I’d like to announce Richard Hutchinson’s latest creation, the FlashBoy Plus! This new, second entry to the FlashBoy family expands the previous design by an internal save battery and will finally allow Virtual Boy homebrew developers to make use of game saving mechanisms in their games. Or, better put, it will finally allow people to actually use save game functionality of homebrew and commercial games on hardware.

This marks the end of the “old” FlashBoy line, none of those will be produced anymore. The last ever “old” FlashBoy (#284), which was meant as the main prize for the PVB Coding Competition 2010, is being auctioned off. The competition winner will receive a FlashBoy Plus instead.

This also means that the previously announced upcoming new FlashBoy batch will in fact be FlashBoy Plus units. Those 50 units will be available to those who preordered approximately in early October. The price will stay the same at 90 Euro.

Everyone who did not have luck this time should be happy to hear that we plan to create another batch of FlashBoy Plus units at the end of the year.

Here’s how the box of the Plus will look like. (Kudos to Hedgetrimmer for the fantastic cart renders on the back!

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WOW, this is fantastic news! 😀
What a surprise! Great job everyone involved!

Will it be possible to read/write the sram contents through the flasher software?

Thanks!

It is not possible to read or write the SRAM. The battery will be overwritten every time you play another game accessing it.

To bad the SRAM can’t be backed up or restored, that kind of kills the joy about it a little.

I guess Richard never got the FeRAM to work then, would have been really nice with memory not needing a battery.

Great work anyway, looking forward to getting one!

Nice! Can the previous FlashBoy be upgraded if we return the cart and add in a pizza fee?

Chris

Bidding on said last flashboy now… I really hope I win it! (for the good of playing homebrew games and in a way, donating to the site at the same time 😀 )

(wish me luck, Virty!)

I’m really glad to have put out for one now, a flash card with internal memory is exactly what I’ve been waiting for!

Although, mind my uninformed self, but not being able to back up the sram means that saves cannot be saved to the computer for later use?

Regardless, I’m hyped!

I guess Richard never got the FeRAM to work then

Right. Several options have been tried out actually, including EEPROMs, but failed.

Nice! Can the previous FlashBoy be upgraded if we return the cart and add in a pizza fee?

AFAIK, yes, but not easily. Will have to talk to Richard about that.

Although, mind my uninformed self, but not being able to back up the sram means that saves cannot be saved to the computer for later use?

Yes, that’s correct.

Just heard back from Richard and learned that it is not possible to upgrade the old FlashBoy to a FlashBoy Plus, as it’s a different circuit. Sorry!

To bad, in my opinion its not worth buying a new flashboy when you cant save your saves but oh well
Not that any homebrew need save and the vb save games can all be bought together for under 90 euro

Just hope most homebrew games will stick with passwords if save is really needed

Atleast its good for people who dont have a flashboy and dont want to buy the games with save features after they already bought a flashboy but for us who bought the vb games with save feature before the original flashboy was released will just stay with the old flashboy

“the vb save games can all be bought together for under 90 euro”

Are you including SD Gundam Dimension War in your calculations? 😛

Needless to say, I’m still excited for this revised cart!

Great to see we finally have a flashcart with SRAM! 😀

…Pity I don’t have enough at the moment… 🙁

Re: not being able to back-up saves:

It would be possible to build DogP’s USB link cable and use a program running on the VB to save/restore SRAM through the link port.

Maybe Chris and Richard could work on marketing such a cable (which would also allow multi-player gaming between emu and hardware, or between two VB’s over the ‘net).

It would also be a good idea to somehow make the VB-side cable detachable so it could be connected to another one to make a standard VB<->VB cable.

Where/When can I get on the waiting list for pre-ordering one of these things?

I hope you make more than 50 next time. I need to get in on this!

I want on the preorder list!! 😀

Perhaps we could look into getting the connectors made (I’ve not seen them anywhere). As for making more FlashBoy’s, it’s getting very close to not being able to get donor carts anymore. There really needs to be a solution, especially for when Vaughanabe13 releases his cart.

getting connectors made triggered a memory that someone here at PVB made up a flash cart with their own connector strip, it was an off the shelf part with the right pitch, I’ve not searched the forums to find out who it was but I’m sure its been done. Would be great to work that bit out then maybe a batch of cart shells and connector strips could be made, I’m up for doing any CAD models that are required.

You can use this form to set a preorder for future batches: http://www.planetvb.com/modules/liaise/index.php?form_id=8

But as Minestorm pointed out, it’s getting really hard sourcing more donor carts for cart shells and connectors at a reasonable price. I currently only have ~20 for the second batch of FB+.

We really need to find a way to create cart shells without spending many thousands for a mold…

RunnerPack wrote:
It would be possible to build DogP’s USB link cable and use a program running on the VB to save/restore SRAM through the link port.
Maybe Chris and Richard could work on marketing such a cable (which would also allow multi-player gaming between emu and hardware, or between two VB’s over the ‘net).
It would also be a good idea to somehow make the VB-side cable detachable so it could be connected to another one to make a standard VB<->VB cable.

If we can find a way to reproduce connectors without having to kill SNES RGB cables, I’d gladly make a run of link cables.

I think it would be best to just take a male<->female USB cable, cut it in the middle and attach a link port connector to the cut ends. Both parts cut then be plugged together to have a VB<->VB cable, or you could just use the male half for a VB<->PC connection.

Such a cable might be expensive, though.

getting connectors made triggered a memory that someone here at PVB made up a flash cart with their own connector strip, it was an off the shelf part with the right pitch, I’ve not searched the forums to find out who it was but I’m sure its been done. Would be great to work that bit out then maybe a batch of cart shells and connector strips could be made, I’m up for doing any CAD models that are required.

It was e5frog, model number of the connector is “FH-2MM-SD-2X40-G”. I am looking for it right now, cheapest source I could yet is ~3 EUR.

I can’t open the datasheet for that connector because the link is old/broken. Does anyone know what the pitch of the VB header is? Is it 2MM?