Thanks the the summary of posts. I thought there had been a lot of work done on this by the community but I didn’t look hard enough for the detailed posts I guess. Regardless, it will be interesting to see how they made theirs. Is anyone selling these? I’m quite certain I would screw this up if I tried it myself. It’s like doing major electrical work on my house, by which I mean a man’s gotta know his limits 🙂
Yea, I’ll try to get lots of pics and videos. I’m assuming they won’t be too protective of it or anything. The fellow I was corresponding with was a little coy when I asked who made it, but I didn’t press. It is not unreasonable that he wouldn’t want for the maker of such as thus far rare item to get swamped with requests all of the sudden since he did the guy a favor, though I doubt that would be a major problem. Hopefully I’ll get to talk to someone either who made it or who will direct me to who did. Plus, I would imagine I’ll get a pretty good idea of how it was fabricated just by looking at it. Looking forward too it. Relatedly, too bad I was always a mediocre SF player at best 🙂
Ok, so I took some baby steps into my project this weekend and learned some things and hope to learn some more things from you guys. Recall, I am a soldering super-novice.
Knowing my limitations, I decided to try to do the SNES-to-NES controller mod (simply splicing a NES cord onto a SNES controller) to get experience working with the small Nintendo controller wires. Results were mixed. The final creation did actually work but I wasn’t very happy with it. I want some technique advice from y’all experts.
1.) MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION: What general technique do you use for these tiny wires? I twisted the stripped sections around each other lengthwise, then put the iron on top of the wire(so the excess solder bulb would flow onto the wire) and moved the iron along the wire dabbing the solder along the way. This seemed to work ok, but not wonderfully. I had to do a few again because it didn’t seem to coat them enough to keep them braided together sometimes.
2.) Which wattage iron should I use? I would presume a lower wattage would be preferable for such small wires? Currently I have a 25W and a 40W.
3.) Something seemed to be getting burned in the middle of the wires, well away from the colored insulation. This was evidenced by little black sections on the soldered section of the wires and black bulbs that would form on my iron. What even was that?
4.) Did you guys heatshrink each individual wire, then the cluster, or electrical tape the small wires and heatshrink the cluster, or do something else?
Any info or advice on any or all questions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!
I really like the idea of having controller integrated power. Un-tethering from the AC adapter without having the heft of 6 AA batteries is an attractive feature. And I think our community would support crowd-funding, but the question is: is our community large enough to generate enough of a fund?
Thanks for the info RunnerPack. I think I’m finally ready to go create my Frankenadapter. I had said the ground of the switch because the rocker switches I was looking at had 3 terminals (labeled positive, ground, and accessory). I was confused as to why more than 2 terminals were needed and I saw ground and thought connect grounds there, then when I thought about it more I realized that didn’t make any sense whatsoever, so thanks for setting me straight on that.
As for the kind words, I did think better of my particular word choice after posting since I don’t know the etiquette here very well, but I didn’t see where I could edit the post once it was live. Apologies to any members whose sensibilities I may have offended 🙂
I second that emotion on all. I have had many pleasant interactions about various things with many of those listed. Much love for all those guys and their varied contributions, but I will specifically single out Runnerpack for literally bringing all 3 of my units back from the dead with his mad soldering skills.
north or whomever, I may expose my ignorance here, but what do you mean by “crystal screens?” Is that something special? I haven’t heard that term in the context of the VB yet.
RunnerPack wrote:
Roli got it right, but here it is in a nut shell:
1. Connect all ground (-) wires together (VB, controller, and AC adapter).
2. Connect the positive wire from your AC adapter to one side of the switch.
3. Connect the other side of the switch to the battery input of the VB (not the +5V wire).
4. Connect all other controller wires to their corresponding wires on the VB (latch, data, etc.)
The reason you’re measuring 14V at the AC adapter is that the adapter is unregulated, and the volt meter doesn’t provide much of a load. You’re seeing what is called the “open circuit” voltage of the adapter. Once it sees a load from the VB, the voltage will be closer to what is printed on the sticker. Even if it did provide 14V under load, the voltage regulator in the VB could handle it.
Wow man. Thanks! Good to hear from you again. It’s super weird because not 10 minutes ago I was thinking I should contact you directly about this because you did all that great work for me about soldering the LEDs a year or two ago and I was left with the impression that you really knew your shit.
So that all makes sense and I think that should about take care of it. One small point of clarification. You say to connect all the grounds for the VB, controller, and AC adapter. I presume you then connect those to the ground terminal of the switch?
That totally makes sense about the open circuit voltage. I know just enough about electronics to convince myself to know what I’m doing and subsequently fry shit. Incidentally, in doing my checks I noticed that the terminals of the AC adapter tap were measuring a steady 13.8V to my bare AC adapter’s 14.0V. I don’t know what’s in there, but I guess the tap is putting a little bit of load on the circuit which knocks down the voltage a little?
Anyway, thanks for all the input from you and Roli! I’m hoping I can eventually find someone willing to button this all up into a nice, clean, contained project box, but my ghetto mockup will work until that time.
Thanks for your input VectrexRoli. I am interested in putting a 2 position rocker switch in line with mine as well. I also bought a replacement SNES power socket so I can use an actual SNES AC adapter to supply the power. VBmills provided this handy pinout wire translation in another topic:
Virtual boy pad wire colours:
Yellow – data
Blue – +5v
Brown – latch
Orange – clock
Black – ground
Red – battery supply voltage
Snes pad:
Red – data
White – +5v
Orange – latch
Yellow – clock
Brown – ground
What I’m confused about is how to handle the power aspect of the wiring. First I connect the data, +5V, latch, and clock wires on the VB cable to their corresponding wires on the SNES cable.
Do I connect the ground wires too, or does this come into play closing the loop on the system power.
I have succeeded in confusing myself about how to handle the power so I’m going to put this out there and ask if someone would be so kind as to explicitly tell me how to do it.
So I have the following:
1.) battery supply wire and ground wire from the VB cord
2.) 2 way rocker switch (3 prong: power, accessory, ground)
3.) AC adapter plug (positive and negative terminals)
4.) ground wire on the SNES cord
So how exactly do I connect these pieces together and not blow the whole thing to hell?
I also found it interesting that I check with my voltmeter and my SNES AC adapter puts out a stead 14V DC. I guess the VB steps this down? Or do I need to have a component in-line to step this down if it had previously been done in the AC adapter tap or the VB controller?
Anyway, thanks in advance to whomever it may concern.
Ok. After playing Hyper Fighter I have decided that the SNES-to-VB adapter project will take on more urgency due to the game’s hardcore awesomeness. I actually didn’t find using the right d-pad and triggers for the punch/kick buttons that bad, but I found doing special moves motions with the left d-pad awkward. Not to mention the muscle memory I have with an SNES controller from countless hours played on the various SF games. But I digress.
I have a vision for this adapter. So you have a simple project box. Out of opposite ends are the VB cord and the SNES cord (obviously the VB plug comes from a donor controller and the SNES from an extension cord). On another side you have a typical switch and opposite that you have the SNES AC adapter port. I did some looking and the back panel to the SNES is readily available online for about $12 bucks (http://www.ebay.com/itm/190682841531?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT) among other sources). So if you could cut out just the portion needed for the AC adapter and affix that to the last free side of the box you would have a clean, sleek adapter (since all the soldering would be inside the box) that required no extra accommodation.
Problem is, my soldering skills suck and my dremeling skills suck even more. I know there are many out there with these talents though. I am ammasing the parts now, but I’m hoping there is someone out there who might undertake this project for an appropriate fee and/or the fun/challenge. It would also serve as a prototype for the rest of the community that has such skills to make one for themselves.
Lester Knight wrote:
so what you just said was that someone dumped the cart to a ROM and you may or may not be the only one with the full version of SF as a .VB ROM file?
i’m not sure i would have admitted that publicly. assuming, that is what i just read. lol. i’d be worried about my inbox blowing up.
I read that the same way, except I read it to mean the original, not a dump 😉
And just to be clear guys, I was not advocating for a nefarious release. Even if speedyink has a ROM, I agree that it should only be released with the permission and full blessing of the folks who developed it and/or bankrolled it, pain me though it does to say it. The leak suggestion was just to keep the developers anonymous if it was their wish to be so, not that someone should dump it and/or release it unauthorized.
These are all good points. Again, I’m just a fan like you and everyone else on here. I heard 18 just today through a PM on this forum from someone who has a copy. I won’t name him since his info is apparently false. I’ll assume his motives were pure and he just had bad info, perhaps from whomever he got it from. Who knows. He wasn’t willing to part with his and guessed it would “fetch thousands one day.” This sent me into my aforementioned spiral of bummertude.
In principle I wouldn’t mind paying for the ROM, and if there was a physical copy out there for anywhere approaching a reasonably affordable price I’d be first in line. But making profit is the reason most often sited for getting sued so that’s part of the reason for my plea. I assumed there would be no additional runs if getting sued is really a concern.
As for hurting the market for the cart, that could be debated. This would so far be among if not the rarest VB game. Look at other rare games… NES for example. Nintendo World Championship cart, Stadium Events, Little Sampson… and on and on. These games all have ROMs available a thousand places on the internet, yet they still go for ridiculous prices. Also, given that right now a physical copy is the only way to play it on hardware points to the market not being harmed but if anything probably helped by people who play the ROM and want to play it on hardware. Hard core collectors want physical copies even if they are just going to put them on a shelf. Hard core fans want to physical copies because they want to play games on original hardware. I’m both, but I also have to be realistic and not go broke.
While I think getting permission sounds awesome, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how and it’s obviously not my place to meddle with anything, beyond my words on a forum. I agree they probably already know about it though because it was everywhere.
Me too if there are any left. I don’t figure there are, but if someone gets bored and decides to part with one some day PM me. I collect to play, so I don’t intend on profiting by selling it one day or holding it as an “investment.” I’d probably even sell it at my cost later to keep it moving around the community. Anyway, you would make a VB enthusiast very happy.
I second what fups said. RunnerPack did awesome work. Quick, great communication, and all around nice guy. And the service was so cheap. He is obviously doing it for the good of the VB community and not to get rich. I couldn’t believe the soldering job he did when I got them back. Popped them in and my VB was better than new. And for that Sir, I thank you.
Thanks @speedyink. It’s the L trigger while playing a game. I tried all the buttons and combinations thereof but on the game selection screen, not after starting the game 😕
I’m obviously a major n00b, but where is the menu to set the 3d depth? I ran the DOS command and got the ROMs with the 3 ROMs I chose in it and I ran this fine in Mednafen but never saw a settings menu anywhere in the process. Am I just lookin right past it?
This is super awesome. I don’t seem to be getting any 3D effect though. Does it only work with some games? So far I have only tried it on Mednafen and I haven’t tried it on my FlashBoy yet. Does the 3D effect only work on the FlashBoy for some reason?
