Any time, lwizardl; happy to be of service. Thanks for the glowing recommendation :thumpup:

3DBoyColor wrote:
Are you using the AC adapter or battery?

That’s a good question. It’s possible a low voltage could result in having insufficient power to keep both galvos moving at full speed.

It’s also possible the left mirror is wearing out or has been knocked out of alignment. You may have to disassemble your Virtual Boy and watch the two mirrors oscillate in-person. Watch the known good one (right), then look at the left to see if it acts any differently, like if it slows down or speeds up, or is not moving in the same way.

Since the mirrors are (ideally) oscillating at 50 Hz, it’s unlikely Dreammary would be able to notice a difference with the naked eye, unless he’s a cyborg, or is using a strobe-light, or both 😉

I’m unsure about what you think looking at the mirrors is supposed to accomplish, anyway. The symptom has already been identified – we know the left mirror is speeding/slowing because of the “expanding/shrinking” display (in effect, the VB itself is the “strobe light”).

Besides possibly making strange noises, a bent/twisted mirror support would most likely result only in a misaligned picture. It probably wouldn’t cause the “shaking” effect, since a properly functioning opto-sensor would compensate for any minor change to the mirror’s periodicity.

Cool. Let us know how it turns out.

Thanks for the glowing recommendation, InactiveX! 😀

@Baptist: PM sent

Koohiisan wrote:
Anyone have a good source of anaglyph glasses that work with Wiirtualboy? I tried the only ones I had, which came with a 3D movie (“Journey to the Center of the Earth”), but the red side was off enough to not fully block out the cyan side. So, I’m not getting the total 3D effect, and it’s enough to cause eyestrain.

I don’t know if Koohiisan ever worked this out, but I’ll post this, anyway…

Although I don’t own the movie, it is my understanding that it came with Magenta/Green glasses, not Red/Cyan. If this is the case, you should use #FF00FF for one eye (left?) and #00FF00 for the other eye.

@norty: Your questions are far enough off-topic that you should really have started a new thread (possibly on an entirely different forum ;-)). I don’t own a Mini, so I can’t answer.

Dreammary wrote:
My image is shaking in the left eye, it just started doing it recently.

Can anyone help me?

Without seeing it in person, I can only assume this problem is caused by a dirty or failing opto-sensor (IR photo-gap) on the offending mirror. The solution could be as simple as opening up the VB and blowing the crud out of the sensor. If you open the VB and take out the red plastic lenses, you can look through the eye opening, past the mirror, and see the opto. I’ll attach a photo.

You could try using one of those “canned air” dusters to blast it clean, or if you have one, an air-compressor (although those sometimes have dirty/oily/damp air, so YMMV).

If no amount of cleaning seems to work, it may be failing due to age. Although not impossible, it may be impractical to fix.

Attachments:

1. 

   vb_opto_sensor_id.jpg
   

(I took a bit too long to post this, but I might as well…)

Those are all excellent suggestions, DogP. The only problem with something plastic- or silicone-based is the lack of “breathability”. You don’t want your face getting sweaty or your lenses fogging up 🙂

We basically have three problems to solve. Our visor candidate has to:
1. …block out light,
2. …be comfortable against the face,
3. …be able to attach to the VB.

With the optional fourth goal of being cheap and easy to make using commonly available parts. At a minimum, it should be cheaper than the OEM one, or else what’s the point? 🙂

Number one is pretty easy. Even if what you use isn’t fully opaque, you can add more layers, add a layer of something opaque, paint it black, etc.

Number two is a bit more difficult, because there are many factors that affect “comfort”. There’s the breathability thing, making the edge soft enough to avoid getting marks on your face (which even Nintendo didn’t manage), and even making sure it doesn’t put the user’s eyes outside the comfortable focus distance of the display (which is pretty much taken care of by using the original as a template, but I thought it should be mentioned).

The third requirement is also pretty easy, since we have the measurements of both the plate and original shade. We just need the material at the interface to be stretchy enough to slip over the knobs. After that, it’s just a matter of making holes in the right spots. Of course, this assumes you’re even using the original plate. If you don’t have the plate, you just have to fabricate something that will attach to the VB, and use whatever method you want to attach the visor to that (including just making the whole thing one piece).

Lester Knight wrote:
thanks runnerpack. i am still confused as where to start but you have given something more to research. i’m currently reading up on parallel vs. series and now to add in resistors into that.

If you look at the ASCII diagram I posted, the horizontal lines are supposed to be series strings of five LEDs and one resistor. The plus signs at the ends stand for a vertical wire connecting each of these series strings in parallel with one another.

the LEDs i got seem pretty bight when hooked up to two AA batteries. based on that i thought that 6 would meet my needs, but you are right, more might be better. i’m happy to use as many as i can to create as bright of a light as possible. i do have enough room on the bike to mount 2-4 9 volt batteries without issue.

Well, you might want to just make one string as in the diagram (mine, one you generate with the calculator, or any other) and hook it up to check its brightness in the environment it’s most often going to be running in. If it’s too dim, just make another string, put it in parallel with the first, and check it. Lather, rinse, repeat 😉 Also, since you have multiple switches, you could use them to set up “low and high beams” so you can balance brightness and battery life “on-the-fly”.

If you’ve never soldered before, here’s some advice:

1. The iron is not there to melt the solder. The iron’s job is to heat up the metal you’re joining (in this case, mostly LED and resistor leads, and a few wires) and it is this metal which should melt the solder.

2. The solder will attempt to flow toward the heat source, so add solder to the opposite side of a joint from where the iron touches it. The hissing noise is the flux boiling off, and it’s a good thing; no flux = “cold” (bad) joint. Also, contrary to the old saying, a “bigger blob” does not do a “better job” 😉

3. You don’t need to worry too much about polarity on the LEDs, as long as you keep the entire string pointed the same way. LEDs have two ways to show polarity: a flat spot on the plastic part, and one lead is longer than the other. Keep connecting the longer to the shorter (or the flat side to the round side) and add the resistor to either end. If it doesn’t light when you connect the battery, just swap ends (if it still doesn’t light, you have a bad solder joint or bad component).

[RunnerPack]

For starters, you’re going to need some resistors to limit the current, or the LEDs will burn themselves out (leave it to a RatShack “expert” to forget that ;-)).

Secondly, with the resistors in there, and the three LEDs being so close to the 9V’s “nominal” voltage, it’s going to have quite a lot of power left when the voltage gets too low to light the LEDs. I would go with multiple parallel strings of two LEDs (and one resistor) each, and put the batteries in either series (18V) or parallel (9V).

You can find calculators online that will help you design LED circuits. Here’s a pretty good one that can do arrays like that I described above. I attached a pretty good one.

Third, since you have 50 LEDs, you might want to use more than six, which wouldn’t be very bright at all. Of course, you have to weigh desired brightness against battery life, so it’s up to you.

• This reply was modified 12 years, 1 month ago by RunnerPack.

Attachments:

1. 

   led_array.png
   

Woot! Necro-post, FTW! 🙂

Upon revisiting this thread, I realized I had a modified version of 133MHz’s diagram that includes the value of “x” (which I measured closer to 85mm), so here it is.

Attachments:

1. 

   eyeshade-1.png
   

Here’s the relevant thread: http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=3688

(HorvatM and 133MHz posted the visor measurements, but I posted the mounting plate dimensions).

I’m not sure what part(s) of my post you are questioning. Are you doubting the existence of circular polarization, or that my monitor uses it, or…?

This article on CP (‘specially the pik-churz ;-)) helped me understand it better; maybe it’ll do the same for you.

While there is a tiny bit of ghosting, I just confirmed that the left lens continues to pass the left image, even when rotated 90 deg. and vice versa. I even tried the “RealD” glasses, which I’ve heard are linearly polarized, and it worked fine.

It wouldn’t matter if it was 100% ghost-free, since you can’t fuse a stereo pair when it’s turned too far off-axis, and looking at one like that for too long causes eye-strain. That’s why it’s imperative that a stereo-pair has only horizontal parallax – with as much as possible appearing in both images, on the same horizontal line – and why “toe-in” is such a bad idea, due to the inherent vertical disparity it produces.

Hi, again, lwizardl! PM reply sent.

Welcome to the forum. You got a great deal on that VB. I’m looking forward to getting it working for you. Have you played much VB before? If not, you’re in for a real treat, I gotta say 😉

Why not split the difference? We could have a human-readable (though not necessarily XML, ick ;-)) descriptor file which is kept alongside the ROM, rather than being attached to it. You could even take a cue from Mednafen and include a hash of the ROM in the descriptor’s filename, which would help prevent mix-ups.

VirtualRolf wrote:
…use as short a cable as you can find. 😀

Here’s the shortest cable I’ve found 😉

I made it out of a “dead” USB cable. It’s technically not a cable, since it’s simply a pair of connectors mounted back-to-back. Surprisingly, the FB even has trouble with this, sometimes (possibly the cable wasn’t “dead” but merely doesn’t always make good contact, which would of course carry over to this one).

Attachments:

1. 

   really_short.jpg
   

2. 

   plugged_in.jpg
   

modeltfordman wrote:
Hello everyone I too am in need of a repair.

PM sent.

BTW, if you don’t want to buy a proper screwdriver, Lester’s suggestion to modify your bit is a good one (if you have the means/skills to do it, which you most likely do).

Yep, just different runs and/or different board houses. The color variation is due to either the thickness or exact formula used for the solder mask.

I’m assuming the logo is that of the board manufacturer, but the 94V0 is the UL flammability classification of the PCB material used.

seekaseeka wrote:
Also, most games have what looks like very very light, faded red dots on a grid in the blackness behind the adjust VB screen at the beginning of every game

There actually is a grid of dark red dots behind the logo on the adjustment screen. They’re drawn there on purpose.

I’ve readjusted the display in the slot multiple times, cleaned it, and since they’ve been resoldered, I would like to hope they aren’t the problem

Having fixed them myself, I know that it’s possible for a repair to appear perfect and for the display to test out fine, then start glitching again. All it probably needs is a little more solder and a quick touch of the iron on each wire. Have you asked the person who fixed it originally to give it another go?

I also wouldn’t rule out the LIF socket itself. Besides the “dimpling” problem, it’s possible the contacts themselves are simply not gripping tightly enough, or are a bit corroded. You could try putting a piece of tape along the back side of the end of the cable, to try to make it thicker. You’ll have to be extra careful when inserting it, though. And be sure to also do the “fully in, then pull out slightly” method of seating the cable.

Theres another, much harder to fix possibility. If your cable has a crease in it, like this:

It’s possible for one or more wires to have broken along the crease, due to fatigue. When I do a repair, I always A) check for that problem, and B) put a piece of tape between the display and cable, on the LED side, to take the strain off the cable, like this:

It doesn’t solve the problem if it’s already broken, but it hopefully prevents it from happening if it hasn’t. If your repair guy didn’t do that, you might want to do it yourself.

PM sent.

I solder-fixed one that had a black line like that. I, too, put it down to a bad LED, but it’s at least as likely that it’s a loose bonding wire between the driver chip and the (still functional) LED.

I’m not saying it’s practical, but with access to the right (very expensive) equipment, it could be fixable. I know that some of the more prestigious universities have wire-bonders, so its at least within the realm of possibility that someone here “knows a guy” that could make it happen.