Galactic Pinball

The easiest thing to do is having the label printed at a print shop in glossy adhesive paper, then cut to size and stick to cartridge.

8-O!!

I love Jumping Flash!

Having such a game released for the VB would have been absolutely terrific 🙁

My VB games live a peaceful life on top of my Famicom Disk System games 😛

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A minimum of 300 dpi resolution is needed for a quality print reproduction.

Even the crappiest of scanners can do 300 dpi, you just need to set it manually on the software you’re using to acquire the images, using the automatic settings gives poor results most of the time.

Awesome! Could you post the entire scan even if it doesn’t fit on standard paper? I can print it out on A3 paper so size is not a problem:-D.

Thanks again!

Thanks for the quick reply!

I’ve made this quick drawing in mspaint by interpreting your description. Is everything correct?

Also if it’s not too much trouble, what is the value of x and is it symmetrical?

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These two ended up in Santiago, Chile:

VN101265353
VN105492618

http://www.thecoverproject.net is an awesome site for high res cartridge and label scans, but unfortunately they don’t seem to host any Virtual Boy ones :-(.

If somebody around here owns that game and is able to provide a high resolution label scan, you’re all set.

If you don’t have access to good printing equipment yourself, you can always have it printed at a print or photography shop by professional equipment on high quality adhesive paper. You just need a high resolution scan (300dpi+) of the label and maybe a minor color correction in software.

He does say that he’s missing Jack Bros., but “it’s rare, expensive, and probably not worth jack shit”. Fair enough IMO.

That is weird that you found two VB’s that had been monkeyed with! Where did you get them?

I got the first one from a local retro gaming forum. The other one came from the local eBay-like auction site. I’ve paid $10 for the first one and $20 for the second one. Judging by their condition I’d say that both of them have been fished out of flea markets by lucky retro gaming enthusiasts.

I live in Santiago, Chile. My student card doesn’t do PayPal so I can’t buy on eBay, DealExtreme, PlayAsia, etc. (never mind the shipping charges!) Both VBs were scored locally.

The Virtual Boy is a real rarity around these parts. Apparently it didn’t have an official release in my country, which means that the consoles that are floating around have been privately imported from the US. It’s very rare to see one pop up for sale and when they do they’re ridiculously overpriced. I’ve seen glitchy, incomplete VBs sell for as high as $50!

My theory about the monkey-style repairs on both consoles is that they were repaired in the mid 90s, by inexperienced people when the Internet wasn’t everywhere for them to read tutorials and websites like this one. The soldering inside the controller was probably done by a local TV repairman.

Out of curiosity, could you take some pictures of the destroyed display cables? Maybe they could be added to a what NOT to do to fix a glitchy display 😉

Check out the attached files 😉

I really like your blog. It’s well written and I love reading about other people’s hardware hacks (hackaday.com is in my favorites bar 😉 ). I can’t wait for the article about replacing the clone’s CPU/PPU. 😀

Thanks for your kind comment :-D. I love hackaday too and that was the reason for me to start a blog. I’ve been doing some nifty stuff lately which I felt that needed to be on the web for fellow tinkerers to see. Check out the GameBoy style reset mech. for the NES if you’ve got the chance. 😉

I’ll eventually do the clone CPU/PPU swap. I haven’t got around to it because the Virtual Boy and some Famicom Disk System projects have been absorbing my time lately :-P.

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Hi guys! There was a happy ending for my story after all! 😀
About a week ago I managed to score another broken VB for cheap, but this one was in excellent aesthetic condition, almost complete (VB, stand, controller, battery pack and Mario’s Tennis), everything worked except for the displays which were completely dead. Naturally I just swapped the entire display assembly from my dead VB and presto! Fully working VB! I’ve been hooked up on Mario’s Tennis and Wario Land since then and I love it!

Just out of curiosity I decided to check out the bad displays, and it seems that I’ve got a knack for finding heavily abused VBs, because apparently somebody tried to fix a glitchy display issue… with a blowtorch! There’s a hole burned through the flat flex cable on both displays, no joke. My former, power-abused VB came with some sort of lamp cord badly soldered to the battery terminals, and inside the controller there were several blown traces which have been jumpered over. What kind of voltage did they use to power this thing? And why did they keep continue using it after blowing traces on the controller board? Anyway it’s so bad that I’ve snapped a couple of pictures to share with you. Oh the horror!

I want to thank everyone who helped me out, especially DogP. Thanks for helping me figure out how the voltage regulator works. Since such information isn’t available anywhere else on the web, I’m going to put it on my electronics/gaming blog so that it can help out other people who might come across a broken VB with the same problem.

Thanks again and happy gaming! 😀

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It was a controller problem after all! I’ve tried hooking up a SNES controller to it and I was able to start the games and somewhat play them (missing some buttons). Since the VB controller is based on the same serial protocol I thought that it may be possible to replace the custom control chip with two cascaded 4021 ICs, in case said IC is indeed bad. As for the audio issue, fortunately it was a problem on the amplifier board and not the main PCB.

I came up with a simple RC network hooked up to pin 3 to generate a delayed /RESET signal to make the system boot up properly. I’ve used a 47μF capacitor and a 4.7kΩ resistor for an RC time constant of approx. 250 milliseconds. It booted up perfectly every time! It was just a matter of building a small PCB with a 7805, resistor and capacitor to replace the original voltage regulator module.

Unfortunately my story doesn’t have a happy ending. I was excited about installing the replacement regulator, putting the system back together and finally playing some games, so I started etching a small PCB and installing the parts. Everything went great, but when I turned it on, nothing happened. Putting my multimeter on the 5V line revealed the horror… almost twelve volts. I mistakenly fitted a 7812 regulator instead of a 7805 >:(. When I realized that it was already too late. Now my VB is gone for good 🙁 *sniff*.

Once again I want to thank you DogP for helping me out through it. Thanks to your help I got my VB working and I think that we both learned a great deal in the process. Now there’s an easy & cheap fix for a blown U8. I’ll keep my dead VB and games in hope that I’ll stumble across another one some day.

Wheee!! It’s mostly working now!! 😀

Today I’ve tried following your suggestion of keeping pin 3 low while applying power and driving it high after a second or two, and now it starts up correctly! Both LED arrays come on and the picture is quite stable on both eyes!

I’ve tested all of my four games: Galactic Pinball, Mario Clash, Mario’s Tennis, and Wario Land. All of them display a warning screen telling you to read the instruction booklet before operating in English and Japanese, but I can’t get past that point. Wario displays its message in a different font.

I do get different sounds depending on the game:

Galactic Pinball: Weird looping random tunes that sound like a crazy remix or some serious circuit bending going on.
Mario Clash: Same as above, but it lasts for a few seconds and doesn’t loop.
Mario’s Tennis: This one plays a recognizable music track from the game, but I don’t know exactly what it is.
Wario Land: Silence.

I don’t think I should be getting music at this point, especially when it seems to be frozen at the warning screen, but again I’ve never played the VB before so I don’t know what to expect. Also I only seem to get sound through the left channel, both on headphones and external speakers. I’ve attached sound recordings from the games in case they could help identify the problem.

The controller doesn’t seem to respond but it’s hard to pinpoint if it’s a controller issue or a system issue, without a spare VB controller for testing.

In the meantime I’m going to buy a can of contact cleaner and apply standard troubleshooting techniques like looking for cold solder joints and stuff like that, just in case it’s a simple problem like a dirty or loose cartridge slot.

Again, thank you very much for your help DogP. Thanks to your advice I got my VB from totally dead to mostly doing what it’s supposed to! 😉

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3. galacticpinball.mp3

Yeah, there are obvious burn marks around the battery contacts, no doubt that somebody with little soldering experience tried to hook up an AC adapter to it.

I have followed your advice and tried powering up the VB from a real 5V supply, the one that I use for my external hard drive which puts out 5V at 2A. I’m injecting the 5V directly through the controller port. Connected everything back together, put a game in and now there’s some progress!

The mirrors start to oscillate for a second or two and then stop. Apart from that, there’s no more signs of life from it. No light from the LED arrays, sound or any activity that the computer is running. Voltage is now pretty stable which rules out a possible short circuit. This is with U8 removed from the main PCB.

Still intrigued by the mystery of Pin 3, I have checked the voltage on it and it varies randomly between 1.3 and 1.8 V. I’ve noticed that when I touch Pin 3 with my multimeter probe, the mirrors stop oscillating, and if I turn on the power with the probe on Pin 3, the mirrors never move. I suspect that the internal impedance of my multimeter is having an effect on this line and it may well be a logic status pin as you said.

So I’ve decided to put the status pin theory to the test and tried to pull Pin 3 low and high through a 4.7kΩ resistor. When Pin 3 is pulled low, the system appears completely dead, just like with the multimeter lead on it. By pulling it high through the resistor, it seems to spring to life somewhat more. Now the mirrors keep oscillating and never stop, but again that’s the only sign of life that it gives, nothing else seems to come up besides the vibrating mirrors.

I’ve tried replacing U8 just for its “pin 3 functionality” by connecting pin 2 and 3 to the main PCB, while powering pin 1 with 12V and the VB with 5V, but it’s just as dead as when pin 3 is pulled low. Pin 3 reads about 0.3V so I presume that U8 is completely busted.

It seems that a certain behavior on pin 3 is essential for a successful startup but I still can’t figure out what it exactly does, and without a working measurement for comparison it’s like peeing in the dark, at a friend’s house.

DogP, thank you very much for your help! 😉