After tearing down the DS Lite unit last weekend we move onto the big blue box. The IS Nitro Capture unit itself, a sandwich of delight. Forbidden, yet still sandwich-like. You must not eat this. Only futuristic robots are up to that task!

There really is an extraordinary amount of hardware crammed inside this thing. With the outer case removed, we find a collection of circuit boards stacked together, with connectors running between the different sections.

The device has quite a collection of interfaces, including the connections that run to the Nintendo DS hardware. There’s also provision for the Game Boy cartridge slot, which is why the connecting cable divides into separate sections. Very clever, although it does mean there are even more things to disconnect when you want to pull everything apart.

There’s the capture hardware, connections for the DS and Game Boy cartridge interfaces, a little backup battery and all sorts of interesting components hiding underneath. I certainly wasn’t expecting this to be a particularly quick disassembly!

The first board I removed was marked for the Game Boy slot, and underneath that was another collection of connectors and components. Everything seems to be stacked together with little standoffs holding the boards apart. It’s very reminiscent of some of the Sega development hardware I’ve pulled apart over the years.

One little mystery was solved along the way. The missing front-panel LED hadn’t disappeared at all, it was still inside the unit, just rather badly bent. A little adjustment and that was looking much better.

Further down into the hardware we find more boards, plenty of connectors and even a little corrosion on one of the assemblies. Nothing particularly obvious appeared to have leaked onto it, so that was another curiosity to investigate.

There are some rather interesting board markings in here too, including what appears to be a monitor board, a CPU board and an additional wireless adaptor section. I also found a little backup battery hidden rather deep inside the assembly. Wonderful place to put something that will eventually need attention!

The component selection is quite interesting as well. There are Rubycon capacitors on several of the boards, along with a collection of programmable logic and other devices. One of the chips appeared to have a 2007 date code, which fits nicely with the era of the Nintendo DS development hardware.

After getting everything apart, I had a much better idea of how the Nitro Capture was constructed. Next would be the entertaining business of getting it back together and finding out whether it still worked. Hopefully, with all those boards and connectors, I’d remember where everything went!

At least the front-panel LED is back where it belongs, and I’ve got an opportunity to take some detailed photographs of the internal hardware. Now it’s just a matter of working backwards through the pile of screws and circuit boards. Nothing could possibly go wrong!

Related Posts