Rewiring Your Cartridge Connector

I wanted to take a moment to share my current method of relocating an N64's Cartridge Connector. I am not claiming to be the first person to do this, but rather that I haven't seen or heard of anyone else doing it. The reason I started doing it like this is because I try to do Mods in a way that is reversible, so that they can reasonably be brought back to stock condition. Also because I typically do case Mods to the N64, and not handheld 64's, I don't typically need to remove the expansion port on the bottom except to do the rewiring, so why not do it a little differently?

Take note of the connector's orientation, notice that Nintendo was kind enough to print a small white arrow on the connector, this lines up with the large white arrow that is printed on the Mother Board.

Also, you can see the board's revision number at the top, "NUS - CPU - 05", so I am showing y'all on a revision 5 board. Revision 05 through 08 tend to perform better than earlier revisions with a relocated cartridge connector, 08 being the latest board revision (that I've seen) and seems to be the most stable.

So I'm going to utilize Male & Female Headers to make our wiring easily removable. The Cartridge Connector has 48 pins which, due to its spacing, we will split this into four separate connectors:

2x connectors will have 11 pins &

2x connectors will have 13 pins

I use:

Male breakaway headers

Female Headers

Through Hole PCB

Ribbon Cable

I first measure out 4" of ribbon cable and cut

I then measure and mark the ribbon cable 1/3" from each end, and then measure in another 1/3". Using a utility knife carefully seperate each wire up to the second mark. Using a wire stripper, strip each wire up to the first mark, and twist the strands. Set these aside while we prep the PCBs. We need:

2x PCBs that are each 4 x 11

2x PCBs that are each 4 x 13

The reason we want 4 rows is to have space on the board to apply pressure to when inserting or removing the connectors, without having to put pressure on the wires. One long side and one short side of each PCB needs to be sanded or filed down to a straight edge, as all four PCBs will fit together with all four touching .

Cut the headers (both Male & Female)

2x 11 pins

2x 13 pins

solder in the headers first, be mindful of heat, leaving the soldering iron in one area for even a short period of time will melt the plastic headers causing the pins to move around or fall out. Then wire in your ribbon cable to the PCB attaching to each pin of the headers, being careful to not short any pins to each other.