I was finally able to have a Virtual Boy system link experience- I brought my system and Hyper Fighting to a friend’s place for some versus mode fun! The link cable I made is pretty ugly looking, but held its own surprisingly well. There is a great article on this project in the Workshop (http://www.planetvb.com/modules/workshop/?02). This article helped me fix a goof where I just had each pin on one EXT port going to the corresponding pin on the other port- the systems recognized each other in versus mode on Hyper Fighting, but everything save for your own fighter was a scrambled mess. That’s because I had pin 4 (receive data) connected to the other receive line, same with pin 8 (send). Once I flipped a couple wires so each pin 4 connected to the opposite system’s pin 8, it was perfect!
If I’d seen that Workshop article before starting, I probably would have just used an SNES AV cable instead of that ugly green Playstation controller extension cable. I also had an extra Playstation 1 Gameshark lying around, and noticed that the black connector that plugs into the PS parallel I/O port could be cut down in size to fit in the VB EXT port. There are a lot of pins on the Gameshark, but they’re spaced just right so each pair of two will line up on a single VB EXT port pin. It was just a matter of figuring out which two pins would be paired up in each case, and soldering a wire from the green cable to each set of pins.
…this is just a placeholder though, I’ll be first in line when that official link cable comes out.
I’m working on an updated and better version of the cable. This time I’m taking apart male USB plugs for the connector. Each USB has 4 pins, facing two of them together works pretty well since the pin spacing is almost exactly right for the EXT port :). The two center USB pins aren’t spaced equally compared to the outer ones, but it doesn’t seem to affect this project.
After peeling the black plastic casing off each plug, the silver shielding underneath should be removed as well. This leaves the actual cable attached to the little white plastic thing where the 4 pins terminate. After Dremeling away some of the excess plastic, I managed to get each side spaced perfectly to fit snugly into the EXT port.
This time I’m soldering 8 wires from the plug to a standard ethernet jack. The pictures show my first one, I just need to put heat shrink tubing over the electrical tape and add something to make the USB pieces wide enough to fill the EXT port. I figure using ethernet cable will allow for more flexibility since you can get a longer or shorter one as needed. Then, making a special ethernet to USB attachment means this same link adapter could be used for online play. I’ll upload more pics as it develops…
This is my try to make a Link cable.
http://www.retrocomputers.gr/forum/mastoremata-montes-ktl/14012-link-cable-virtual-boy
The trick with the USB cable is awesome.
😎
