Where do you live? If you live in Europe you can PM me for a price and other details. If you live in NA you better contact Runnerpack.

Wow! I thought you fooled me with this as an April fool’s joke, but you guys actually did it! Looks pretty nice, though the expected “it has to be customized to the user” thing was to be expected 😉

Tested it some more, never seen the problem again! So this problem is confirmed to be solved with Runnerpack’s patched ROM!!

Any way to send our BH! repro carts for a reflash? 🙂

Thanks Runnerpack, it works great, tried it 5 times powering off and on removing the cartridge and not removing it. Will test some more this evening when I come back home from work, but for now it seems to do the trick and the game works fine (no hangs on real hardware with FB).

It is a very nice find indeed and very insightful information!

So to summarize what is going on here, it basically is a bug in the current BH! ROM but it doesn’t affect most VB’s because they sort of accidentally reset to a 0 state while other VB’s could load 1 state which causes the background to be set incorrectly which causes this issue.

Thanks everyone for all the input which eventually led to DogP’s conclusion.

Wow, great that you figured that out!

Strange though that this one mainboard suffers from this problem consistently and others almost never. That would mean that not every mainboard is created with the same chips?
It still is a bit curious, though the reason why it can happen is pretty clear of course.

If someone with the know-how could be so kind to change the BH! ROM with this setting incorporated correctly, I would be grateful and could put it to the test.

Well, as I was just too curious, I just tested it and unfortunately, it didn’t make any difference other than that the cartridge was really easy to put in and out of the slot now 😉

DogP wrote:

TheForce81 wrote:
I am pretty sure it isn’t a ROM problem, but just to be thorough I added the ROM like I flashed it on my FB and to be clear, I also used the reproduction cart that was available to buy a while ago and they both suffered the same problem.

Yep… I wasn’t suspecting a ROM problem… but there are a few ROMs out there, and I didn’t want to try chasing memory locations in a ROM that’s different than the one you’re using.

I’d have to look in more detail, but looking at those pictures… the first thing that comes to mind is the BKCOL register being set to 3, rather than 0. It’s possible that there’s something goofy with the way BH handles BKCOL (maybe it never initializes it, or writes to it when it’s not supposed to). I’ll try to look at it more closely later.

DogP

Thanks for looking at this, as I am not that big of a software person, is it easy to change the BKCOL (whatever that might be 😛 ) to 0 hard coded and send me the ROM (again, not sure if possible, but that is the first thing that comes to mind when reading your response)? Take your time with it of course!

I am pretty happy with all the responses here and I just sprayed the connector, but do not wish to short circuit anything and really have to go to sleep now, have tennis tomorrow, is already past midnight and don’t want to show up red eyed to my team 😛 so won’t be waiting out the 30 minute work in time.

speedyink wrote:
Huh, sorry I don’t really any ideas as to why, but this happened to me for like a day with my Bound High cart on my VB.. I thought my displays were loosening up, but when I tried a different game it played fine. The next time I played Bound High (a couple days later) all was back to normal, and it hasn’t happened since.

Unfortunately I didn’t think to try my other VB, but it sounds like you’ve tested that already.

The only useful bit of info I can think of is my house is heated with a woodstove, so it can cycle from warm to cold quite a bit over winter time. Have you tried doing a couple heat cycles to the main board (nothing crazy, maybe from like 10 degrees C to 30 degrees)

Thanks for your input as well, I already thought it could be the cart, but as it happens with the FB and the repro cart as well, I kind of dismissed the cart itself. But that never had me doubt it could have been the cart slot of the mainboard, so I checked it and cleaned it, the only thing I didn’t try is special contact cleaner.
So I will try that soon just to be sure that isn’t the problem as your experience does give me at least some more empirical data! That is more than I had hoped for to be honest!

I am pretty sure it isn’t a ROM problem, but just to be thorough I added the ROM like I flashed it on my FB and to be clear, I also used the reproduction cart that was available to buy a while ago and they both suffered the same problem.

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Well, just finished the tedious process of flashing and trying all the commercially released games and have come to the conclusion that none of those exhibit any problems with this mainboard except for Bound High!

[TheForce81]

Tauwasser wrote:
Take the VB apart, take macro shots of the mainboard. From both sides. You might get lucky and a member here can point out something obvious through visual inspection.

You might get even luckier and have the problem magically disappear once you re-assemble the VB.

It’s worth a try.

cYa,

Tauwasser

Thanks for your input! Already cleaned the board by using an air compressor (while the mainboard seemed completely clean, though you never know) and I took a good look at all parts of the board using a magnifying glass and couldn’t see anything.

Will be trying some homebrew later today to see if some other games exhibit these problems on this particular mainboard.

EDIT:
Well, I tried a lot of games and some homebrew and even the Display Tester didn’t show any problems! So it seems to be isolated to BH! which might say something about BH! or makes it a very curious case. Could anyone with more software knowledge see if BH! uses more RAM than other games? I of course do not expect (if anyone is willing of course) to check it against all other available games.
If possible, comparing it randomly against a few other games could be insightful.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 4 months ago by TheForce81.

RunnerPack wrote:
I believe Wyndcrosser was talking about this thread. Is this the actual VB you’re having trouble with? Back then, I also thought it might be a very specialized cable glitch problem, but that’s been eliminated, obviously.

It has to be something like Greg mentioned; damage related to video RAM or the VIP itself. However, rather than actual damaged parts, it could be as simple as a short between some of the upper address lines, which would cause only certain areas of memory to be affected. Maybe a thorough wash with IPA (isopropyl alcohol) and/or ultrasonic vibration, followed by drying in a hot oven (with gradual warm-up and cool-down to prevent thermal shock to the parts), would solve it.

Yes, that is the VB I was talking about and it is already on its way to him. I acquired two VB’s through eBay a month ago and used one of its mainboards to swap. So now he can finally play BH! without issues.

Too bad I do not have equipment to perform ultrasonic vibration to test your proposed process.

Seems I totally forgot about that thread, have been pretty swamped with stuff lately, working two very different jobs and have had a lot of extra curricular activities to boot!

Greg Stevens wrote:
Not being a hardware guy but a software one. If I saw the issue while coding id guess there was something wrong with character or bgmap memory areas.

That of course could very well be, Bound High! could use more of the RAM available than those other games and if that part of the RAM would be corrupted, this will only show up in that case.

Thanks for your input as well 😉

Wyndcrosser wrote:
I’m a little bit confused with what you wrote, but the issue is related to bad connectors on the eye pieces due to how BH works. I think there was a thread about this already. Search for Bound High and it should come up.

Well, it most definitely isn’t that, the display units were fine in another VB unit. But thanks for the input!

marioweezer wrote:
Haha, thanks RunnerPack! I’ve sent TheForce81 a PM to see if he can do a permanent fix on my VB. As you said, worth doing now rather than waiting until the display fails!

You have a PM! 😉

It sounds like a great idea, though $50k is a lot of money to raise, but if 500 members here would be willing to spend $100 on it, the goal will already be met.

I am willing to pledge for $100,- to it, with a but, it needs to be a game that would be interesting to me and the idea in that mock-up thread does interest me so 😉

Definitely Zelda! Ohhh would that have made one hell of a great experience! I love A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS and that is a 2D style Zelda in 3D and it adds to the experience there. Ahhh well, too bad it didn’t happen 😉

Johnny365 wrote:
Yes, I do plan on getting it permanently fixed just so I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. I guess I’ll have to go game hunting :\

Edit: Just realized I don’t have a long game bit to get into the screw holes on the unit. Time for Ebay!

Get these and you are definitely good to go!

Johnny365 wrote:
How much does he charge on average? Also, is there a way to test the displays without any games inserted when I get the controller/AC tap?

I won’t be able to get any games for a little while I think.

No, there is no way to test it without a game inserted unfortunately. Please PM him to ask his price.
In any way, if you are really committed to getting into the Virtual Boy, having them soldered is the way to go. Every display will display glitches at some point.