I was messing around with Red Alarm a bit, and it turns out the game IS actually running, it just doesn’t draw anything to the console before reaching the title screen. If you press A a couple of times in the dark, and F5 in and out of the debugger, you can see the framebuffers gets updated with all the precaution graphics, but not the console itself. Of course the CPU window also highlight alot of exceptions all the time…
It’s actually kind of playable after that 🙂
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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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You’re understanding the mechanics correctly. The column table is not for compensating for the speed of light 🙂
However, the mirrors don’t move at a constant speed. Think of it as how the Y coordinate moves on a sine wave. At the extreme angles the mirror is moving slower, and as it sweeps over the middle it moves faster. So without compensation for that, the columns at the edges of the image would be thinner and closer together. The leds need to stay lit longer for those columns, or you’d get a squished image at the left/right edges.
Hope I didn’t make it more confusing 🙂
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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The controller itself is nothing to write home about, it’s just the regular released model. Same story with the stand, no prototype round knob or anything.
What’s interesting though is a sticker on it that sais “BPS”.
Could this be a hint as to who originally owned this kit? (A certain Faceball/Tetris developer) 😉
Or does it just mean “Battery Pack Storage”? 😛
Oh, and does anyone know if the controller needs batteries in this setup, or can it magically draw juice from the debugger?
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Onto the debugger itself! Like KR155E mentioned, it’s a newer model with the final controller port, which makes it a little strange that it came with this head unit. I can’t find a serial number on it though, unless it’s hidden on the inside.
All the other revision letters are on the pics below. (Anyone know what BRKHIS stands for?)
It is however a complete and fully featured model with all the optional parts included (TV-out card, 4 MB of extra ram (8 MB total), cart slot for flashing/dumping on top and the SCSI ISA card for PC connection, with all needed cables)
It also includes a metal bracket that can go on top of the cart slot, to keep the cart securely in place. (Translation of that note please) 🙂 (Is it safe to plug a regular game cart in there, or did all debuggers/EEPROM carts have the different pinout?)
The included system disks also are of a newer version (1.3) than any of those available here on PVB, so I’ll make sure to copy them and send to KR155E for archiving.
The SCSI ISA card doesn’t look like anything special, but appearently it’s hard to get the debugger working without this exact model. I’ll have to dig out an old PC from the basement to try it out. (Some sort of SCSI to USB adapter would be handy instead 😛 )
