WOW, that looks great as well, 3D printing rules! This really gives the VB more security for the future (since these kind of parts are hard to come by).
The rubber has almost nothing to do with the whole glitchy display problem. The problem is that, while to the naked eye unnoticeable, the whole flatcable looses its connection to the board.
All the traces only have to have about 1 or 2 mm full connection to make the displays work perfectly fine.
What you have done is push the conductive adhesive on the board, which can last for a short while but then loosens up again. The glitchy display is always a bad connection to the board, or potentially could be caused by seriously broken flatcables which should be easy to spot(I have never encountered this though).
I have soldered approximately 25 pairs of VB displays with the glitchy display issue and all of them remain perfectly fine!
When you solder the traces to the board for enough length, it can obviously not loose connection to the board and hence the problem is solved this way.
TheForce81 wrote:
Looking good, I am eagerly awaiting my cases. This really gives us a great way to store our loose cartridges and since I almost only have loose cartridges this is ideal!
Thanks for the “previews” of what mine will look like 😉
You will be happy to know that your cases arrived to me from Nintendo of America yesterday. I plan to take them to the post office to mail to you on Monday morning, after which I will follow up with you then.
Ahhhh, that sounds good indeed! Thanks for the help again, though I still do not understand why there is not such an online webshop from Nintendo here in Europe.
Looking good, I am eagerly awaiting my cases. This really gives us a great way to store our loose cartridges and since I almost only have loose cartridges this is ideal!
Thanks for the “previews” of what mine will look like 😉
It is cool to see that this came out of the release I did on the ROM. Though I never owned or do own the prototype cartridge, only the ROM through a shaky deal :p .
Never thought that would kick start the VB community as it did (or it was just a coincidence that the VB action got off just a short while after).
I hope people enjoy it!
The VB community really took a turn for the better, things have gone so far so fast lately. I really enjoy it!
That is quite the rip off if you ask me! It will certainly work, but $40 excluding shipping?! If he sells a few he will be laughing his ass off.
People really overestimate how easy it is to buy a bit and grind it down. If you have a vice and any kind of grinding tool, a dremel will even work great, you can just make one yourself quite easily for only 1/4 or less of that price.
THOUGH: NEVER SOLDER ON THE BATTERY DIRECTLY, NEVERRRRRR!!!!
It will most likely explode with consequences you do not want to think about.
If you solder a battery with clips on it, be careful not to warm up the clips too long, as the same effect might happen, be warned as this is a very serious danger!
Ok, I wasn´t aware of that. Since you can solder your own accupack (rc cars), which have little metal clips already soldered onto them. I thought that these batteries are suited for high temperatures within a short period….then how do they do that?
Those clips are not soldered on, it is some sort of punch on technique used to get those clips on.
While those batteries can withstand somewhat higher temperatures, those temperatures will never reach the 200C or higher mark.
Also, you normally can and have to warm up those clips quite long to be able to solder it in the cars, the overhead heat will be evenly distributed over the large batteries so that they will not heat up that much, though it still is not a good idea to warm it up for too long as it is bad for battery life.
The small save battery does not have that much room to distribute its heat to, so you have to be extra careful with that.
Unfortunately, I do not have any games that can be used to try this method…. Otherwise I would have tried for sure!
jrronimo schrieb:
Even if there is a spot for a battery, adding one might not do anything.
Well, why wouldn´t they plan accordingly to save on money and have a unified board for all carts? From a manufacturers standpoint this would totally make sense, at least for the battery. Think of rentability in terms of lesser factory cost and usability in terms of being “upgradeable” for little to no cost in advance. Nothing unusual nowadays, even back then.
I admit that I don´t know about the programming, but who knows if the software co´s didn´t program a savegame feature into some games (that might have been dropped in hardware terms later on), that would only show up with a battery?
I completely agree that the circuit board is probably the same for battery & non-battery carts; it does make sense. But I have a feeling that there wouldn’t be a way, programatically, to “detect” a battery. Or, even if there is, I doubt any games do it. Mario Clash might be a good one to try since it has a score, but I don’t think the score’s saved anywhere…?
Or maybe just adding a battery would cause the cart to “automatically” remember the score? The theory being that the battery would supply power to the cart’s memory and it would somehow persist between plays assuming the score variable isn’t just reinitialized each time…
…the more I type words the less confident I feel about this… haha.
Ahhhh, this is what Wolfman was getting at, now I reread the post I get it, was a bit tired when I read it the first time.
I think this would be very plausible, if I had a Mario Clash cart I would have tested it, but I do not…
Octaedre wrote:
This might be completely bullshit so don’t take my word for it, but I know a guy who’s specialized in importing hardware and software from Japan (nearly every X68000 in the area that I know of was bought from him), and he told me the quickest way to drain a save battery was to not use it for long periods of time, and that at least once every six months he’d fire up all his equipment to keep the batteries from dying early.
I have no idea if this is valid or not, but it would seem logical to me, seeing how a save battery usually drains a lot quicker when you don’t use it (the one on top of my head is the Neo Geo Pocket color one which is usually completely drained if you haven’t used it in a while).
This is total BS, the batteries used in older cartridges are Lithium batteries, they do not have the same problems as most “normal” batteries have. They do not slowly lose their charge due to inactivity as many other batteries do.
So, in the case of save batteries you will only shorten the life of the battery (probably so little that you won’t notice it, but it takes more charge out of the battery if you use the cartridge) by firing up your games each 6 months.
WoLfMaN wrote:
jrronimo schrieb:
Even if there is a spot for a battery, adding one might not do anything.
Well, why wouldn´t they plan accordingly to save on money and have a unified board for all carts? From a manufacturers standpoint this would totally make sense, at least for the battery. Think of rentability in terms of lesser factory cost and usability in terms of being “upgradeable” for little to no cost in advance. Nothing unusual nowadays, even back then.
I admit that I don´t know about the programming, but who knows if the software co´s didn´t program a savegame feature into some games (that might have been dropped in hardware terms later on), that would only show up with a battery?
Here´s a link for the repair – from the dimensions of a GB cart it is likely that VB carts size is not much off in thickness, but have a look for yourself:
Definitely the way how I would approach a repair attempt!
I do not know if I understand you incorrectly, but since even the GBA games have been fitted with flash memory (the same kind of memory they use in SD cards, flash drives, etc.) so they no longer need to outfit cartridges with batteries. Not all GBA and N64 games have flash memory, but they started using flash back then for the first time and now they use it exclusively.
If you meant that they should have done it in the past, I agree, but understand the reason they did not.
I actually replaced such a battery in a GB game two months ago, a Pokemon game, the batteries die quite fast in those cartridges do to the use of a RTC which functions like a wristwatch basically, but then without the display 😉
It is quite doable, if you are careful and works well.
THOUGH: NEVER SOLDER ON THE BATTERY DIRECTLY, NEVERRRRRR!!!!
It will most likely explode with consequences you do not want to think about.
If you solder a battery with clips on it, be careful not to warm up the clips too long, as the same effect might happen, be warned as this is a very serious danger!
Good job there Gookanheimer, seems a bit tedious, but it did the job!
I just love it when VB’s are saved from this problem. I remember it when I fixed my first two displays, I was so disappointed when I first noticed the glitches in my VB. The displays are just what makes the VB so special to me.
I still think this is the worst mistake Nintendo made with the VB to be honest.
It is quite an unacceptable one even! If the VB would have been a successful device with sales of around the millions, then millions of people would have complained. I really am wondering what Nintendo would have done if such a situation would have presented itself.
Playing Paper Mario Sticker Star, great game, though the later worlds are less fun than the first two worlds if you ask me. It still is a solid game I enjoy though, not have played 20 hours in a game in only 10 days since a long time, so that tells you something I guess 😉
Benjamin Stevens wrote:
Well, we all know and have to expect that stuff like this happens after any limited release of a game. I agree, though, that he is trying to use a lie in addition to the rarity of the game to sell it, which is just wrong. I’m just surprised that it has happened so soon. My guess is that he truly bought a copy of the game and was just too lazy to make his own picture of it, so he just stole the one off of Uncle Tusker’s site for his auction. Hopefully not too many buyers were from Canada. That would make it easier to track down who the guy is.
The only real solution is to solder the screens. Every other option is temporary, for some people the oven trick has worked for up to two years, but it always comes back that way.
This is GREAT news! I can’t wait until its release, though I will obviously have to 😉
I think a “no strings attached” (where the money goes to the people who paid for it, without anything back for it but the ROM eventually) fundraiser would be a good idea to try to cover the costs as much as we can for now. I think that would be a good idea. Just to encourage the potential release of perhaps (if it really exists) Dragon Hopper.
