Phobophile wrote:
Sorry. I wanted to modify my post and haven’t found how.

The screw i’m talking is not a #4 1/2inch. It’s 1/4inch long…

Oh, I just realized that, when you called them “phillips screws” you were referring to the ones that hold the display boards in, not phillips-head replacements for the ones holding the VB together.

I don’t think those have a standard size, but they have a major diameter of ~0.075″ and seem to be 40 TPI, as near as I can tell. The same screw is used to hold the mainboard down, so you could use one of those and find some other way to secure the mainboard, or just be careful with the VB (like you should be, anyway) and the one screw will probably be sufficient (since it doesn’t move around, unlike the display boards).

BTW, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you damage the screw? I’ve never encountered one that took much force to turn. If you stripped out the head, but the threads are still good, you might be able to cut a slot in the head and use a flat-bladed screwdriver to turn it.

I’m actualy probing for some prices to get them soldered. Aren’t you back into business?

Sorry, no, but HPL and TheForce both do excellent work.

LMSBTFY (let me search box that for you)

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=29882#forumpost29882

Also, it doesn’t matter what heat-source you use, the “oven trick” is temporary and none-too-good for the display cable. You’re way better-off sending those to be soldered. It’s well worth the price, as anyone who’s had it done will attest (and many have – on this very forum).

“Short-lived”? DLP projectors (including this thing) are still being actively developed and manufactured. I bought an LED-driven, pocket-sized, DLP projector a few months ago. They’re even being modified and used in certain 3D printers.

Maybe you mean DLP-based rear-projection TVs, which – along with all other RP TVs – are definitely obsolete, but the projection technology itself is alive and well.

Near as I can tell, it’s just a picoprojector with a really dim LED that you look into instead of looking at the image bounced off of a screen. They claim there are no “pixels”, but that’s exactly what the mirrors in the DMD are.

LEDs and mirrors is about where the similarity with a VB ends. Since this has one mirror per pixel, there’s no scanning motion as in the VB (although I’m sure the addressing of the mirrors is time multiplexed, like the pixels in an LCD or OLED screen). In fact, since the mirrors are “1-bit” on/off devices, colors have to be created by PWM – flickering the mirrors on and off, with the amount of on time deciding the brightness (for each of the R, G, and B LEDs).

BTW, the claim of “directly on the retina” is pure hogwash; there’s no getting to the retina except through the eye’s own optics (without major surgery), so it’s no different than any other image, real or computer generated. This is just a run-of-the-mill stereo microscope pointed at a pair of DMDs (supports SBS stereo).

1) Great work!

2) Is there a makefile or other build script/instructions available? I’m using MinGW, and I’d like to be able to make the odd contribution now and then.

3) To answer your question, I would prefer that you stick to plain C, or maybe C++ (but whatever you do, please don’t add a V. Studio dependency on Windows).

4) If you must add a non-C language for the GUI, you could do much worse than my personal favorite scripting language: Ruby.
* It’s easy to learn.
* It runs on all the target platforms (and is easy to install on any of them).
* It’s built to allow easy wrapping of C code inside a “C extension” (and there are even tools like SWIG which perform most of the work for you).
* If you don’t need a “rubyish” OOP interface, you can simply call functions inside DLLs from Ruby code.
* There’s a great, well-maintained, cross-platform, graphics/input/sound library for it called Gosu (which is a clean, well-designed API wrapper around SDL2 and OpenGL. BTW, it’s written in C++ and the Ruby version is made using SWIG). It already does fonts (using TTF, but individual characters or the whole font can use custom bitmap images) and text input. You can even incorporate custom OpenGL code into its pipeline.
* There are many other useful libraries available in the form of “gems” (at http://www.rubygems.org/) installable with a nice package manager that comes with Ruby (e.g. getting Gosu is as easy as “gem install gosu”).

5) The word “acknowledgment” is misspelled in the copyright notice.

I agree with TheForce81, the spring you have looks like either a homemade or found replacement (which helps explain why it would pop out in the first place). I don’t have a loose spring, but from what I can see of the one in my stand, it looks more like the one TF81 posted than it does yours.

I had my stand apart once, and IIRC, I think I put it back together by just snapping the clip in place (with the hinge pins in their respective holes) and pushing the spring into the gap underneath (behind the part you press with your thumb) until it popped into place. The curved part goes in first, so the inside of the spring can be seen if you look into the aforementioned gap. With the stock spring (as seen in TF81’s photos), the widest part goes toward the moving part of the clip, and the complex folded part goes toward the main body of the stand.

speedyink wrote:
Contact HP Lovethrash.

FTFY

Welcome to the site, RotoMan!

HP Lovethrash wrote:
Next, I plan to trim down the controller/memory card port…

Nicely done! I would probably sand the tops of the LEDs to reduce the “hot-spot” effect, but otherwise very cool.

Also… why would you keep the controller/memory card ports? They’re a waste of space since you can just wire the receiver and (a) memory card(s) directly to the mobo (or use some kind of mating headers to make them easier to change out).

Also, why is it an “audiophile” system? Did you do something to improve the audio output? Did you use gold-plated, oxygen-/gluten-free, non-GMO, cables? Did you replace the CD-ROM controller chips with vacuum-tubes to give the PCM data more warmth and prevent wow and flutter?

The only time I’ve seen individual black lines on displays I’ve repaired, they were actual “dead pixels” caused by individual damaged or disconnected LEDs. Of course, they were sharp, not blurry, and I was always very careful to never touch, scratch, or get any contaminants on the clear LED cover while they were in my care (and they were all very clean when they got to me).

I agree that they should be soldered, but it’s pretty easy to tell the difference between cable issues and dirt/LED issues. Cable issues almost always affect either the whole display or every nth horizontal line. The data is sent 16 pixels at a time, so one open or shorted data line is going to affect every 16th row. If one of the three BRTx lines is affected, it will change the total number of red shades visible on the screen. If it’s a timing signal, the screen will likely be either all black or solid red.

Note that the connection between the cable and the display isn’t the only source of these problems. As alluded to by Lester, the plug must also be clean, undamaged, and seated properly in the VB’s mainboard. DogP wrote about the proper procedure in this post.

The ROM (read-only memory; so no, it can’t be reused) chip in the VB carts have non-standard pinouts, so there is no drop-in replacement. The custom chip in the Everdrive is likely either an FPGA (field-programmable gate array) or an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit), neither of which would actually hold the game(s). They’re used to simulate a cart ROM while getting the data from the SD card (or some other flash memory). IIRC, this is exactly how the “VBSD” cartridge was going to work (and there may be a working prototype by know, for all I know).

TMK, all of the VB repros and custom carts have been pre-programmed FlashBoys without the USB port and possibly other programming-related circuitry installed (with the obvious exception of Hyper Fighting).

I already contacted HPL directly, but in case anyone else is curious, I suggested looking for “breadboarding” wires, and trying to find stranded ones (solid will work, too, but be less reliable due to being a single point of failure).

For the magnet wire, I suggested the “burn and sand off the char” method, or chemically stripping it (with, e.g., acetone).

Sbeehive wrote:
About to take a stab at fixing the better of the two displays.

As for the first one, I have some questions:

1) Would you guys recommend peeling what’s left of the plastic off of the display and trying to solder down what’s left of the copper?

I would only do that if you see a trace without a wire soldered to it (meaning the end of the wire is up under the plastic).

It’s possible that there is some contaminant under there shorting something out. I used to let a little isopropanol wick under there and use a popsicle stick (sanded smooth into a kind of chisel tip) as a scraper/squeegee to try to squeeze stuff out from under it.

2) Does it make any sense that I’m testing no shorts between traces yet the picture still looks like garbage?

Only if there are certain wires not making contact with the board (i.e. not soldered)

3) Is there any validity to testing the connections from the leads to the pin connector on the VB itself? When I did this everything tested out as it should, but it makes no sense that the picture is still garbage.

By “leads” do you mean the traces on the display PCB itself?

If every trace on the PCB connects to its corresponding pin on the VB mainboard, and only that pin, the picture should be perfect.

You should also make sure they’re making good contact with the socket. Here’s a post about it.

I get the sense that the original copper wire isn’t making contact on some of the leads. I just don’t understand how I can get a good readout via multimeter from the very bottom of the PCB to the edge connector if there’s no connectivity. My only other two working hypothesis is that I somehow damaged the ribbon cable, the pcb itself, or the VB unit.

It is possible that a crease caused by a failed strain-relief has caused one or more wires to break, due to work-hardening of the copper. The heat of the iron and the surface-tension of the solder usually cause the broken ends to get pulled out from under the plastic, but not always.

Sorry to double post, but I just realized nobody’s mentioned the Lost Vikings series, yet. If you like puzzle-platforming, you have to check it out (but play the SNES version of LV2, because the Windows/Saturn/PS1 version – with the cringe-worthy title “Norse by Norsewest” – has hideous 90’s pre-rendered “NURBS” graphics and very cheesy voice acting – some of my favorite voice actors, but terrible dialog that’s bad enough just reading it in the SNES version…

Blizzard, if you’re reading this, I (and literally dozens of other LV fans :-P) have been waiting decades for a remake/sequel, with online and local (split-screen) multiplayer! Put down the Warcraft for a little while and get to work! Actually, it doesn’t even have to be about vikings; make another Warcraft spin-off game with LV gameplay and I’d be fine with that. Bonus points if you make it for 3DS

adler_0 wrote:
Arkista’s Ring for nes. Please go check out this game. So much fun and very underrated in my opinion.

This game is ridiculously fun, especially given the simplicity of both the graphics and gameplay. Thanks for sharing!

Wow, well-spotted! Sad to think about that VB wandering around Canada wearing an eye-patch, though…

It’s very odd that the prop-master would happen to have VB parts to hand when looking for bits to make Asgard Acrylic Techno-thingies(TM) out of O_o

Makes you wonder if he made anything from any of the other parts.

Lester Knight wrote:
Is it a Super Joy III?

Yep, that’s it. I got it used, so it didn’t come with the second controller or “zapper”, but I did get the gun (well, one that looks like it; I haven’t actually tried them together) later from another 2nd-hand store. I’m pretty sure it’s in pieces in a zip-top bag somewhere, waiting for me to build its “NoaC” into a custom NES of some kind…

If only they had a few more kilobytes of space to make it an even billion…

Somewhere, I have a “famiclone” in the shape of an N64 controller that has a Famicom cart slot. I don’t remember how many games it claimed to contain (and I don’t think I ever found out how many it actually contained).

Does the transmitter support A and B, are they just left disconnected, or did you hook them in parallel with other buttons?

I’m also curious about what you’re going to do with the 10mm LED…

Yes, that does look like a light blue (cyan), rather than a dithered dark blue. Now that I think about it, it makes sense that this is a standard CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, key {black}) print, just like those produced by standard inkjet and color laser printers, rather than using custom mixed inks. If that’s the case, then it’s the darker blue of the screen-shots that was produced by dithering.

speedyink wrote:
Well there ya go, I don’t have much knowledge in the printing field. I can’t find a test pattern on the box, just the number 12 (?).

There is blue on the box as well, and the “55” gradient is like a brownish color on white. Does that mean it uses black and brown as well? Or would that be achieved by mixing?

I mean, you’re probably right as for why it ended up those colors. I’m just curious about printing at this point =P

I’m by no means a professional printer, I just tend to pick up bits and pieces of knowledge here and there, especially concerning technology. The light blue is likely just the deep blue printed with a sparse dither pattern. The brown is likely a combination of the red and the yellow.

If you want to see what the dither patterns (traditionally called “halftones”) look like up close, get one of the cheap, plastic microscopes they sell to parents of nerdy children I have a 30X made by “Uncle Milton” (the ant farm people) that is actually quite well-made. It served me well when I needed to examine solder joints on display PCBs.