Or, you can cut out the middleman.
497 Feb 11, 2014 12:57 am
Re: Cheap USB to MIDI Cable for Arduinoboy? (44 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)
498 Feb 7, 2014 9:02 pm
Re: Interest check: MIDI interface for YM_MINI synth (and ANSI vblank?) (32 replies, posted in Other Hardware)
Here are my files:
499 Feb 7, 2014 4:35 pm
Re: DMG powering on but nothing happening (19 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)
Have you tried putting in a pair of heaphones to the headphone jack? (Just exhausting possibilities.) Try disconnecting the LCD board and then turning the thing on with headphones connected.
WARNING: never connect or disconnect the LCD board while the Gameboy is powered on. This may damage the CPU in such a way that the left and B buttons stop working permanently!
The problem may be related to the power converter. The unregulated power from the batteries is connected through the power switch and then only to two places, the power converter, and the power LED. The fact that the LED lights up really only means that the power switch is working.
Do you have a multimeter?
500 Feb 7, 2014 3:25 pm
Re: Bioplastic Based IC chips (27 replies, posted in General Discussion)
The plastic used in ICs is typically an epoxy resin, as opposed to a thermoplastic. A thermoplastic will melt and solidify with temperature, whereas as an epoxy will set through a chemical reaction and won't melt. They are also mechanically rigid, excellent electrical insulators, anhydrous and chemically inert, all of which are anywhere between highly desirable and required features for devices used in production of electronics. Now, the problem is that most or all bioplastics are thermoplastics. This is great for 3D printing, but not so great for chips.
For example, you'd be hard pressed to find a bioplastic which has a high enough melting point to tolerate soldering which will reach a minimum of 200 ºC for reflow soldering, more for other methods, including manual soldering with a soldering iron.
Other problems that I would predict: Poor bonding to the die and bond wires, which will let moisture creep in and destroy the die. Poor heat conductivity. Might melt or otherwise react with the die and destroy it. Might melt from the heat generated by the die and become a good enough conductor on the microscopic level to create faults. Might have unsuitable dielectric properties and leak high frequency signals between different nearby traces on the die.
But the kicker is that the tiny amount of plastic used in the production of a chip i probably the least of the problems environmentally speaking. A typical consumer product will contain in the order of hundreds to thousands amount the plastic used in the chip in the case. Producing the die requires the use of various nasty chemicals, for example trichloroethylene which is used for washing the die. Any serious manufacturer will keep their trichloroethylene in a closed loop system, but to mention a famous example, there was a leak in the facilities of MOS Technology, Commodore's chip plant, which forced the city to build a water pipeline from a nearby city because the groundwater was ruined. How do the less scrupulous Chinese IC manufacturers dispose of their chemicals I wonder?
But my bottom line, and this may perhaps sound a bit hostile, is that you can't just slap a buzzword onto an industrial process. If something hasn't been tried it's often because it's not a good idea.
501 Feb 6, 2014 5:14 pm
Re: Recording sound from Gambatte on OSX (11 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)
If you want to go the extra mile (kilometer) you could set up Wine and run BGB. Wine on OSX is a bit of a hassle as far as I remember, but BGB should officially work in Wine, and it can record directly to a wav file.
502 Feb 3, 2014 9:51 pm
Re: New colour scheme (7 replies, posted in Bugs and Requests)
Have you tried the Snow scheme?
503 Feb 2, 2014 11:54 am
Re: Interest check: MIDI interface for YM_MINI synth (and ANSI vblank?) (32 replies, posted in Other Hardware)
504 Jan 31, 2014 10:09 pm
Re: I think i broke my nanoloop cart? (7 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)
It works on the GBA. It's just that you can't put an old GB program on a GBA cartridge.
505 Jan 31, 2014 8:43 pm
Re: I think i broke my nanoloop cart? (7 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)
The NL Two cartridge cannot run original Gameboy software. (And also probably doesn't have additional ROM space.)
e.s.c.'s advice is slightly wrong (sowwy). The demo ROM is useless for you. What you need is the update ROM. Get it here and follow the isntructions: http://www.nanoloop.de/midi/two.html
The point of note is that you need to press select+start before the logo is finished animating. This allows a program to be downloaded into the GBA's RAM, which then updates (or in your case, overwrites the incorrect data).
506 Jan 31, 2014 1:18 pm
Re: Have we figured out what causes noisy sample playback on some DMGs? (10 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)
Actually, I realize I have a really old (and dirty) DMG that I bought cheaply on an auction for its low serial number, and it has this problem. Unfortunately, after a quick analysis, I don't think the particular problem is related to bad/low value capacitors, but how the sound circuit in the CPU chip is constructed. It seems like when you turn the wave channel off, (which has to be done to reload the sample buffer) it returns to a DC level way outside of the amplitude range of the wave channel. My antispike fix isn't of much help either. Unfortunately, I don't think the problem is fixable. I will try some things, but don't keep your hope up.
507 Jan 31, 2014 12:49 pm
Re: Have we figured out what causes noisy sample playback on some DMGs? (10 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)
If you have a motherboard that does this, feel free to send it to me for analysis.
508 Jan 27, 2014 2:10 pm
Re: I got this for a steal!!! (21 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
But what is it...?
It's a competition cartridge which Nintendo used for competitions on game fairs and similar events.
509 Jan 26, 2014 10:18 am
Re: DOES ANYBODY KNOW THIS SONG???? (3 replies, posted in General Discussion)
Page 2, "mode7 gba intro01.mod"![]()
510 Jan 25, 2014 4:45 pm
Re: Is the download option required? (12 replies, posted in General Discussion)
The reason there is a download link is because it would be easy to download the file anyway (unless you put in some complex protection against it, which we didn't feel like doing.) Even Bandcamp lets you listen to the tracks, and with a little bit of magic, download them without paying. But iirc, the available files are in a lower quality, like 128 kbps MP3, so that is supposed to be the discouragement against that.
512 Jan 24, 2014 2:26 pm
Re: [SOLVED] problems uploading ROMs to Nanoloop cart (12 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)
Ah, that's why I asked. I've heard OSX can be unreliable for MIDI sysex. Possibly related, I found this:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8148 osx-broken
tl;dr MIDI commands can be timestamped, and this is not recommended for sysex messages. I wonder what the NL transfer application does. Perhaps I should contact Oliver about this and check...


