I got my VUE-Debugger set in the mail today, and wow, is it a beautiful piece of hardware! 😀

I’m making this thread to show pictures of its different parts, and other details about it. Let’s start with the head unit!

I’m very happy about this head unit, because it seems to be the very earliest model with the dark blue plastic and the thicker foam eye piece we’ve seen in old pictures.

Details I noted that differs from a regular VB:
-The cord. (Duh!) Since it connects to the debugger it has a cord coming out right above the cartridge slot. In fact, the cartridge slot is empty. There is no connector inside it, so you can’t put a cart into it.
-No VIRTUAL BOY logo on the front.
-Dark blue plastic (instead of black). Both on the bottom piece, the speakers and the knobs on top.
-No rubber bumpers on the sides. Molded Nintendo logos instead.
-Eye shade: Thick gray foam rubber, with a thin black velvet-like outside.
-Many differences in the plastic mold, both top and bottom half. No text anywhere, single long “dust-cap holder”, triangular shapes on the top corners etc.
-No controller- or link ports (just holes)
-Sticker on the bottom that sais “SUB Ver.A”

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Wohoo! I got it all up and running!
It was actually pretty easy once everything was hooked up properly (it needs an old COM-port mouse to run, luckily I still had one in the basement 🙂 )

PC and TV connected, now I can debug! 😀

The TV-out is indeed PAL-only, which is perfect for me living in Sweden. I dunno about taking it apart, maybe later 😛

KR155E, How did you get that test mode running without connecting it to a PC? I just get a black screen if I boot it up by itself?

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Simply amazing to see this baby working!

Is the 1.3 version of the sample software any different? Did you have a chance to look at the disks yet for any custom code? 🙂

KR155E, How did you get that test mode running without connecting it to a PC? I just get a black screen if I boot it up by itself?

That’s weird… What exactly are you doing? Did you also hook up the controller? cartridge inserted on top? Might we have to compare jumper settings on the back of the debugger?

I only hooked up both the visor and the controller and booted the Debugger, then the test program started. I don’t think I had to do any more than that.

I have the controller and visor plugged in, dip switches 1 and 3 on (also tried with all off, but they’re for scsi id so it shouldn’t matter anyways?) No cart plugged in on top. Don’t get any test program. Maybe they removed it on later models? That would be stupid though…

The “mystery disk” contained two copies of the running monkey demo (both look identical) and the moving balls demo. Plus a textfile with some notes from a developer on how to run it, how to dump carts with it, and how to use it to play regular vb roms on it.

KR155E wrote:

Is the 1.3 version of the sample software any different? Did you have a chance to look at the disks yet for any custom code? 🙂

Yes! They corrected some flip bug in a graphics converting tool appearently, and added a simple parallax effect to the automatic pause screen.

But! …Drumroll… What’s really interesting about the 1.3 version disk is that it contains a Hudson folder with what seems to be a Hudson version of the same “running monkey” demo. The demo itself seems to look and play the same though 🙁

I didn’t compare the source code yet, but the isx file is much bigger, so something must be different. I tried to make it into a .vb rom through the debugger, but it just turned into 48 kb of crap 😛

DanB wrote:

I didn’t compare the source code yet, but the isx file is much bigger, so something must be different. I tried to make it into a .vb rom through the debugger, but it just turned into 48 kb of crap 😛

Have you tried using my vbcvtisx or lameboyadvance’s ISX2ROM?

The extra data may just turn out to be debugging information (which my program simply ignores).

I didn’t remember about those, thanks 🙂

vbcvtisx doesn’t work for me (not even on the 1.2 version isx?) and ISX2ROM can’t handle it either. It appears it isn’t an isx file after all, but in vuexe format. I guess it has to be re-compiled by vucc to get an isx file. I haven’t set up my vucc environment yet.

However, I did use ISX2ROM to convert the regular 1.3 sample soft to a vb rom, and here it is. The pause screen has new graphics, and the entire rom seems to run faster than 1.2.

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DanB wrote:
I didn’t remember about those, thanks 🙂

vbcvtisx doesn’t work for me (not even on the 1.2 version isx?) and ISX2ROM can’t handle it either. It appears it isn’t an isx file after all, but in vuexe format. I guess it has to be re-compiled by vucc to get an isx file. I haven’t set up my vucc environment yet.

However, I did use ISX2ROM to convert the regular 1.3 sample soft to a vb rom, and here it is. The pause screen has new graphics, and the entire rom seems to run faster than 1.2.

I can’t get this ROM to work on hardware. I just see a black screen. To be sure, my other padded ROMs work just fine.

Hm, I don’t know… I just converted the isx with lameboy’s tool. Do the earlier released versions of this demo work on hardware?

DanB wrote:
Hm, I don’t know… I just converted the isx with lameboy’s tool. Do the earlier released versions of this demo work on hardware?

Versions 1.0, 1.1, and 1.1a work on hardware, while versions 1.2 and 1.3 do not.

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
Versions 1.0, 1.1, and 1.1a work on hardware, while versions 1.2 and 1.3 do not.

I have just tested version 1.3 on hardware and it works. You have probably used a wrong padding mode. If you are using Pad_VB.exe, then you have to use padding mode 3 to fill the ROM with duplicates.

M.K. wrote:

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
Versions 1.0, 1.1, and 1.1a work on hardware, while versions 1.2 and 1.3 do not.

I have just tested version 1.3 on hardware and it works. You have probably used a wrong padding mode. If you are using Pad_VB.exe, then you have to use padding mode 3 to fill the ROM with duplicates.

Cool. Thanks!

Oh wow! I’m glad to see it fired up okay and everything!

I guess I don’t know how the debugger works, but does it have its own HDD in it that could contain any data? Or is that more what the floppies are for…?