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Austin, Texas

Hey All,

I've recently been growing fonder of my less-loved Game Boy Colors for various reasons—nice display, good battery life, smaller, and better support for Carillon Tracker.

I've also recently acquired one of the aftermarket CGB link cables that are used to build the Pushpin interface; it's something I've been itching to play with, especially since it's so underused and poorly documented—and I'm just plain curious.

However, that mystique is also a cause of problems, as it is very difficult to find good information about the hardware and software.

Most of the links to information on Pushpin's Google Code Page are dead, and it's apparently somewhat common knowledge that the advice given on the page for building the interface is incomplete at best, and plainly wrong on some points. Any kind of formal documentation that was once available now seems scarce.

I've done some searching, and found nitro2k01's blog post about building the Pushpin interface, which was a troubled build and ended with suggestions for changes—yet nothing I understood to be complete as the best possible implementation.

I've also crawled through the Pushpin Google Group, which is now overrun by spam, to look for definitive information. I found some posts discussing improved schematics, but again, nothing that seemed to be the "definitive" or "ideal" schematic. This post from 2008 seems to have the most recently revised schematic I've found:

So, this leads me to my main questions:

  • Does anyone have any of the currently unavailable "official" documentation for Pushpin archived or saved anywhere?

  • Are there any known build tips or more refined schematics that I haven't found yet?

  • Does anyone have information I haven't thought of, or any general tips on creating the interface and using Pushpin?

I've stopped short of tweeting @ or e-mailing one of the creators; I don't like to bother people over something they've clearly quit supporting if I can help it…

Last edited by Telerophon (Jul 18, 2012 5:50 am)

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new jersey

In the comments of nitro2k01's blog, "Guyie Frayo" (comments #23) posted the following image and said that it worked.

Also, a lot of those google doc links can be recalled with the wayback machine.

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Austin, Texas
jrasor wrote:

Also, a lot of those google doc links can be recalled with the wayback machine.

BRILLIANT!

Really though, I haven't had to use that in so long that I completely forgot. Thanks!

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new jersey

I had an altoid tin laying around and decided to give this thing a shot. I think I have the whole jawn wired properly but it's not working. If someone could tell me which pins "4" and "5" should be on the midi jack, I can probably figure out what's wrong from there. Thanks!

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Definitive Documentation wrote:

Pushin blows, use MGB instead

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new jersey
herr_prof wrote:
Definitive Documentation wrote:

Pushin blows, use MGB instead

Haha well it's just something I decided to take on to busy my hands. I'd like it to work but I don't really care if it works better than anything else.

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new jersey

So I went back to checking the voltage across the gameboy color link cable and all but one of the wires is giving off 4.9v. Does that sound right? I unhooked each wire from a header and kept them in order. So ground is right next to the shield and I think first wire should be VCC+. Any advice would be wonderful!

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new jersey

Whoops! Had some bits wired up wrong! But now it works!

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Austin, Texas

Oh, cool!

Exactly as in the schematic, or did you have to change some things?

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new jersey

Well a big step was flip the IC around! That schematic works but it should be noted that "Pin 4" and "Pin 5" are not where you expect. If you're looking at the face of the jack and it's frowning (as opposed to smiling) the second pin is "Pin 4" and the forth pin is "Pin 5". I don't know if this a standard way of labeling these connectors, but it was kinda of counter-intuitive to me.