In today's episode I am talking to Swedish homebrew hacker Konrad Beckmann. Around summer last year Konrad announced a project to create a Nintendo 64 flash cart by using nothing more complex than a Raspberry Pi Pico. Recently Konrad made big progress on his project to use a Pico to get a digital HDMI-like signal from the N64. His ethos is to find ways to hack these devices as cheaply as possible.

Konrad explains both projects to us in good technical detail. I do my best to keep up with such clever talk.

0:00 Start

2:00 Konrad's background

5:00 Why the Raspberry Pi Pico is excellent for embedded hcking

9:55 Using the Pico vs the raw RP2040 chip

14:30 The 2 versions of the PicoCart64: Easy and complex

20:00 Konrad's view on open source

22:00 When to announce an open source project?

24:00 Konrad's first computer

31:00 Sweden was rocking home internet in '95

35:00 Pico N64 digital HDMI mod

43:00 Konrad explains how 7-bit RGB works

51:00 HDMI via the Pico now has a real HDMI port

55:00 Is a external scaler the future of HDMI projects?

1:01:15 Do we need a generic N64 flex cable for other hackers?

PicoCart64 Github: https://github.com/kbeckmann/PicoCart64

N64 digital video mod work: https://github.com/kbeckmann/PicoDVI

Konrad's Discord: https://discord.gg/B8n57fGd

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kbeckmann

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Along with my friend Steve from RetroTech we maintain a blog about our projects "The Cathode Ray Blog"

https://www.cathoderayblog.com

You can find the audio on the web or your favourite podcast app

https://anchor.fm/zezretro

Catch us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/zez

https://twitter.com/usa_retro

For all your CRT repair needs, check out Steve's channel

https://www.youtube.com/c/RetroTechUSA