😀

Project VBoot

[Vaughanabe13]

Here is a pic of my first prototype board installed in the VB cart slot with the plastic cover off. As you can see, that board was made small so it could fit in the plastic cases. The new board is considerably longer and will be able to poke out the end of the VB cartridge slot. It’s almost ready to go, I just had to make a quick change and tonight I should be able to get it ordered. Feels good to be making progress again! Based on the current pricing it costs me about about 65-75 USD to make a single board with all components (not bulk pricing). Also, more good news – I found multiple alternate suppliers for my bus transceiver chip, so I won’t have to do a redesign any time soon for that reason.

See the link for pic and more in-depth update info:
http://brennanthl.wordpress.com/

• This reply was modified 13 years, 2 months ago by Vaughanabe13.

Maybe I could offer my services as a graphics designer for the label? 😀

T-SqProductions wrote:
Maybe I could offer my services as a graphics designer for the label? 😀

Your offer is appreciated but as of right now I don’t have any plans to make a case for the board. I haven’t thought very much about making it look presentable at this point, it’s all about getting it to work. But I’m always willing to take suggestions on how to make it look good. 😀

Here’s a question: Is that switch on the PCB reachable when the cover is on, or is the current revision too short? It doesn’t look like you would be able to reach it, but I might just be miscalculating the size of the cartridge slot.

As far as the way it looks, I love the look of bare PCBs. 😀 Any way you could get them to fabricate boards with the etch resist in red?

Also, where did you get your boards fabbed? Was it BatchPCB or someplace like that? I actually found this place recently, they charge more per square inch than BatchPCB but they send you three copies of your board, shipping is free, and near as I can tell there’s no setup fee, so it’s a way better deal. Just something to think about when you get the design worked out if you decide to go into “mass” production.

That button is perhaps why he unscrew the bottom piece. 😉

Great link there, very neat idea letting several people fill up a panel together. Then you can make just a few boards very cheap.

I actually work at a PCB manufacturer, I guess I should ask how much cheaper I can get it… 😉

About that offer of a graphic design, perhaps you can put something on the copper of the PCB, or as silkscreen – or a combination? If you use standard green you can combine silver (pad), light green, darker green and white silk screen. Could perhaps be possible to work out something neat in those four colors. 😉

Fwirt wrote:
Here’s a question: Is that switch on the PCB reachable when the cover is on, or is the current revision too short? It doesn’t look like you would be able to reach it, but I might just be miscalculating the size of the cartridge slot.

As far as the way it looks, I love the look of bare PCBs. 😀 Any way you could get them to fabricate boards with the etch resist in red?

Also, where did you get your boards fabbed? Was it BatchPCB or someplace like that? I actually found this place recently, they charge more per square inch than BatchPCB but they send you three copies of your board, shipping is free, and near as I can tell there’s no setup fee, so it’s a way better deal. Just something to think about when you get the design worked out if you decide to go into “mass” production.

Good questions. The button will be accessible from outside the VB cartridge slot when the plastic slot cover is on, but you are right in guessing that in the picture I posted the PCB is too short. It doesn’t even stick out when the plastic cover is on, but that’s fine because that was an old version of the board (the first prototype). I was just posting it to show that it fits into the VB very well with the connector.

Also, thanks for the tip on the fab service, I will definitely check them out. I typically use BatchPCB for prototyping because they are the cheapest option if you only want one or two boards (plus they usually ship you 1 board or so for free, in my experience).

e5frog wrote:
That button is perhaps why he unscrew the bottom piece. 😉

Great link there, very neat idea letting several people fill up a panel together. Then you can make just a few boards very cheap.

I actually work at a PCB manufacturer, I guess I should ask how much cheaper I can get it… 😉

About that offer of a graphic design, perhaps you can put something on the copper of the PCB, or as silkscreen – or a combination? If you use standard green you can combine silver (pad), light green, darker green and white silk screen. Could perhaps be possible to work out something neat in those four colors. 😉

I did make a quick a little design for the prototype that you can maybe see in some of the pictures, but it’s nothing special. Here’s a pic of it but the word spacing is off (the centering is correct on the silk screen). FYI there is no room on the board anywhere for copper artwork, it would have to be done on silkscreen.

But yeah, there’s probably some tricky copyright stuff with my logo since it resembles the VB logo. I’d be willing to take artwork suggestions if anyone has ideas. Keep in mind there is no “clean” place to put it on the board so it will likely have vias and pads and such through it.

Attachments:

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   vboot.jpg
   

Also, I found a local (in my state) PCB service for low-volume production and they have a red PCB + red solder mask board, so that might be the way to go when I start making the first official batch. I’m definitely getting ahead of myself though, there are still a number of things I need to work out. In my head the calculations and the theory make sense but I need to actually get it working like I want.

http://www.custompcb.com/

My thought was that there might be some space left if you extended the board so you had something to grab hold of if you wanted to unplug the board from the VB.

Every time I see the name VBOOT I can’t help thinking of a boot.

e5frog wrote:
My thought was that there might be some space left if you extended the board so you had something to grab hold of if you wanted to unplug the board from the VB.

Every time I see the name VBOOT I can’t help thinking of a boot.

Yeah I’m definitely going to give some thought to how the pcb is actually inserted/removed from the system because obviously most people can’t take off the plastic cover and I wouldn’t want them too. There should be some blank space at the end of the board that will stick out and I’ll measure all of that. The user only needs access to the one button and there is also a power LED and a status LED that will stick out of the VB cartridge slot. The button will be used for saving the RAM (save) data to the SD card or various other uses.

I also thought of a possible expansion board that would be easy to make down the road. It would interface between a VB cartridge and the VBoot board, provide power (so the VB system isn’t needed), and then you would be able to make ROM dumps or SRAM dumps of your existing carts and store them to the SD card. I like that idea because right now the VBoot design has no way of retrieving your existing save game data.

Also, I don’t really like the name “VBoot” either, I just picked it for a project name. It might not be called that in the end. “Virtual Boy Bootloader” or “VB Bootloader” are just clumsy to say and don’t roll off the tongue.

The main problem with removing that bottom cover is that you remove the stand grip, which means you would have to set the VB on top of something in order to play it, and then you might bend the PCB or something…

As far as cartridge dumping, I know DogP has tried several methods over the years. I recently noticed that somebody managed to interface one with a Retrode, but the original prototype of the Retrode was just an ATmega168 with V-USB pretending to be a read-only mass storage device. The main issue with all of the solutions over the years has been that getting a cartridge connector either meant destroying a Virtual Boy to get one 🙁 or building your own… The guy who interfaced his Retrode actually built a connector out of PCMCIA pins. 😯 Is there a male counterpart to that connector you decided on? If so, that would be a fantastic thing for the community.

I actually don’t mind the name VBoot, but if you’re looking for more names, how about VBSD (since it loads from an SD card)? Or, since FlashBoy is taken, what about VirtualFlash? 😛

Also, I just wanted to say that what you’re doing is really cool… I wish I had the skills to design stuff like VBoot… Keep up the good work!

Fwirt wrote:
The main problem with removing that bottom cover is that you remove the stand grip, which means you would have to set the VB on top of something in order to play it, and then you might bend the PCB or something…

As far as cartridge dumping, I know DogP has tried several methods over the years. I recently noticed that somebody managed to interface one with a Retrode, but the original prototype of the Retrode was just an ATmega168 with V-USB pretending to be a read-only mass storage device. The main issue with all of the solutions over the years has been that getting a cartridge connector either meant destroying a Virtual Boy to get one 🙁 or building your own… The guy who interfaced his Retrode actually built a connector out of PCMCIA pins. 😯 Is there a male counterpart to that connector you decided on? If so, that would be a fantastic thing for the community.

I actually don’t mind the name VBoot, but if you’re looking for more names, how about VBSD (since it loads from an SD card)? Or, since FlashBoy is taken, what about VirtualFlash? 😛

Also, I just wanted to say that what you’re doing is really cool… I wish I had the skills to design stuff like VBoot… Keep up the good work!

Apparently I wasn’t clear but you will not have to modify your VB in any way in order to use this. The only reason I removed the cartridge slot cover is for testing purposes.

Yes I have a male connector that can interface between VB cartridges. The only reason the VBOOT can’t do it directly is because it has no power source – it draws all power from the VB, but when it’s plugged into the VB you obviously can’t plug a cartridge in. So I would need to design an external board with a power supply and some logic that would provide power to the vboot and allow you to dump ROMs of your games. The way I envision it, you plug your VB game into the adapter board, plug the adapter board into the VBoot board, connect a power adaptor and hit a single button to dump the ROM and SRAM into a file on the SD card. Once I get the vboot cartridge working it would be very easy to make a little adapter board that can do that.

I do like the name “VBSD”, that’s a great idea. I can’t use the word “flash” anywhere though because there is no actual flash memory on the board (other than the micro).

I can’t use the word “flash” anywhere though because there is no actual flash memory on the board (other than the micro).

Hah, don’t forget the SD card is flash 😉

If you are looking for a build house, these people would be able to do what you want…

http://www.screamingcircuits.com/

I have not used them myself but word on the street is they do good work.

mbuchman wrote:

I can’t use the word “flash” anywhere though because there is no actual flash memory on the board (other than the micro).

Hah, don’t forget the SD card is flash 😉

If you are looking for a build house, these people would be able to do what you want…

http://www.screamingcircuits.com/

I have not used them myself but word on the street is they do good work.

Yeah but the SD is just used for external storage, it’s not the main component of the system, as the flash memory is on the flashboy.

Ah, so you want a way to dump directly to the SD card. I thought you just meant some way to dump an image that you could move to an SD later. Personally, I think that would be the more useful option, since you’re probably going to be wanting to move stuff from PC to SD (or vice versa) more often than wanting to make copies of your cartridges, although that’s just my option.

Also, could you post the part number of the male connector you have to connect to VB games? I’m just curious about the specs in case I want to build something later.

On a final note, I forgot it was a RAM cart… my bad. Well, VBSD still holds then. 😀

Fwirt wrote:
Ah, so you want a way to dump directly to the SD card. I thought you just meant some way to dump an image that you could move to an SD later. Personally, I think that would be the more useful option, since you’re probably going to be wanting to move stuff from PC to SD (or vice versa) more often than wanting to make copies of your cartridges, although that’s just my option.

Also, could you post the part number of the male connector you have to connect to VB games? I’m just curious about the specs in case I want to build something later.

On a final note, I forgot it was a RAM cart… my bad. Well, VBSD still holds then. 😀

I don’t see what the problem is if you dump directly to the SD card – if you’re transferring files to the SD from your computer you will have to move it back and forth between the PC and cart anyway. I don’t anticipate having to remove the SD card regularly unless you are a developer – I imagine most people would put all of their roms on the SD card and leave it.
I don’t have a choice in how to dump a cartridge anyway because there is no USB connector to the PC. To me I think it would be best used for reading save game data that you don’t want to lose (in case of battery failure or if you want to use your existing save games on the SD card). I know the VB games are relatively short, but I think it would be nice to, say, have all of my wario game data on the VBSD so I don’t have to start from scratch.

Yes I have a male connector that can interface between VB cartridges.
(…)
I do like the name “VBSD”, that’s a great idea. I can’t use the word “flash” anywhere though because there is no actual flash memory on the board (other than the micro).

Do you mean that you have ONE connector for yourself currently or do you mean that you also know where to buy more connectors that fits with no modification?

The male connector that fit’s the 2/2mm female connector won’t fit in a cart, pins are too thick and also square.

Nice solution with the PCMCIA-pins and the 2.5″ hard drive adapters. I had been looking at PCMCIA connectors before but haven’t tried it, actually have a broken laptop I was planning to steal the connector/s from.

As all carts are already dumped (unless there are variations) I guess the only use for one would be to dump SRAM from the FlashBoy Plus and my original Galactic Pinball cart.

As you plan to load from SD to a ram chip, will it be possible to write to that ram from the VB as well?

BTW, I bought four of these to build a connector myself:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280541800459

Feels good not having to use or modify the one in my spare VB “head”.

e5frog wrote:
BTW, I bought four of these to build a connector myself:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280541800459

Feels good not having to use or modify the one in my spare VB “head”.

That’s a cool solution with the hard drive connector. I do have some part numbers that “theoretically” should work but I haven’t tested yet, since the board I’m working on doesn’t need them. But that’s something that will be pretty easy to figure out in the future. Again, that adapter board may not even be useful for anyone here, but I think I might make one at least for myself.

Yes, the RAM will work exactly like it does with an actual cartridge – the VB will be able to read and write from RAM. Essentially after the bootloader runs through its algorithms the VB will be able to read a game and it’s associated RAM data identically to an actual cart. But again, this is still untested and will probably require many hours of software and debugging.

Good news, the boards got here yesterday and I’m almost done assembling them. I just have to touch up a few of the SMD components at work since I don’t have high precision soldering equipment at home. The only problem I have noticed so far is the save SRAM chip is wrong – I didn’t find out until ordering the part that this chip uses a non-standard pin layout. So either I’m stuck with no save SRAM support on this prototype or I’ll need to find an alternate part that has the correct pin layout.

Other than that, the board seems good and I’m excited to start testing it.