We Can Now Read GameCube Inputs!

📅 11 Aug 2022 - lipe-dev

That’s it, the first milestone has finally been reached! :party-popper:

Let’s talk about it.

Over at https://github.com/NicoHood/Nintendo there are some schematics that are frankly a bit confusing to me, but I got through.

First of all, the Pro Micro does not have a 3.3V output, so I had to buy a 3.3V voltage regulator. Very cheap and totally worth not having to build my own (even though it’s a very simple circuit).

The 3.3V output is needed to power the logic level converter. Actually, not power, it is called a “reference voltage” that it uses to “know” what voltage the signal will be converted to.

That’s basically the only hurdle we had to actually go through… but for 2 days my circuitry simply did not work.

I tried everything, New pro micro, new wires, disassembled everything and put it back together with double care… nothing.

You can follow this saga in https://github.com/NicoHood/Nintendo/issues/54 and finally in this reddit thread where my stupid mistake was finally revealed.

Turns out not all rails on my breadboard are connected all the way through. A couple jumpers did the trick.

Here is the first pic of the project:

What a mess! But at least, it’s a mess that does something.