Glover wrote:
Oof. Those poor boxes.

I’ve seen worse, and I even have worse for a few US games, but those prices go a long way towards a complete JP collection. Tempted!

Randy wrote:

It’s not very big, just over 1″ long by .75″ wide. I’d never considered putting it in the controller, but I do think it would fit.

I’ve already ordered a couple boards from retrousb and I’m planning to make brand-new cables that could be swapped in by the end-user, ideally such that the board can fit inside the controller. If the retrousb ones don’t work, I’ll check those out!

At least, if anyone’s interested. :p

GreDe85 wrote:
I’m really intrested to collect the full set of the released commercial games for the Virtual Boy, but with the 1300$ price tag for US version of the Jack Bros.. really need to think about the priorities & such

I recently bought one of the nicest Jack Bros. CIBs recently seen and it was $450 — the price was high, but the box is immaculate. It was the last cartridge I needed for my complete US collection, which I’ve also now completed in box. I received Space Pinball the day after I took the below picture, heh.

Or do you mean you want to collect a fully sealed collection? I understand the appeal, but at the same time you can’t play the games, which is half the fun!

Collection for the VB is easy to do and excellent, you’ve just gotta be willing to spend a few dollars. Everything except Virtual Bowling and Lab seem to be available regularly.

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Randy wrote:
You can get one from these guys also. I bought one, but haven’t put it together yet.

http://www.raphnet-tech.com/products/virtualboy2usb/index.php?category=Kits

Neat to see someone else doing those circuits aside from retrousb. How big is the board? Can it fit in the controller okay?

Oh that looks gorgeous! I love it! Custom colors ahoy!

Do they even make translucent filament?

*stares at mailbox harder*

For as epic and expansive as that dude’s collection is, he’s missing a lot of cheaper, easy-to get US VB games. That said, he’s got 3 of the 4 Super Rares, so I guess he wins anyway. :p

It looks like DogP built one some time ago: link

I think he used this kit.

I should try making one. I wouldn’t mind making them for people if I could get it right…

Edit:// Okay, I’ve ordered two USB kits to play with. If I’m going to make some, I’m going to do it in a way that doesn’t destroy the original cable so that it could be replaced if someone so chose, nor do I want to harm the original controller if I can help it. I’ll have to source the blue plastic internal connector, but those are common — we’ve got them here at work, for instance.

This should be a fun project…

Next time you do the repair you mentioned, post a pic to help those of us who can’t imagine the insides quite as well… heh.

vb-fan wrote:

jrronimo wrote:
Haha, yep! A lot of people are “trained” to download WinZip, which is annoying and shareware. 7-Zip is free and better in a lot of ways!

I don’t have any experience with 7-Zip, I’ll try it; thanx!

Some freeware is good — I tell people about Irfanview, an excellent image viewer. You can change color & brightness & contrast, re-size, rotate, sharpen & blur, and can print exact sizes. About the only thing you can’t do is pixel manipulation like you can in Paint. And it can play media files if it has the right plugins! I’ve never heard of ANYONE reporting a virus or malware with it…

(The icon “splatcat” is also funny; reminds me of a certain “Meany-Baby”, parody of “Beanie-Babies”…)

I’ve been a fan of Irfanview for years. It’s my standard quick-and-dirty image working program. It does all of the main things I need it to do and again, free! There are a few other little programs like that, but IrfanView and 7-Zip are some of the best free utilities out there.

vb-fan wrote:

I had “Winzip” on one computer, but this one only has 7-Zip. And I think the first is shareware. Electronics has always been my “cup of tea”, not a computer whiz; though everyone in the family does call me with computer problems!

Haha, yep! A lot of people are “trained” to download WinZip, which is annoying and shareware. 7-Zip is free and better in a lot of ways!

Benjamin Stevens wrote:

jrronimo wrote:
Hudson Soft Virtual Boy lapel pin – $500 O_O; — I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these before and way too high. Anyone interested? :p

How about 50% off and who knows how much more off the seller will accept?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nintendo-Virtual-Boy-pin-E3-2004-brand-new-in-sealed-package-/370622329435?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item564acff25b&_uhb=1

Haha, that’s what I get for not searching for the item, just posting the one I found. >< Nice. I still don't think I need one... heh.

Virtual Boy Ad Pamplhet – $50

Hudson Soft Virtual Boy lapel pin – $500 O_O; — I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these before and way too high. Anyone interested? :p

Benjamin Stevens wrote:

vb-fan wrote:

Tell me — they are “zip” files — will 7-Zip work?

That is not my area of expertise, but I am pretty sure that 7-Zip will work to extract them.

My day job is computer support so in a way, this is my area of expertise, haha. And with that I will tell you YES, 7-Zip will open .zip files.

…and pretty much *every* other compressed format: .rar, .iso, .tar, .lzh, .arj… (not that you’ll really ever run across .lzh or .arj anymore!)

thunderstruck wrote:

jrronimo wrote:
That’s awesome and fantastic work! It sounds like you’re working towards being able to pick what tune you want to play for each level? Perfect.

I’d be very interested to see what the music “looks” like, programmatically. But maybe that’s impossible without the source code. I feel like something like that would go a long ways towards writing some sort of synth program or a tracker or something.

If you are intrested in sound I could go ahead and polish/comment the sources oh my midi player so that it can be released. It is still not perfect but maybe a good starting point.

That’d be great if you’ve got some spare time to do it! Not a high-priority project by any means — I’m super-noobish and it’ll be a long time before I do anything with it.

Awesome! Good job! Looking forward to extra pucks, too.

Guy Perfect wrote:

jrronimo wrote:

I’d be very interested to see what the music “looks” like, programmatically. But maybe that’s impossible without the source code.

You silly person. Music is usually one of the easier things to hack. (-:

When you haven’t started anywhere with anything, every little bit helps, heh. I’ll keep it in mind, though, and actually dig into this stuff one of these days.

HorvatM wrote:
Easier my ass. The VSU’s many capabilities (interval, envelope, etc.) mean that probably everyone designed their own cryptic MIDI-like format. And, at least in Insmouse, the sound code is a mess of several routines that appear to have been written in assembly by hand and they exchange data in registers, so it’s very hard to follow because you don’t know which of the many registers of the V810 hold relevant data and which are just garbage.

Interesting! It almost sounds like they were doing some sort of procedural generation type stuff — i.e., the music changes based on what’s happening in the environment. Moonbase Commander for PC does that sort of thing; it’s really neat when you pull it off!

Anyway, sorry for hijacking the thread. I should start a new one one of these days.

That’s awesome and fantastic work! It sounds like you’re working towards being able to pick what tune you want to play for each level? Perfect.

I’d be very interested to see what the music “looks” like, programmatically. But maybe that’s impossible without the source code. I feel like something like that would go a long ways towards writing some sort of synth program or a tracker or something.

Oh man those do look pretty sweet. Might be a nice way to stash loose carts so I don’t have to open up cardboard boxes and hurt ’em.

Thanks for the “how-to”! I have a feeling I’ll be making some of these… eventually.

Dor-Si wrote:

jrronimo – It’s nice to see you have a shelf dedicated to your VB collection and that you keep it elevated off the floor, sitting high on it’s perch where it belongs. That’s how mine started as well, but it didn’t stay that way for long! Also, congrats on finding the that rare minty copy of Jack Bros.

Yeah, I suspect I’ll start displaying the collection soon. I had a look around eBay and it looks like I can even finish my non-sealed boxed collection for about US$200 for the ones I still need. That’s very, very tempting.

In the past, I had some Magic cards in my basement on the floor. The basement flooded while I was away on a trip and many of my cards got ruined. I now know better than to keep things just on the floor, haha.