I recently bought a gameboy pocket from thebitman and I can't get any of my chiptune software to function properly with it. Nanoloop one 1.6.3 hangs at the copyright screen every time I try to use it and when I use my EMS carts with LSDJ the second you hit start the contrast shoots to almost black and only returns to normal if you hit start again and stop the tracker. I know in the for sale post thebitman said it was modded by kitsch so I was hoping someone might be able to help me fix this issue. Normal games work fine but the screen is inverted and While awesome for music software I find inversion terrible to game with.
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Taichung, Taiwan
Usually when the contrast changes when you press start in LSDJ that means the batteries are almost out of juice.
Are the batteries fresh in the Pocket?
The older versions on the 64M EMS Smart Card would drain batteries pretty quick on a pocket. To my understanding it was due to it not being optimized for it. EMS however fixed this issue with their newer 64M Smart Cards, which look identical. I believe the "newer" EMS Smart Cards were being produced starting around 2~3 years ago if I am correct. Kitsch knows more of the 411 on that than I do though in terms of more exacting dates.
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matt's mind
(probably not modded by me, albeit sold through the shop possibly)
however,
make positive you are using fresh batteries. the AAA types the pocket uses are its main disadvantage (imo). try popping in fresh ones straight out of the box and see if that helps
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Litebritedeath Land
Both my LSDJ carts do it. The one I bought from you Katsumbhong and a new one I bought off kitsch bent less than a month ago. I put brand new batteries in it today.
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matt's mind
can you look at the back of your cartridge, and tell us what the imprinted code says? its a date code, it will help clear up if its a cart+pocket problem, or something else (most likely weak batteries)
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thebitman wrote:
Gameboy Pocket with green buttons and V3 backlight courtesy of Kitsch, screen was peeled and prepped by Zelkedo
**do note, this unit does not have the matching battery cover but instead has a clear one that matches VERY well and really lets the green shine through. Can do internal prosound for free. $50 obo.
Never said it was modded by kitsch. I said green buttons and V3 backlight, referring to the source of my non-stock parts being acquired from his shop. Sorry if that wasn't made clear earlier. Screen was peeled by Zelkedo, and wiring work for the backlight was done by myself according to the V3 backlight guide for pockets. I'll see if I can dig up a link.
Fresh batteries are always a good start. Never used Nanoloop with a Pocket. Please let me know if things don't resolve themselves easily and I'll do what I can to correct my modifications or the hardware itself.
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matt's mind
sxe_weekend wrote:
I have a 1302 and a 1309 EMS cart.
ok, those are good for use with the pocket. so, we've ruled out a cart incompatibility issue at least!
for anyone who may be interested:
-- the first two numbers are the year (2013 in this case)
-- the last two numbers are the month (February and September, respectively)
-- the dates are imprinted onto the case at the time of assembly. not when the case is made, and not necessarily when the PCB is assembled itself. but, when the whole thing comes together as a completed unit. then, they stamp them to show the batch #, essentially
the pocket had problems running these carts prior to batch 1006A. So, 1006 and before this are quirky.
there was a PCB revision that coincided with that assembly that fixed the issues
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Taichung, Taiwan
Dat info. Writing this down in my composition notebook of chiptunes.
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Sweeeeeeden
That the screen going black is related to LSDj's power saving feature, in conjunction with other parameters like GB type, possibly the condition of the unit (dried capacitors) as well as battery type/quality/health.
The brute force way of solving the problem would be disable LSDj's power saving feature. Older versions used to have a setting for this in the menu screen, but newer versions don't, and instead turn off power saving when playing the song, and keeping it on otherwise. You can however still disable it by editing the ROM. Open the ROM in a hex editor and look for 76 00 C9. There should probably only be one occurrence of this string in the file. Change 76 to 00. In the latest version of LSDj as of now, 4.7.3, this instruction is at address 4B9.
Keep in mind that this *will* drain your batteries slightly faster.
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Litebritedeath Land
Hmm I wonder if it's mainly the capacitors. I put brand new Duracell batteries in it and I mean brand new(my granny bought them last week). Also like I said the problems are not just with LSDJ but Nanoloop as well. My Nanoloop one 1.6.3 cart hangs up at the copyright page and only does this in the gameboy pocket. It's fine in all 3 DMG's I have.
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matt's mind
its worth checking the edge connector and pins on the cartridge for dirt/debris too. you'd be amazed at how often this is the issue,
got a can of compressed air perhaps? clean out the edge connector inside the gameboy really well if so. if you don't, try the tried-but-true 'blowing method'. just like getting NES games to work...
you can usually just visually inspect the fingers on the cartridge itself, if you are up for it try a little bit of rubbing alcohol on them (although, if they work on other consoles its most likely not them)
you will hopefully dislodge something if its there, but also the moisture in your breath helps encourage contact between the console and cart a little bit. this isn't suitable as an all-the-time solution, but it might at least help diagnose the issue as poor contact.
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Sweeeeeeden
Different problems have different causes. Things like crashes and a corrupted logo can be caused by bad contact. Eg, dirt, misaligned cartridge connector and perhaps easy to overlook, that the cartridge/cartridge connector is slightly bent from internal pressure from a backlight panel or other mod, which might also cause bad contact.
The "dark screen" problem on the other hand is never caused by bad cartridge slot contact.That is purely an electrical problem, caused by varying power consumption when the CPU is power save mode. When the CPU's power consumption goes varies, so does the LCD voltage. There's not really a way to completely fix that without redesigning the power supply circuit. The easiest way to fix the dark screen problem is probably to edit the LSDj ROM, like I said above.
I think the Nanoloop problem is a bad contact problem, and you may have luck not inserting the card-tridge (haha) fully and see if that makes a difference. You might also want to try to burn the version of the ROM that doesn't have the custom "hello" logo. Click the following link and scroll own to "Scrolling Logo" You need a Nanoloop MIDI adapter to update the ROM.
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nitro2k01 wrote:
Click the following link and scroll own to "Scrolling Logo" You need a Nanoloop MIDI adapter to update the ROM.
I appreciate you pointing this out. I somehow overlooked this, and just got used to my scrambled logo/"hello" with my dual clock DMGs.
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Cleveland, OH
The issue is that your backlight is draining too much power. You need to add a resistor to the backlight to bring the brightness down and therefor draw less power. I have to do this with every Pocket that I backlight. I would recommend somewhere between 100ohms and 220ohms depending on the color of your backlight.
But as an experiment you can try desoldering the backlight altogether and try running LSDJ again. This will tell you without a doubt if your backlight is drawing too much power. I would recommend starting at 150ohms and then seeing which way you need to go from there.
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Litebritedeath Land
@thursdaycustoms its a green backlight.