USB in a DS cartridge

[MinisterofDOOM]

Probably not quite what you were expecting, but on a whim I decided to make this a couple weeks ago:



Lunar Knights is a truly terrible game. I opened the game cart a while back to see what DS game hardware looks like. Then a couple weeks ago I cracked open a very bulky USB thumb drive to find that the actual hardware was less than half the size of the massive housing. The hardware looked compact enough to fit in the DS cart so I gave it a try. It worked out pretty well. Unfortunately I don't have any internal pics from before I sealed things back up, but I do have more of the finished product:



This shows how I trimmed the contact guides to leave room for the USB connector. You can see in the previous two pictures just how cleanly the connector lines up on the top side. The game cart has two posts inside to which the game PCB anchors. The USB PCB conveniently fit EXACTLY between them, ancoring it solidly. It was also exactly the right length to fit in the cartridge, with the back snug against the "top" and the USB connector cleanly at the bottom. This shot also shows the conveniently still-visible LED indicator in the center of the visible PCB. Just dumb luck that it worked out like that, but it's nice to still be able to see the LED.

Here you can see how the lower part of the USB connector is longer than the top, which worked out perfectly fitment-wise.

The only thing that didn't fit absolutely perfectly was the thickness. The DS PCB has ICs on only the top side. The USB PCB has ICs on both sides, so it's marginally thicker and actually causes the face of the cartridge to bulge a tiny bit. But it's barely noticable. I do kind of wonder about heat with prolonged use, though, since the ICs are directly in contact with the front and back faces of the cartridge.

And just for fun, the original innards of the game cart:

The USB drive I used has a 1GB capacity and ironically I used it to ferry the pics I posted here to work with me to upload.

[marlin29311]

Lol, that looks pretty interesting....not as interesting as this:



WTF Swarovski?

[MinisterofDOOM]

It's head comes off!!!

[nnorton44]

http://gizmodo.com/5298654/gee...eader