"Blargh, it has a screen" I thought then I noticed something. It was rechargable via mini USB. It was a eureka moment when I realised that I don't have to use an AAA battery and I can transfer music to it via the mini USB which is pretty much available on every gadgets nowadays. It didn't have a lot of memory but it was only 1gb but I still bought it and got to work on it. After the whole tract switch problem I decided to see if I can use the original circuit board that came with the NES controller and got to work on cutting and cutting traces. After literally destroying my first attempt, I got hold of a second NES controller circuit board and using a small screwdriver, scraped off gently the black stuff on the board to get something that looks like this.
I also used the screwdriver to score the lines across the traces so that only when the button is pressed on the controller will it actually control the MP3 player. Some might call this a hack job but it works well and as some people say, if the cars running, you don't look under the bonnet. So now onto sorting the player. The version I had also had tract switches built into them. I just pulled them off. The picture below shows what the top part looked like before while the one at the bottom with the 4 solder points is after I removed the tract switch. There is a risk however because when I bought a second one to attempt this method again, the solder pad lifted up as well and pretty much rendered the whole player worthless. In truth, it would be safer if you just soldered onto the legs of the tract switch itself to save the hassle.
If you manage to get past that part, you just have to solder two wires diagonally on the solder point to the circuit board and so when you press it, it performs the function like play, pause, fast forward, next track etc. By this point, I ended up with something that looked like this:
Circuit board was in 2 parts because I was too heavy handed when I was cutting parts of it out. If anything, I found that the wire soldering was the most tedious part due to having to guess how long each wire needed to be and how short. Now I had to get the USB part working. I got lucky and the mini USB came off easily when I desoldered it off and I just used some wires to extend it to be placed where I needed it. Now I had to grind the controller case to fit it in.
Photos I forgot to take at the time. How I drilled a hole for the mini USB and how I drilled a hole for the screen to be shown which at the time I purely forgot because I was in such a frenzy that taking pictures was the last thing on my mind. I will get to it in a future update. So anyways, now should be the moment where everything should slot together.
Yellow wire was all I had and so it was a really memory test to remember which point goes to where. And so by this point, I realise that everything works perfectly. It recharges by USB perfectly and each button works as I reassigned it to. Below is the finished pictures with just one tiny problem.
The screen hole bit off a chunk of the Nintendo logo. I get a few comment where people have asked why it's not possible to move the screen to the middle. As you can see from the construction, the MP3 player PCB was too big and so moving it left or right made no difference. Really one of those situations where the right MP3 player can make all the difference. So that was my second NES MP3 Player prototype and the only one to date which actually has a screen because I'm looking for that right MP3 player to work with. A few months after making this, the store discontinued selling the MP3 player I used in this and so even trying to find the same one on ebay is impossible. I still have this about to remind me of the pain and tears in trying to get it to work and it gave me valuable lessons.
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