33 Topic by friendofmegaman

(4 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

Hi everybody,

So I wanted to make all the mods for DMG in a separate box and plug it to the DMG via DB-15 or 9. I want to put it to the bottom of the back plate. But cutting a god trapezoidal hole there appears tricky because you basically have to cut 2 layers of plastic - one the actual shell and the other is battery compartment.

My strategy would be making a rough hole first and then file down the edges. This is gonna be a hassle. So I wonder how would someone more experienced in it go about doing this. Thanks!

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34 Topic by friendofmegaman

(3 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Hi guys,

I've found two tutorials for the Famicom AV mod:

1. http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/sh … ur-Famicom
2. http://jpx72.detailne.sk/modd_files/fc/avmod.htm

And they are bit different. Question - who tried which and which works? (or perhaps both work?)

Thanks!

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35 Reply by friendofmegaman

(15 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

IMO the worst LCDs are Pocket's. Or its just me being unlucky but the LCD ribbon cable is so fragile there that sometimes it just falls apart after the slightest touch.

Also I noticed that sometimes reflective/polarizing film is peeled off quite easily, but in 50% of cases it won't stay in one piece when I try to remove it - it tears apart making it nearly impossible to remove and leaves some gluey residue behind sad

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36 Reply by friendofmegaman

(15 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

They develop dead horizontal lines because the vertical connection sort of wears off. This I believe depends on the conditions where the thing has been chilling all these years. So yah it's more of a lottery. I'd advise to buy a new one you can find them quite cheap on ebay or on garage sales where they're even cheaper.

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37 Reply by friendofmegaman

(20 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

gr3yh4m3 wrote:
JOBO wrote:

Has anybody made one of these? Looks like a fun little project. Would be interesting if Retropie worked with this set up!

Agreed smile 

Would LSDJ work with this? And could you just use a spare DMG case instead of 3D printing one?

LSDJ is a gameboy rom so as long as you run it on a gameboy emulator it should work.

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38 Reply by friendofmegaman

(11 replies, posted in Trading Post)

Shit all sold already sad

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39 Reply by friendofmegaman

(244 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

TylerBarnes wrote:
friendofmegaman wrote:

So it appears that FPGA manufacturers tend to discriminate Mac users sad

Everyone does really. Couldn't you run something like Parallels on your mac or are you rockin' a PowerPC?

I'm just saying. I'm gonna use bootcamp or find a PC. This definitely won't stop me from doing the project smile

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40 Reply by friendofmegaman

(244 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

So I was wondering which language to use Verilog or VHDL. So for I found a bunch of reading on the former and not so many introductions / tutorials on the latter. Thus for now I'm gonna stick with Verilog...

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41 Reply by friendofmegaman

(463 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

It's amazing how this is coming out!

Also looking at your worklogs is a great source of learning to craft in plastic:) I have a dumb question though. I noticed you're using superglue. Are you going to reinforce it with something else or super glue is strong enough? Is it some special brand you're using or just any superglue would go?

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42 Reply by friendofmegaman

(463 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

Are you going to make bottom shoulder buttons to duplicate select and start buttons?

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43 Reply by friendofmegaman

(244 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

So it appears that FPGA manufacturers tend to discriminate Mac users sad

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44 Reply by friendofmegaman

(244 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

rvan wrote:
friendofmegaman wrote:

Yah, actually I was hoping to achieve exactly that. Not for a workshop of course, but for LSDJing on big screen without patching LSDJ to be in tune with other instruments (since SGB has slightly different frequency)... Why is it not possible?

Doesn't it work to use a DMG crystal on an SGB?  Or even a DMG CPU, if you want to be that authentic.

FPGA sounds like a good way to go for video capture/output, though.  I probably don't have to the time to invest in learning to code for FPGAs, but I'll definitely keep up with what you all are doing.  I'd be especially interested in composite output (rather than VGA) so that it can be recorded.

My primary purpose is sending data to PC, so you'll be able to record indeed if this part succeeds smile

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45 Reply by friendofmegaman

(244 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

Jazzmarazz wrote:

Microcontrollers and FPGAs will have internal protection. the protection is weak, but useful. The clamp diodes are internal, see:

When you write your FPGA code, the environment will have an emulator option to compile and test theoretical ROM/RAM useage. If it fits or does not fit, it will say so.


Ah I see, thanks!

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46 Reply by friendofmegaman

(244 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

I don't understand this bit:

Jazzmarazz wrote:

using an external series current-limiting resistor to limit the current into the upper clamp diode to 10 mA

What's the upper clamp diode? I thought for each input pin we just need to throw a divider to get 3.3V or whatever voltage is required...

VGA wing is cool, but it's $12 while the whole arcade wing is $19... $7 difference...

Overall it looks pretty good, I think we need to read through the documentation and figure will this thing resolve our problems with uC or not.

For the video capture device it has USB UART. But it says:

"Channel B is connected to the Papilio One in an Asynchronous serial UART configuration that is capable of speeds up to 2MHz"

What's that suppose to mean? Will it provide 2Mbaud speed?

If so then I'm gonna need to build the frame in the Papilio and send it to PC to save on bandwidth (4MBaud required to send raw data). Furthermore the frame must be assembled by FPGA clocked by DMG's clock. Is there a way to check if FPGA has enough capacity to handle that? Because you said that your project was too big. What if this one is too big for Papilio as well?

These are my first thoughts, I guess I'll figure this things out once I familiarize myself more.

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47 Reply by friendofmegaman

(244 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

So apparently there are some relatively cheap and easy-to-use boards designed specifically for software engineers and uC guys allowing smooth transition to FPGA. What I'm looking at at the moment is Papilio board and arcade mega wing:

http://papilio.cc/index.php?n=Papilio.Papilio
http://papilio.cc/index.php?n=Papilio.ArcadeMegaWing

Has anybody used this one before?

EDIT
Of course I need to double check the spec and see if it suits our goal


EDIT
I can't see Mac-compatible programmers for FPGA are there any?

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48 Reply by friendofmegaman

(244 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

Jazzmarazz wrote:
friendofmegaman wrote:

So I read through the whole thread to recap everything that has been done.

My current thoughts:
1. I'm gonna stick to original idea of DMG/Pocket to computer.
2. I need to check with one of my co-workers (who turned out to be competent in FPGA) what kind of board is needed to pull off video capture. I'll let you know what board I'll have ordered and dump all the info here.

Awesome. There are boards that have VGA built-in, which is what I personally want to get out of this project. I understand that you want to get video on a PC< but I want video on a TV or monitor. Different hopes, but the same goal.

That's exactly what I'm hoping for to get. Since FPGA is so powerful and I decided to invest my time into learning it I'd like to take as much as possible.

Ideally I'd like to have some serial interface to send data to pc via USB, VGA and composite. HDMI would be great also, but I know nothing about it... but if it's easy to implement then I'm up to. And plus I'd like some controller input to completely desktopify a DMG.

But first - DMG->PC.

Did you already order the board? What are your thoughts on the FPGA brand you'd like to get and language to program it?

If you haven't ordered it yet we could look into pros and cons of different boards and order the same thing so that we could share the work. That would be perfect IMO.

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