Yeah… Mario’s Tennis, Mario Clash, Galactic Pinball, Teleroboxer, and Wario Land all were identical between US/JP versions.

DogP

I actually did… somewhere 😛 (I actually took a pic of the animation as well). I used to have them posted on my website, but at the time I had multiple webspaces pointing back and forth (to get around the small webspace limit), and when I got my new webspace and redesigned the site, I never got around to redoing that section. “One of these days” 😉 .

I’m not sure where all my game ending pics are right now either… but I’m really not worried about high scores (I don’t think I’ve uploaded any screenshots). I’m not sure that I even submitted those scores… maybe those were imported from an old forum post on high scores? Or maybe I did submit them 😛 .

DogP

Vaughanabe13 wrote:
I think the routing is almost done.

Very cool… that’s looking nice! BTW, what’s with the edge connector? How do you plan on doing through hole? A standard VB connector has SMT pads, and it straddles the PCB. Even if not using the original connector, I’d think you’d want to do it that way as well, since a right angle connector probably wouldn’t fit (the board would be too low and hit the case).

DogP

Nope… it’s the exact same ROM.

DogP

Vaughanabe13 wrote:
Also, I can’t really tell the difference between the screens, DogP. I guess I don’t really know what an autorouter looks like since I have usually done stuff by hand. When you have boards that dense, you’re going to have a lot of random vias and strange looking traces no matter what you do.

Yeah, your PCB is definitely very dense, and I’d expect some randomness, but typically humans route traces in meaningful paths, while an autorouter picks short, direct, odd shaped paths… and things like a bus going from one chip to another many times won’t even run parallel to each other, even though they’re consecutive on both chips.

The original Flashboy isn’t THAT dense… look at all the extra unused space (especially on the final: http://www.planetvb.com/content/hardware/flash_carts/flashboy/images/fb_final_2.JPG ), but in the first one I linked to, there’s random traces and vias all over the place. The second one I linked to actually has tighter routed traces without using vias every 1mm 😉 .

So anyway… does it actually look routable on two layers? I don’t like 4 and 6 layer boards, but that’s always an option. Another option would be jumper wires for things like Vcc and GND, just to remove the need for those to snake across the board. Also, have you considered using a CPLD as a crossbar? The extra space taken up by the chip would probably more than make up the amount saved from routing.

DogP

Did you actually route that all by hand? A lot of that looks very random, like an auto-router would do. Of course that probably happens when you’ve got lots of chips with pinouts that don’t exactly line up 😛 . And I disagree about using the auto-router… all the ones that I’ve used have sucked, and even if they do route, they look like crap 😉 .

I mean… compare: http://www.planetvb.com/content/hardware/flash_carts/flashboy/images/fb_proto1_1.JPG with http://www.planetvb.com/content/hardware/flash_carts/flashboy/images/fb_proto4_2.JPG . I guess Richard could probably answer this… but the first one DEFINITELY looks auto-routed. Was that Electra? The second one looks possibly auto-routed but seems to have at least some manual routing (or maybe just some better auto-routing rules).

DogP

I’ve bowled a 300 in NFB (and LOTS of 299s >_<)... very disappointing. It just has a crappy animation that says "Perfect" (or something like that), then goes to the normal game over screen. No credits, no bonus game mode... nuthin. DogP

It’s your display cables. Due to things like brightness settings, some games will cause your displays to glitch when they’re just fine on others.

DogP

That explanation doesn’t really state any relevant information on the laser wearing out from CD-R though. The first paragraph explains what happens when the laser wears out (from CD-R or GD-ROM use). The second paragraph just talks about a GD-ROM in general. And the area in the middle is the CD-ROM compatible area (which tells you to use in the DC, not a normal CD player). None of that has anything to do with a laser working harder… even if the data got fragmented (which it didn’t), that’d just cause the motor to run around a lot.

I personally just think the lasers wear out anyway. Lasers wear out in all the other systems (PS 1-3, Xbox/360… why not the DC?).

DogP

I bought my system new, so it’s always been well taken care of, but it got a LOT of play from CDs (though I haven’t played it much in the last few years). I do remember some games causing the drive to be really noisy, so of course I didn’t play them.

I wonder what the reasoning would be on why CDs would be tougher on the laser though. The system was meant to be able to play CDs (audio), so the physical CD shouldn’t be a problem… maybe the low quality CD-Rs we had back then were harder to read and caused the laser to turn up the power (who didn’t buy the cheapest “free after rebate” CD-Rs back then 😉 ).

The other possibility is that EVERYONE played CDs on their systems, so anyone who does have a laser die says “oh yeah… I played CDs on here, now my laser is dead”, rather than “oh yeah… my system is 11 years old, now my laser is dead”.

DogP

I’ve basically ONLY run CD-Rs on my Dreamcast and it still works.

DogP

Vaughanabe13 wrote:
Progress (very rough placement here):

Look at all those airwires! Not looking forward to routing this beast.

Heh… looks like fun. 🙂

DogP

heftymadmonkey wrote:
I don’t know if it’s supposed to be like that or not, but whatever case if I put batteries in it and switch on the system it doesn’t turn on. what should I do? XD

Do you have a game in the system? It won’t do anything without one. Do you hear any buzzing, from the mirrors vibrating (which you can see by shining a light and looking in the eyepiece).

Edit: YAY! 1000 posts! 🙂

DogP

RunnerPack wrote:
You definitely didn’t disappoint! :thumpup:

I don’t have access to any FPGA stuff, but it makes me want to at least hook a breadboard or something up to my VB.

Yeah, the VB cart breakout cable is really useful… it’s so nice running code and being able to probe everything with a logic analyzer and oscilloscope.

You should build one of them, and get to breadboarding some cool stuff. You can get lots of cheap dev boards… I just choose FPGAs because you can do LOTS of cool stuff without adding all kinds of crazy hardware. Really, all I need is some circuitry to bring the 5V to a compatible 3.3V level, and then it’s just code.

DogP

The TV Boy outputs to the TV, and also has an output for a special VB headset (the “scanner” port). The development kits also used the same headset, and some had TV output… so you could do that with one of them as well.

On the homebrew side… I’ve built a TV/VGA adapter, which uses a stock VB, with the display signals brought out to an FPGA, which generates the video. Here’s a couple videos of that:

It still plays on the stock displays as well as the TV/VGA outputs (though being upsidedown with wires hanging out, it’s pretty tough to play 😉 ). It’s just a prototype using a development board and a bunch of wires… but if I ever get the motivation, I’d like to make a board to install in the VB with a connector on the VB for VGA and TV.

DogP

Deadly-D wrote:
To quote my favorite clown… “Where does he get those wonderful toys?”

Heh… xilinx.com, digilent.com, and ti.com will get you most of it… the rest is stuff laying around and imagination. 😀

DogP

Heh, nope… single and enjoying myself 😀 . If I was married, you’d never see me here, and if I was lucky, I’d have 1 arcade game in the garage 😉 .

DogP

DaVince wrote:
That looks incredible. Better than any regular arcade I’ve been to (which I have to admit, are few and far inbetween. Hey, arcades died at some point, right?).

Heh, arcades died several times… when, depends who you ask.

Vaughanabe13 wrote:
I understand you were going for the classics but…. you need a couple of Hydro Thunder machines and an Area 51 or other gun game before it’s complete. 😎 Very cool though. Which machine(s) were most popular at your party?

Yep… I’m planning on getting a Hydro Thunder soon, to put next to the SF Rush cabs. I used to have an Area 51/Maximum Force, but after playing through it a bunch of times, I decided it wasn’t worth keeping around. I do have Police 911 2, which IMO is one of the best shooting games.

The most popular games at the party were SF Rush and Ice Cold Beer, and the pinball machines got a lot of play too.

DogP

I’ve been waiting for it to be answered 😉 .

DogP

The GC uses the same screws as the VB. I also came across this one: http://www.chollogame.es/epages/61488288.sf//en_GB/http/www.etracker.de/es_ES/?ObjectPath=/Shops/61488288/Products/ngc_screwdriver , but that’s not in the US, so it’s not particularly helpful to me.

There’s others as well, but not for sale, like: http://gamechn.com/productsview.php?id=201&proid=827 . If you look harder, you can probably find them. Just hopefully they’re not made of cheap metal like a lot of the bits.

DogP