Picture showing the way the cut-down piece of chip is soldered onto the mainboard - looking, indeed, like a QFN package.

Making A Handheld NES By Turning DIP Chips Into…QFN?

By liana 2 years ago

You can realize a whole lot with a Dremel. For instance, seemingly you can trim the authentic NES down into the hand-held type-element. The two the CPU and the PPU (Picture Processing Unit) are 40-pin DIP chips, which will make NES minification a little bit difficult. [Redherring32] wasn’t one particular to be stopped by this, nonetheless, and turned these DIP chips into QFN-design-mounted dies (Nitter) employing little additional than a Dremel cutting wheel. Why? To convey his TinyTendo handheld game console task to fruition, of training course.

DIP chip contacts go out from the die making use of a world wide web of metallic pins referred to as the leadframe. [Redherring32] cuts into that leadframe and leaves only the useful component of the chip on, with the leadframe pieces remaining as QFN-like get in touch with pads. Then, the chip is mounted on to a customized footprint on the TinyTendo PCB, related to all the other parts that are, thankfully, attainable to acquire in SMD variety presently.

This trick is effective persistently, and we’re no doubt heading to see the TinyTendo currently being launched as a standalone task quickly. Just a 12 months ago, we noticed [Redherring32] lower into these chips, and questioned what the purpose could’ve been. Now, we know: it’s a rational continuation of his OpenTendo project, a mainboard reverse-engineering and redesign of the primary NES, an effort no question appreciated by numerous a NES fanatic out there. Generally, folks do not slice the real chips down to a modest dimensions – as a substitute, they minimize into the mainboards in a observe known as ‘trimming’, and this apply has brought us several miniature original-hardware-based game console builds about these a long time.

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