Making a Game Console Part 1 - Salvaging a Case

Some of my favorite games run on very old software. I'm talking Windows 98 kind of old. Windows 98 is, in my opinion, the best pre-NT version of Windows that there is. It was a release that focused on content from the internet and introduced more and more concepts of what Windows is today. Some of these games wouldn't run on my Windows 10 computer, nor would they run in a VM (copy protection broke that, grumble grumble), so I decided to make my very own game console that runs Windows 98. This will be another long project, so strap in for multiple episodes. What a way to start the new year!

Aesthetics are key in any game console. Mine will be no exception. I didn't want to make something from scratch (I'm no craftsman), so I went with a Elan Stereo Box that I had gutted a while back (mostly). There were still some PCBs in there with valuable parts. I've broken it down in this picture. Taking this apart is literally just a bunch of screws, but the thing is sturdy and solid metal, so it was a bit cumbersome to work with.

First, let's look at the backplane (pardon the shag carpet). All of the zone cards attached into this which was then fed into the main board. This part is pretty useless for us, as there is no multiplexing logic on it. I assume it relied on shift registers that resided on the zone cards which I can't seem to find. Oh well. The plan with this is to either cut it down or remove the connectors and use it in a quick and easy project I'm planning (so, obviously not this one).

This is the back panel of the power supply. This case was involved in a lightning strike, so I don't really trust it to handle any power, plus I have a computer power supply so why even bother. I need all the room I can get. It goes.

I do want to keep the switch for that same project I'm thinking of, though.

Power supplies are always a treasure trove, but never with parts I care about. There are two ICs on here that may be of use. There's a UC3844A Current Mode Controller and a CNY17 Optocoupler. Everything else goes in the parts bin.

At some point I removed the EEPROM and microcontroller from the main board. I still have them, just not in here. There will be a lot of desoldering going on here, mainly to get the microcontroller socket off so I can maybe use it. But in addition to that, there are several interesting things on this board that can be popped right into a breadboard and used.

• 4 toggle dip switch
• A Real Time Clock IC
• A Supervisor IC (RTC power fallover to battery probably)
• Fully Static RAM
• 6x Shift Registers (3x Parallel-in and 3x Serial-in)
• 2x Inverting Line Buffers
• 2x Programmable Logic Devices
• 3x Demultiplexers
• 3x Flip Flops
• Reprogrammable PROM

It also has some buttons and lights. Those buttons and lights are the things I want to use for the case since they fit well. They're going on the I/O pins on the motherboard. I'm going to desolder everything else on here in a minute. But we have one last board to look at.

I really have no use for the display board in this project. I plan on cutting away the part that would have housed it for the CD and Floppy drive. So it's not going to make an appearance in the final product, however, it looks like it could be interesting to make into something because it has many shift registers for its 14 segment displays and light bars. Pretty neat how shift registers can work like that. I'm not going to take this one apart just yet. I think I can trace it. But I've overestimated my abilities before so...

Anyway, I went ahead and desoldered the stuff from the main board with the exception of the buttons and LEDs. This was really tricky because the holes themselves were tight enough to hold onto the chips and I had to melt the solder and then wedge the chips out. The socket was an unfortunate casualty in the prying. The plastic came off but some of the pins did not. I can probably find another socket like it from somewhere, though, so I'm not too bitter.

So, what's next? I plan on putting the main board back in to function as the case's power button, power LED, and HDD led. The other buttons are just for show. I could hook something up to them but I see no reason to. Next, I'll make an adapter for the ATX motherboard to fit snuggly into the case along with the power supply and whatnot. I've already determined that, while there's a nice place for the floppy drive already cut out in the front, a bit more will be removed for the CD drive. We'll also need to make some kind of internal structure for the case to hold the components such as the hard drive, the disk drives, and the cards. Next, we'll write some software to act as a game console home screen and throw that into the autoexec.bat file. Finally, we'll design a wireless controller with some parts I have laying around and some other stuff. Then, hopefully, I'll be able to play Lego Racers on the big screen again!