EEVblog #491 - Nintendo 64 Game Console Teardown

What's inside a 1997 vintage Nintendo 64 gaming console?

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[justagun]

Dave, I think you'll find that the CPU will not respond without a cartridge due to the security measures that Nintendo added. When a cartridge with a corresponding CIC chip is not present, the CPU is kept in reset state, so the system will not play pirated games.

[davidmaiolo]

EEVBlog, your background knowledge and attention to detail on these teardowns is awesome. I just watched you formulate a more thorough understanding of the workings of this system without a game, power supply, or prior usage of the system than some people who have been playing and studying this system since it came out. Good job my friend!

[JamesJefferyUK]

"Look at that bastard security skrew" ... I love your personality. Subscribed.

[RFC]

23:56 - Taking back the doppler effect on the electrons' "engine noise". Possibly the nerdiest self-correction ever.

[emmettturner]

The screws are NEC External Line Head "GameBit" screws. You can remove them by melting a clear Bic pen over them and unscrewing. SGI designed it very similar to one of their CGI workstations but the RCP was designed by a team eventually known as ArtX (supposedly assembled and contracted by Nintendo). After designing the GameCube GPU they were bought by ATI and put to work on the Radeon 9700 Pro and newer GPUs.

[FurEngel]

I believe the Jumper Pak was to delay the cost of the extra memory and to expand the product life. The systems were built in '96, and the cost of the 4MB RAMBus memory was huge. but the cost in '99 (when the Jumper Pak was released) was a fraction. That is why the pak was even included for free in Donkey Kong 64.

[colonsmoke]

Really cool video. I was a game developer for the N64 back when it was still referred to as the "Ultra 64". This was of course before it was released to the public. So I suspect the "NUS" on the chips stood for "Nintendo Ultra Sixtyfour", rather than "Nintendo Ultimate Sixtyfour".

[NathanK]

they wanted to.. they tried.... there where arguments in meeting rooms every it was important...when something is important you need to stand for it... but there was no give.... they would not call they could not call the peripheral interface chip: P-NUS or the amp-nus the A-NUS

[sbrideau]

Funny, I've donne a course in computer programming, and worked in programing. Then I went for a course in networking, and am now working as both a sysadmin and networking engineer. These videos, after recently discovering your channel, almost makes me want to go back to college and learn electronics, as soon as I'm done paying my student loans (worked for the last 5 years, still 10 years to go on my loans (not as expensive as the US in Canada, but still expensive). I love to learn these things.

[FunnyShorts-lgri]

Liked that electron drift velocity save :D

[ElNeroDiablo]

The expansion slot on the bottom was for the N64DD - Nintendo 64 Disc Drive. A relative failure of an expansion that got a limited release in Japan between December 1999 & August 2000 and never made it outside of Japan.

[yam]

That memory expansion slot on top is most likely the 'Jumper Pak', which you were supposed to replace with the 'Expansion Pak' (4MB RAM expansion, sold separately) released later by Nintendo. The expansion slot on the bottom was intended for the 64DD, a disk drive add-on for the N64 that basically failed commercially. It only came out in Japan.

[googaagoogaa]

i would think another reason for the cartridge port being socketed is if it was damaged or broken they could just pop it out and stick in a new one

[linmajon]

It is 2013 and this is currently one of the most inspiring blogs on youtube. The mystery of electronics hardware is sooo interesting to hear about, and Dave is an excellent teacher for this. Thousands thunbs up from me!

[marshaul]

As for the cartridge socket connector, I actually think it's a pretty solid design, and not a questionable cost-cutting measure.

Think about what's going on here. First of all, kids absolutely *will* slam cartridges home, possibly on a regular basis. I'm sure I did it myself back when my '64 was in service. One of my first thoughts when you started looking at the main socket was "solder joints will be pulled off the board in no time with a kid slamming that cartridge home". Solder joints are pretty solid, but impact force transmitted against the joint via a through-hole pin is a great way to delaminate the copper pad entirely from the board, if not fracture the joint outright.

But with this design, right off the bat, by having the cartridge socket connected via a socket of its own, there are now two points of play to absorb the stress of this impact. Also, because the mounted socket is through-hole and *on the bottom* (leaving the solder pads on the top layer), any impact force which is transmitted through both sockets to the solder joints is now *pulling the joint together* (into the board), as opposed to pushing it apart (away from the board).

Clever, if you ask me.

[WhitentonMike]

I noticed the RDRAM specs show the 2 pairs of pins in the corners of U11 for example are mechanical only.

[toshineon]

Those are some impressive specifications for the time. No wonder games like GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark looked so good.

[DavidHansen]

Also worth noting is that sometimes, if not often, there were additional circuitry on the cartridges themselves to support extra features of the game(s). Extra processing and memory, like what was often seen in old Atari carts, IIRC.

[Nuklen]

N64 without the memory expansion would have a Rambus DRAM Terminator on the expansion slot there, the system either requires that terminator or the expansion to work.

[dan_loup]

I think the sega saturn would be a much more interesting system to tear down and review like that.
Lots and lots and lots of off the shelf chips and like 6 separate memory areas, also the drive mechanics and such.