GEZ wrote:

Wow, thanks very much – I love this community!
And thanks RetroDan!

You ain’t kiddin’. Something about VB fans make them very, very cool people. Bigmak donated a substantial amount of stuff for the run, like VB dust covers, bags, and a shit-ton of the printed materials, and freakin’ GAVE me a copy of Bound High.

Started reading this thread, was bummed when I noticed it starts six years ago (as I’d obviously missed my shot), finished reading it, and am glad it’s still in the works. This will be a definite buy for me.

I did wonder, though, with all the arguing over whether to make the connector red or black, nobody ever thought about matching the design of the VB itself – red on one half, black on the other. Call me weird, but I quite like that idea a lot.

vuefinder83 wrote:

thunderstruck wrote:

Cool, thanks man.

No prob, I’m more than happy to help.

GEZ wrote:
Any room for one more on the list? Don’t have a donor though. I am in Canada…

GEZ, I got your back bro.

RetroDan, I’m now passing over my MT donor cart over to GEZ, and will now be donoring a Red Alarm cart in place of that one.

Applied. At this time, all donor carts are being called in. I’ve sent PMs to everybody who indicated that they would donate a cart.

GEZ wrote:
Any room for one more on the list? Don’t have a donor though. I am in Canada…

Added you to the list.

RareGameCollector wrote:

RetroDan wrote:

jrronimo wrote:
I’m curious: Did you make your own new PCB? If so, that’s fantastic! Can you share any information about the board?

Confession – the current PCB I use is designed by a fellow out in California named Kevin Mellott. For the record, I did tell him about this project, and he is alright with me using his board. I am in the process of designing my own board, as soon as I determine a Flash chip in 4Mbit, 8Mbit, and 16Mbit sizes that includes a #RESET line and operates on 5V. It’s harder than you’d think.

The board is viewable in the first post of the NintendoAge thread, fully populated except for the nvRAM and MaskROM.

Not seeing a pic anywhere?

http://nintendoagemedia.com/_usermedia/attachments/F9E6E75A-C572-131A-E00E1AC6C6B9DB46.png

I’ve actually had the idea for a while now of making what I privately refer to as “Pokemon Very Red” and “Pokemon Extremely Red”. With the relative ease of making your own VUE-004 link cable, it’s a fascinating thought to be able to battle Pokemon with another player on the VB.

Then, of course, there’s the obligatory necessity of making a Zelda game for the system – I mean, what Nintendo system doesn’t have one? Find a need and fill it.

Judging by the pics I found online, Mindstorm used the Intel DA28f016 series of chips. He must have cleaned them out though – when I learned what chip he used, I started searching for them, but nobody seems to have them anymore.

DogP wrote:
The left and right displays are identical and interchangeable… as are US and JP displays.

DogP

Huh. Didn’t look that way to me. Guess I’m mistaken, mea culpa.

No, you can’t use the left LED array on the right eye – the contacts on the board won’t line up correctly if you swap the arrays.

“Baking” the VB might not do a whole lot – the correct fix is to solder the ribbon cable where the glue is to create a solid, permanent connection instead of the pressure-based one on the un-fixed cable. It is probably the worst design choice I’ve ever seen from a Nintendo product – it’s literally designed to fail, and soldering it in the first place wouldn’t have cost more than a few pennies extra per unit.

There’s a fellow or two on eBay who provide this fix for about $40, and I’ve done it myself to repair my units.

jrronimo wrote:
I’m curious: Did you make your own new PCB? If so, that’s fantastic! Can you share any information about the board?

Confession – the current PCB I use is designed by a fellow out in California named Kevin Mellott. For the record, I did tell him about this project, and he is alright with me using his board. I am in the process of designing my own board, as soon as I determine a Flash chip in 4Mbit, 8Mbit, and 16Mbit sizes that includes a #RESET line and operates on 5V. It’s harder than you’d think.

The board is viewable in the first post of the NintendoAge thread, fully populated except for the nvRAM and MaskROM.

[RetroDan]

jumpman wrote:
Hey Dan, please add me to the list if there are anymore spots left, thanks!

Added. Only a few spots left now.

At this time, I’d like to go over procedure for those of you with donor carts or trade-ins. When the waiting list is filled completely, I will be be contacting each member with a donor or a trade-in with the shipping address to send their carts. Included with the carts you send, I would like each of you to add a piece of paper with your username, what carts you’re donating (and how many), and your shipping address. Having written correspondence will help me keep things straight so that there are no mixups.

Please be aware that these items will be assembled by hand, and that will take some time. I will keep the thread updated on production progress, but please don’t be surprised if this takes a few weeks. As far as shipping goes, US orders will ship first when the project is completed, and then International orders. All shipments will include a tracking number.

Thanks to everyone in the community who is helping this project succeed – I couldn’t have done it without you.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by RetroDan.

vuefinder83 wrote:

RetroDan wrote:
Added to the list.

I would like to be added to the list if it’s not too late. I also have enough MT donor carts to cover me and my good friends, Robert Molander, L_E_T, and thunderstruck, if donors are still needed.

Sure, I’ll take four donors from you. I’ll credit them for the carts, if that’s okay.

Added to the list.

Don’t worry about it too much – I already have something like 45 of the 50 donors either in hand or promised on a per-buyer basis. Sure, it would help a bit, and save you a bit of cash, but it’s not a big deal.

While I’m not comfortable enough to repair another person’s VB, I did recently have to do this myself, and it’s not terribly difficult.

All you really need is a screwdriver, a gamebit, flux, and a soldering iron. The reason glitchy display is caused by the LED PCBs being connected by glue instead of a solid solder connection (probably one of Nintendo’s dumbest decisions). All that needs to be done is painting some flux over the pads and using a bit of solder to form solid, PERMANENT connections between the ribbon cable and the LED PCB.

The ribbon cable is fairly straightforward – it’s even possible to remove the cable entirely and solder in kynar wire – you just need to make sure that the contacts match up correctly.

Quite frankly, the hardest part is getting the VB taken apart – it’s a bit of a strange beast.

As I am only now realizing that I can’t edit posts on PlanetVB after a period of time, the updated list will be on the NintendoAge thread, but I will absolutely monitor this one.

Consider it done, gents. Will either of you be submitting donor carts?

[RetroDan]

Australia? Yikes. Shipping from the US is going to be expensive. As for donors, Mario Tennis is the standard, as it’s not a good or desired game (in most people’s opinion), but there is the option of donating a US Jack Bros in return for TWO CIB copies and my own Jack Bros Repro (so you won’t feel totally Jack-less).

Now that I’m capable of posting here, I’ve received a few PMs from members that would be interested in joining the buy, so I’m officially opening up the waiting list here:

SD Gundam Waiting List:

1. NintendoAge ProtonX (Mario Tennis)
2. NintendoAge plaindulloatmeal
3. NintendoAge Soma (Mario Tennis)
4. NintendoAge daillest
5. NintendoAge Quazonk
6. NintendoAge MrWunderful (Mario Tennis)
7. NintendoAge dannyplante (Virtual League Baseball)
8. NintendoAge spawn
9. NintendoAge kurtori (Virtual League Baseball)
10. NintendoAge Atarian75
11. NintendoAge Otraotaku (donor?)
12. NintendoAge Atom
13. NintendoAge FerryGooD (3D Tetris trade – thank you very much!)
14.
15. NintendoAge The Hero
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
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35.
36.
37.
38.
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50. NintendoAge Double_Dan_Gaming (What, you thought I wouldn’t want my own copy? )

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by RetroDan.

A Dragon Hopper dump would be absolutely brain-exploding, but I don’t think we’ll ever see it. Although there are magazine scans indicative that at least some working form of the game (probably a late beta or maybe even a Release Candidate) left Nintendo’s hands, there’s no proof that anyone outside of Nintendo ever got their hands on it after that. I’m guessing that if it still exists in any physical form, it’s in the Nintendo Archives. At best, it’s in the hands of a collector, but if it’s outside of the Nintendo Archives at all, I think the sad truth is that it’s probably in a landfill somewhere.

Can’t tell you how much I would love to be proven wrong, though.

Well, I should hope I would be considered ‘straight up’, gents and ladies. (Finally got the registration thing working).

If you and this PlanetVB community have any questions, I’m more than happy to answer them for you.