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More soldering iron queries! So is something like this actually worth the money, or is it literally the exact same thing as those little copper ball of wool things I see in the cleaning aisle and thus a bit of a rip-off? Also, I've been looking at the suggested the Hakko FX-88 soldering station here.. Aside from the fact that it's slightly silly looking, how secure is the pen's resting slot? It looks kind of shallow, like the iron could just flop out easily, or that the entire thing might tip over from being light and plasticy. Considering how often I klutz into nearly giving myself tattoos with the crappy lightweight soldering iron holder I've been using, I was hoping for one that's more useful. Finally, what are good options for removing solder? I see braids, suckers, random things I haven't had any real experience with. Cicero posted:What I don't get is why repro controllers for the NES/SNES/etc. eras still suck so bad. Any patents that Nintendo et al had on them are long since expired, and the electronics themselves detect the button presses fine, so it's literally just screwing up the feel and dimensions of the plastic and rubber bits. I realize getting the right feel is a non-trivial task, but c'mon, it's been over two decades now! You would've figured that by now someone would've done it. I guess everyone wants to cash in on the retro craze, but nobody wants to put in the extra effort to really make a quality product. Same deal with repro controllers AND repro consoles, come to think of it. (Which is a shame, because I know sometimes they really can put forth some extra love.. Like that Atari Flashback 2 that used actual hardware, and could be converted to play actual carts.) Midnight Raider fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Jan 19, 2013 |
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Jan 19, 2013 15:38
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Kreeblah posted:Eh, assembly itself isn't too bad. It's figuring out the memory locations, timing details, and weird quirks of whatever you have hooked up to the CPU/microcontroller/whatever that's the annoying part. At least for the SNES, those sorts of things should be pretty well documented by this point, I'd imagine. Basically in that code or at least the snippit I'm trying to find is that there should be a STA $2141 and $2142 each. $2141 is the call to the SPU to write commands to it, $2142/3 is the memory and $2140 is the status. How the SPU works is a song is essentially a long list of instruments as hex which is pulled from a pre-existing track list inside the rom. Songs are played bit by bit and each time a command is fed to $2141 $2140 musc be checked to see if the SPU is free again which then goes back to writing to $2141 then $2142/3. So what you're looking for is a LDA $variable which loads the track location into memory and then a JSR command which is the assembly to jump into a subroutine along with the SPU register commands. Midnight Raider posted:More soldering iron queries! It's just a big ball of copper wool, just handy because it has a little holder. You could shove some into something different and get the same result. As for that iron, no idea I have a Weller. For desoldering each thing has their own use and it all depends on what exactly you're planning to do. Braid is used for things like TSOP chips or surface mount to make things a little bit easier while still remaining super cheap. It's also handy to get that last bit of pesky solder your sucker fails to grab. A sucker is used to remove the solder from pin holes so you can remove through-pin ICs and components. If you're wanting to go full blown which I'm doubting you can get an entire flowing station as such http://www.amazon.com/WR3000M-Digital-Self-Contained-3-Function-Tools/dp/B0019V5PSQ/ which lets you do things like use hot air to lift ICs or have a solder sucker built into the iron. Really you should be able to get by with just some braid and a sucker. Use a dead pcb and practice pulling ICs and components off so you get the hang of using both and you should be able to do *most* work. flyboi fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Jan 19, 2013 |
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Jan 19, 2013 16:23
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I have that iron or a model very much near it. The stand is metal and is very solid. If i put pressure on the non stand end of the tip, the stand will flip over long before the iron comes out. I use a cheap desoldering iron with a bulb sucker combo i got from radio shack. Braid I never got to work, and I didn't like the plunger sucker I had. ChaiCalico fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Jan 19, 2013 |
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Jan 19, 2013 16:54
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Why have GameCube games practically doubled in price over the last 3-4 years? Is this something that I should expect to reverse? What the poo poo?
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Jan 19, 2013 17:55
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Rodney the Piper posted:Why have GameCube games practically doubled in price over the last 3-4 years? Is this something that I should expect to reverse? What the poo poo? Games are always cheapest at the end of a console's lifecycle.
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Jan 19, 2013 17:58
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madpanda posted:I have that iron or a model very much near it. The stand is metal and is very solid. If i put pressure on the non stand end of the tip, the stand will flip over long before the iron comes out. Yea, don't let the goofy colors fool you. The Hakko FX-888 is extremely sturdy. The holder is made of all metal, and secures the soldering iron just as well as any other holder I've seen. The actual base station itself is pretty heavy as well, and won't move anywhere. The whole thing is rock solid and compact. Rodney the Piper posted:Why have GameCube games practically doubled in price over the last 3-4 years? Is this something that I should expect to reverse? What the poo poo? I've noticed the same. I think part of it just has to do with the fact that it's Nintendo. Take Wind Waker for example. It is by no means an uncommon game at all. But look at ebay, and every copy fetches nearly $50. Hell, I've even seen disc only versions go for $40. That's madness. Even some multiplatform GC games go for 2x as much as some of its PS2/Xbox counterparts. It's just crazy. About the only thing you'll find cheap nowadays is the endless sea of Madden, NHL, and NBA games. fatpat268 fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Jan 19, 2013 |
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Jan 19, 2013 18:05
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fatpat268 posted:
This is true, it's cheaper to get the Resident Evil 2 and 3 versions for the Dreamcast than get the Gamecube versions(which are PSX ports). The gamecube had a sea of crappy shovelware, majority of it's library is absolute crap like Aggressive Inline Skating but for the few gems that are there, they now go for alot. Mind you the Gamecube sales for everything from hardware to software was less than the N64, it really was a mediocre system. But then you have the Nintnedo effect which suddenly makes everything at second glance something amazing.
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Jan 19, 2013 18:47
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Miyamotos RGB NES posted:Is the only benefit to this being able to connect the SNES to your HDTV's component inputs? Since it's not a 1CHIP I believe the image is still going to be pretty crummy, unless I am missing how a PPU works. Ha, I asked you the same question a week or two ago. I researched it a bit and found that the 1CHIP models will still look better. Crummy is a relative term though because older models still don't look that bad. It's not like the snes was some terrible abomination until they revised the chipset. The main advantage to this mod is cost because you don't need a SCART converter.
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Jan 19, 2013 18:54
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loving local ebay cosignment fuckers. They bought up every single cube game at both gamestops except WWF or WWE or whatever that pile of gently caress is. eBay has ruined any sort of game hoarding.
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Jan 19, 2013 19:03
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Aggressive Inline was a pretty solid Tony Hawk impersonation on the PS2. I should post my collection sometime. Nothing amazing, but a few decent things. I unfortunately threw away all my SNES boxes and my 7 years of Nintendo Power about a decade ago. I'm an rear end in a top hat.
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Jan 19, 2013 19:06
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The thing about Gamecube is that most of its library is unremarkable. The games that ARE worth having are almost all first-party, and first-party Nintendo games are always expensive, no matter how common they are or what system they're for. Some of Nintendo's Gamecube games have aged very, very well, though, and are still worth their relatively high asking prices -- Wind Waker, Double Dash and Smash Bros. Melee in particular. Most of Gamecube's third-party software is better replicated and more cheaply available on other consoles.
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Jan 19, 2013 19:11
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Rodney the Piper posted:Why have GameCube games practically doubled in price over the last 3-4 years? Is this something that I should expect to reverse? What the poo poo? Might have to do with Gamestop no longer accepting Gamecube trade-ins since April 2012, so there's less availability of used Gamecube games out there.
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Jan 19, 2013 19:26
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Safari Disco Lion posted:Just ordered parts to try making a wireless SNES controller. Looks like they're about $50 each to make, all the parts are about $35 total but getting a controller seems to cost around $15 each. I may have to try getting a bunch in one lot if I can. Ebay is completely saturated with lovely new replacement ones and I think it's driving prices up, the old original ones were like $5-8 about 3 years ago. I implore you to tell us how this goes and how it works! I found a guide someone did for a Saturn/multi console but I'm still a bit lost on how to simplify it (I'm making a different sort of controller, but wireless would be sweet). The (somewhat obvious) gist I get is: Controller > Encoder chip > Transmitter >>> Receiver > Decoder > Console I know you can get a cheap transmitter/receiver pair but then what about channels? The chips seem pretty standard but then I saw how many variants of the way they encode things. (THINGS WITH 3-4 LETTER ACRONYMS i.e. SOL, ARGH, ETC.) I ripped open an old wireless flash set to see if I could use that but I know nothing. Long story short it looks like I'm using wires since that will be easier and then I may actually get off my rear end and finish this but I would certainly be interested in hearing your controller escapade regardless. As long as I'm posting I just want to say thanks Flyboi for the flashcart history lesson!
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Jan 19, 2013 19:27
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The Gamecube really was overlooked during its time but now everyone is starting to appreciate it and all the games it had. Sadly, there are so few (good condition) copies of those games now relative to the demand out there. Telling you guys, if you have any desire on a PS2/gamecube collection, you best be finishing it up soon.
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Jan 19, 2013 19:29
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Ineffiable posted:The Gamecube really was overlooked during its time but now everyone is starting to appreciate it and all the games it had. Sadly, there are so few (good condition) copies of those games now relative to the demand out there. Only games I don't have and want are Tales of Symphonia, which I owned and sold  and Xenosaga Episode 3 which is just as impossible to find 
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Jan 19, 2013 19:35
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WendigoJohnson posted:This is true, it's cheaper to get the Resident Evil 2 and 3 versions for the Dreamcast than get the Gamecube versions(which are PSX ports). The gamecube had a sea of crappy shovelware, majority of it's library is absolute crap like Aggressive Inline Skating but for the few gems that are there, they now go for alot. Mind you the Gamecube sales for everything from hardware to software was less than the N64, it really was a mediocre system. But then you have the Nintnedo effect which suddenly makes everything at second glance something amazing. The majority of games on almost every system are lovely bullshit titles. That doesn't matter because most people aren't collecting EVERY game for a system they're collecting the good ones, and the Gamecube had quite a few. You're kind of going out of your way to rage at Nintendo here. Nintendo games hold their value pretty well and there's no reason to expect that the ones on the Gamecube would be any different in that regard no matter how mediocre the console was.
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Jan 19, 2013 19:38
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_____! posted:I implore you to tell us how this goes and how it works! I found a guide someone did for a Saturn/multi console but I'm still a bit lost on how to simplify it (I'm making a different sort of controller, but wireless would be sweet). The (somewhat obvious) gist I get is: http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=4393.0
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Jan 19, 2013 19:49
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flyboi posted:Basically in that code or at least the snippit I'm trying to find is that there should be a STA $2141 and $2142 each. $2141 is the call to the SPU to write commands to it, $2142/3 is the memory and $2140 is the status. How the SPU works is a song is essentially a long list of instruments as hex which is pulled from a pre-existing track list inside the rom. Songs are played bit by bit and each time a command is fed to $2141 $2140 musc be checked to see if the SPU is free again which then goes back to writing to $2141 then $2142/3. So what you're looking for is a LDA $variable which loads the track location into memory and then a JSR command which is the assembly to jump into a subroutine along with the SPU register commands. So, how do you know it's going to use the accumulator for that? Now that it's not 1AM, I took a quick look at the opcode list for the SNES CPU and there are load and store instructions for X and Y as well as instructions to copy the contents of A into X or Y (or the other way). You'll probably also want to keep an eye out for STX or STY instructions storing data at those locations.
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Jan 19, 2013 19:51
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BoutrosBoutros posted:The majority of games on almost every system are lovely bullshit titles. That doesn't matter because most people aren't collecting EVERY game for a system they're collecting the good ones, and the Gamecube had quite a few. You're kind of going out of your way to rage at Nintendo here. Nintendo games hold their value pretty well and there's no reason to expect that the ones on the Gamecube would be any different in that regard no matter how mediocre the console was. The Gamecube library definetly wasn't as good or as vast as the Playstation 2's or even it's precursors(SNES,N64) or sucessor(Wii). It's got nothing to do with raging against Nintendo, especialy when I have the system in question with a decent selection of games. It's even mentioned by Nintendo that the Gamecube did not do as well as their previous and future systems. The Taint Reaper fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Jan 19, 2013 |
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Jan 19, 2013 19:51
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WendigoJohnson posted:The Gamecube library definetly wasn't as good or as vast as the Playstation 2's or even it's precursors(SNES,N64) or sucessor(Wii). It's got nothing to do with raging against Nintendo, especialy when I have the system in question with a decent selection of games. It's even mentioned by Nintendo that the Gamecube did not do as well as their previous and future systems. Yeah the GameCube has 646 games, the Xbox 1 has 968 games and the Playstation 2 has 2,016 games. However, the N64 only has 387 games, so you're wrong there on the N64 having more.
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Jan 19, 2013 19:57
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Kreeblah posted:So, how do you know it's going to use the accumulator for that? Now that it's not 1AM, I took a quick look at the opcode list for the SNES CPU and there are load and store instructions for X and Y as well as instructions to copy the contents of A into X or Y (or the other way). You'll probably also want to keep an eye out for STX or STY instructions storing data at those locations. All of them are potential, it's just when something is written to $2142/3 that means sound is about to play. It's about finding where the loop is that feeds the SPU which will give you the rom address that is the start of the subroutine. With this you can look through the asssembly for the JSR to this address which will give you the lines you need to modify for MSU support. Basically it will be something like this: LDX $## STX $#### JSR $#### ... then inside the subroutine that JSR is jumped to you'll see it pull the information from STX and then process it into the SPU inside a loop LDX $#### blahblahblah STX $2142 So then you have your sound loop you then use byuu's assembler patcher to modify the LDX $## to insert a JSR before which will then read the ## from LDX which would be the track number and then check if the MSA exists. If so, pass to it and if not, go back to the regular code. Once done, set the track in $## to empty and return from the routine to allow the code to continue. I think I touched on this before but how music works in SNES and well pretty much everything is you have a table which has pointer locations to the data for the content within the table. Since it's a fairly basic processor the tracklist will always have $00 as silent music so you don't turn the cartridge on and it flips out as SPC isn't fully initialized yet. Granted, I just used X by there are 3 different ways to load and pull data from memory and any are plausible.
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Jan 19, 2013 20:09
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Eventually the ebay secondary market will crash aside from a handful of stand out titles (Like it or not, Mario and Zelda will always fetch higher prices simply for being Mario and Zelda games). I really doubt many people are looking to spend $5 or more on lovely Shovel Ware Title 6 to complete a collection, and eventually the guys who have these massive lots of lovely games will want them out of their house/warehouse. Be patient and give it time and keep an eye out on the local scene.
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Jan 19, 2013 20:10
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_____! posted:I implore you to tell us how this goes and how it works! I found a guide someone did for a Saturn/multi console but I'm still a bit lost on how to simplify it (I'm making a different sort of controller, but wireless would be sweet). The (somewhat obvious) gist I get is: I will. All in all it doesn't look terribly difficult; hardest part for the SNES one mostly seems to be keeping everything flat enough to fit. I have NO effing clue what all the differences are in the transceiver chips, I just bought the one the parts list told me to. 
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Jan 19, 2013 20:11
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Also I nominate flyboi as best new poster in the retro thread.
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Jan 19, 2013 20:11
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Install Gentoo posted:Yeah the GameCube has 646 games, the Xbox 1 has 968 games and the Playstation 2 has 2,016 games. Yeah I thought the N64 definetly had more than that, my mistake. However the N64 and Wii did have more second and third party support than what the Gamecube had. You had many of the Rareware games that were atleast 6-7 good solid games that still hold up today and then stuff like OoT and Majora's Mask. The Wii got a load of more nitche titles like Fragile Dreams, Dragon's Lair, Rune Facotry, and certainly had alot more of certain generes that went under represented on the N64 and Gamecube. You really can't hate on Xenoblade Chronicles, it really stands on on being the best console RPG released last generation.
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Jan 19, 2013 20:11
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Can you guys help me identify what this is supposed to attach onto?  There's no company name or number or anything on it, and I know it never fit right on my Game Gear or Nomad. Got it from a neighbor kid like 20 years ago and it's just moved with all my other stuff since.
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Jan 19, 2013 20:36
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WendigoJohnson posted:Yeah I thought the N64 definetly had more than that, my mistake. However the N64 and Wii did have more second and third party support than what the Gamecube had. You had many of the Rareware games that were atleast 6-7 good solid games that still hold up today and then stuff like OoT and Majora's Mask. The Wii got a load of more nitche titles like Fragile Dreams, Dragon's Lair, Rune Facotry, and certainly had alot more of certain generes that went under represented on the N64 and Gamecube. You really can't hate on Xenoblade Chronicles, it really stands on on being the best console RPG released last generation. I'm not really sure what you're arguing but there's still a fair number of great 3rd party games for the Gamecube. Just pulling from my limited collection I have found Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Tales of Symphonia, Resident Evil 4, P.N.03, Viewtiful Joe, Soul Calibur II, Eternal Darkness, and F-Zero GX (developed by Sega).
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Jan 19, 2013 20:40
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The Joe Man posted:Can you guys help me identify what this is supposed to attach onto? At first glace I'd guess it clips onto the top of the original brick Game Boy and is held in place by that screw bit.
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Jan 19, 2013 20:42
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It's for the game gear(?)
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Jan 19, 2013 20:43
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WendigoJohnson posted:Yeah I thought the N64 definetly had more than that, my mistake. However the N64 and Wii did have more second and third party support than what the Gamecube had. You had many of the Rareware games that were atleast 6-7 good solid games that still hold up today and then stuff like OoT and Majora's Mask. The Wii got a load of more nitche titles like Fragile Dreams, Dragon's Lair, Rune Facotry, and certainly had alot more of certain generes that went under represented on the N64 and Gamecube. You really can't hate on Xenoblade Chronicles, it really stands on on being the best console RPG released last generation. The GameCube has a lot of third party support compared to the N64, it's just that it's crap! Out of 646 GameCube titles, 63 were published by Nintendo - that's 9.8%. On N64 out of 387 titles Nintendo published 53 of them - 16.7%. It is however true that the Wii had more third party support - Nintendo only published 76 out of 1220 titles for 6.2% of the library. I think you're simply misremembering the N64. It had the lowest proportional third party support of any Nintendo system besides the Virtual Boy (which was 50% Nintendo published games). The Joe Man posted:Can you guys help me identify what this is supposed to attach onto? The probably could go with a TurboExpress. The rounded parts where it attaches only seem to match the TurboExpress, and not either version of the Lynx and of course not a Game Boy of any kind. There could also be a very small chance of it going with a Gamate I suppose, but that's very unlikely.
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Jan 19, 2013 20:44
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RVWinkle posted:I'm not really sure what you're arguing but there's still a fair number of great 3rd party games for the Gamecube. Just pulling from my limited collection I have found Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Tales of Symphonia, Resident Evil 4, P.N.03, Viewtiful Joe, Soul Calibur II, Eternal Darkness, and F-Zero GX (developed by Sega). I suppose the Metroid Prime series was third party as well. Edit: oops that was supposed to be edit and not a quote. Install Gentoo posted:The probably could go with a TurboExpress. The rounded parts where it attaches only seem to match the TurboExpress, and not either version of the Lynx and of course not a Game Boy of any kind. That ain't no Turbo Express attachment and likely not any kind of video game relate peripheral mainly because almost every hand held accepts carts from the top. RVWinkle fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Jan 19, 2013 |
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Jan 19, 2013 20:45
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The Joe Man posted:Can you guys help me identify what this is supposed to attach onto? Bet you a nickel it's for a Game Gear, it has a screw-in bit on the back for addons and whatnot.
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Jan 19, 2013 20:50
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A lot of the multiplatform games on the GC are perfectly fine and playable.
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Jan 19, 2013 20:53
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PopeCrunch posted:Bet you a nickel it's for a Game Gear, it has a screw-in bit on the back for addons and whatnot. Huh. Seeing as how the only handheld I had as a kid WAS a Game Gear, I remember trying to put it on and it just didn't fit right. Well, my Game Gear's been sold since so I can't retest but if anyone wants this mystery magnifier, let me know (Ten bucks?) EDIT: Holy crap I was an idiot kid. Just looked at a back picture of a Game Gear. Lil' dumb JoeMan was definitely trying to fit it on over the top somehow, not the bottom 
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Jan 19, 2013 20:56
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flyboi posted:loving local ebay cosignment fuckers. They bought up every single cube game at both gamestops except WWF or WWE or whatever that pile of gently caress is. eBay has ruined any sort of game hoarding. Even ebay is plagued by loving resellers. Any auction that has a lot of decent games are generally won by the same people over and over again (you can search their bid history) because they're bidding high and reselling them for a small profit.
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Jan 19, 2013 21:02
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fatpat268 posted:Even ebay is plagued by loving resellers. Any auction that has a lot of decent games are generally won by the same people over and over again (you can search their bid history) because they're bidding high and reselling them for a small profit. When I was trying to get a Genesis on there I realized that nearly every single Genesis was being bought by one account.
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Jan 19, 2013 21:08
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Speaking of Gamecube prices climbing, Gotcha Force has really jumped in the last couple years. Except for PSO 1&2(+), Pokémon Box, and NCAA Basketball 2K3, though, I have most of the in-demand/hard to find titles:      One of the Capcom vs. SNK 2's is an empty case - I left the disc at a friend's house and it got lost, so I bought a replacement copy. Fire Emblem is still sealed. (Not pictured: the disc-only games I managed to scrounge from Gamestop, and Kirby's Air Ride, which I'm trading a disc-only spare copy of Ikaruga to someone on CAG to obtain. Also, I have two sets of bongos but no dance pad.) And yet there are STILL gaps to be filled in terms of what I want: Baten Kaitos Origins, Odama, Go! Go! Hypergrind, Tom & Jerry in: War of the Whiskers, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee, Bomberman Generation, and really just about anything that's cheap enough. (And then the handful of imports like Kururin Paradise and the Hudson remakes and Nintendo Puzzle Collection.)
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Jan 19, 2013 21:17
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RVWinkle posted:That ain't no Turbo Express attachment and likely not any kind of video game relate peripheral mainly because almost every hand held accepts carts from the top. I had a real cheapo light+magnifier thing for my Game Boy Color as a kid that made it impossible to change cartridges without taking the device off the top first. I wouldn't have been surprised to see one like that for other handhelds.
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Jan 19, 2013 21:31
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Dear god quick can anyone recommend a retro game store near Madison Square Garden
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Jan 19, 2013 22:11
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Miyamotos RGB NES posted:Dear god quick can anyone recommend a retro game store near Madison Square Garden NYC is a poo poo area for retro games. Your best bet is on 202 E 6th Street. By the way what will it take for someone to buy me an avatar with Segata Sanshiro crushing a PS1?
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Jan 19, 2013 22:14
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