This distro is based on Buildroot, that means it very flexible and well suited for numerous customized embedded linux applications. Makers will find it extremely useful since it can be used to create powerful custom deployments – Want to control a robot using a Raspberry Pi? then this is the distro for you – Please keep in mind that the default configuration builds a system with nothing more than the bare essentials.

Please checkout the README file for more information.

You may download the test-drive SD-card image here: http://dl.guillermoamaral.com/rpi/sdcard-3.8.img.xz (user root – no password)

How to build it yourself!

How to flash

After purchasing it, kids kept walking up to me and asked about the console, clearly excited about all the old-school games inside. They where aware it was not a PS3 or an XBOX 360, they didn’t care, it was true 8-bit love. I have to admit, that made me very happy.

Taredown

I started by removing the easily accessible screws underneath the console.

Exposing what I pretty much expected, an extremely simple system held together with hot glue.

From this angle you can tell that the two single sided boards on each end are just breakout boards for the different connectors required by the system; with the exception of the L7805CV regulator and it’s accompanying decoupling capacitors.

The boards seem to have been screen printed, the traces also look a little oddly shaped. If you look closely, you can still see quite a lot of flux residue, dirty.

The other board doesn’t look any better sadly. Also, they went and soldered all the TH components and jumpers on the bottom side. Not really sure why…

The top side of the main board looks pretty much as you would expect, one big cartridge slot, what looks like a 21 Mhz crystal oscillator and a few capacitors.

The real action is on the bottom. It looks to be some sort of chip-on-board design, this little guy in the middle is why I took so long to post this tare down; I wanted to maybe try to dissolve the epoxy but I kept getting distracted by work. In the end I decided against it, since I don’t have a powerful enough microscope for it to really be worth busting out the acid.

Bonus

The cartridge seems to be another breakout-like board for what looks to be a NAND flash. I’m going to try to get some data off the flash memory, I’ll post and update when and if I’m successful. :)

What now?

I’m going to put it back together and give it away to the first kid to walk up to me at the mall next week. :)

I had some schwag for the event, this included t-shirts, bookmarks, stickers, buttons and random booth paraphernalia. Most of which was gone by Sunday morning due to a herd of middle-schoolers that swamped the booth on Saturday.

People kept trying to buy the booth Marshmallows off me, I guess I will have to make some extra ones for next year. :)

Talk

I was surprised to see that the room was packed when I walked in about 10 minutes prior to show time. It went well considering I lost my voice earlier that week. My throat was killing me since I had to go mic-less due to some “technological differences” (Idiocracy, 2006), I was worried it was going to start bleeding, luckily it didn’t.

If you’re interested in trying out the demo used during my talk, it’s available in both 32-bit or 64-bit versions of Linux. Simply extract and execute the “run” script found inside the resulting marshmallow_demo directory.

The demo requires a recent version of the Linux kernel along with a working OpenGL setup.

Thank You

I’d like to thank the SCaLE organizers for their support and I hope we get invited back next year. I’ll leave you with a quote from an email I got soon after arriving home.

Yours was my favorite booth at SCALE; low budget, and I got to learn
about something I hadn’t heard of before. Keep up the good work on the
project!

-Jim Garrison

I recently found myself with a surplus of Adafruit Industries components, I decided to put a few of them to good use by making a custom NES controller.

Objectives

• Use a thru-hole 5-way navigation switch.
• Use some square tactile buttons.
• Create a custom Eagle device for the navigation switch.
• Use a strip of SMD 0603 10k resistors.
• Use a single-sided 65×65 MM square board (since I have a bunch of them).

Design

The design is fairly simple, the only difference between it and a standard controller would be the use of the Center pin on the navigation switch as the Select button.

PCB

I had to resort to using quite a lot of jumper wires since the board is pretty small, it should also work fine on a double sided board (just not very efficiently).

Replace the bottom layer (blue lines) with jumper wire.

Results

The controller works great! Though it could use some routing to make it more comfortable.

Back – Start Button

Front

Use

My custom Raspberry Pi distro is now sporting an up-to-date userland along side a 3.6.10 kernel and a few more tweaks (including that colorful /etc/issue you see above).

This distro is based on Buildroot, that means it very flexible and well suited for numerous customized embedded linux applications. Makers will find it extremely useful since it can be used to create powerful custom deployments – Want to control a robot using a Raspberry Pi? then this is the distro for you – Please keep in mind that the default configuration builds a system with nothing more than the bare essentials.

Please checkout the README file for more information.

You may download the test-drive image here: http://dl.guillermoamaral.com/rpi/sdcard.img.xz (user root – no password)

How to flash

MES

Marshmallow Entertainment System demo image was also updated, now with (buggy) ALSA support!

Raspberry Pi ALSA leaves a lot to be desired, so don’t expect too much. :)

You may download the platformer demo image here: http://downloads.marshmallow.me/sdcard.img.xz

How to flash

Thanks

I would like to thanks you all your great emails, the support is much appreciated!

I was planning on replacing the 72-pin connector in an NES, since my NES has been doing the red square of death tango for a while now, but after busting it open I found that the contacts where in good condition, so I opted to give them a good cleaning.

But first, some legalese. The content in this post is informational and in no event shall I be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including but not limited to loss of use, data or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any theory of liability, strict liability or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in anyway out of the use of this information, even if advised of the possibly of such damages.

Cleaning

Bonus

If you have some thin cleaning wipes, you can stick one between the cartridge and the NES connector, it really helps with stuck on dirt.

Today I decided to do something fun, I went to my local flea market for inspiration and found it! It came in the form of a dead but in good-condition NES controller. After closer inspection, the problem was a dead 4021 p2s IC.

I was about to convert it to a TV controller when I remembered it was MakeyMakey Monday!

Resurrection

I started by cleaning the device and figuring out how I was gonna go about wiring the buttons to the MakeyMakey. I then got a few of my Adafruit Extra-long break-away headers and an old red pen (I needed the ink, you will see why in a moment).

I inked the top of the headers with the red pen’s ink and then placed the NES Controller back on-top of the headers; This gave me a clear idea of there I should drill.

I got my trusty hand drill and fitted the headers to the back of the NES Controller. Afterwards, I testing the header locations to make sure the MakeyMakey fit correctly. It did!

My attention them moved over to the PCB, I cut the wires for the controller cable and desoldered the whole thing, IC and all.

I then soldered a few wires from the headers to the controller PCB.

And finally cut the pull-up resistor traces; this step is extremely important! Failing to cut them will result in all buttons getting triggered.

I then cleaned up and closed the controller making sure I didn’t bend any of the internal wires.

Tested it by playing some minecraft.

Mapping

Up Arrow = W
Left Arrow = A
Down Arrow = S
Right Arrow = D

Select = F
Start = G

B = RIGHT CLICK
A = LEFT CLICK

Video

Marshmallow Game Engine started as a way for me to keep my cross-platform game engine chops up during my spare time (not that I have that much spare time mind you). But with the advent of both powerful and affordable hardware like the Raspberry Pi, I started looking into creating my own game console again, and I have to admit, I’m very excited.

MES

Thanks to the wonderful Raspberry Pi, I’m finally able to create an affordable DIY console kit for my game engine.

The following are some common components in game consoles, I’ll go through the list so you can get an idea of how the end product will work.

Controllers & Ports

Luckily the RPI has a couple of built in USB ports. A simple USB port hub or something like the Mayflash Wii classic controller pro to PC which can handle two controllers per USB slot can be used to add more ports when needed.

Not all USB controllers will be supported, but I will target the most common ones in the beginning, user submitted mappings will soon follow.

Reliable power cycle

Since we can’t have people cut power to the running system willy-nilly, I created a little board to take care of the power distribution.

Back

An ATtiny85 MCU is the brains behind the board, it will later on output debug messages via the indicator LED, but for now it flashes at two different frequencies for boot and shutdown, it also signals the main board when it’s time to shutdown properly.

Front

The board is powered by a 5V@2A power supply which is forwarded to the main board when the console is turned on, the rest of the board runs on 3V3 and consumes about 0.007ma in stand-by mode, and about 10ma when the indicator light is on.

Hardware specs and source code can be found on my GitHub account, all covered under the BSD and CERN OH licenses.

Media Slot

Since I’m planning on having mainly downloadable content, an optical media drive or cartage slot would not make much sense (fun as it may be). I might add external USB storage support.

Enclosure

No definitive case design yet. I’m considering laser cut PCB.

Operating System

Since speed and boot time are very high priority when it comes to game consoles, I decided to build my own distro. It’s lean, mean and comes in one single flavor, COUGAR.

I found that on some LCD displays, screen settling takes longer than the actual system boot, which is pretty awesome. The game engine waits for the screen to be ready before it continues running, this applies for first boot and for video output switching (HDMI <=> Composite).

Game Engine

I’m using my own game engine which is still under heavy development, I’m trying to get people interested in helping out with port maintenance (specially the Windows and MacOS X ports). If you’re interested please contact me.

See it in action

I showed off my progress on Adafruit Industries Show and Tell

Try it out!

If you want to try out the demo, just follow the instructions below:

After it’s done, insert the sdcard in your Raspberry Pi and plug it in!

Notes

You will need to have a keyboard handy since the odds you have a supported gamepad/joystick is pretty thin (donations welcome!).

F1 – restarts the demo
ESC – kills the demo
SPACE – Jumps
LEFT – Move left
RIGHT – Move right
LSHIFT – Run

Donations

You are probably asking yourself “How can I help?”, well I’m glad you asked!

I’m currently taking hardware and PayPal donations, if you have a game controller you want supported, a Raspberry Pi laying around or too much cash in your bank account and want to fund further development, feel free to contact me or hit that nifty PayPal Donate button on my site.

Thanks for your interest in my project, please feel free to leave comments or suggestions below.

Also, I’m usually around on IRC #marshmallow_h @ freenode

G

(it’s not the power jack, I ran out so I hacked something else in it’s place)

I’ll expose the double-sided version later this week, after I hit the electronics store.

The rpi-pwrbtn repository on GitHub includes the double sided board schem and the MCU code: https://github.com/gamaral/rpi-pwrbtn