PicoCart64

Nintendo 64 flash cart using a Raspberry Pi Pico. So far, all of the work happens in the develop branch. Follow kbeckmann to follow along while he's working on the project. Konrad also hosts a Discord server where there's also a community budding.

There are parallel projects currently:

The lite version using one Raspberry Pi Pico board capable of booting homebrew
The next-gen version with two RP2040 chips and an on-board PSRAM chip supporting ROMs up to 64MB.

The following concerns the lite project, unless noted.

Getting up to speed

Although PicoCart64 is still a very young project there are several people interested in contributing already. A PicoCart64-lite board is capable of loading up to 2MB ROMs on an unmodified N64.

Getting the raw PCB

Note that currently this is a work-in-progress, and even the first version of the PCB has not been tested.

Check out the develop branch and navigate to hw/picocart64_v1_lite/. Compress the gerb_picocart64-lite_v1_0 to a .zip file.

Go to JLCPCB and make an account if you don't have one already. Push the Order now button in the top-right.

This takes you to the PCB configuration utility where you can upload the .zip file you just created. After uploading, you should see a rendered version of both sides of the PCB. If you want to produce a cheap cart for testing you can leave all settings as they are, except for this one:

PCB Thickness needs to be set to 1.0mm, otherwise the cart won't fit in your console

Sourcing the components

For building the lite version, you need the following parts along with the PCBs. Here we're assuming you want to assemble 5 boards, as that is the number of PCBs you'll be getting from JLCPCB as a minimum.

Qty	Name	Source
2	Raspberry Pico 3-pack	713-102110545
5	BSS84 MOSFET	750-BSS84-HF
5	0603 100k resistor	71-CRCW0603100KJNEAC

For the next-gen design, these are needed. This list is not exhaustive, and still a WIP.

Qty	Name	Source	Notes
5	BSS84 MOSFET	750-BSS84-HF
5	USB-C Receptacle	640-USB4105-GF-A
5	0603 1M resistor	71-CRCW02011M00FNED
10	0603 5k1 resistor	71-CRCW02015K10FKED
5	Ferrite bead	810-MMZ0603Y241CTD25	Does the ohm rating matter?
5	Push button	506-FSMSM
5	MicroSD card slot	538-104031-0811
5	RP2040 Stamp	Tindie link	We're probably phasing this out.

Assembling the board

This is TODO until jchillerup has received his boards and has been able to snap some pictures.