Yes, I know This is DUMB (NES on battery power)

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  • čas přidán 9. 06. 2024
  • Maybe not practical for most but I dunno, maybe someone can find a use for running an NES (or other retro consoles) off a battery bank!
    I had the battery bank so I figured I'd try. TBH while I was a little intrigued to actually see it working at all I was much more curious as to how long the battery life would actually be. My initial thought was a ~10 watt system draw on a 10,000mAh battery would yield 10 hours of battery life. I know that there's efficiency loss when looking at batteries and power supplies. The capacity rating is for the battery at 3.7v and there's going to be loss in the boost converter bumping the voltage up the required 9v for this application. So okay, maybe not quite 10 hours, but what about 8 or 9? But I quickly shrugged that off as not being remotely close. There's no way this little battery is going to power an NES for anywhere remotely close to 8-10 hours! I started to look at calculators on Google and stumbled across 3.7 hours. Okay, this sounds more reasonable I thought. So I decided to call it at 3-4 hours. Well, turns out my initial quick and (ignorant) easy method of 10 watts into 10Ah giving 10 hours was closer. Probably a coincidence but nonetheless we ended up at pretty much 8 hours right on the dot! I really didn't expect this tiny battery that I can easily fit in my pocket, or the palm of my hand, to run an NES for 8 hours. But here it is!
    This if anything is a real eye opener to just how little power these old consoles actually use. CPU's and GPU's have certainly gotten a lot more powerful in terms of performance, but they're supposed to also get more efficient as time goes on. But comparing this to the PS5 (or XBOX Series X) is mind blowing. These modern consoles can use 200 Watts when playing heavy games! That's 30x more power than the NES! Imagine having 30 NES systems powered on at once and realizing that's equal to just one PS5! You'd need one hell of a power bank to run a 200 Watt console like that for any real amount of time.
    This should work with most retro consoles including the Sega Master System, Genesis/MD, SNES, TurboGrafx-16 and many, many more. Really anything that runs off DC voltage within the wattage limitations of the power bank. But remember I am using a 9v PD USB-C to 5.5mm barrel plug with the PD trigger chip built into the cable. You need a cable that will tell the power supply (PD power adapter or power bank like this) to output the required voltage and that also has to be able to handle the current (Amps) that the system will need. I've already shown my PD USB-C cable powering the SMS, SFC and Genesis so there's no reason to think this wouldn't work with those just as well. The bigger systems like the Genesis would likely draw a little more currant than the NES here but it would still be a very reasonable run time! But what's the point of running a system like that off battery power??
    While yes, this is pretty useless as is it did get me thinking. If this 10,000mAh battery can run the NES for 8 hours it could probably run an external monitor as well. Small portable composite monitors (LCD/LED/IPS) are available and should fit into the power limitations if not here, but certainly on the larger 65 Watt power banks I've seen. Most laptop displays for example only use 5-10 watts. Not far off what the NES itself uses. So a small (say an 8-10") composite monitor within 10 watts should be able to run along side the NES here with this small battery and still get 4 hours of play time. Hell, with the larger power bank we could bring that back up to 8 hours! Someone out there must want a portable NES/monitor combo like that right? Camping with no AC maybe? Someone? Anyone? No?
    Okay, so really this just shows off how cool USB-C PD and these modern GaN small and efficient power sources and batteries can be. I mean even if I have no use for this I still think it's crazy that a small palm sized battery can run an NES for 8 hours!
  • Hry

Komentáře • 23

  • @clownbaby882
    @clownbaby882 Před 24 dny +1

    Cool experiment. That little battery bank is a champ

  • @Warrax22
    @Warrax22 Před 24 dny +1

    About 10hrs autonomy, not bad! Edit: didn't realised it could drop fast near the end, 8hrs is not bad either!

  • @Justin_Strack
    @Justin_Strack Před 24 dny +1

    You got to play you got to play.

  • @RomeoGoesRetro
    @RomeoGoesRetro Před 21 dnem +1

    Can we take a moment to acknowledge that the commodore monitor is still working like a champ?? Was it also on the whole time during this experiment?

    • @MN12BIRD
      @MN12BIRD  Před 21 dnem

      Yeah left it on (not running off the battery of course) but I didn't even think of wear on it for no reason I guess I could have turned it off or at least turned the brightness down. Oh well it lasted this long what's another 8 hours?

  • @WhatsOnMyShelf
    @WhatsOnMyShelf Před 19 dny

    If I recall correctly, flash carts draw more power than standard carts.

  • @WhatsOnMyShelf
    @WhatsOnMyShelf Před 19 dny

    13:40 160watts for a PS5 is incredible, considering the power supplies for PCs

  • @duhmez
    @duhmez Před 23 dny +1

    Nintendo switch docked is only 12 watts.

  • @neofreak91x
    @neofreak91x Před 23 dny +1

    soo is possible to mod nes with battery

  • @duhmez
    @duhmez Před 23 dny +1

    If u bring electric car out to a campsite, thne u got pretty much unlmited battery for stuff like this + monitor etc etc. Hey now anyone can bust out a phone or tablet and pull up some super mario, but if u whip this out with a smmonitor, that is how u do it in style!

    • @WhatsOnMyShelf
      @WhatsOnMyShelf Před 19 dny

      There are also USB powered monitors. It would get a little tricky when using a device like a retrotink to make the exchange of composite->HDMI but this battery has three USB ports.

  • @xBlitzerx
    @xBlitzerx Před 23 dny

    Cool idea. I wonder how it would compare to an NES Classic? Maybe test that and might as well get a small LED screen as well. Hehe.

    • @WhatsOnMyShelf
      @WhatsOnMyShelf Před 19 dny +1

      The NES classic runs at about half the wattage of the original NES, so maybe it would run twice as long

  • @Clancydaenlightened
    @Clancydaenlightened Před 24 dny +1

    Do a 5v conversion and rebuild the composite video amp
    And you actually can run it from a USB bank
    Just rip off and de solder the modulator and rectifier, and remove 7805, and use a diode for anti polarity

    • @Clancydaenlightened
      @Clancydaenlightened Před 24 dny

      Video amp is just a signal transistor and voltage divider or a buffer to match impedance
      Npn Emitter follower type
      2n4401 or 3904 and two resistors I can't remember the exact values
      5v and composite from console go in
      Tv friendly composite comes out the other

    • @Clancydaenlightened
      @Clancydaenlightened Před 24 dny +1

      With everything on 5v throw a 5v composite tft
      Now it's "portable"
      Composite tft are cheap
      Just buy a car rearview camera LCD and gut it for the display
      Still need a speaker for sound output

    • @Clancydaenlightened
      @Clancydaenlightened Před 24 dny +1

      Now people don't have to destroy psone LCD anymore portablize consoles

    • @WhatsOnMyShelf
      @WhatsOnMyShelf Před 19 dny

      @@Clancydaenlightened Eh, there are plenty of portable DVD players to canabalize. The modern solution would be to use a USB powered monitor. There are small ones. I never checked, but they may run on 5V too without using this newer PD stuff. I'd actually like to find a PD device that outputs 10v for SEGA stuff.

  • @duhmez
    @duhmez Před 23 dny

    I love PD! I am a PD phile!

  • @Videogamelover58
    @Videogamelover58 Před 24 dny

    Cool

  • @dagnisnierlins188
    @dagnisnierlins188 Před 24 dny

    I've watched enough Ben heck to know this is not bad idea.

    • @MN12BIRD
      @MN12BIRD  Před 23 dny +1

      I remember he ran a Genesis off like AA's or 9v batteries or something once yeah