SNESNESCUBE64

I still want to make a tiny mod board for this. I just can't be bothered to disassemble my Nintendo.

I've never been much of a fan of snipping pin 4. I think the only thing that's stopping me from doing this to my Nintendo permanently is that I sometimes make homebrew carts and need to make sure that I programmed the CIC correctly.

Couple pickups today.

• Super mario 3 for playchoice
• Galaga project cabinet

Collect - retail display/sign

Not sure if the yoshi topsy turvy display qualifies for the display. If not maybe my ESRB ratings sign I got from a gamestore that closed

To kinda copy what T-Pac did, these were my most listened to songs of 2023 (one per artist*). They aren't necessarily my favorite by the artist, but they are up there.

1. The sky is burning - Primal Fear
2. We are Real - Helloween
3. Lust for Life (best hits version) - Gamma Ray
4. Not today - HammerFall
5. Master of the pendulum - Avantasia
6. Enemies of Fun - Kai Hansen
7. A threat from beyond the shadows - Dragonland
8. Megatropolis 2.0 - Iron Savior
9. Tyranny - Firewind
10. Deliver us from Evil - Blind Gaurdian

*Kai Hansen appears as a vocalist in three of the songs, it is a bit of a gray area but he's my favorite musician so I am just gonna leave it.

Maybe I am missing something here, but what makes the timewalk stuff special? Did they have some kinda deal with Bandai?

Seems like a normal repro to me.

I did a demo on the new hardware!

The new hardware came in early! I assembled it last night and it seems to be working exactly as it should. I'm very happy with how it turned out.

I spent all day yesterday messing around with QBoxPro to try and generate clearer voice samples. It's very neat old software designed to generates LPC byte streams for speech chips such as the TMS5220 (which is what I am emulating) with weird quirks but seems to work ok. I've re-recorded most of the voice lines using my voice and it sounds alright so far. I might play around with it more.

1 minute ago, zxdplay said:

There will be debugging pins on the motherboard, which can be used to determine the status of the current update frame using a logic analyzer.

That's good to hear, big fan of test points. I was more speaking of software debugging though. Will this be able to debug via serial or USB?

The thing about new hardware is that you are already limiting your base immediately. I love to see it but am pretty skeptical.

Do you have prototype hardware already? Showing a shell for another device does not enstil confidence in a product. We saw that with the coleco chameleon several years ago. I wouldn't even bother asking for money until that is achieved.

What kind of hardware are you targeting? Some ARM-Based machine using off the shelf parts or are you doing your own architecture from scratch? Developers care a lot of specs because they need to know what they are working with.

How are you going to be handling compiling? Are you making your own or are using something like GCC or LLVM? Are you developing your own C libraries to handle graphics and other custom hardware? Are you making a whole environment meant for development on your platform? What is debugging going to be like? Will there be a debugging environment or an emulator to try things out?

What is the lifecycle of this project expected to be like? What is support for this new hardware going to be like? I know it's a hard question to answer, but how long do you plan on supporting the product?

Let me be honest. As much as I'd like to see it. I think that for small time development, the ship has sailed for new hardware. You are going to struggle to get developers to come to your platform. From a programmer's financial perspective, it's hard to justify development of a game that has a userbase of 170 that MIGHT buy it. People looking to develop for new hardware are going to target PC as it has a much bigger target audiences and more ways to get it to them. A lot of NES homebrewers enjoy the strict limitations and idea of programming for such old hardware. I'm just not sure newer hardware will catch on with that community.

I'd try doing a kickstarter if you are looking for backing. I think VGS is way too small to hit your target backing.

My favorite was finding a rare Nintendo Head On N arcade board on yahoo auctions japan. That was a fun project.

2 minutes ago, CT said:

This ^^^

And somebody needs to open a barcade near me. All of the pinball machines I have found (w/ the Pinball Map app-highly recommend btw) are busted up and unplayable.

Frustrating hobby to say the least.

Pinball is one of those hobbies where you gotta buy junk and fix it. EMs are rather inexpensive if you can fix them. I miss having a pin and can't wait to move so I can get another.

This was one of my favorites. We were unboxing a mandalorian pinball straight from the distributer. Stern couldn't even get the date right. Last I checked, May 35th isn't a real date.

9 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

Pshh those are rookie numbers don’t the LEs retail for like 10-12k?

Something like that. The cost of a decent used car.

11 hours ago, Gloves said:

Not seeing a price, nor country availability.

In the past, Stern pins for the pro model have been between $7k or $8k USD. They are not cheap but some of the parts (and the wiring they use) is.

3 hours ago, Nintegageo said:

Better than another band theme though which is nice ^_^

This. Some of those like Led Zeppelin are miserable. Foo Fighters is ok but the shots aren't great.

Although I can't say I am a fan of most of those sterns in general.

New hardware has finished fabrication. Should be here by next friday assuming no delays. I should have that finalized hardware running by the end of the day.

3 minutes ago, CastletonSnob said:

Don't authentic SNES cartridges have screws that kind of look like stars?

People call them gamebit.

• For expensive games that you are unsure about, ask for board pics. Many legitimate sellers will take a picture of the pcb which will be a legitimate nintendo board with mask roms. The mask roms will typically the same product code as the label engraved on it. Ceramic chips with clear windows are indicators of illegitimate games in most cases.
• Labels will typically be miscut
• Labels can sometimes be blury or have messed up coloring
• Sometimes the label will say 'reproduction'
• Many repro SNES cartridges will have plastic gray "screws" but the shell is just a clamshell that clips together
• If the deal is too good to be true, then it is. It's fine to be skeptical.

I ordered the (hopefully) final revision of the speech boards before the end of 2023. So hopefully I can get the rest of this taken care of this month. I am also toying around with the idea of a rank board since I had extra I/O available to me, but we will see how that works out.

I did add an audio transformer and saw improvement, so I was able to sneak that into the final revision of the board.

I'm not really a fan of "resolutions" per se. However I can share my plans and goals for 2024.

Projects:
- Finish my Radar Scope speech board software
- Finish my Gorf LED rank board project
- Finish my Enigma 2 arcade repro pcb
- Asteroids Deluxe arcade cabinet restoration
- Donkey Kong Jr arcade cabinet restoration
- Punch-out arcade cabinet restoration
- Repro several Nintendo Computer Othello parts and build new upright cabinet (stretch goal)

Life Goals:
- Eliminate at least three of my nine remaining student loans. Only relatively small government ones left so I kind of wanna hammer them out
- Purchase my first house.

I've just about finished the hardware design. There is one last thing that I want to try before, but I don't really expect it to improve much so I might call this design good. Basically, I wanna try to add an audio isolation transformer inbetween the atmega and the amp. I was told that it might help me with a the noise I am getting. I ordered a couple different audio transformers on amazon, so I guess I will see if that improves things.

I'm pretty fond of the 1951 one.

If you want a different implementation of A Christmas Carol, the metal band Majestica did an album based on the story of A Christmas Carol. This one is my favorite of the album. I think it's something that lots of people can enjoy.

Merry Christmas Andy.

My secret santa was @a3quit4s and boy did they hit a homerun with what they sent me. They sent me Super Paper Mario (a game I've been wanting to play since I was a kid but missed out on) and pikmin 3 for switch. They also sent me a blue yarn yoshi amiibo. It was the last one I needed so it is super apprecated. I think my favorite was the bub and bob plushes though! I found the perfect place for them immediately.

Thank you very much and Merry Christmas!

For the guess the santa, he didn't participate in the gift exchange but I feel like Jeevan ran it this year.