97 Reply by m00dawg

(83 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Theta_Frost wrote:

I think the FaMI referenced is this guy: http://code.google.com/p/nesserial/.
It's awesome + expansion chips!

Also, when NESA with the passive mixer is ready, I'll buy immediately. smile

Yeah I need to get on that smile My ArduinoBoy Sheild board should be in the mail right now so I was going to focus on that first. You should probably remind me every so often if you don't hear any rumblings about it.

I'm going to be doing some workshops here locally on chiptunes and stuff so I'd like to have the passive mixer design done then. Either way, I'll be happy to share the design once it's done!

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98 Reply by m00dawg

(83 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

nickmaynard wrote:

the midines is cool but i think an arduinoboy controlling mgb (or lsdj) + some sort of drum machine is much cooler.

i bought my midines from wayfar over ebay and it shipped the day after payment, just saying.

When did you order it? Recently?

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99 Reply by m00dawg

(37 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

I've been rather bad about following these forums lately but I'll do my best to keep this updated! If not, the link I sent that points to my band's website should be updated once I get it up and running (the prototype - the knobs and stuff are for a bit later on down the road).

All the board layouts and stuff are free for the taking as well if you want to build/modify your own. I think Kitsch is working on an ArduinoBoy kit but no idea of the status.

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100 Reply by m00dawg

(83 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Indeed the cool screen effects would be a pretty cool thing to have for a live show! But if it's not reliable... I dunno I guess since the turn-around time for Midines is so long, and Chip Maestro seems to be in more active development, it might be best to hold out for it. I sent an e-mail to Wayfar to see if I get a response as well so I can gauge things that way.

For now noisewaves solution seems like it's what we're going to have to contend with today.

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101 Reply by m00dawg

(83 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

electricloverecords wrote:

i was worried when i bought my midines that the guy would just take my money but it did come.

it worked well enough but i wouldn't gig with it.

this was maybe four years ago.

4 years ago was about the time I started hearing rumblings about lengthy orders and things. Why would you not gig with it? Does it just crap out some of the time or is it more like random quirks? Sounds like it's not the way to go for us since we want to use it mostly for a live setting, doh!

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102 Reply by m00dawg

(83 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

noisewaves wrote:
m00dawg wrote:

As an aside, I dunno what you use for output, but I made an op-amp output board to bypass the noisy on-board output (which goes right past the PPU and picks up a ton of noise) that really improved the cleanliness of the audio. More info as well as the schematic and board layout can be found here. The second iteration, though SMD, can be powered with 9VDC so you can use one power adapter to power it which is nice.

I use low-gains NESmod currently, but after listening to the NESA mod my interest is definitely piqued. Is it only RCA out? or will NESA work with 1/4 outs?

I use RCAs but you can use 1/4" if you wanted. For stereo, you would probably want to share 1 ground pin for the jack; for mono it would hook up to the NESA board the same way as the RCAs. The board has one GND/output pair for each channel so there is plenty of flexibility.

1.0 can be etched at home. 2.3 is all SMD and double-sided so I opted to have it fabbed (from DorkBot) but it was fairly inexpensive. I want to do a third revision that will use the 4th op-amp channel for a passive mixer (should you want mono out for any reason, just like the original output of the NES) but it's not a huge priority at the moment.

I should have some spares of the 2.3 board if you want me to send you one. You would have to populate it but it's not terribly bad. The resistors can be a bit tricky as they kept sticking to iron, but otherwise it's not terrible to build.

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103 Reply by m00dawg

(37 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

OOOOH damnit that's a very good idea! I haven't looked at the Ardunio stuff much (I'm more of a MidiBox guy when it comes to hardware stuffs) but it seems almost trivially easy to add that sort of stuff. Actually, even if ArduniBoy couldn't do it, MidiBox has multiple projects that can do that sort of thing although a nice compact all in one solution is for the win.

Until you just mentioned CCs, I hadn't put any thought into those options smile I think it will be better once I have the shield and mGB up and running but man now you have my gears turning!

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104 Reply by m00dawg

(83 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

noisewaves wrote:

wouldnt hold your breath for MidiNES man.

i use a powerpak with my NES and i love it, yes the NES is always the lead in, but it dosent take away from anything (in my opinion).

my drummer wears earbuds and i program the noise channel as a metronome so he can play along in sync. plus if your playing a venue that has good sound and good stage monitors, its almost impossible to get lost, but practice makes perfect.

That is probably what we will have to do, at least for the songs using the NES. Our next album sound is more fitting for live shows, but is also one we may end up using a wider variety of chip-synths (NES, GB, SID, FM). I can sync them all via MIDI...except the NES smile

Otherwise, yes, the PowerPak works great! We used it for all the NES sounds off our first album. I think for a live show, I am more inclined to use custom cartridges so we can pull out one cartridge and put another one is for some showey cool points but the principle is the same. One plus to having MIDI support would be when composing. On our last album it wasn't so bad because most of the songs started out as chiptunes first. For our second album, more songs seem to start with something else and we compose the chips around that.

I need to test FamiTracker's MIDI support as if it understood transport commands it would make things easier (better still if it had Rewire or VST support but I'm not good enough to implement that and beggars can't be choosers smile.

As an aside, I dunno what you use for output, but I made an op-amp output board to bypass the noisy on-board output (which goes right past the PPU and picks up a ton of noise) that really improved the cleanliness of the audio. More info as well as the schematic and board layout can be found here. The second iteration, though SMD, can be powered with 9VDC so you can use one power adapter to power it which is nice.

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105 Reply by m00dawg

(83 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

I already have sent our my board designs for an ArdunioBoy shield so mGB will be a possibility, I hope, soon! FamiTracker might be ok (I think it has MIDI sync now?) but would be lame for a live show - we really want to try to use the real hardware if we can. So sounds like Chip Maestro is our next best chance. Curious as to what sort of MIDI quirks Midines has?

We can play to the NES without sync - the problem is adding other synths and things. If we wanted the GameBoy and NES to be happy together, that's going to be a potential nightmare for a live show. That plus without sync, the NES would always have to be the lead in.

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106 Topic by m00dawg

(83 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

I was about to purchase a Midines from Wayfar, but read online that Midines may be defunct? Does anyone know the status? I know the order process used to take a long time, but as far as I can tell, Wayfar is still accepting orders?

I know of, and am excited about Chip Maestro but I missed the Kickstarter project and I don't know how long it will be before another batch. That plus Midines seems to be rather mature if I could get my hands on one.

Suggestions?

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107 Reply by m00dawg

(3 replies, posted in Releases)

Thanks fellow Redditor! I assume you saw it on /r/chiptunes?

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108 Topic by m00dawg

(37 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

I have been wanting to build an ArdunioBoy for a while and finally opted to go the route of making a shield first since it means I can reuse my Ardunio for other things if I want, and have a bit more room to experiment. I used shield template I think I found on Adafruit somewhere. Just sent the design off to DorkBot and will be able to test things in a few weeks hopefully. Until then, I thought I would share for anyone that might find it helpful.

Here is a pic of the board layout
Here are the EagleCAD files for it.

Not much to it, really. I extended the shield out a bit to make it easier to mess with the MIDI ports as I am a bit worried about clearance underneath the shield were I to move them in. The plan is to get this working and then make a custom board for the whole thing so I can better fit it in a case and things, but I thought this would be more more useful for me at the moment.

Feedback welcome! The thought occurred to me I should have asked for feedback /before/ or ordered the boards but oh well smile As long as the first board works, I'm happy and can make changes in a subsequent revision.

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109 Topic by m00dawg

(3 replies, posted in Releases)

I have posted a few singles of it here in the past, but now the whole thing is done! You can check it out here. We think the combination of chiptunes and surf guitar really worked out well and we are pretty excited about what we have come up with. Hope you enjoy!

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110 Reply by m00dawg

(19 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Parts came in so I spent the afternoon populating the board and I'm happy to report that it works just as I had planned! Including my plan to use a DC power adapter so I wouldn't need a separate power source for the op-amp. Works like a charm!

Only thing I may need to work on is changing the resistor value for the cartridge input as it sounds a tad distorted when played through my mixer. I think that's always been an issue. Recording the output directly doesn't seem to be a problem, however (though that could be because I often only record one channel at a time and the distortion is mostly when playing the saw and square channels at the same time).

I also now need some double-sided tape to adhere it to the bottom of the NES case since it's small enough now that it can move around a bit.

So I guess some small todo's but the main concept appears to work. Next up, is trying Theta_Frost's suggestion of having a passive mix out wink

Pics

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111 Reply by m00dawg

(18 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

They are both DMG-CPU-06's with the same LCD board revision (I forget which - I think 06 as well?). Some of the noise comes from the 06's mainboard and, in fact, I tried mixing and matching at one point which helped some. A huge majority of the noise is on the LCD board though, even if I connect it to my good GameBoy's mainboard. My wild guess is that Q1 (that's a regulator right?) might be to blame.

I haven't looked at the CPUs though so I'll have to take a peak next time I have them open. Agreed, a new GB is probably a good option although it's a bit hit or miss on eBay and they sell for a bit higher prices locally for some reason.

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112 Reply by m00dawg

(18 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

Ah yeah I thought that might be it since I didn't think it was off-center before I removed the original screen cover so perhaps it was moved around while unsticking the glue or something? So I'm supposed to nudge the LCD screen itself within the plastic guard, or the whole thing?

I might just leave it alone until I'm brave enough to try an LED backlight mod on this thing. Since the mod does not appear to have been the cause of my audio problems on my other GB, it's probably a safe bet and would be a welcome addition for sure!

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