NES Media PC

Whew, well now that exams and that whole Christmas thing is done I have some time to kill and write something here.  In the process of cleaning up around the home here I found a rather fantastic relic of the past, an original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).  I remember having one but up until now had thought it had gone to video console heaven to join its brethren Commodore 64 and Atari.

A long lost source of fun and adventure unearthed again.

A long lost source of fun and adventure un-earthed again.

Long Lost NES - Top

NES - Bird's Eye View

However, now what to do with this iconic relic of the 80’s.  A Philips screwdriver and 10 screws later showed the NES in all its boxlike glory would make it a great enclosure for something.  What just what could that something be?  My first thought was to turn it into a hard drive enclosure for regular backups was a decent idea, however, seeing that some more ambitious people on the internet turn it into a retro media PC I decided I wanted to do that too.

The gutted NES in all its internal box glory.  The power buttons are the only thing I left.

The gutted NES in all its internal box glory. The power buttons are the only thing I left.

So here are my specs for the internals of this experiment:

  • Intel DG41MJ MINI-ITX LGA775
    A small but flexible motherboard that can handle most of the Intel Dual Core processors (as opposed to just Celeron or Micro processor). It also has 5.1 surround sound and has a high resolution digital out that will give some HD picture quality.  Also the capacity to have 8 USB ports serves my purposes well.
  • Western Digital Scorpio Blue 2.5IN 160GB
    Space to put stuff.
  • OCZ Gold XTC PC2-6400 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-800
    Far more RAM than I could ever justify but hey it’s on sale.
  • Liteon IHOS104 4X BLU-RAY Reader BD-ROM Drive
    Blu-Ray is the way of the future I hear.

More to come I will keep this place update as I progress.

– Niels

1 Comment so far

  1. Daniel on January 6th, 2010

    Nice! I just finished the case today and will post an update on my site in a little bit. The case is going to be on display at the Exploratorium in San Francisco in February. I’m going to try and get a mouse and keyboard ready by then too, but school starts on monday. I love getting a break from school!

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