UltraHDMI Install!

Hi all! Been fairly busy recently, so this is my first update in a while. After getting hold of both an NT Mini and Super NT, the N64 remained the only Nintendo console I owned without a native digital HDMI option. Luckily, I had an ultraHDMI board on order! Pre-ordered in November and I got it at the start of March.

I won’t go into full detail in terms of the install as it’s been covered lots elsewhere, but I found it surprisingly easy. Despite soldering a flat flex cable to such fine pitch pins of the RPC, a decent amount of flux made it a breeze and I was done within minutes.

Cable held in place with some kapton tape

Soldered. I used a very small amount of solder and utilized drag soldering. A decent amount of flux made it simple, preventing oxidisation and drawing the solder to the contacts.

The UltraHDMI board itself sits at the back, underneath the analogue AV out. A small cutout made for the mini-hdmi socket. My console is a JP model, but in a PAL shell (hence the UK sticker)

It worked great! Checked the self-test function and my wiring came up as absolutely fine. Awesome.

UltraHDMI Menu. Lots of options.

The image is taken directly from the graphics chip itself (the N64’s ‘reality processor’) and upscaled with a focus on accuracy. It’s exactly what the console is outputting without any lossy analogue conversion and looks incredibly crisp. The de-blur option uses an algorithm to reverse the additional full frame AA added by the console and works really well.

So all was good! Well, until I tried updating the firmware using my Everdrive 64. It was the middle of the heaviest snow we’ve seen here in the UK for years and my house had a power cut. Only intermittently, but enough to brick the UltraHDMI.

I looked everywhere for a solution – and there was none other than sending the board back to the developer (marshallh) for repair. Hell no. I threw him an email and luckily he responded with a jtag file I was able to flash to the board using an altera blaster. Phew.

Don’t do firmware updates in snowstorms, people