I recently saw a Flashboy on Ebay that sold for $204.47. Ouch. Hope I can make the preorder for the next batch!

Hey guys! I’m new to the Virtual Boy (just bought it off a friend who didn’t want it), and to this website for that matter, and I love how you guys are keeping it alive! I’m posting this on my phone, so sorry if it’s been mentioned throughout the thread (since this thing takes forever to load certain pages). I was reading on the first page that people were looking into making flash cards for the VB, has that fallen through yet? If not, there’s not a place where you can buy them online or anything (other than ebay, though I highly doubt at), is there? Anyways, thank you, and I hope to be an active member of this community! 🙂

EDIT: Nevermind, found out they’re nearly impossible to find haha. Hopefully some more come around, because I do want to take advantage of this system, and think it’s actually really fun so far!

Hey, I found a new Flashboy on ebay Germany:

http://cgi.ebay.de/FlashBoy-Nintendo-Virtual-Boy-USB-Flash-Cartridge-/270625425274?pt=Videospielkonsolen

Is it the same KR155E from planetvb? I think so 😉 So Im looking for a Flashboy, but I missed to pre-order it. Maybe Im the lucky winner of this auction ^^

btw: its the second Flashboy form KR155E on ebay?! Why you dont sell them all on ebay, so its available for all and you make good money 😉

Greetz

e5frog wrote:

Vaughanabe13 wrote:
I’m only going by what DogP says on this one, and he says 128 megabits.

http://www.projectvb.com/tech/cartpinout.html

The VB would most likely ruin a chip that runs at 3.3V. The only possibility would be a chip that runs at 3.3V but has 5V tolerant inputs. But those are just as rare as the 5V chips so it doesn’t help.

The only way to get around using some kind of flash/RAM would be to right a routine in my micro that interprets the VB address requests, fetches the corresponding word from the SD card, and places it on the address bus. But I haven’t figured out yet if my micro will be fast enough to do that.

Yes as DogP writes the pin 4 is selection pin for expansion area /ES – and there’s the magic pin to use another 128Mbits – apparently.

You can use 3.3V chips (and those of other voltages) if you use level converters – you will actually have to when the 5V chips become increasingly harder to find.

A solution with an SD-card would be the ultimate solution. It will have it’s limitations of course. If it has a limited SRAM that holds the whole ROM for normal parallel usage the size of this will limit the maximum size of the cart – however, as has been mentioned before, none of the commercial games are more than 16Mbit (2MByte).

If we want to open up for larger homebrews perhaps it would be nice to be able to use the extreme capacities of the VB. Running directly towards the SD card sounds like an interesting method…

Looking at the title of the thread I’m a little surprised it ended up here. 😉

Due to the speed limitations of SD I will be unable to interface the VB directly SD memory. The old/clunky/expensive chips will still have to be used for ROM. I’m working on a solution that won’t require level translators.

The old/clunky/expensive chips will still have to be used for ROM

How much does a 16MByte x 16 5V SRAM cost ?

Do they exist ?

KingDedede schrieb:
Hey, I found a new Flashboy on ebay Germany:

http://cgi.ebay.de/FlashBoy-Nintendo-Virtual-Boy-USB-Flash-Cartridge-/270625425274?pt=Videospielkonsolen

Yep, it’s mine! The auction is linked from the FB+ announcement, but is not very visible as it seems.

KingDedede schrieb:
Why you dont sell them all on ebay, so its available for all and you make good money 😉

Selling them here has always worked great, so I don’t see why I should change that (and pay fees to ebay). Maybe I could earn more money, but it’s not about the money, but my beloved VB community. 😀 [/brown-nosing] Besides, I am pretty sure ebay would notice and classify me as a tradesman.

Welcome, BTW!

MineStorm wrote:

The old/clunky/expensive chips will still have to be used for ROM

How much does a 16MByte x 16 5V SRAM cost ?

Do they exist ?

You must mean 16 megabit, not megabyte. Yes they exist, but the numbers are dwindling and most manufacturers have stopped producing them. Generally they cost between $20-40 each, depending on the make and model and where you get them from.

e5frog wrote:
Yes as DogP writes the pin 4 is selection pin for expansion area /ES – and there’s the magic pin to use another 128Mbits – apparently.

You can use 3.3V chips (and those of other voltages) if you use level converters – you will actually have to when the 5V chips become increasingly harder to find.

A solution with an SD-card would be the ultimate solution. It will have it’s limitations of course. If it has a limited SRAM that holds the whole ROM for normal parallel usage the size of this will limit the maximum size of the cart – however, as has been mentioned before, none of the commercial games are more than 16Mbit (2MByte).

If we want to open up for larger homebrews perhaps it would be nice to be able to use the extreme capacities of the VB. Running directly towards the SD card sounds like an interesting method…

Looking at the title of the thread I’m a little surprised it ended up here. 😉

You actually can have 384mbit of memory on the cart… 128mbit for each address space available. There’s the ROM area, Battery backed RAM area, and Expansion area 🙂 . There’s not really anything special about any of these memory spaces though… you can put anything anywhere you want (the only special part is the interrupt vectors pointing to the ROM area). And if for some crazy reason you need MORE, you could bank the memory… but that seems very unnecessary.

And yeah, you’re definitely not gonna run directly from an SD card… you have 150ns to get the address requested, request that from the SD card, clock out the page from SD, and put the data on the parallel bus. SD cards can only be clocked at ~25MHz, and with the 1 bit SPI mode, that’s MUCH too slow.

I designed a cart that would boot from Compact Flash, then load a standard parallel flash, but I never got around to finishing it… it was kinda a mess anyway.

I do have something pretty cool that I’ve been playing with on and off for a long time… maybe I’ll post some pics one of these days. I doubt it’ll ever go to production, but it’s cool anyway.

DogP

DogP wrote:

I do have something pretty cool that I’ve been playing with on and off for a long time… maybe I’ll post some pics one of these days. I doubt it’ll ever go to production, but it’s cool anyway.

DogP

Please do! 😀

MineStorm wrote:

The old/clunky/expensive chips will still have to be used for ROM

How much does a 16MByte x 16 5V SRAM cost ?

Do they exist ?

Digikey.com has ONE, they have only 66 of it and it’s $22 per pcs.
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=CY62167ELL-45ZXI-ND

And to make a complete cart you would also need a memory for the “battery backed up memory”.

I guess if you had a larger memory and for example an avr that takes care of the microSD-card transfers. It could also switch to an independent area of this memory so that you’d have memory backup for all the games that uses it. For not yet developed homebrews there would need to be user-configurable (via the needed selection menu) setting for the left over free areas if they are locked to the commercial games for example.

Alternatively, the mikroprocessor used has enough memory to store the battery backed up ram and then save it as a file on the microSD card preferrably using the same name with another file suffix.

I’m pretty sure I already wrote about this wet dream in another thread. That was actually named after that subject…

Yes:
http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?viewmode=flat&order=ASC&topic_id=3763&forum=2&move=next

“Discussion about a microSD equipped Virtual Boy cartridge.”

16Mbits would be enough size for the commercially released games, but as discussed, to open the door for larger projects perhaps even more room would be nice.

You can get 128Mbit SRAM for $13, downside is they are BGA chips (not really for soldering at home) and they work in the voltage range 1.7 – 1.95 V.
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=557-1444-1-ND

I’m not sure there are voltage level shifters for that range but it may be just as “cheap” using a 128Mbit chip with a level shifter as a 5V SRAM that’s only 16Mbit.

It also opens up the ability to use SRAM space for battery backed up space, that is then saved to the microSD card upon reset or similar.

Like the 1541U-II, the boards could be manufactured elsewhere and screwed together afterwards.

Vaughanabe13 wrote:

DogP wrote:

I do have something pretty cool that I’ve been playing with on and off for a long time… maybe I’ll post some pics one of these days. I doubt it’ll ever go to production, but it’s cool anyway.

DogP

Please do! 😀

Seconded! 😀

RunnerPack schrieb:

Vaughanabe13 wrote:

DogP wrote:

I do have something pretty cool that I’ve been playing with on and off for a long time… maybe I’ll post some pics one of these days. I doubt it’ll ever go to production, but it’s cool anyway.

DogP

Please do! 😀

Seconded! 😀

Thirded! 😉

KR155E wrote:

RunnerPack schrieb:

Vaughanabe13 wrote:

DogP wrote:

I do have something pretty cool that I’ve been playing with on and off for a long time… maybe I’ll post some pics one of these days. I doubt it’ll ever go to production, but it’s cool anyway.

DogP

Please do! 😀

Seconded! 😀

Thirded! 😉

Fourthed.

HorvatM wrote:

KR155E wrote:

RunnerPack schrieb:

Vaughanabe13 wrote:

DogP wrote:

I do have something pretty cool that I’ve been playing with on and off for a long time… maybe I’ll post some pics one of these days. I doubt it’ll ever go to production, but it’s cool anyway.

DogP

Please do! 😀

Seconded! 😀

Thirded! 😉

Fourthed.

Fifthed! 😎

Deadly-D wrote:

HorvatM wrote:

KR155E wrote:

RunnerPack schrieb:

Vaughanabe13 wrote:

DogP wrote:

I do have something pretty cool that I’ve been playing with on and off for a long time… maybe I’ll post some pics one of these days. I doubt it’ll ever go to production, but it’s cool anyway.

DogP

Please do! 😀

Seconded! 😀

Thirded! 😉

Fourthed.

Fifthed! 😎

Sixthed! 😛

Ugh… it’s not THAT cool. But heh… I’m out of town for the weekend… I’ll try to pull it out and get some pics and maybe a video when I get back.

DogP

Vaughanabe13 wrote:
My ultimate goal is to store every ROM on the MicroSD card and design some kind of VB file browsing front-end to select which game to play, and the cart will then flash the game in less than 1 second and the VB will boot straight into it.

+1 support

It may just be me, but I just cant reason myself into buying a flashcart that only plays a game at a time. I think the character of a flashcart is the ability to play multiple games at once.

I would be happy to buy something like this if you decide to go through with it for sure!

Progress (very rough placement here):

Look at all those airwires! Not looking forward to routing this beast.

Vaughanabe13 wrote:
Progress (very rough placement here):

Look at all those airwires! Not looking forward to routing this beast.

Heh… looks like fun. 🙂

DogP

Put it through Electra. I’ve never had a layout it couldn’t handle.

Doing the routing myself is actually my favorite part, and it’s free.