Micro-Sized Flex For Commercial Quality Bodging

July 29, 2019 by Kerry Scharfglass 9 Comments

We love watching the creativity unleashed by the democratization of once-exotic technologies. The casualness by which one can order a cheap, small run of PCBs has unlocked a flood of fine pitch components and projects which look commercial quality even with a total build volume of one. Now the once mythical flex PCB has been falling from it’s stratospheric pricing and with OSHPark’s offering it feels like we’re at the inflection point. [qwertymodo] leveraged this by creating a beautifully twisted flex to add link port support to the Super Game Boy

In the mid-90’s Nintendo released the Super Game Boy, a cartridge for the SNES which allowed you to play Game Boy games on the big screen. Each cartridge was in fact an entire Game Boy with the appropriate hardware to present it in a way the host console could interface with, but missing some of the hardware a standalone Game Boy would include like a link port to connect it to another system. This mod fixes this limitation by bridging the correct pins out from the CPU to a breakout board which includes the link port connector. For general background on what’s going on here, check out [Brian]’s article from April describing a different mod [qwertymodo] executed to the same system.

What’s fascinating is how elegant the mod is. Using a a flex here to create a completely custom, strangely shaped, one-of-a-kind adapter for this random IC, in low volume is an awesome example of the use of advanced manufacturing techniques to take our hacks to the next level. It reminds us a little of the method [Scotty] used to add the headphone jack to his iPhone 7 back in 2017. At the time that seemed like a technology only available to hackers who could speak a little Mandarin and lived in Shenzhen.

Detailed information on this hack is a little spread out. There is slightly more info in these tweets, and if you have a Super Game Boy crying out for a link port the adapter flexes are sometimes available here. Look beyond the break to see what the mod originally looked like sans-flex.

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SNES Mode 7 Gets An HD Upgrade

April 26, 2019 by Jonathan Bennett 9 Comments

Emulating SNES games hits us right in the nostalgic feels, but playing SNES games on an 1920×1080 monitor is a painful reminder of the limitations of SNES hardware. [DerKoun] felt the same consternation, and decided to do something about it. He realized that some SNES games have much higher resolution textures that weren’t being taken advantage of. The SNES had a revolutionary video mode, mode 7, that allowed a game to set a relatively high resolution background, and then rotate and scale that background during gameplay.

This pseudo 3d effect was amazing for its time, but taking a high resolution image and squashing it into a 320 by 240 pixel viewport makes for some painful artefacts. This is where [DerKoun]’s hack comes in. He wrote a modification to the bsnes emulator, allowing those rotations and scaling to happen in full resolution, vastly improving the visuals of mode 7 games.

The latest teaser for what’s to come is shown above, mapping the mode 7 backgrounds onto a widescreen viewport, as well as HD.

Come back after the break for some mind blowing SNES HD PilotWings action!

Update: Development discussion has continued in a new thread. Start with link above to get origin story and continue to the new dev thread for recent updates.
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A Steady Hand Makes This Chip Work Again

March 21, 2019 by Brian Benchoff 29 Comments

What do you do when you’re working with some vintage ICs and one of the tiny legs pops off? That’s what happened to [Kotomi] when working with an old Super Nintendo. A single lead for the sound chip just snapped off, leaving [Kotomi] one pin short of a working system (the Google Translatrix). This is something that can be fixed, provided you have a steady hand and a rotary tool that’s spinning at thousands of RPM.

Fixing this problem relies on a little bit of knowledge of how integrated circuits are built. There’s a small square of silicon in there, but this tiny die is bonded to a metal leadframe, which looks like the ribcage of a robotic centipede. This leadframe is covered in epoxy, the pins are bent down, and you have an IC. Removing just a tiny bit of epoxy grants access to the leadframe which you can then solder to. Don’t breathe the repair, it’s not pretty, but it does work.

While this technique makes use of a Dremel to break into the chewy nougat center of a vintage chip, and in some ways this could be called decapsulation, it really isn’t. We’ve seen people drop acid to get to the center of a chip and a really hot torch will get to the middle of a ceramic chip, but this technique is just accessing the lead frame of the IC. All ICs have a stamped (or photoetched) metal frame to which the silicone die is bonded. Running a Dremel against some epoxy doesn’t access the silicon, but it does grant access to the signals coming off the chip.

SNES Portable Leverages Flash Cart For More Games

January 25, 2019 by Lewin Day 12 Comments

Handheld consoles have to make a lot of design choices that their TV connected brethren don’t have to worry about. Battery life is important, as is screen visibility, and the games can’t be too bulky or unwieldy if you’re going to be carrying them around all day. [Chris] is no stranger to building handheld versions of home consoles, and took a few of these lessons on board in his latest portable SNES build.

The motherboard was provided by a SNES Jr., a lightweight, compact model released towards the end of the console’s reign. This was small enough that it required no trimming, however [Chris] elected to replace the inefficient 7805 with a more modern switching regulator. The case was 3D printed on a typical FDM setup, while the buttons were produced on a Form 2 for better dimensional accuracy and surface finish.

The flash cart PCB is permanently wired to the motherboard.

The real party piece, however, is the use of an SD2SNES flash cart. This allows a huge variety of ROMs to be loaded onto a single SD card, and played on the original console hardware. This is particularly useful in a portable build, as it becomes possible to carry all the games you could want, rather than having to juggle several full-sized SNES cartridges. The SD2SNES is wired in place permanently inside the console, with an impressive number of patch wires between the motherboard and the cartridge PCB. Despite the long lead length, [Chris] reports no issues with the connection.

There are some limitations – the flash cart doesn’t work properly for games using extra chips on the cartridge, like the SuperFX in Star Fox, for example. Despite this, it’s an excellent, high quality build that we’re sure is a lot of fun to play out and about.

We’ve seen [Chris]’s work before – this portable N64 is a particularly nice example. Video after the break.

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NBA Jam Tournament Edition Double Z ROM Hack Screen

NBA Jam ROM Hack On SNES Is Heating Up

December 3, 2018 by Drew Littrell 8 Comments

It’s a rare game that is able to bridge the gap between sports game fans and those that identify as hardcore gamers. Midway was able to bring those two groups onto common ground when they released NBA Jam to arcades in 1993. The game was an instant hit and was ported to 16-bit home consoles that same year. Compromises were made during those ports, so an attempt to make them more inline with the arcade release came in the form of NBA Jam: Tournament Edition a year later. However, in the heart of [eskayelle] NBA Jam: TE on the Super Nintendo didn’t go far enough. Now they have released a ROM hack that completely reworks NBA Jam: TE, and it’s called the “Double Z Mod”.

The Original NBA Jam Ball from the Title Screen — The original NBA Jam ball (courtesy of Steve Lin)

The concept behind the ROM hack was to bring about the NBA Jam game that fans deserved. All facets of pop culture from the early 90s were mixed in (not just former Presidents). According to the ROM hack’s notes, some of the things that were packed into the mod include:

• Assets from the original game have been restored, such as the Mortal Kombat banners.
• Modified certain players to give them a more “arcadey” feel.
• Soar to new heights with Air Jordan!
• Play as “The Worm”, Dennis Rodman, on at least four teams.
• Forget the Rookies, now play as the 1992 Dream Team.
• Tons of new secret characters including: Hulk Hogan, David Hasselhoff, Arnie as the T-800, and more.
• Expanded rosters are now as easy as inputting the “Konami code”

(Hint: B, A, B, A, Up, Down, B, A, Left, Right, B, A at the title screen menu)

In a gesture to give back to the ROM hacking community, [eskayelle] went as far to provide a collection of helpful tools to help potential SNES ROM hackers build their own NBA Jam: TE remixes. The document details ways to alter player photos, team colors, stats, and cosmetic tweaks. Since the Double Z mod focuses on being as 90s as possible, maybe this collection of tutorials will lead to a current NBA roster update.

To play the NBA Jam TE Double Z mod, you can use devices like the Retrode that allow easy dumping of an original cartridge onto a PC. From there the dumped ROM can be patched using an IPS patcher, like LunarIPS, which is as simple as locating two files in a browser window and hitting “Apply Patch”. In case you needed to see the Double Z mod in action, there is the clip below.

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SNES Controller Has A Pi Zero In The Trunk

November 17, 2018 by Tom Nardi 7 Comments

We’re no stranger to seeing people jam a Raspberry Pi into an old gaming console to turn it into a RetroPie system. Frankly, at this point it seems like we’ve got to be getting close to seeing all possible permutations of the concept. According to the bingo card we keep here at Hackaday HQ we’re just waiting for somebody to put one into an Apple Bandai Pippin, creating the PiPi and achieving singularity. Get it done, people.

That being said, we’re still occasionally surprised by what people come up with. The Super GamePad Zero by [Zach Levine] is a fairly compelling take on the Pi-in-the-controller theme that we haven’t seen before, adding a 3D printed “caboose” to the stock Super Nintendo controller. The printed case extension, designed by Thingiverse user [Sigismond0], makes the controller about twice as thick, but that’s still not bad compared to modern game controllers.

In his guide [Zach] walks the reader through installing the Raspberry Pi running RetroPie in the expanded case. This includes putting a power LED where the controller’s cable used to go, and connecting the stock controller PCB to the Pi’s GPIO pins. This is an especially nice touch that not only saves you time and effort, but retains the original feel of the D-Pad and buttons. Just make sure the buttons on your donor controller aren’t shot before you start the build.

Adding a little more breathing room for your wiring isn’t the only reason to use the 3D printed bottom, either. It implements a very clever “shelf” design that exposes the Pi’s USB and HDMI ports on the rear of the controller. This allows you to easily connect power and video to the device without spoiling the overall look. With integrated labels for the connectors and a suitably matching filament color, the overall effect really does look like it could be a commercial product.

The SNES controller is an especially popular target for hacks and modifications. From commercially available kits to the wide array of homebrew builds, it there’s plenty of people who want to keep this legendary piece of gaming gear going strong into the 21st century

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Memory Mapping Methods In The Super Nintendo

November 14, 2018 by Bryan Cockfield 6 Comments

Not only is the Super Nintendo an all-around great platform, both during its prime in the 90s and now during the nostalgia craze, but its relative simplicity compared to modern systems makes it a lot more accessible from a computer science point-of-view. That means that we can get some in-depth discussion on how the Super Nintendo actually does what it does, and understand most of it, like this video from [Retro Game Mechanics Explained] which goes into an incredible amount of detail on the mechanics of the SNES’s memory system.

Two of the interesting memory systems the SNES uses are called DMA and HDMA. DMA stands for direct memory access, and is a way for the Super Nintendo to access memory independently of the CPU. The advantages to this are that it’s incredibly fast compared to more typical methods of accessing memory. This isn’t particulalry unique, but the HDMA system is. It allows the SNES to do all kinds of interesting tricks with its video output display like changing color gradients and doing all kinds of masking effects.

If you’re interested in the inner workings of classic consoles like the SNES, this video gets way down in the weeds in the system itself. It’s interesting to see how programmers were able to squeeze more capability from these limited (by modern standards) systems by manipulating memory like the DMA and HDMA systems do. [Retro Game Mechanics Explained] is a great resource for exploring in-depth aspects of lots of classic games, like how speedrunners can execute arbitrary code in old Mario games.

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