Why can’t we all just get along? 🙂

In response to the shipping thing, I have sold things on eBay and Half from the US, and I’ve seen my share of “will you ship to” requests. I’ve done it a few times and almost every time the person on the receiving end refuses to pay the additional fees. Several times I ended up paying the difference out of my pocket. So now, I only ship overseas if the person communicates very well and explicitly says they are going to pay the extra cost. So in your case I would have said “yes,” but when I get these random requests from people with <5 feedback to ship to Australia or whatever, I get suspicious.

Mine is VB100559576

I don’t know anything about how the VB interfaces with a cartridge, how it reads memory from the ROM, any of the pinouts, and I haven’t done any VB programming (yet) so I wouldn’t be very good at this project.

Might I suggest using a PIC24F? You could get 16MIPS with the 8MHz internal clock and a 4x phase-lock-loop enabled. And the Microchip C32 compiler has some good file management libraries you could use for the micro SD card.

Some good ideas here. I thought about doing this myself. But then I realized how hard it would be. The concept is fairly straight forward but getting everything to work would be a nightmare. More power to you if you want to take on something like this, I’d be happy to help. Microcontrollers are my specialty

Yes, in my original post I said you should take out the resistor because it isn’t needed. I don’t know where that design came from so I can’t comment on what the purpose of that resistor was.

That’s a pretty sweet hack, DogP. However, I happen to own a game gear rechargeable pack and it’s really bad. The batteries have been cycled so many times I can only play the GG for about 30 minutes before it dies. So yeah, that’s a great idea as long as the battery back does a decent job powering the VB.

RunnerPack wrote:
I think an internal modification would be cool (and that’s a very good circuit/description by Vaughanabe13) but you could also just go with a commercial UPS unit. Even the smallest one should be able to supply power to a VB for days–maybe even weeks… Just make sure the switch-over is “instantaneous”.

As an addendum to Vaughanabe13’s circuit, adding one or more large value capacitors in parallel with the battery and AC adapter (with a voltage rating of at least double your AC adapter output) would give you a little added insurance during the switch-over. And if you use electrolytics, mind the polarity.

Yeah, good call about the capacitor. It’s not really necessary, but if you’re paranoid about losing power during a game it would be extra insurance. If you’re using a large capacitor (maybe 20-50 uF rated for 20+ V) it will most likely be polarized, so make sure you connect the negative lead to ground and the positive lead to the V+ rail (after the diodes in the above circuit).

The way it works is the capacitor will get charged to V+ (around 9V) when you turn on the power, and when the power switches between AC and batteries the capacitor will discharge very slightly to maintain the output voltage of 9V while the switch is occuring. This would be a necessity if you were using regular (slow) diodes, but with schottkys it shouldn’t be an issue.

Also, I think a UPS would be pretty overkill (and expensive) for this application. Those are usually used for servers, automated test equipment, and PC’s that run 24/7.

[Vaughanabe13]

Usually this type of circuit is used on clocks, where the real-time-clock chip needs to be powered by a battery if the wall wart fails/power goes out.

An easy way to do it is by connecting the battery and the adapter in parallel, and protecting the battery with a fast-switching diode, such as a schottky diode. Here is a circuit example to see what I mean:

The voltage output of the adapter should be greater than the voltage of the batteries wired in series. So, if you are wiring 6 AA’s in series you have approx. 1.5*6 = 9V. This means the adapter should output more than 9V for this circuit to work. I haven’t taken a multimeter to my VB adapter so I can’t confirm this. Keep in mind that the voltage a battery puts out decreases over time, so you most likely won’t get 9V (which is good, in this case).

*Note* If you’re using rechargeable batteries, the equivalent voltage of the battery pack will be significantly lower than 9V, probably around 7V. Then you’re fine with the standard 9V output of the adapter, but again, I don’t know what the VB adapter puts out so you’re probably fine either way.

The way it works is when the AC adapter is plugged in, it puts the diode D2 in reverse bias, and the battery is essentially disconnected from the circuit, so the VB is powered through the adapter and D1. Schottky diodes have a low forward voltage drop of around ~.2V, so it will not affect the VB in normal operation. Now, if there is a power failure, D2 will now conduct forward current and D1 will be in reverse bias, so the AC adapter will then be disconnected from the circuit and the VB will be powered from batteries. You need a fast switching diode for this so the VB does not sense a change on the V+ rail and reset the game, which is why you should use a pair of schottkys. Then, if the power were to come back on, the original scenario would be true again and you would be running on AC power again, with the battery circuit disconnected.

In the case of the example circuit in this post, the “12 volt power supply” would be your VB adapter, the “12v gel cell” is your AA battery pack (wired in series), and “Beacon” is your virtual boy. I have seen examples with and without the resistor, but I would probably leave it out. 10W resistors are gigantic and cumbersome and it was most likely used as a current-limiter for the battery pack, which you would not want for the VB circuit. Sorry I couldn’t find a better example, I just looked it up in google image search and that’s all I could find for now.

• This reply was modified 14 years, 2 months ago by Vaughanabe13.
• This reply was modified 14 years, 2 months ago by Vaughanabe13.
• This reply was modified 14 years, 2 months ago by Vaughanabe13.

The one in IC is not the best, but they do have a decent collection of old games (PSX/N64 and earlier age). They had 6 VB games when I checked today, so that’s not too bad.

Thanks for the tip. There is a Gamers in Iowa City as well and they also carry a few odd VB games. Unfortunately they usually ask a higher price than what I can find on eBay, and they never have the dust covers or boxes/manuals. I never see any VB systems or accessories though, only the games. It makes me wonder who the people are that are selling these games to them…

Haha nice. When’s the last time Iowa State scored a touchdown on us? I think it was over 3 years ago…

Currently Own:
Self-built Core i7 gaming PC
Nintendo Virtual Boy
Microsoft Xbox 360
Sony Playstation 3 Slim 120GB
Nintendo Wii (with Homebrew channel and USB hard drive)
Sony PSP (custom firmware)
Nintendo DS Lite w/flash cart
Sega Dreamcast
Nintendo 64
Sega Game Gear

and in the past I have also owned:
Sega Genesis/32X
Sega Saturn
Sega Nomad
NES
SNES
Sony PSX
Sony PSOne (with LCD screen)
Sony PS2
Sony PS2 slim
Nintendo Game Boy/Pocket/Color/Advance/SP
Tiger R-Zone (Don’t laugh!!!)
Tiger Game.Com
Nintendo Gamecube
Microsoft Xbox

…and I think that’s it.

*Update*
Wario Land and Teleroboxer arrived last Friday. Virtual League Baseball and Galactic Pinball should get here in a day or too.

I’m really enjoying both WL and TB. Teleroboxer is a HARD game but also very fun and rewarding. I had a good laugh because the previous owner had three save states, each with 1 victory and 50+ losses. I bet he got tired of facing the second boxer, haha. I just beat the second guy and I’m working on the third. It seems both of the backup batteries in these carts are still going, so we’ll see how long they last.

Wario Land has some excellent 3D effects, and I like the puzzle element of jumping between foreground and background. I haven’t gotten very far yet, but I’m working on it.

I’m wondering, I have heard of people playing the VB by laying on their back and letting the unit rest on their face while playing. I tried this and the weight of the VB made my face hurt – I couldn’t get it situated comfortably. Is there a trick to this that I don’t know of? Until then I’ll continue playing it on the stand.

I just don’t understand all the talk about how the VB will give you migraines or cause blindness or whatever. I’m sure the people that say this have never played one before…

One of the first rules you need to follow on eBay is if the seller wants you to do business outside of eBay, it is 99-100% guaranteed to be a scam.

Thanks for the links. I don’t think I’m going to go the EPROM route because I don’t have a programmer/eraser for those and it could get expensive. I may try my hand at designing my own version of the FlashBoy. It will probably have to wait until this summer though, I’m too busy.

Does anyone know how long the backup battery is supposed to last in the cartridge? I’m just wondering because it’s been about 15 years since the VB came out. Seems like they would be failing by now.

I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t work. Most adapters are rated for 500mA ish current, which is a little low, but should be fine. The only downside would be no power switch, so you would have to unplug the cable to power down.