Cool… it should be easy for you to see the problem w/ that test. I think it’ll be a short between the two pixel bits, so you’ll want to change your brightness (press B). You should clearly see the problem on the crosshatch (and probably all the rest), and if you run the horizontal line test, go to manual mode (press A) and move it until you see the problem (brightness should change)… post which line it is (press select and tell me what Y=). I can probably tell you which pins are shorted, which hopefully you can unshort with a knife.
Yeah… a display tester has been on my todo list for quite a while… I just wanted to suggest that you could fix it pretty easily without it in case you’re as impatient as I am 😉 . But I’ll try to get one put together hopefully this weekend.
Well… since you disconnected the display and found out it’s a short… that should be pretty easy to find if you’ve got a multimeter. You should be able to check continuity between each adjacent pin and find the shorted one, then take a knife, needle, etc and scrape between the pins and hopefully clear the short.
Yup… that’s exactly the thing I was talking about. I initially thought it was the red lens as well, but if you remove the lens and look directly into the mirror, you’ll still see it. I thought maybe it was also something on the mirror, but the mirror always looks perfect. So I assume it must be something on the LED bar or the optics. For some reason I seem to remember it getting better or going away completely by cleaning the clear plastic cover on the LED bar… but it’s been a while since I’ve looked at it… so I dunno.
Yup… I think I know the problem you’re talking about… I’ve seen it on several VBs. I don’t think it’s the red plastic though, I think it’s something in the optics area inside the VB (I’ve never really tried tracking it down, but I assumed it was the clear plastic cover on the LED bar). Have you ever opened your VB to fix the display cables? Just curious whether it’s something you could have gotten on the display when you opened it.
Cool… congrats! That does look pretty nice (that glue looks higher quality/easier to work with than the stuff I’ve got, which is probably why it’s much more expensive too).
But yeah, if you’ve still got lines, either a pin is shorted to another, or one isn’t connected. Are the lines the same on both displays? If so, you have a shorted pin (because both eyes share the same bus). Disconnecting one display will tell you which one is bad (one should look fine by itself, and the other will have the lines). If the lines are only on one display, or they’re in different places, you have a pin(s) not making contact.
BTW, do you have a flash cart? If so, I could throw together a quick test to tell you which pin(s) is bad.
You could probably build gccvb (the compiler) for Mac, and probably grit (for converting graphics) as well. I don’t think either of them have a build for Mac available, and I also doubt anyone has tried building them for Mac… but more than likely it’s possible (probably without too much work). Then you just need any text editor (preferably with syntax highlighting), and you should be good to go.
Or… the easiest way is probably to install Windows either dual-booted or in a virtual machine. You might even be able to get away with it with something like Wine or Crossover (assuming there’s a Mac version of those).
Yeah, if you have a hardware/home improvement store, it should be in the plumbing/drain cleaner section. I know Lowe’s has it (if you’re in the US), and I’m guessing Home Depot, Menards, or whatever other large home improvement/hardware stores would have it too.
Alright… is this what you’re trying to do (Up/Down adjust the tilt)? I quickly hacked this together from DT’s demos: http://home.comcast.net/~virtual.boy/VB/affine_demo_k.zip . I basically combined the affine_set_all function with the affine_scale function, so I could have it generate a different scale for each line (determined by the loop counter). Of course it’s far from optimal, since it still uses floating point and has redundant code/unnecessary intermediate variables, but that should get you started.
Yeah, that’s definitely doable, assuming you’re actually modifying the BGMap. The problem that I ran across in Mario Kart is placing other objects on the screen that line up with the rendered BGMap, but not flat on the BGMap (ie karts upright, while track is laying down). Of course even that’d be easy if you have a static image like that, and aren’t rotating the playfield. Lemme see if I can throw something together for you.
That’d be pretty cool… I’d have to think of something cool to make that I could do quickly. I assume it wouldn’t really be a competition, but just something fun to do? Of course for a lot of us, “from scratch” is a copy/paste of a lot of old code to make something new, but it’d still be pretty cool.
Not sure about anyone else, but the part of making games that I dread the most is making the graphics (and I guess sound)… what might be interesting (although maybe less fun since it may limit ideas) would be to post a set of graphics (and maybe audio) and say make a game in one day using stuff from this collection of media. Then see what people come up with. Of course the media would have to be pretty non-specific so people could use their imagination, but it’d be interesting to see what people come up with. And I guess non-programmers could submit proposals of what they would have made with the resources available.
I second Falldown… I’ve been starting to work on a version of that for years, but I never can really get into it. I used to love playing that on the TI-86 though. When I was working on getting the affine stuff figured out for Mario Kart, I kept imagining Pilotwings and F-Zero… but IMO Mario Kart is the best of those games and most worthy of the time.
I also agree that we need a real FPS… something like Wolf3D or Doom.
Are you looking to do something like the view in Mario Kart (except just on an image)? I optimized my function a bunch, but David has a demo posted on his site that had that perspective (affine demo 2 in: http://www.goliathindustries.com/vb/download/affine_demos.zip ). IIRC, the main thing you need to do is divide pa and pd by the pdx loop counter. I don’t have time to look at it right now, but if I get a sec, I’ll try to help out if you still need it.
it’s very unlikely to work unless you can apply it extremely precisely (possibly using a mask like you would with solder paste). Most likely you’ll short multiple pins and make the problem worse. Solder would be much easier because solder will only stick to the conductive surfaces, unlike the conductive glue, which will stick to any surface.
If you short pins with solder, adding flux and reheating (possibly needing desoldering braid) will fix the problem. Conductive glue is much more difficult to work with, and there’s not a good way to get it to just stick to the conductive parts. Either way, you’d still need to remove the coating off the flex cable to expose the conductor.
