I dunno… I find it hard to believe they ever needed “extras” until they did the all-out clearance… I don’t think there was ever a shortage, since none of their other price drops really sparked sales. But yeah, that serial number sticker is only on the plate that attaches to the stand, so who knows if just that part or the entire VB was used. Since the bottom doesn’t say PLAYLINK, it sounds like it may just be that one piece, since that’d be pretty hard to change (although some of my systems do have a weird rectangle around EXT like the mold must have been modified at one time, but I doubt it was changed after the plastic piece was already made).
Heheheh… that’s cool! Probably when the VB bombed in JP worse than it did in the US, they shipped lots of unsold VBs to the US (or maybe they’re clearance VBs, and the $25 clearance worked better in the US than Japan, so they shipped them here to be cleared out).
Oh… hmm, I dunno then. I only looked at about 8 of mine, but I’ve got a bunch of VBs around V100-V101 and they have no bump, but the ones around V103s do… I could check the rest and see if there’s any others that don’t fit the pattern.
Hmm… interesting. I just checked a few of mine, and I see that on the higher number stickers (around VN103), while the lower numbers all have normal stickers. Maybe it’s one of those anti-theft stickers combined into the serial number sticker… I dunno. I guess you could try peeling it back to see what’s under there, but I’m guessing it’s not anything too exciting.
LOL, Doh! I know the feeling… I’ve done more than my share of things like that :-P. At least it’s last few seconds were probably pretty exciting… finally putting it out of its misery (and ironically, its final death was more of the same power supply abuse that killed it the first time 😉 ).
I’m assuming you’ve checked the simple things like making sure one of the caps didn’t short and save you, right? It’s unlikely, but one time I hooked up an arcade PCB w/ the 5V and 12V swapped, but I got super-lucky and the large draw on the 5V rail overloaded the 12V@1A output on the power supply, and simply swapping the wiring to the correct way made it work.
Heh, anyway, it was nice walking through the problems w/ you… it’s rare that anyone goes much farther than just checking that their batteries aren’t dead before calling the VB dead. And if you really want a VB, you should be able to snag one on ebay cheap, since all you need is the head unit, controller, and some sort of power supply (assuming yours has the stand and eyeshade, and you already have some games).
Heheheh… those are the correct sounds… I’d say you’re close to having a fully working VB 🙂 . If you download the latest Reality Boy (emulator), you can get an idea of what it should sound like (although the sound emulation isn’t perfect). It sounds like your problem now is in the controller. I think in all of those games, you need to press start to get to the next screen.
If you can’t get your VB controller working, you can rig it to work w/ an SNES or even an NES controller (although the key mappings aren’t very good). Just connect the corresponding pins to the one from the other controller (VB controller pinout: http://www.goliathindustries.com/vb/VBDiagrams.html ).
Oh… and about only one audio channel working… IIRC the audio amp for the speakers and headphones is on the small board w/ the headphone jack and volume knob. Try swapping the left and right input from the main board (IIRC it’s the middle two pins, but you should verify) to see if it’s the amp or the audio generator from the main board.
Hmm… I’m not sure then… I’ve never had a problem with a VB that wouldn’t execute code, but I’ve also never had one w/ a blown regulator, so it’s likely that somebody did something really stupid, and could have blown more than just the regulator.
If you haven’t already, I’d try powering it up w/ a game in the slot (the system won’t do anything w/o a game in it), and hold pin 3 low for a short period, then drive it high. It sounds like without the regulator, that’s a floating input, which is why it acts weird (resetting after a few seconds and the multimeter probe holding it in reset). The mirrors should be oscillating if the system is going to do anything, so it sounds like low is reset (and probably held in reset until the pin goes high, like a power good status pin). If you connect it to a 5V supply and the status pin directly connected to power, the power might still be flakey while it tries to boot, and cause a lockup. If you make sure your 5V is good before connecting that, hopefully it’d work like it’s supposed to. If I get a few spare minutes tomorrow, I’ll try hooking my scope up to the pins and watch the power up.
If you have a logic analyzer or oscilloscope, you should check the address and data lines. That could tell you whether it’s actually trying to execute code, or if everything is just totally dead. You could probably get some idea from a logic probe as well. Also, make sure the mirror oscillation is stable. I think the mirrors also have a mirror stable status pin, because IIRC if you manually stop a mirror, it stops displaying (I don’t remember if it resets or just stops outputting video though).
I just checked my notes and I don’t have a good description of pin 3 either… but I do know that you can power it w/ 5V directly on the 5V rail. Why do you suspect a short circuit, if when you connect 5V from a 7805, you actually get 5V across the board? IIRC the VB draws ~250-350mA@5V, so it’s pretty realistic to believe a 7805 w/o a heatsink would overheat quickly (especially w/ a high-ish input voltage). You should measure the current going to the 5V rail w/ an ammeter.
About the actual function of pin 3, I’d guess it’s some sort of status or reset pin… I’ve never watched it on a scope, but maybe it stays high until the +5V is stable, then goes low to start everything up (just a guess).
Have you tried actually putting a game in with everything hooked up and driving it w/ 5V directly on the 5V rail? You can power that from any convenient 5V spot, like the 5V pin on the controller port, link port, game port, etc. You might want to use a more robust supply than a bare 7805 (or at least heatsink it). I typically use a modified AT computer power supply as my bench supply (20A@5V), but you could even use an old cell phone charger or other regulated 5V supply. From what you describe, it sounds like someone that didn’t know what they were doing (or were careless) was screwing around trying to make an AC adapter and fried the regulator (not that they couldn’t have fried something else as well though).
Yeah, let us know when they arrive… I’ll send some money. Have you decided how you’re working it? Are you collecting money then releasing, or releasing to donors first?
But I don’t know any collectors who can’t get their hands on a Virtual League Baseball :P. There’s WAY too many of them… compared to the number of people who want flash carts and can’t get one. If it weren’t for donor carts, there’d likely be no flash carts at all.
I think it’s totally economics… a donor cart of games that there’s WAY too many of can be had for 25 cents or less if you find the right source (a 48 pack of Baseball sold for $10 at one time). If you made your own cart design, you could probably get one for 25 cents as well, but in quantities of 10s of thousands or more :/.
The connector is definitely the hardest part to acquire, since you’d have to have a custom connector made, from a connector company (like AMP or Molex), and not just anyone with a plastic mold (like the case).
I personally have no problem cutting up carts for donors… I figure there’s an abundance of common carts that people don’t really want, and it allows people to get more enjoyment out of it in its new life as a flash cart, new game, or whatever it gets transformed into.
I’m not familiar with the ZX Spectrum, but you have the US tap (which uses the US SNES plug w/ the pin in the middle)… the Japanese tap has a standard type plug (which is probably what the ZX fits).
I’m not sure… I’ve never seen that, but I’ve heard others say similar things, like playing in a dark room fixes it, etc. It seems highly unlikely, but possibly the displays are light sensitive, and a display with a weak cable connection will be driven by the bad connection, but when there’s light coming in the front, it generates a charge that overrides the weak input (going back to the floating input thing again).
That’s a total guess though… without seeing it first hand and doing other observations, I can’t really say anything for sure.
Heh… yeah, it’s a pretty small “scene”… if it can even be called that. There’s a fair amount of fans, but as you can see from the popularity of this thread, it doesn’t seem that there’s a large number of people jumping up to throw money at this, or even really jumping for joy 😛 .
Hopefully there’ll be something cool on there that can interest the mainstream crowd (like a cool demo), but if it’s like the other versions I’ve seen, it’s just a couple lame demos which are less fun than even the most boring homebrew game/demo (except maybe Cooler’s Matrix demo 😉 ).
Matthew Callis wrote:
They only sold for so much because no one can go online and download them and after they’re released, anyone with Photoshop/GIMP and the files can make them. That means I bought what turns into a few dollars worth of diskettes and labels after I share them with everyone.
I’m not sure how true that is… my friend was planning on just bidding on them for his collection (he’s already got a dev kit with software)… but he didn’t have that specific version of disks though, so he thought it’d be cool to get those as well. He doesn’t use any of it for functionality though, so it’d just be a collectable (having some more official development disks).
The contents of the disks don’t hold much technical value, since they really only work with the official debugger, and the homebrew scene has progressed well w/ gcc and has plenty of examples. It’s kinda like the NES tester carts and stuff… nobody actually uses them for that anymore, but because they’re official test/dev stuff, it’s cool. Don’t get me wrong though… it is still really cool to see official code and apps, just as it’s cool to have the official disks.
That said… I’d definitely donate… and like you said, it’d likely get leaked if you tried to keep it totally private, but you’d probably get more donations if you did something like donors of $20 (or more) get the disks at donation time… then the disks get released to the public in 30 days (and ask that donors not share until you release it). Knowing that the disks will be released shortly should make most people feel fine about keeping them private, but give some benefit to the (impatient) paying crowd. And the community is pretty small that only the hardcore people (that actually care about seeing the contents, i.e. dev’rs) would donate anyway. There’s very little on the dev kit disks that a casual VB fan would be interested in looking at.
Cool… I saw that auction… I think a friend of mine was planning on bidding, but apparently he didn’t win or changed his mind :P. I’m not totally familiar with community dumps, and it wasn’t immediately clear from reading the links you posted. Can you give us the quick run down on it?
I assume people donate some money and you release the dumps? Does it only get released to the donors, or do they get it first, or do you just collect all the money, then release it to everyone (what do donors get besides being credited as a donor)? What’s the reason for collecting donations… is it to recoup the purchase cost, make money, or…?
BTW, have you received the disks yet? I’m just curious how different each of the sample disks are (i.e. v1.0, v1.1, v1.1a, v1.2 of the same app, or different apps for each version).
