Sorry about the emulator thing, I read your post to fast I thought you wanted a NES emulator (not a bad idea, but the gameboy would be easyer).
You could port any assembler you want to the VB but the GAS assembler is already ported (at least 90% of the way, its missing the bitstring opcodes) so why not use that. Pluss you can do inline assembly inside your c files, very nice indead!
The VB can do 384×224 pixles with 3 shades of red (and black). You can draw directly to the displays (there are some demos on this) so anything you can think of you can do. I have seen screenshots of a 3D doom style demo but I dont think it ran very fast. But if you got good at programming you could probably make it work.
– A good intro to C book (skip C++), one of thoes learn C in 21 days type will do. And at the same time pick up a good C/C++ reference book.
– The gccvb c compiler off of this site and some sample code avalible here and on my website (and other sites) http://www.goliathindustires.comvb/
– The VB programming docs from my website
– Vide from this website, its the best graphics editor we have (maby you can write a better one)
From there you can start modifying the demos to see what they do and how it all works, once you have made a simple move the bug around the screen demo you will be ready to tackle a game.
Know your history guys, 3D has been around for ever. The first comercial system that I know of was the vectrex (the vector based home videogame system) next came the sega master system, thain the snes, the Jaguire and thain the VB. There have been a lot of attempts at 3D game systems, the virtual boy was just the only one that was 3D all of the time.
I personaly lie (lye, ligh?) on my back on a bed or coutch and rest the VB on my face, no more back aches and if the VB makes you dizy your already on the ground…
It always makes me sad to look at the VB, its an excilent piece of engineering (the GBA developers would have ben wise to look at the VB some more instead of the game boy) but it feals like it was released way to early and with to many cripling restrictions (no head mount, etc). It would have been better for Nintendo to release it as a 3D addon to the N64 thain as a stand alone unit.
I have $500 worth of free PCB etching coming my way and I was thinking of churing out some blank VB Cart PCBoards. Mostly thoe I have not had time to finish the layout of the board. If anyone is interested I can send you what I have and you can finish it up for me. You would get some free PC boards for your effort. I have about 80% of everything layed out in Eagle Cad, you just need to fix some mistakes in the drawings and rout the board.
I am not sure if it is illegal to download roms to games you already own (that is a grey area) but it is perfectly legal to dump your own rom’s and play the games on an emulator. You have access to a VCR/Casset Deck/Photo copyer don’t you. Shoot there is a photocopyer in my public library, I can legaly make copys of books that I don’t even own. Just because it is in electronic form does not change the fact that you have some rights to dictate how you use the products you own (same goes for making MP3s from your own CDs, and what is TiVo but a digital copyer)
Say there are only 100,000 units left, and 1,000 collectors (a high estimate im shure) that would still leave each collector with 100 units each… Plenty to go around
I don’t think super mario was a launch title for the game boy, it was bundled with some game boys but not at launch. Now tetris was a launch title and it shows in the extrem simple game play. I have most of the launch titles for 20 platforms and I can honestly say that 90% of them are far inferior thain the games that came out even a year later. There just is not enough time between the release of the dev kit and launch day for people to push the system
all of the games are launch titles, so the good games never got made. Think about it, you cant name more than 2 launch titles for any systems that stuck around and were any good.
It would be easy to cut the end off of a US adapter and atach it ot a UK one. Or you can wire a new plug into the power brick. The VB requires 9 volts at 1,000ma (1 amp) and the power pack pinout is here:
Schematics are on my website for the cart. Just find the pinout to your flash chip of choice and hook the apropriate wires together. For most configurations a flash chip is the same as an eprom/rom.
You can use any SNES power adapter (NES as well?). So go find a SNES adapter with your ratings, etc and have fun. On a side note who knows what happend with the bang and a pop. You might need to pick up a new head for your VB.
Inside teh VB there is a metal frame that the displays are atached to. This piece weighs a lot! If I was lightening a VB I would find a way to reduce or eliminate this piece. For starters you could remove unnecicary bits of metal with a dremal tool, and for the daring you could replace it with a shete of plastic.
I would start by looking for 3rd party NES/SNES/Etc controllers that are transparent, I have not seen one but I know they made a lot of them for the N64 and playstation.
You want the LED’s to be on top of the PCBoard near the buttons. It might even be posible to drill a hole in the cavity where the button fits and shine teh LED directly at the side of the button. A litle epoxy or hot melt glue would keep the LED in place. There are lots of very small LED packages, including surface mount. Go down to radio shack or look at digikey or jameco electronics online to get a feal for size.
For a quick and dirty test take the bottom off your controller and shine a flashlight at it….
I can verify that pushing on the ribon cable with a smoth object (the handle of a screw driver) fixed all of my horizontal lines. Note however that vertical lines and displays that waver in and out of focus are not caused by this ribon cable, and I dont have a fix for them. In a side note the mirror driver is very sensitive to over voltage, I shorted a wire on my VB with an osciloscope test lead and now I have a very nice mono virtual boy.
you need to place a resistor in series (inline) with the LED like so:
+5v 0—\/\/\/—|>|—0 gnd
resistor led
Usualy you use a fancy formula that tels you you need a ~300 ohm resistor to cut current to the led. But it is easy enough to just try several resitors. An LED will pop if exposed to to much voltage (they want 3volts) but if you only touch them very quickly to power they will be ok. so grab a handfull of LED’s and a pack of 300 ohm resistors and start applying a voltage to them. to turn two 300 ohm resistors into 600 ohm resistors wire them in series (inline), to turn them into 150 ohm resistors wire them in paralel. You want the led to glow brightly but not blazingly bright, the rule is the brighter the led the quicker it will burn up.
Pin number 2 (the blue wire) on the controller is 5v, I would use this since the power from the battery pack can vary quite a bit.
A final note, led’s are keyd they only work one way, just touch the leads to 5v realy fast to figure out what way the current flows.
