Very cool! Though I was hoping that he had actually made a board that easily installable into a VB, so I could cross that project off my list. 😉

DogP

Benjamin Stevens wrote:

DogP wrote:
I’d be glad to let you borrow a USB EPROM reader if you’d like to try that.

Sure. I’m curious enough to try it out.

Okay… I’ll test it to make sure everything’s good to go, then I’ll box it up and drop it in the mail. I’ve still got your address.

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
Assuming that the Nintendo Power story is true, I was simply under the assumption that the Sample Soft for VUE Programming was flashed to this cart and sent to Nintendo Power so that they could view it and/or post pics of it in one of their articles about the Virtual Boy, but it seems that they never decided to use it in one of their early articles. I imagine that the Nintendo Power office received a lot of demos and samples from various places for possible use in their magazines, which were never actually used in articles that were published.

I definitely do hope that you will examine the code and see if it looks familiar to previously known code. From what I have examined so far, the code from my EPROM cart looks so vastly different from the code that has been made available on this site that it looks like two completely different coders created the programs separately and independently of each other.

The problem is that the code was example code written in C, which should have come out very similar, had it been compiled with the same compiler (even different versions of it). I took a quick glance, and yeah, it looks WAY different… probably different enough to say it could have been a different compiler (like gcc). If I dig a bit more, I can probably determine that for sure.

Benjamin Stevens wrote:

One certain way that would prove a fake would be to look at the date codes on the EPROMs used. If they’re 96+, they’re fake…

I made a new photo of the Sample Soft for VUE Programming cart, which shows all of the info on the EPROM chip. I’m not sure which is the date code on this chip, though. I’ve attached it to this post for examination by others.

Hmm… that looks like a smoking gun there. I think that’s almost certainly fake. As far as I can tell, the M27C4001 wasn’t available until 1998, and I believe the date code on that is the 13th week of 2000 (0013). I’ll try to find confirmation of that though (the datasheet doesn’t specify the location of the date code for this EPROM).

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
Well, assuming that the story about these carts coming from an ex-employee of Nintendo of Japan is true, wouldn’t it make sense that these would have been the carts that Atlus and Hudson sent to Nintendo of Japan, in order to get Nintendo’s approval to commercially release the games?

Yep… certainly possible, but as with all this stuff, stories are just that. The same person that would fabricate a label for the EPROMs would come up with a story like that to try to add realism (value). Without any sort of proof (or at least some probability that they’re true), I take those stories with a grain of salt. If Shin Nihon Pro Wrestling pops up tomorrow… I’d believe that it came from an original developer. But if the first known proto exchanges hands, and then a different one pops up, claiming to be from the testing department at NoJ… heh, no. That ROM was dumped, and someone is selling a copy. 😛

DogP

I’m not sure why you’d be having problems dumping certain carts with the Retrode, but a much easier (and more certain) way to dump the EPROM carts would be to pull the EPROMs and use an EPROM reader on the chips directly. I’d be glad to let you borrow a USB EPROM reader if you’d like to try that.

I’m guessing you know that the first, and only certainly genuine Space Pinball prototype cart wasn’t a standard EPROM cart, right? It was on a flash cart with a different pinout… it used the pinout of the prototype VB: http://www.planetvb.com/modules/hardware/index.php?type=vue&sec=flash_rom_pcb . To me, it seems very unlikely that they would have used that EXACT same early build on a later EPROM cart, since it did end up getting released as Galactic Pinball (so there was certainly development happening between the proto VB version and any sort of EPROM cart that would have been used on a final VB). Of course that’s assuming that it is identical… if there are substantial incremental differences, then I’d say it’s very possibly genuine (I don’t know when they changed the name from Space Pinball to Galactic Pinball, or revamped the tables).

When the original Space Pinball cart was dumped, the dump was kept “private”, but distributed to a pretty large group (basically it was allowed to be shared, but not posted publicly). And when all those empty EPROM carts were sold on Yahoo JP, that opened up the possibility for someone with the “non-public” dumps to deceive buyers into thinking they had a genuine cart… and it happened on multiple occasions.

Both of those carts look very similar to this: http://www.vgchat.com/1000th-post-yay-t11972.html?s=0690602596f35f9ec9071746019dc6a1& , which I’m pretty sure is another fake, sold by someone who obtained that ROM. There was also a Bound High “proto EPROM” cart floating around that looked like it, but was the buggy gccVB version (I took a quick look and didn’t find pics, though I’m sure with a deeper search you could find them… and that’s probably the one referenced in that post). Once again, that was before the ROM was released, but there were quite a few people that had the ROM… especially the buggy version. And of course I don’t know for sure, but I’m fairly sure that the recent Faceball proto was another fake, made by someone who obtained the ROM and one of these blank carts.

IIRC, there were also one, or a couple carts sold around that time with EPROMs populated (or maybe just with EPROMs included)… which ended up having the released version of some JP games. I think it might have been this, in the pic shown with all the EPROMs: http://www.planetvb.com/modules/hardware/?type=vue&sec=ep_rom_pcb . I think there was news posted on this if you wanted to read up on it. IMO, that’s probably fake, and they didn’t put much effort into it (selling as “unknown”, fishing for someone to pay a high price, hoping that something good was on the EPROMs). Anyone with one of those carts could try the same thing, even today (bought at a garage sale, comes with unmarked chips, I don’t have a VB, so I can’t test… SELLING AS IS).

That’s certainly interesting about the molding difference in the cart, but I’m not sure that I’d say that it’s likely that the cart would have been used to test sample code early on (before more carts were made with the lettering), and then never used again (and actually have labels printed for the chips, in a similar style to a newer cart). Like KR155E said, there was at least one other version floating around before-hand as well. Maybe someone could verify that it’s not the same as that, and look at the ROM for other clues (I’ll try to look into it if I get a chance).

One certain way that would prove a fake would be to look at the date codes on the EPROMs used. If they’re 96+, they’re fake… though EPROMs were starting to go away in favor for flash around that time, so even today, used EPROM pulls that you buy are many times from the mid 90s. And anyone putting any effort into deceiving buyers would likely (hopefully) use EPROMs of the correct age.

I don’t know what to make of the first three. Maybe they’re real, maybe they’re not. The Jack Bros. definitely looks less genuine than the Panic Bomber, but that could also be that the Panic Bomber label adds an “authentic” feel. Slap a plain sticker on the Panic Bomber carts, and I’d probably say that they all look equally uncertain. If they all came from the same place, and they are genuine, I’d say they would have had to be from a play testing environment. I don’t see any other reason that Jack Bros (Atlus) would have been related to Panic Bomber (Hudson).

But, at the end of the day… unfortunately, they’re all released versions of the games on the EPROMs, so authenticity will always be questionable, and probably not matter all that much, other than as a cool factor that the EPROMs were actually used back in the day.

DogP

Is the bit slipping on the screw, or is the bit gripping the screw fine, but just won’t turn? Sometimes when the screws are stuck, it helps to slightly tighten them before loosening them to sorta break them free a bit.

If it’s slipping, it could be that the bit is just barely long enough, and if the screw got slightly rounded, you may get more grip by grinding down the upper edges a bit so you can press it in just a little bit deeper (give it a more firm grip on the screw, so you don’t keep stripping the edge).

DogP

I’ve considered it a few times… but it’d be a LOT of work for basically what we already have. It’d certainly make sense to do it in an FPGA, and I’m sure the entire VB could fit in a moderate size modern FPGA. It’d also make sense to have it use ROM files, rather than cartridges, because almost all FPGAs now only support up to 3.3V (so you’d need to level shift 3.3V<->5V, and have the 60 pin connector, when that could otherwise all be omitted).

I think enough is known about the hardware that it’s a realistic project if someone was determined. But for it to be perfect, you’d need everything to be cycle accurate, which would take a LOT of effort and trial/error. That may not take too much for the V810, since most of that is specified. But for the VIP especially, if you process everything in your own way, it could take more or less time than how it’s done in the original hardware, which would affect the timing of the flags, which may affect what actually happens in the game.

As far as patents go… I think the VB is still protected for a couple more years, though I’m not sure that would affect this kind of project. I think this would essentially fall under the same category as emulators.

There are some advantages. Of course since you’re making the hardware, you can do whatever you want. You can add color, debugging capabilities, RAM, co-processor, overclock it, etc. And I think it could look like anything you wanted. You could make it fit in your pocket and have a cable to up to LCD 3D glasses… or have it plug into a 3D TV/monitor. Or it could be a handheld system with a 3DS style display. Or…?

All that said… VB emulators are pretty good, and they exist now. While not as cool as a true hardware “VB on a chip”… with some effort, the emulators could be made nearly perfect, which could be ported over to an already available embedded system with a 3D display (or connectivity to a 3D display), such as a 3DS or phone w/ 3D display (and maybe a Bluetooth controller). I think the emulators would need some optimization to run 100% full speed, but that’s still much less effort than building from scratch in an FPGA.

DogP

It’s almost certainly the typical display cable problem. When you say you repaired it… did you solder it, or do the oven trick, or…?

DogP

jrronimo wrote:
Wasn’t Mindstorm 3D printing some link cable ends for exactly this purpose?

Yes, he printed the same model that we’re still working on perfecting.

thunderstruck wrote:
While we are on this topic. Is the protocol spoken by the Ext. port documented somewhere? I looked for it a while ago but couldn’t find much information. I’m not so much interested in having 2 VB communicating. Connecting something like an Arduino to a VB would be pretty cool though.

It’s basically SPI… there’s data in (pin 4) and data out (pin 8), which are synchronous to the clock (pin 3). You can set it up as master or slave, which just tells whether it drives the clock or not. There’s also a general purpose open collector pin (pin 1).

DogP

BTW, just to update… I pulled apart one of my systems that had a pretty noticable dark line. I swapped LED displays and the problem switched sides… then I cleaned the clear window on the LED display (just wiped it with my t-shirt and blew off dust/lint) and it looks perfect now.

So yeah… if you have dark lines, clean the window of the LED display.

DogP

Cool… I’d definitely be interested in seeing pics. I keep wanting to try stuff like this with clay or thermoplastics (like polymorph)… but have never gotten around to it. Though the 3D printer definitely takes care of a lot of the things I wanted to do (I’m pretty bad at artsy things, so making a model on a computer is much easier for me than sculpting things 😉 ).

DogP

jrronimo wrote:

DogP wrote:
And BTW, the left eye uses the left mirror and left LED display (and the same goes for the right).

Do you mean that the displays are actually side-dependent?

No… the displays are the same. My comment was in reply to:

Lester Knight wrote:
I’m seeing more in the left eye, so that would be the right mirror?

jrronimo wrote:
Either way, does anyone have any tips on aligning the displays vertically? Has anyone else run into something like this?

First of all, you can check the alignment by pressing Left, B, Down, A, Up on the right D-Pad (with a game running). This will give you a horizontal and vertical line, which should intersect.

So, what I’d do is verify that nothing looks obviously out of place. Check things like making sure the LED displays are properly seated in the housing and screws are tight, the display housings aren’t tilted, and move freely when you adjust the IPD, etc.

If all that checks out, you may need to adjust the alignment. There are two torx screws near the two small phillips screws that you removed to take the LED display out. By loosening these, you can slide the display around a bit to get the displays properly aligned.

These torx screws:

BUT, first look to see if either of them look to have been moved. If so, that’s the one you want to adjust. If not, try to figure out which one looks more out of alignment (you don’t want to adjust both unless you have to). Then look in both eyes and try adjusting until the lines intersect. I’d leave the screws a bit tight, so you can still move it by hand, but if you get it looking good, it doesn’t move when you grab your screwdriver to tighten it.

Good luck!

DogP

What’s the plan for the molded plastic end? As you can imagine, that’s probably the hardest part of the whole thing… getting something that actually clips into place that makes reliable contact with the original connector. I think you might also run into problems from the leverage caused by having the RJ45 port offset like that (the right side will probably keep popping out with the weight of a cable hanging).

We’ve actually been making a lot of progress on a link plug for a real cable. I’ve got several 3D printed prototypes, but we’re still making a few tweaks before they can go into production.

DogP

Lester Knight wrote:
I’ll give that a try. In case it isn’t the LED can you point out to me the optics on the display assembly?

Thanks!

It’s the big lens between the mirror and the LED display… you can sorta see it in the second picture behind the mirror. And if you remove the LED display and look in the hole… that’s the other side.

DogP

Dreammary wrote:
I resent the package with tracking and sent you the PayPal amount.

Cool… I wonder why they got returned to you the first time, but hopefully they make it here this time.

Lester Knight wrote:
What is the best way to clean the mirrors? I’m getting black lines that I assume are dust on the mirrors. They are noticeable on solid red backgrounds. I’m seeing more in the left eye, so that would be the right mirror?

That’s actually a pretty common problem. I’ve never thoroughly investigated it, but I’m pretty sure it’s actually the clear plastic window on the LED display itself, not the mirror. Try swapping your left and right displays and see if the problem changes (probably won’t look identical on the other side, since the angles will be different… but it should change).

If it does follow the LED display, then I’d use one of those microfiber cloths that you use for glasses/sunglasses to (gently) clean the window. If it stays the same, then I’d try wiping both sides of the optics on the display assembly (the lens next to the mirror).

And definitely let us know what you find out… that’s one of those things that I keep meaning to look into if I ever get around to it.

And BTW, the left eye uses the left mirror and left LED display (and the same goes for the right).

DogP

jrronimo wrote:
DogP: Can you show on a picture exactly where to look on a VB for any trouble? I don’t have a scope at home, but I work with a fully-stocked electronics workshop with a number of guys that could help me out. But I have no idea where to look on the device…

Since I’ve never troubleshot this problem, it’s hard to say exactly what to look at… but here’s some technical info and pics of what I’d look at.

The first pic is just the stuff to look for. On the left is the servo PCB, the right is the display assembly. The second pic shows a closeup of the board. You can see the opto with the flag (attached to the mirror) that breaks the beam as the mirror moves.

The third pic is the back of the board. There’s an IR LED, and two phototransistors in that plastic housing. The pins that I’d look at are pins 4 and 5. Those are the outputs of the phototransistors. What happens is the LED shines light, and the signal from the phototransistors changes when the flag moves back and forth blocking the light. The servo PCB looks at that signal to make fine adjustments to the mirror drive. I removed the screws to show the slot… it’s possible that the board needs to be adjusted to get the proper signal… though I’d be careful, since you could definitely make it worse. But to adjust it, just loosen the screws and slide the board forward or backward.

The last pic is a pic of what pins 4 and 5 look like on the scope. Notice that it’s a 100 Hz square wave (the displays oscillate at 50 Hz, which passes through 0 twice per cycle). You should see nice square waves like that… if you see skinny rounded bumps instead, then the board probably needs to be adjusted (as I talked about above), and if the signal is really weak, then you probably either need to clean the opto, or replace it (either the LED or phototransistor is getting weak). In my case, you can see the one signal is about ~500mVpp, and the other is ~750mVpp.

Of course it’s not easy to probe those pins… I probed them at the connector that goes between the opto board to the servo board… they’re pins 3 and 4 (though that’s still a bit buried, so I used a small wire clipped to my scope probe).

I’d also verify that all the cables between the boards are securely connected. If only one eye is having a problem, I’d guess that the servo PCB is fine.

Oh, and I remembered correctly… the displays are disabled when one of the mirrors stops.

DogP

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MineStorm wrote:
Pat, what’s the fix for a constantly shrinking / expanding image in one display ?

I’ve never come across one that did that, but it’d have to be something in the control loop of the mirrors. There’s an opto that detects the mirror vibrating back and forth… the system counts the pulses and either speeds up or slows down the mirrors to make it oscillate at exactly 50Hz.

IMO, the opto is the most likely culprit… either it’s just dirty, or could be failing. There could also be a problem with the wiring, or the circuit that drives it, but since the other eye is working fine, I’d say that’s less likely. I guess it’s also possibly caused by a mechanical failure.

If you have a scope, you could look at the opto pulses and make sure that they’re actually happening, and at a constant rate… otherwise I’d first check that the wiring is all connected well, and try blowing out the opto area. I don’t think the system will run open loop if there’s no signal at all from the opto (I seem to remember the display going black when I’ve stopped the mirrors)… though I’d have to try again to confirm.

DogP

Glad to hear that they’re making their way back safely, and that they’re being enjoyed once again!

mxpxrobbie wrote:
My kids have been bugging me about trying it out ever since they saw it on the dining room table in pieces!

As long as they’re ages 7+… awesome! 😉

jrronimo wrote:
I remember talk around here — AGES back — about straight up making new cables. Maybe in ~15 years we’ll have to start in on that…

Yeah, hopefully prices on new flat flex cables will start to come down as the years go by. We had some made for work a few months ago and they were ~$100 a piece! I’m sure in REALLY large quantities that price would come down, but a rigid PCB of that size would be really cheap… hopefully flex circuits are just lagging behind a bit.

Wyndcrosser wrote:
would rolling really get rid of the dimples?

Could we solder over it? using thin solder wire

I think rolling may help, except it may squish the cardboard and adhesive, making it thinner, which would reduce the pressure. The reason I think rolling will help is that I don’t think the copper itself is dented, but that the cable has actually just rippled to conform to the socket (since it’s so thin). See the attached pic (side view of the cable under the microscope)… you can see the dimpled part is wavy compared to the undimpled part. But yeah, I don’t know that it’d hold its form for very long even if it was rolled flat again.

And by rolling, I mean using something like a rolling pin… not rolling the cable like you were rolling a poster.

But no, I don’t think adding solder would be a good idea. It might add a little bit of thickness, but would probably be hard to get as thin as you need it. I think a safer way to do that would be to just jam a piece of paper above the current cable stiffener.

DogP

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The repaired displays shipped out Wednesday… so a lot of you should be receiving them Friday and Saturday. They all worked great after repair.

One thing to note: there’s a pretty consistent problem where the cables are dimpled from where they’ve been in contact with the socket on the motherboard side for 17+ years… this ends up causing a glitchy display problem as well. The easy solution is to simply pull the cable out a tiny bit.

When you push the display cable into the LIF socket, you’ll feel a little bit of tension, and then you’ll feel it sorta pop into place. That means you went too far. Just pull it out a tiny bit, where you feel a little bit of tension, and you’ll be good to go.

I’d say about half of the displays did that… so I just wanted to mention that, as you’re reinstalling your displays, to: 1) not push it in all the way, and 2) test it before completely reassembling (so you don’t have to disassemble it if you pushed it all the way in).

There probably are other ways to deal with it… you may be able to use a roller or something to undimple the cable, or slide a piece of paper above the cable to increase pressure… or even trim a tiny bit off the end of the cable so you can push the cable in beyond the dimple… but simply pulling it out a tiny bit does the job, and there is enough tension that you shouldn’t have to worry about it moving during normal use or shipping.

What this also means is that in 17 years, you may need to pull the VB apart again to deal with the new dimples in the cable. 😛

DogP

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Great to hear! I was gonna suggest checking the volume pot, but I was thinking that it was just a single pot, not a dual pot… but now that you say that, I guess I do remember there being 5 pins.

DogP

I’ve never come across a VB with failed audio, but the first thing I’d do is insert and remove the cartridge a few times. The contacts are supposed to be self cleaning, and since the audio is routed through the cartridge, if there’s a dirty pin, it could cause audio problems.

I assume that you know the cartridge is good?

I’d also look down into the connector on the system to make sure none of the pins look damaged.

Other than that, I think you’re gonna need to tear into the system to figure it out. My best guess would be that either the amplifier has failed, or one of the caps on the amplifier board failed (common on other hardware, though I’ve never personally seen bad caps on a VB). Unfortunately, IIRC, the amplifier used isn’t a standard part (though you might be able to make a standard part work, if you’re handy).

DogP

I had all the boxes/envelopes stacked up, and it reminded me of Christmas… so I snapped a pic. I purposefully blurred it to protect your identities. 😉

Anyway, I’m working on them tonight, but unfortunately I’m still waiting on a couple packages. I’m sliding the cutoff until Tuesday, and will (hopefully) be shipping everything out Wednesday (so they should be back to most of you for some weekend VB goodness). 🙂

DogP

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