SNESNESCUBE64

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.

Not gonna lie, I had a moment of weakness and opened up the shipping box early. My secret santa was one step ahead though and wrapped what they sent me which I as far as I am concerned is a legal binding contract for opening on christmas day.

Arcade badge please

Bubble Bobble Leaderboard badge please.

Things are going well with the project. I've just about finalized the amp circuit. After trying just about every opamp that I stock (I think it was 14) I settled on the LM1458. I am able to just about get the sound levels of the LM324 but without the distortion. I've started designing the next hardware revision. I will have a couple of pins leftover so I will have a expansion port in case I want to hook up to any other peripherals in the future. The next hardware revision will be removing all the jumpers and test points as well as the pullup resistors for the databus. The pullup resistors are not really necessary it seems so I am just not going to include them. The 7404 inverter IC will also be removed as it was unecessary. I arduino will also have no knowledge of the write line in the future. I am already not using it in software, so I am using that I/O elsewhere. The next version will still have the arduino pro mini serial header for debug and programing but will just be using an atmega328p (as well as the supporting circuitry) all onboard. I was also left with one extra I/O, so that will be resulting in one extra dip switch option. It's option will probably be for the expansion header, but I am unsure yet. I also added a test button so that way I can hear all the samples get played back with the settings applied. It really came in handy when testing the different amps. In terms of software, soundboard rom is done. Code to interface with the soundboard is done. I am currently not using ACK but might if I feel it is necessary. It shouldn't be if the sound rom is done. I've started writing code to interface with the dip switches. All options work as they should but I am not handling certain functionality completely. Part of that is because I don't have the rerecorded samples and alternate lines samples done. Hopefully during my holiday break I will have time to do that. I am super happy with the progress so far and cannot wait to finish this up.

Gosh, now that this list is over, we need another best metal list. What else am I gonna look at on this site?

Their newest album "The god machine" is pretty good. "Deliver us from evil" is one of my favorite Blind Gaurdian songs.

Just as an update to this project, yesterday I had fiddled around with my opamp circuit to make it a bit louder and increased the volume of the samples in order to make them a bit louder. So volume is no longer an issue. One other thing I looked into was how the TRS1 boards figured out when to play "Engine Trouble". Referring back to the ostermayer Radarscope sound page to double check to see if there was any way that I could read that the damage level was maxed out from the sound CPU, I noticed that /SOUND3 was undocumented. I figured, well if it would be anything, perhaps it would be the indicator for maxed out damage. The sound CPU cannot see when the siren or any of the other discrete logic sounds were playing. The TRS1 boards had a similar interface, so it had to be figuring it out SOMEHOW. So I hooked my logic probe up using some mini grabbers to check. To my surprise, it only went low when damage was maxed out, indicated by the pulse light being on since I used "mem" Because /SOUND3 was the trigger here, I was able to update my code to trigger engine trouble on DB4 from the module side. The only thing that I had really modify in terms of the sound rom was my databus write routine. Because /SOUND3 was on the port 2 databus (pin 35 - P25/PB5), I had to add a check to see if it indeed was active. The only issue is that I kind of injected this code into the original sound rom, so I had to make sure I restored the registers back to the way they were when I got to the routine. What really sucks about testing this, is that MAME doesn't implement port 2 since it goes unused from the input perspective and is only used for addressing as an output. I could test it good enough as I could change the port value just to make sure my logic worked, but to see if it actually worked, I had to test it out on the real cabinet. I was able to get the module to work correctly because of this and am very happy about that. I am able to FULLY recreate the original TRS1 voice experience with my module on the newer and more common TRS2 boards. I am super excited to finish my code and work out the handful of bugs I've encountered while doing it. So what remains is these action items: Utilize the dip switches to add a bit of extra functionality Work on making a better sounding amp circuit Alternate voice saying original lines (they don't sound to great) Alternate voice lines Software cleanup

I saw minus one the other day, it was excellent. I definitely liked it better than shin godzilla and it had a better story than any of the legendary movies.

So I have been playing around with this project for a while now. I did a proof of concept to see if I could do it back in June, but upon realizing that I couldn't talk to it without modifying the sound ROM I put it on the shelf. A few weeks ago I picked it back up after finishing up everything I really wanted to do with my Nintendo Helifire project. Before I get into this, I'd like to add a bit of context. In some versions of Nintendo Radarscope, specifically the TRS1 boards have the ability to have speech using a goofball Mitsubishi speech chip. This chip seems to be a bit rare as I could not find a single example after looking for about a year. Most of them did not come with this speech circuit populated. The later and more common TRS2 Radarscope sound boards did not come with the speech section at all. The goal of this project was to try to be able to get speech on the more common boards because why not. Onto the nerd stuff! The first thing I did was try to figure out how to modify the ROMs. Before I could even do that, I had to understand what I could write to make it meaningful. To my benefit, it was actually fairly simple to figure that out. In the MAME debugger, I could read the inputs, so I was able to see when the synth table was written to. To my benefit, there was also an awesome page going into detail about the table. From there, it was just finding out where in ROM it was reading these inputs. What is nice, is that in the original, all of the speech except for "Engine Trouble". Now that I knew what the states were, how was I going to get it to talk to a voice module. Well Nintendo made it really easy for me, they broke out part of the databus and the write line to a typically unused voice header on the sound board. This was going to be my vehicle for talking to my module. Luckily for me, the write line went unused other than this header. From there it was trivial to figure out how to write onto the databus (thank god some great folk scanned the intel 8035 datasheet and manuals). Now goes to the means of reading such writes. My whole voice module is based around an Arduino with the Talkie library. It is a neat library that takes data and outputs just like a TMS5220 (or a couple other speech chips) would. I was able to see the writes on my logic analyzer, but I realized that it would have been hard to keep the Arduino in sync with the databus even with using the write line as an interrupt. What I needed was a latch which my proof of concept didn't have. So for the first revision of the speech board I added a 74LS374 octal latch in order to capture the inputs as they are written. That way, the Arduino can just read the inputs at it's own pace. With a working prototype that could effectively read the inputs, I was able to finally get to software. As I mentioned, I was using the talkie library to play these. Once again, I used the awesome ostermayer radar scope page to download the recorded samples and quickly convert them to the TMS5220 data that the library needed. After writing some code to read the inputs and make some decisions on what to play, I had a working speech board! I have a rough project that works correctly with the game now! I still have a lot of work ahead of me and things that I want to do to make this thing better though. Let me know what you think! Clean up the original speech samples / convert speech ROM data to work with this library. Utilize the dip switches to add a bit of extra functionality Work on making a better sounding amp circuit Alternate voice saying original lines (they don't sound to great) Alternate voice lines

Try it on a real NES first before you do anything else. Clones can be flakey sometimes. The first thing I would do is check the jumpers. UNROM, going off memory, has jumpers on the game board to specify how much RAM it uses and whatnot. From there once that is validated, I would to try and dump the roms either with an NES ROM dumper or by removing the chips to validate them that way. If the ROMs check out good, I would validate the character RAM IC. The unfortunate part about UNROM512 is that it is meant to be erasable. I really don't like using parallel flash ICs as they are less permanent than OTP EPROMs or even UV EPROMs.

First of all, my mistake. Instead of "first commercial game" I meant "first commercial video game". Wording matters in this thread... Nutting Associates stretched the truth with that one though. This was a heck of a fun thing to look into during lunch because I didn't know NA did coin op stuff before computer space. This did NOT use a screen as we know it in a video game. It used film and what looked like a projector to display the question, from there the user would select an answer with the indicator of whether they were right or not being indicated by lights and buzzers. It also used nixie tubes to display your score. I would not call this a video game in the way we know it.

It's one of those things where it is how you define a video game. One argument is that a video game is nothing more than an amusement device with a display and user input. The "display part" is really what makes the classification part difficult. It's just "where do you draw the line?". Some people say the first one is tennis for two, which used an oscilloscope screen as a display and had paddle inputs. Bertie is a game that doesn't use a television or screen, rather it uses bulb indicators. Many consider that to disqualify it due to the "video" part not being present. I'm in the camp that Bertie, while important, is not a video game due to it's lack of video display. One thing to consider, is that if your definition of a video game is any indicator like Bertie, then EM pinball machines would also be a video game, which existed even then. The first pinball machines with flippers (user control) started happening in the late 40s. Alternatively, some people also start the count at "the first commercial game", which would be Computer Space by Nutting Associates and engineered by Syzygy (which would become Atari). Everything before that was homebrew projects people were doing at work or in their basement.

Seems like I am doing a lot of display repairs as of late. This time it was for Pinbot by Williams. In this instance, it was missing the middle character for player 2 and player 4. This one is fairly easy to handle looking at the schematics. The other issue is that the credit digits are missing segments 'B' and 'D'. The first thing to tackle is the missing segments. each display unit uses it's own driver IC for turning on the digits. So it would be just finding out what is in common. Looking at the schematics, I can see that the middle digit is STB13 and STB13'. With this identified, I can see that they each converge to a single NOR gate at U4. Odds are U4 is my problem with that. They used a CD4001. I've had the worst luck with late 70s and early 80s 4000 series CMOS ICs, so I didn't doubt that it was bad. After replacing the IC, I found that the two characters were back. So onto the next issue, the missing segments on the credit section. As previously mentioned, I was specifically missing segments 'B' and 'D'. The first thing to check in this circuit are the resistors that go in-between the driver and the display. In this case, they are 10k 1/2W resistors R21 and R23. Testing them in circuit, I found that they were open, meaning that they would not pass any current through. After replacing those two resistors, I found that all displays were working as they should.

You've never heard iron savior? I love their music. Here are a handful of my favorites. Sorry for hijacking the thread...

There's been too much power metal to not have Helloween, Iron Savior, and Blind Gaurdian. Bonus points for Avantasia or Masterplan. In terms of what's left I kinda am guessing Judas Priest and maybe Megadeth. Dunno about the rest.

Not everyone can be an expert. Non-collectors will look a game title and list it. It's just if it becomes a pattern. If their main thing is selling games, then they realistically should know what they are selling. However your estate sale person isn't going to know anything about games. And even if you are messaging them, they may not care. That could be a bit of a problem but not everyone is willing to take advice from what would ultimately be a stranger on ebay. Too many ulterior motives. I think that some of the responsibility of not buying a fake product on ebay still falls on the buyer. If you are willing to spend hundreds on a game, least you can do is make sure that what you are getting is legitimate. Basic things like learning to recognize fake labels and bootleg/unoriginal boards is not a super difficult task with the vast amount of resources online. That said, a seller should be doing some research as well. If the fake is blatant, I'd hope that they would recognize the differences. To answer the question "How do I handle it personally?", if a seller is trying to consistently pass off fake goods as the real deal, I ignore their listings and move on.

I absolutely love the entire series. Super mario kart has a ton of charm and is super cool for what it is. I would give it a 10 but I am not quite a fan of the controls. They feel super slippery compared to the newer ones. Perhaps it isn't fair to compare it to the newer ones, but it is still fun.

I don't think there's a whole lot you CAN do at this point. Something is wrong with game itself. Unfortunately I am unfamiliar with the tricks of fixing these. If you just bought it, try to get a refund.

Unfortunately that game might just be defective. There isn't a whole lot (to my knowledge) that you can do about a 3DS card dying. I suppose inspect it closely for damage, but unfortunately it might just be bad. Have you tried it on another system/firmware?

If you are talking about comparing binaries, software like Beyond Compare 4 can do that. I use it at work and quite like it. HxD can also do comparisons but it isn't as good.