View Full Version : Virtual Boy problem
GrayFox
08-24-2004, 04:47 PM
Alright, I picked up a Virtual Boy with 4 loose games for $15 at some rummage, and now, I've gotten home.
I've tested it, and it seems that the pictures keep coming in all scrambled, but I did get a clear picture once.
I've tested most of the games and they all seem to be doing the same thing, and well, I dunno if it is the unit itself, the games, or maybe they just all need a cleaning.
If it's a good cleaning they need, how do you clean the virtual boy's cartridge slot?
EDIT: Agh, at closer inspection, it looks like the damned thing has it's right monitor not working. Son of a bitch, I hate people that say their stuff works, and then it doesn't. People can be such bastards.
christianscott27
08-24-2004, 06:28 PM
virtual boys suffer from a bad design: fragile optics + unstable legs = broken
luckily they are cheap and fairly easy to get and as a bonus you can always "part out" the broken one in trades. people are always looking for the stand, visor, controller or power supply.
The problem is most likely a bad connection on the cable going from the motherboard to the LED bar... this is the most common problem, and the best way to fix it seems to be taping the cable to the LED board so it's tighter. The reason this happens is because there is no connector on the LED bar side, and it's just held on by glue, so as the glue gets old and weak, the connections don't stay on very well. You should also make sure that the connector is seated in the socket on the motherboard well.
Next time I find a VB that does this, I'm going to pull it apart and make a howto on fixing it for my site... the problem is that I've already repaired all of mine that have done it :P .
DogP
omnedon
08-27-2004, 05:05 PM
Will tape do the trick, even when the glued on (no longer) cable is completely off?
What kind of tape? Ho do you make sure the pressure is tight, and stays tight?
I'd love to be able to fix VB's.
I usually use electrical tape and wrap it around the glued part of the LED bar... just wrap it really tight, and make sure that the end of the tape is on the inside (against the plastic mirror housing so it can't come undone). The best way to make sure that's the problem is to flip the VB over, take the bottom off, then plug it in and play, when you see the screwy graphics, start messing with the cable going to the LED bar, you should notice that it gets better when you push the cable against the LED board.
I've got some other ideas besides electrical tape, but I'm not sure how long they'll last... like using a heat gun to remelt the glue and push it back on tighter, or soldering them together (the plastic would melt, and only the metal would be left), and maybe supergluing over that so it never comes loose again... but I dunno, I haven't tried any of those ideas yet, so for now, I recommend the electrical tape, it's not permanent, and it's easy to do.
Hmm... if the cable is COMPLETELY off, I probably wouldn't use the electrical tape... the wires are too small, and they'd probably shift, but for that, maybe the heatgun to remelt the glue to get the cable reattached, maybe some superglue to hold it from moving at all and/or electrical tape to reinforce it.
BTW, I have told a quite a few people that have had this problem about this, and I've heard back from 3 people that it did fix theirs, haven't heard anyone say that it didn't, but I'll bet that most didn't even try it, because of the security screws that aren't accessable with the regular bits.
Here are some pics I just took of the bars for those who don't know what they look like (this one hasn't been repaired, since it hasn't needed it yet). Don't mind the extra wires, that's my experimental VB, currently overclocked.
http://dogp.home.comcast.net/LEDBars/1.jpg
http://dogp.home.comcast.net/LEDBars/2.jpg
http://dogp.home.comcast.net/LEDBars/3.jpg
DogP
omnedon
08-28-2004, 02:46 PM
Thank You!
Time to try some stuff out. :-P
Cool, yeah, let me know what does and doesn't work... I've been kinda busy working on a Mario game for VB lately, so my VB hardware time has been a little low :( .
DogP
Boboduo
08-28-2004, 04:20 PM
Cool, yeah, let me know what does and doesn't work... I've been kinda busy working on a Mario game for VB lately, so my VB hardware time has been a little low :( .
DogP
Thanks for all the info and pics.
Now what's this --A new homebrew game for the Virtual Boy?
Oh... yeah, heh... it's a homebrew game that I started over a year ago... I hadn't touched it for almost 11 months, but in the last week or two I've been really hitting it hard and actually getting a somewhat playable game. Here's a pic of it as it is now (in 3D):
http://dogp.home.comcast.net/MarioVB3D.jpg
I've made a few other homebrew games (which are available on my site), but they've all been really simple things that I threw together very quickly... this one will probably take some time to get done. I assume you've played BLOX? That one is done by KR155E from Planet VB (http://www.vr32.de). Definately the most complete homebrew VB game out there ATM.
DogP
Boboduo
08-28-2004, 06:20 PM
Looks pretty cool- Keep up the good work!
Jive3D
02-10-2005, 11:10 AM
I'm having this very problem with my virtual boy (the right side screen flickering and giving a stange image.
Please please please, whenever you can, make a pictured tutorial - I have not done any kind of electronics type tinkering since I took a class in highschool (about 10 years ago).
Thanks!
Okay... I'll try to get this thing going... I've got a pretty big update that I need to do whenever I get the time.
DogP
chadtower
02-11-2005, 11:05 PM
Awesome pictures. My personal opinion is that this sure as hell screams for a jumper solution... maybe a set of connectors that are jumped on both sides, though damn that would be a pain in the ass.
And dude... I love my VBs... if you come out, or anyone for that matter, comes out with homebrew carts... I'm good for 5 copies the first day. I'm dead serious about that.
Yeah, if they had just put connectors on both sides everything would have been fine :( . Anyway, about the flash carts, there's a few of us that have been trying to come up with a solutiion, but so far nothing has been made besides hand-wired carts. Supposedly there's one guy who's got a PCB all planned out, but he needs to get the board made (and work out the programming details).
A USB or Parallel port programmer that connects to the cart edge would be sweet, but the only place to get those connectors seems to be a VB :( . I think using the VB to program it would be nice, but then we need to have a switch to either another ROM (safest), or waste a segment of the ROM (dangerous, because to burn, you'll be erasing and rewriting the boot ROM) to accept data over the link port, then actually make it program the chips. What a pain :P .
Or, if you're just talking about carts of homebrew games (not reprogrammable), I've been thinking about compiling a collection of all the homebrews and putting them on one cart, and we could probably make a limited run of those, since that would be less complicated to do. It's just that since VB's audio is still very unknown, most games have no sound, and everyone that I've showed stuff to always comments on the need for sound.
DogP
chadtower
02-12-2005, 08:58 AM
Yeah, if they had just put connectors on both sides everything would have been fine :( . Anyway, about the flash carts, there's a few of us that have been trying to come up with a solutiion, but so far nothing has been made besides hand-wired carts. Supposedly there's one guy who's got a PCB all planned out, but he needs to get the board made (and work out the programming details).
A USB or Parallel port programmer that connects to the cart edge would be sweet, but the only place to get those connectors seems to be a VB :( . I think using the VB to program it would be nice, but then we need to have a switch to either another ROM (safest), or waste a segment of the ROM (dangerous, because to burn, you'll be erasing and rewriting the boot ROM) to accept data over the link port, then actually make it program the chips. What a pain :P .
Or, if you're just talking about carts of homebrew games (not reprogrammable), I've been thinking about compiling a collection of all the homebrews and putting them on one cart, and we could probably make a limited run of those, since that would be less complicated to do. It's just that since VB's audio is still very unknown, most games have no sound, and everyone that I've showed stuff to always comments on the need for sound.
DogP
Fully agreed on all of it but the last part... all good stuff starts somewhere, right? If you were to make a collection of the homebrews without sound, as they stand now, I would absolutely want a couple.
I have a couple potential other solutions in mind for flash carts, but don't have time to get into them right now as I have to run out the door. Maybe we can continue this later.
Maybe we can continue this later.
Continue anytime ;) . I've been thinking of several ways to make a flash cart without needing any special hardware, like using N64 memory cards, GB flash carts, but the problem is that we need a 16 bit bus, so you'd need to use two, and most people I suggested that to said that they wouldn't want to have crap hanging out of their VB like that... a lot of them didn't even like the EPROM cart with the chips hanging out.
DogP