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On the Wikipedia page for Nintendo 64 accessories, there is this statement about battery-free Rumble Paks:

Battery-free Rumble Paks — Late in the N64's run, a few third-party companies made Rumble Paks that, instead of requiring batteries to work, drew power from the system. Curiously, it was possible to modify an official Rumble Pak using basic soldering in order to make it powered by the console.[citation needed]

Can an official Rumble Pak be soldered to be powered by the console and not require a battery?

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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about electrical engineering, not gaming.
    – Frank
    Dec 18, 2017 at 19:06
  • @Frank could it be migrated to electronics stack overflow instead?
    – Roijan says reinstate Monica
    Dec 18, 2017 at 20:10
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    – DJ Pirtu
    Dec 18, 2017 at 22:47

1 Answer 1

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There appears to be a few forums and videos showing that this is possible. One video includes this one:

It seems all you have to do is de-solder a 60Ω resistor that is found within the Rumble Pak, and solder the same resistor into a different location.

An additional site that discusses this can be found here. Using the image found on it, I illustrated what you need to do. It doesn't seem that hard watching the video above.

circuit board

Image Source (modified)

Note that it was pointed out in the video that having too many controllers with a modded Rumbled Pak could short out the console. It was suggested that you have no more than 2 controllers at a time with a Rumble Pak like this connected to the same console.

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    The only caveat I would add is, if your playing 4 player with rumble packs; everyone using this mod could lead to issues. I was curious why this would even be battery powered if there was enough power in the system. Apparently nintendo realized there isn't enough power to power the N64 and 4 rumble packs with the N64 power supply. There's a chance something could break if you have too many modded controllers hooked up (or it may just not work).
    – JMac
    Dec 18, 2017 at 22:11
  • @JMac at the end of the video I have in my answer, it says to avoid using more than 2 of these at a time on one console or it could short the console out. So yea, be careful.
    – Timmy Jim ♦
    Dec 18, 2017 at 22:31
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    I'd suggest adding it to the body just for reference. Your screenshot basically shows the entire process anyways.
    – JMac
    Dec 18, 2017 at 22:32

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