don’t let 1 person ruffle your feathers. you should be working on this project because you enjoy the challenge. if it stops being fun, then stop working on it until the interest returns.
there is a place along side the flashboy and flashboy+. a msd enabled kit with the ability to back-up saves sounds like a move in the right direction. pretty much every flash kit on the market is someones interpretation of how they would have done it (not counting all the clone kits produced during the nds era). that drive and determination allowed for many different features to be developed. these kits end up being works of art, which interest not only gamers and homebrew enthusiasts but also collectors. i would love to own a VBoot for all of these reasons.
the length of time it takes is not important. when it is ready we will support you.
blitter wrote:
Take your time, Vaughnabe13. I’m particularly excited about this board and the potential for it (or a future revision) to allow for additional space in the expansion RAM area for bigger games. My current project is being developed for the FlashBoy and is taking quite a long time, so don’t feel too pressured from me anyway. 🙂
P.S. Are you the same Vaughnabe13 on the MTBS3D forums? *waves*
Yes I am, but I am not very active over there. Recently I was interested in the Oculus Rift so I was following the progress in that original monster thread.
MineStorm wrote:
Chill out. We do this for fun, right ?
I do know what you mean about board revisions. Waiting for them is excruciating (because the fast turn-a-round service is SO expensive).
I recently dumped a box full. God knows what all that lot cost 🙁
In the past I had good experiences with Itead Studio for turnaround time and price, but the problem is they are sold out depending on when you try to order. I’m hoping in early November they will open up their ordering again so I can send out a board. I’m almost done making a VB Emulator board that I can use to debug the cartridge.
I’m sorry you took it that way, that’s not how I meant for my little rant to be received. I started with a joke and expected the rest to be received at about that level.
I don’t know what experience you have, I’d expect you to be an engineer or learning to be to start a project like this. I’m an engineer myself, studied mainly digital electronics. I’m very aware of that I don’t know everything there is to know and for almost every project I’m in I learn new things from older co-workers. “We just used to do like this when I was working at… ” here or there. Maybe it’s a very simple solution that is quick to implement.
… I’m having to make right now is how to deal with the SRAM chip, since it requires power to maintain data. That makes it very hard to debug because I have to debug it live in the system.
My interpretation is that you weren’t familiar with the way to make a battery backup and I thought I might as well present the solution for you and all other people reading (or I would have sent it as a PM) so you/they wouldn’t have to google for it. Nowadays a flash rom is usually what you find in stuff.
I thought there was a problem, I wanted to offer a solution. Not trying to push you down or claim I know more or that I’m better than you – I wouldn’t attempt this project myself as there are too many details I’m not familiar with.
BTW, if you were already familiar with the battery solution, why hadn’t you hooked a battery there already to be able to debug it when it’s not live?
[joke]
I tried explaining it to my five-year-old daughter, she didn’t get it, not even when I translated it into Swedish, I think you’d need to be at least 10 with some basic electronics knowledge.[/joke]
I think any normal person who had plans to make some type of multi-cart for the Virtual Boy would wait and see where this goes first as it’s the best solution anyway. I didn’t think it was any idea to do any more work on a static multi-cart if there’s one coming up that reads it from a microSD card or similar.
Regarding Minestorm’s probable already finishing a cart, I just meant that as he has done many parts/blocks of such a project already it would be easier for him to put those together (I’m guessing) and that you shouldn’t be deterred to keep at it even if it takes time as you’re starting from scratch. If you want to make a similar project for another console you already have a base and wouldn’t need to start all over again – so next time would be quicker. Not that there’s any hurry, as Minstorm said – it’s for fun, and I hope it’s still fun for you at times. The boring part comes after a bunch of carts when you’re just building and delivering the stuff.
I’m sure several people here, some other people who has found your blog and also including myself is quietly cheering for you and your effort so far and hope you’ll stay at it and offer us the last cart we will ever need for the Virtual Boy.
So nothing negative was meant on my part. I’m not afraid to write very clear if I mean to be evil/pissed off/grumpy/etc.
I usually try to be cheerful and helpful online and I hope everyone who reads my messages has that as an initial point of view. I hope noone who has some history with me at this or other forums thinks anything else.
So all my best to you, if you want some pointers or help, don’t hesitate to ask us other engineers here.
Anyway, back to the PCB-plant, “holding my thumbs” that you’ll be able to solve all little problems you run in to. I think we know how it can be when you wrestle with a single little annoying detail for weeks – better to have it sorted out before it’s done, debugging can be even more time consuming.
Vaughanabe13, you put job and family ahead of this???
Heh heh, very much teasing. I’m very pleased there are people working on these things — flash-cart, sd-cart, home-brew programs, prototypes (love “Bound High” except for level 3-10!), etcetera.
Sadly, the “FlashBoy” didn’t come in my mail today; something about a stupid holiday, they forgot to ask my permission.
Wish I had more experience at working with this stuff. I’ve worked with a Xilinx, really sucks that you have to keep PAYING to use the development software — what a scam. I slapped together an EEPROM that plugged into the ROM socket, it was far cheaper than $5 per pop for the OTP. I even put a light on the “loading clock”, so we could see when the Xilinx got fed on power-up and was happy (clock shuts off). They even sprung for some little PCB’s for the eeprom board.
Looking forward to hearing about your progress, or your ski trip, or your family, whichever comes first.
That’s a shame. Sadly, I don’t have the technical experience to pick up the project and run with it, nor am I any longer working for a company that has the equipment for programming — surely someone here does? Seems a crime for all the work he’s done so far to just hit the “refuse bin”.
Anyone game to pick up the ball and carry it the few remaining yards to the end-zone?
Vaugnabe13’s argument was there will be no demand for it once the rift hits the shelves so I say everyone who wants VBSD to be a reality should go to his site and say how much they want one.
That’ll show him that his product made a difference. If that’s the case then he may just continue it if he sees that a great number of people still want it. You know it’s kinda like signing a petition. It certainly can’t hurt.>B
This is upsetting to me as the current game I’m working on does not fit in its entirety on one VB cartridge, and I was hoping an evolution of the VBSD tech could map more Flash memory into the 0x07xxxxxx space and beyond, allowing for larger games. I left a comment on his page and hope Vaughanabe13 takes it to heart. Fingers crossed.
Blitter Ive gone to the site and can’t seem to find your comment could you give us a link. I also can’t find my comment either that I posted yesterday.
That’s sooooo kewl! No he won’t make a million bucks, but he’ll give a million bucks worth of happiness to many of us!
And I was serious about the steak dinner. 🙂
Anyone know how big a Micro-SD it will support? Seems a no-brainer to make it full 32g. As they say in the funner social circles, “the more the merrier”…
vb-fan wrote:
Anyone know how big a Micro-SD it will support? Seems a no-brainer to make it full 32g. As they say in the funner social circles, “the more the merrier”…
32 GB seems like supreme overkill. Virtual Boy games are what, 2 MB max? so, 512 games per 1 GB… times 32 GBs… which is 16,000 games, haha. Not that I don’t want more games, but that seems a *tad* optimistic to me. 😉
Then again, as memory prices fall, it can be hard to find anything less! Or if someone makes an mp3 player for VB and you want to lug yours around as the supreme mp3 player, that’d be pretty cool. 🙂
