Bit Shifter
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Brooklyn NY US

So. Being one hundred per cent useless when it comes to physically interacting with electronics, I wanted to see if someone capable would be willing to help me out with this. Basically I have a couple of Nanoloop v1.1 cartridges with dead or soon-to-be-dead batteries. The batteries themselves are standard CR2032 batteries, but from what I can determine (and I did kind of a lot of digging) the batteries' soldering tabs are of a non-standard, and possibly custom, configuration in which the tabs are at 90° relative to one another. (The superhumanly resourceful Herbert Weixelbaum came to the conclusion that batteries with this tab configuration are most likely designated CR2032/F1B, for whatever it's worth).

In a perfect world, I would like to modify my v1.1 cartridges in such a way that a "battery canopy" (like what's inside the v1.2 cartridges -- holds the battery in-place, but the battery can be easily slipped out for replacement) is inserted inside. And, if that is possible, I would like to pay (a reasonable amount) for someone's help in excecuting this little bit of cart surgery.

A while back Herbert Weixelbaum had scanned the guts of some writeable GB carts, including Nanoloop 1.1 & 1.2:

So, to anyone in the know: at a glance, is there anything in the internal arrangement of the guts of the 1.1 cartridge (yellow one in the scan above) that would prevent a "canopy" or whatever from being "implanted?" Acknowledging that the battery's contact points in the 1.1 cart are (naturally) at right angles while their 1.2 counterparts seem to be at 180° relative to each other -- I'm hoping some sort of clever trickery might be possible to sidestep this.

If for any reason that's impossible, I'd also settle for enlisting someone's help to simply replace the battery the old-fashioned way (someone adept enough / equipped with parts suitable enough to solder the thing in there with tabs at a right angle). I really miss working with v1.1 and would love to resurrect these carts somehow.

Thanks in advance from a hopeless n00b. E-mail's probably the best way to get back to me, I'm at bit decimal shifter at bit decimal shifter decimal net .

Famikiller
Offline
Edinburgh, Scotland

Surely a canopy is possible aslong as the connection is made with the original contact points. NeX would probably be a good man for this job, he's a machine with... machines.
I'm gonna look further into this now that you've got me intrigued.

If it's just the batteries needing replaced its a quick case of soldering and desoldering, but if you're worried about anything going wrong with the contacts, as long as you have some spare EMS blue carts floating about you could salvage those for replacements, since to the best of my knowledge its the same set up. (although EMS aren't right angled)



Btw I've replied to your email.

glomag
Offline
brooklyn, NY

Here I am resurrecting my old Nanoloop 1.1 and came upon the same issue. I thought I remembered that 1.1 was like 1.2 with the sleeve configuration. I cursed the name of Wittchow to learn that it's not. (j/k. Much love to Oliver.)

If anyone out there ever got this battery canopy grafting to work, I'd love to know how.

egr
Offline
Abandoned on Fire

What were some features of 1.1 that are different from now?  I can't seem to find the manual anywhere online to get a description.

nitro2k01
Offline
Sweeeeeeden

Re: canopy type battery holder. I don't see this as feasible. You are relying on the PCB layout to provide the cathode (negative battery terminal) connection. On the yellow cartridge, the cathode is to the left of the battery. You could perhaps solve this by adding a little bit of wire soldered to the pad which goes under the battery, but I don't think you can guarantee good contact this way. You also need to attach the other  side of the "canopy" for mechanical stability. This is farily easy to do if you scrape off some of the solder mask from the ground plane above the battery, and also disconnect said section of the ground plane from the rest of the ground. (Just a few cuts with a knife.)

However, that seems a bit hackish, and might create problems with data loss because the connectioncomes loose. The way I would probably solve this is with a 180° tabbed battery. Solder the anode (positive battery terminal) to the right place. Bend the other tab and fold it around the top edge of the PCB. Solder a jumper wire between the tab and the ground pad on the board. This would require some thought when bending the tab, but should otherwise be the best solution.
...
Though again, thinking about it. that might not work because the top piece of the cartridge will occupy that space momentarily when you slide the cartridge shut.

Anyway, I think I would recommend a tabbed battery which is soldered into place rather than the canopy version, for mechanical stability reasons. This should still extend their life by ~10 years, so it shouldn't be that bad.

Oh and of course, maybe I don't even need to add that I would be interested in playing with these cartridges hands-on for some research. (Such as figuring out how to back them up and flashing new software to them.)

budmelvin
Offline

nitro2k01 - FWIW - I was always able to back up and restore nanoloop 1.2 RAM with XChanger and gbt16.exe.  The catch was I had to grab each bank separately with the -bs xx switch,  I was also able to get a ROM .GB image, but, of course, that file on an EMS cart wouldn't be able to save RAM properly.  I had a very detailed description of all this on the original nanoloop forum if archives exist anywhere of that.  Would have been late 2001, early 2002 I'm guessing.

nitro2k01
Offline
Sweeeeeeden

Bud of all Melvins: I'm making my own flasher, which you will hopefully be able to buy at some point. I want to support as many different cartridges as possible, and having physical access to them helps ensure that I'm doing things correctly.

budmelvin
Offline

Awesome - drop me a line if/when you need a 1.2 to borrow.

Sycamore Drive
Offline
East Kilbride, Scotland

Necrobump?

e.s.c.
Offline
IL, US
egr wrote:

What were some features of 1.1 that are different from now?  I can't seem to find the manual anywhere online to get a description.

roughly the same as 1.2, but only one custom waveform instead of 16 for the s channel, if i remember correctly

Last edited by e.s.c. (Jun 1, 2013 3:39 am)

nitro2k01
Offline
Sweeeeeeden

Whoa! Time flies like an arrow! I didn't even notice the age of the thread.

Bud: I'm interested and I'll contact you in a PM.

egr
Offline
Abandoned on Fire
e.s.c. wrote:
egr wrote:

What were some features of 1.1 that are different from now?  I can't seem to find the manual anywhere online to get a description.

roughly the same as 1.2, but only one custom waveform instead of 16 for the s channel, if i remember correctly

Cool, was wondering if this was one of the versions that had the different song editor or channel layout but I guess that was 1.3?

EDIT: nope, 1.3 wasn't what I was thinking of either, must have just made it all up tongue

Last edited by egr (Jun 1, 2013 11:41 am)

e.s.c.
Offline
IL, US

1.3 is pretty close to 1.5/1.6.3 as far as layout, etc... 1.0-1.2 have the different song screen/3 channels/etc

egr
Offline
Abandoned on Fire
e.s.c. wrote:

1.3 is pretty close to 1.5/1.6.3 as far as layout, etc... 1.0-1.2 have the different song screen/3 channels/etc

Aha!  That's what I was trying to remember, thanks.

(the combined pulse channels, i mean)

Last edited by egr (Jun 1, 2013 11:55 am)

Victory Road
Offline
Gosford, Australia
nitro2k01 wrote:

Whoa! Time flies like an arrow! I didn't even notice the age of the thread.

and here i was thinking "man it's a shame nitro never finished making that flasher" :v

egr
Offline
Abandoned on Fire

Bumping to say that I just got the battery in my nano 1.2 cart changed out at a local store called Batteries Plus. Just $9.02 installed, pretty sweet. Maybe there's a similar store near you if you're still having trouble.