllers or 2 analogue stick from the controllers

Just wondering... Why do you need to use the 12V up-volt reg? 7.4V will power everything more than enough, even that particular screen. I've never once had to use an up-volt in any of my N64p projects, so I'm just kinda interested in the logic. Excited to see where this ends up though!

Ben looked like he was about to cry when he said he broke the first unit

So excited about this one!

I remember when I started watching a while back he said he would never do a portable n64! I'm glad you changed ur mind 😎

I still want the portable Dreamcast

Cranking it up to 700 because I'm an American! That is going to be my new, "This one goes to 11".

omg, you said never again, omg, you are doing it, thank you so much, i loved the article you did on your site

I looked into making a n64 portable and I'm pretty sure that it will run on 7.6v

Ben, instead of a normal N64 controller, you should pick up a "Hori Mini Pad". It has a smaller board and has the Gamecube thumbsitck. It's much better for making a portable!