Gadgetory

it's no big secret that there are people out there who do not like the Nintendo switch job for a couple of really good reasons some people have scratched screens others have talked about how it doesn't exactly ventilate heat very well and more than anything right now it is the only way to get a video signal from your switch to your TV so if you want another option what can you do obviously break your dock and build something better and in my case I want to try something a little special and put it in a classic NES cart to start you're going to have to break your dogs now it's worth noting that Nintendo really doesn't want you to open this thing so there are a lot more steps doing this than you would think first we have to take off this backplate but to do that you have to have a pretty esoteric screwdriver design called ay0 now these aren't exactly common so you have to buy one of these specifically or get it as part of something like an I fix it get after removing the backplate you can see the inside working bits of the switch duct which you can pry off pretty easily but run into the issue that the ribbon cable and power indicator light are buried behind a second layer so we're going to have to remove that as well which guess what requires an entirely different screwdriver now at first glance you might think you can use any small Phillips head screwdriver to do this but some of the screws are actually recessed really beeps you're going to have to make sure you have one that also has the reach to get to them now after taking those out we do need to temporarily unplug the power indicator light which just takes a little pressure to pull out while the ribbon cable is going to need a little more finesse and is made much easier using a small prying tool with the board disconnected and all the screws gone you can easily remove that second layer we hook everything up and boom we have freed the insides of the switch dock from the surprisingly kind of large comparison shell so now that we have the board all we have to do is open up the Zelda cart which is actually a lot easier all you need is a screwdriver that works with a three-pointed security screw which is a pretty common design for most older electronics opening the card up we get to see the core of the original Legend of Zelda which is actually really interesting to compare to other NES carts because it's actually quite a bit larger with the inclusion of this battery and extra memory because it was one of the few NES games where you could actually save your data by pressing the reset and power button at the same time so with the car cleared out all we need to do is get the docs board inside of it and okay so this is actually gonna take a bit more work because well the card is big enough a lot of the molding that was designed to keep the cards insides in place are getting in the way so we're going to actually have to destroy this card a little bit using a dremel with the cutting attachment we got rid of the central screw peg and if you're me also scratch up the inside a little bit and then you switch over to a sanding tool to even that out and get rid of the bottom molding which was used to hold the game boards pins in place kids don't try this at home adults if you're going to try this don't be dumb like me and actually wear protective eyewear so after cleaning away the burning and melting plastic I love that smell in the morning we can now safely fit the board inside we just need a way to secure it there's a couple ways you could do this one of the simplest that we went for is just using a square of mounting tape just placing that on top of the HDMI port since that gives us a nice flat surface and putting it down inside of the cart leaving a little room on one side for us to fit the USBC ribbon cable now it is at this point that we realize that the USBC port is just a little too thick for the carts Mouse to just stick out of it so it's going to have to hang a little bit outside and we chose to have it facing forward for easy access after that we can close up the cart now we did dribble away one of the screw pegs so you only need to um now throw the third one away and the two we have left are enough to make sure the cart closes nice and secure so after doing all this we actually have a completed design now we just have to see if it works so when doing stuff like this there's always the worry that while breaking things apart we might have actually broken something beyond repair so we're going to go ahead and test this out right now so you'll see we got this little USB AC extension cable so it's not just talking the life into the cart like that plug it in and success did you think I did I hope it did that's all that matters now of course that does lose the dark aspect of well the Nintendo sewage dock turning instead into a more portable breakout box now if you want a more permanent fixture for a setup you can of course create a little mount or stand for it like we've done right here I also really recommend getting a stand designed for a tablet or the switch so you can set it up side by side for a nice little display and really this is just one example for all the different things you could do once you figure out how to open up the dock and take apart all the important bits you can even celebrate your love for Nintendo by putting it in a Sega Genesis