Game Boy PC

Myrddin · 17-04-2012 1:13pm

Ooh the pressure is on now Steve, don't worry, it's just the eyes of the world on you

Steve X2 · 17-04-2012 1:27pm

EnterNow wrote: »

Ooh the pressure is on now Steve, don't worry, it's just the eyes of the world on you

eeek!

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Steve X2 · 18-04-2012 11:14am

The small wireless n card and 16GB USB drive that's going inside the Game Boy arrived today. Just as small as they looked on the site and wont take up much room inside the case(These will be on a mini powered USB hub I have that needs to be somehow mounted inside the case).

I've also started toying with the idea of using the composite video on the Pi to run a 3.5" screen instead of the DSI connection on the PI that nobody seems to know much about yet. This will involve some extra modding to fit the screen in where the original 2.6" screen went.

As always, more research required but it would certainly add to the whole case mod if I had a working screen in it.

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CiDeRmAn · 18-04-2012 12:59pm

Hurry up and build the damn thing already Steve!
That way I can give you my money so you can build me one too!

I bagsy the first one btw!

Steve X2 · 18-04-2012 1:07pm

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Hurry up and build the damn thing already Steve!
That way I can give you my money so you can build me one too!

I bagsy the first one btw!

And if it ends up looking like this?

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CiDeRmAn · 18-04-2012 1:24pm

Well, then you can stick Boulder Dash on it and Sparks will buy it!

Steve X2 · 18-04-2012 1:39pm

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Well, then you can stick Boulder Dash on it and Sparks will buy it!

Haha, true enough.

But I should state I have no intention of selling these at the moment. I do plan to install Pi's in lots of retro devices so maybe I'll sell them on at some stage if I feel they are of a decent enough quality to leave the Steve SI Batcave

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CiDeRmAn · 18-04-2012 1:44pm

Well, I can see the Gamegear, Gameboy, Lynx, Nes and, with the provision of an extra button, the Megadrive being beautifully emulated on such a device, just sayin' is all.

Steve X2 · 18-04-2012 2:28pm

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Well, I can see the Gamegear, Gameboy, Lynx, Nes and, with the provision of an extra button, the Megadrive being beautifully emulated on such a device, just sayin' is all.

Yeah, I'd love to get all the original buttons/controls working as well as a couple of hidden buttons somewhere.
But the problem is this is very much a dev board at the moment and it runs an ARM build of Linux so there is loads of work to do on the basic software side of things(by myself and others) to get things running smoothly.
Even hooking up a button to it without using a keyboard is proving an issue.

Anyway, I knew this was going to be a lot of work on the software and hardware side of things so I cant complain about it.
And I wont be doing any modding on the case this weekend as I've now to pop over to London for the weekend on a little job

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Myrddin · 19-04-2012 9:46am

You missed a trick by not using this Steve

Steve X2 · 20-04-2012 10:32pm

Just grabbed one (ok two) of these to see if I can use it to map the Game Boy controls in the RasPiBoy over USB.
The plan would be to gut the thing and use it without a case of course. This little pad is made by the same crowd who do the iCade.

$(KGrHqV,!lME3HUG+EEgBNyBuWFQow~~_3.JPG

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/ION-New-GO-PAD-Folding-Computer-Game-Controller-Game-/110685682145?pt=Video_Games_Accessories&hash=item19c56179e1

The guy seems to be a bit of a basement dweller but it gives you an idea of the size of the pad(imagine it without the plastic shell and inside the RasPiBoy but using the original Game Boy buttons and DPad).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICN60L0PaPk

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CiDeRmAn · 20-04-2012 11:05pm

He's a bit odd, isn't he?
A 9 min video with frak all close ups of the device in action just him, some odd mannerisms and his computer screen, not cool!
But the pad looks nice.
Pity it's not bluetooth though, then it might be mappable to the icade specs or be used with phones, mine plays grand games but the onscreen controls are only ever a poor compromise.

Andrew76 · 21-04-2012 9:28am

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

He's a bit odd, isn't he?
A 9 min video with frak all close ups of the device in action just him, some odd mannerisms and his computer screen, not cool!
But the pad looks nice.
Pity it's not bluetooth though, then it might be mappable to the icade specs or be used with phones, mine plays grand games but the onscreen controls are only ever a poor compromise.

Have you heard about the iControlPad? Bluetooth controller made by the same folks as that OpenPandora handheld. Works with iCade too whatever that iis (http://www.icontrolpad.com/compatibility/). Was tempted to get one myself for my Android phone but just don't play mobile games enough.

http://www.icontrolpad.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-HA74MwVug

o1s1n · 21-04-2012 4:07pm

Steve SI wrote: »

The guy seems to be a bit of a basement dweller but it gives you an idea of the size of the pad

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Talk about uncomfortable viewing! I've never seen a demonstration video which made me feel so uneasy. He's like a mix between a salesman who doesn't believe in the product and a drunk 15 year old boy on his way out to his first nightclub.

Interesting device though. Seems like an ideal solution for your Gameboy.

Steve X2 · 21-04-2012 8:12pm

o1s1n wrote: »

Talk about uncomfortable viewing! I've never seen a demonstration video which made me feel so uneasy. He's like a mix between a salesman who doesn't believe in the product and a drunk 15 year old boy on his way out to his first nightclub.

Interesting device though. Seems like an ideal solution for your Gameboy.

Yeah, he's awkward a feck.
Hopefully the pad is workable when I get that plastic shell off it. It seems like it should be fine and with a bit of luck I wont need to write a driver for it from scratch for the Pi ARM OS.

Speaking of Pi, I used a bit of Sugru on it last night to protect the GPIO pins while I'm working on it(one guy shorted out his Pi by touching the wrong pins with something by mistake).
Sugru is non conductive by the way and very heat resistant.

Its not art but it'll do the job for the moment :0)

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Steve X2 · 22-04-2012 1:22am

First boards post from my Raspberry Pi.

Hello World etc etc....

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Doge · 22-04-2012 1:27am

Steve SI wrote: »

First boards post from my Raspberry Pi.

Hello World etc etc....

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Does this mean you have successfully compiled a driver for the Edimax wifi stick?

Gimmeh!

Or are you cheating by using a crossover cable instead?

Halloooooo piiiiii.

Steve X2 · 22-04-2012 1:32am

waveform wrote: »

Does this mean you have successfully compiled a driver for the Edimax wifi stick?

Gimmeh!

Or are you cheating by using a crossover cable instead?

Halloooooo piiiiii.

Compiled a very alpha driver for the wifi

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Doge · 22-04-2012 1:34am

Steve SI wrote: »

Compiled a very alpha driver for the wifi

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Sweet!

Congratulations you wizard. Will you be posting it for the Pi community to use, collaborate, etcc...?

Steve X2 · 22-04-2012 1:37am

waveform wrote: »

Sweet!

Congratulations you wizard. Will you be posting it for the Pi community to use, collaborate, etcc...?

Yeah, It's not quite ready yet but they know I was working on it as I was speaking to one of them via email about it a while back.
I shared some of my previous work with them so they knew I wasn't all talk and no trousers, so to speak :rolleyes:

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Doge · 22-04-2012 1:42am

Steve SI wrote: »

Yeah, It's not quite ready yet but they know I was working on it as I was speaking to one of them via email about it a while back.
I shared some of my previous work with them so they knew I wasn't all talk and no trousers, so to speak :rolleyes:

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Fair play to you!

How much is involved in modifying a driver to work with arm?

Is there any particular language you are using?

I wish I wasn't so ignorant / incapable when it comes to programming.

The next thing I need to do is learn each of the 4 ways of extracting / installing / compiling using packages with the terminal in debian!

That's how unskilled I am when it comes to linux! :pac:

Steve X2 · 22-04-2012 2:47am

waveform wrote: »

Fair play to you!

How much is involved in modifying a driver to work with arm?

Is there any particular language you are using?

I wish I wasn't so ignorant / incapable when it comes to programming.

The next thing I need to do is learn each of the 4 ways of extracting / installing / compiling using packages with the terminal in debian!

That's how unskilled I am when it comes to linux! :pac:

Compiling drivers for modern systems is easy enough when you have the source code but with the ARM architecture(old ARM at that) that the Pi uses it's a bit of a pain. I'm no expert on the ARM system myself so I only know what I've picked up over the last while with the Pi and the research I did before I got the system. I did learn a bit while trying to get an old version of MAME to work on the Virtual image of the Pi OS I had over the last couple of months.

This might give you an idea but google has loads of info and guides on this stuff.
http://www.ailis.de/~k/archives/19-ARM-cross-compiling-howto.html

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Steve X2 · 22-04-2012 1:05pm

This is the current USB hub that sits inside the Game Boy, you can see the wireless N stick I'm using on the far left and a very small 16GB drive beside it.
It's small but I've ordered a couple of other shaped hubs to see if they're a better fit.

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Dale Parish · 22-04-2012 1:37pm

That's looking very nice! Well done.
It's certainly worth looking into assembly for ARM processors; might look into it myself as I've had a few ideas for the Pi (though they wouldn't involve any programming)

Spacedog · 22-04-2012 4:47pm

Hi Steve, have you a make/model number for this hub?

Steve X2 · 22-04-2012 4:56pm

Spacedog wrote: »

Hi Steve, have you a make/model number for this hub?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000PANXPY/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00

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Doge · 22-04-2012 5:08pm

Spacedog wrote: »

Hi Steve, have you a make/model number for this hub?

Here's a dark creepy pic of a fairly common / generic model I bought a good few years ago on ebay:

Bit longer width than Steve's but half the PCB isn't there which might help in fitting something into a small case.

Spacedog · 22-04-2012 5:57pm

indeed, as I recall seeing some of the original eeepc mods, where the guy added lots of features, he removed the USB ports from the devices PCBS and the hub, and connected everything together with jumperwire.

This one might also be good if you wanted to conceal the OS memory and wifi internally, but retain USB connectivity externally as it has 2 ports on each side.

Steve X2 · 24-04-2012 2:55pm

Doing some work on the software side of the Pi at the moment. Working on a Game Boy emulator(of course) via VNC remotely on my iPad in work(Pi is at home on my network).
Ahh technology, you are a blessing and a curse.

On a side note, there was a power outage/spike in Shankill on Sunday morning and it took out 2 expensive SSD drives in my main PC(getting past a UPS and a surge protected power strip). The Pi was also hooked up and running, only connected to a raw power socket and there wasn't a single prob with it when the power came back up. A hardy little device it is.

Side note for Waveform:
Just in case you want to do the same here's a command or two that might help(you prob know these but just in case).

Install tightvnc server on the Pi:
open up a terminal in x or just do it from the boot command prompt once logged in.
$ sudo apt-get install tightvncserver

then

$ tightvncserver

then setup the remote display settings

$ vncserver :1 -geometry 1920x1080 -depth 24

That's it, just install tightvnc on your pc or whatever device you want to use. I use tightvnc on my pc and Mocha VNC on my iPad.

If you want to make life a bit easier install synaptic package manager
sudo apt-get -y install synaptic

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Dale Parish · 24-04-2012 3:53pm

Is anyone else's Pi recklessly slow?

Steve X2 · 24-04-2012 4:01pm

Dale Parish wrote: »

Is anyone else's Pi recklessly slow?

Yeah, fairly slow in the GUI all right. But don't forget this is really just a dev board for nerds to work out the kinks and get it running properly(hardware and software). The GUI isn't really utilising the GPU at the moment hence the slowness. The power in this thing is in the GPU and not the CPU so when that gets utilised you'll really notice a difference.

In a few months it'll be a whole lot better.

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CiDeRmAn · 24-04-2012 4:20pm

Steve SI wrote: »

In a few months it'll be a whole lot better.

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And you can start selling little GB cased Raspberry Pi emu machines to your Boards mates, starting with the mods.... perhaps....

Steve X2 · 24-04-2012 4:29pm

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

And you can start selling little GB cased Raspberry Pi emu machines to your Boards mates, starting with the mods.... perhaps....

Ehhhhhhhh

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Dale Parish · 24-04-2012 4:30pm

Been a good few years since I used Linux; I remember there being a package manager (sort of like iTunes), where is that on this one?

CiDeRmAn · 24-04-2012 4:31pm

Or you'll do what you normally do and end up collecting a stack of the devices, just 'cos you can..
Consider me, and others, a de-clutter service, it's your mental health we're concerned about!

Steve X2 · 24-04-2012 4:31pm

Dale Parish wrote: »

Been a good few years since I used Linux; I remember there being a package manager (sort of like iTunes), where is that on this one?

You need to install it from a terminal window(or before you run "startx").

This is the command to download and install it:
sudo apt-get -y install synaptic

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Steve X2 · 24-04-2012 4:36pm

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Or you'll do what you normally do and end up collecting a stack of the devices, just 'cos you can..
Consider me, and others, a de-clutter service, it's your mental health we're concerned about!

That ship sailed a long time ago :P
My girlfriend is almost a qualified counsellor and psychotherapist and she cant fix me so I guess it's time to embrace the madness.

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Doge · 24-04-2012 4:51pm

Steve you legend! I really really appreciate you posting those commands, VNC is the very next essential software I want to get on the pi, and that will save me a lot of time.

One of my favourite things so far on my noob Linux/PI journey one single command in Arch Linux:
"pacman - syu"
Which downloads and install all the recent packages, and even the latest RaspberryPi firmware all in one go!
Man having it update the distro and flash the firmware in one single command is seriously impressive!

I'm beginning to love the idea of linux already!

Myrddin · 24-04-2012 4:56pm

Steve X2 · 24-04-2012 4:57pm

waveform wrote: »

Steve you legend! I really really appreciate you posting those commands, VNC is the very next essential software I want to get on the pi, and that will save me a lot of time.

One of my favourite things so far on my noob Linux/PI journey one single command in Arch Linux:
"pacman - syu"
Which downloads and install all the recent packages, and even the latest RaspberryPi firmware all in one go!
Man having it update the distro and flash the firmware in one single command is seriously impressive!

I'm beginning to love the idea of linux already!

Yeah, Linux has it's place and can be great.
You using Arch linux on it? I'm on Debian.

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Dale Parish · 24-04-2012 5:59pm

Ah yes, ye olde sudo apt-get.. I remember why I stopped using Linux now! :P
Someone should develop a commercial but really good OS for this...

Doge · 24-04-2012 6:04pm

EnterNow wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRsPheErBj8

Steve SI wrote: »

Yeah, Linux has it's place and can be great.
You using Arch linux on it? I'm on Debian.

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I have Debian on my main SD card, and Arch on the smaller one.

Was worth putting on Arch alone to update the firmware, but now it appears the updated Debian image put up a few days ago, has an updated firmware package included also, as well as an Alpha Audio driver,
not sure if it flashes automatically on boot up though.

Arch Linux will be too advanced for me I think, as it's tailor made and comes with new GUI, and you have to install each individual package yourself.

I need to actually learn how to use linux first, before I can make my own customized build of it!

Steve X2 · 24-04-2012 6:10pm

Dale Parish wrote: »

Ah yes, ye olde sudo apt-get.. I remember why I stopped using Linux now! :P
Someone should develop a commercial but really good OS for this...

Ubuntu would be a great OS for beginners and pros alike but they dropped support for the PI before it was even manufactured. They said the Pi was just to underpowered to run the OS, and they were right, it needs a slimline OS to really be of any use to anyone.

Lets not forget, this thing is cheap as chips and costs the same amount of money as I spend on morning coffee in a week on the way to work, about 30 Euro.
It's a great little thing to play around with and try to get the max performance out of it but I'd hate to have to live with it as my only pc :eek:

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Dale Parish · 24-04-2012 6:40pm

Machine needs a C&C95 port..

Doge · 24-04-2012 8:10pm

Steve SI wrote: »

It's a great little thing to play around with and try to get the max performance out of it but I'd hate to have to live with it as my only pc :eek:
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You know I was wondering earlier today about the possibility of Broadcom having a more powerful version of the BCM2385 on the way, with a similar price.

While that's pure speculation, it would be cool if say one was released with twice the RAM and a second core in time for the education release, not that Broadcomm are specifically manufacturing these chips with charity in mind.

That's purely Pi in the sky thinking there, but wouldn't it be great!

At the exponential rate PC component become faster and cheaper to produce, hopefully in the near future we'll see a nicer spec for the same price comes.

It makes me wonder if the likes of Apple and other corporations would get in on this miniature PC concept idea in a few years time if it takes off,
especially with kids in mind, to improve their image.

The reality is that they would be too focussed on ease of use devices like the iphone / ipad, where touchscreens are king.

And on second thought the likes of cheap chinese Android tablets are offering superior I/O connectivity per buck, with USB 2.0 OTG, hdmi out, memory card slots etc...

Apple are a bitch for their proprietary (so we can charge you more) connectors, so i could never really see them getting into this cheap PC concept at all.

Apologies for the weird post, couldn't get to sleep last night!

Steve X2 · 24-04-2012 8:23pm

waveform wrote: »

You know I was wondering earlier today about the possibility of Broadcom having a more powerful version of the BCM2385 on the way, with a similar price.

While that's pure speculation, it would be cool if say one was released with twice the RAM and a second core in time for the education release, not that Broadcomm are specifically manufacturing these chips with charity in mind.

That's purely Pi in the sky thinking there, but wouldn't it be great!

At the exponential rate PC component become faster and cheaper to produce, hopefully in the near future we'll see a nicer spec for the same price comes.

It makes me wonder if the likes of Apple and other corporations would get in on this miniature PC concept idea in a few years time if it takes off,
especially with kids in mind, to improve their image.

The reality is that they would be too focussed on ease of use devices like the iphone / ipad, where touchscreens are king.

As for a more powerful Broadcom/ARM setup, well it already exists. The ARM chip in this Pi is a couple of generations old and the reason it's in there is its cheap, powerful enough(the GPU anyway) and Eben was able to negotiate a great price for a bulk load of them(his day job is at Broadcom).

The ram is low because of costs and costs alone. The model A board that's coming soon is cheaper and was supposed to have only 128MB of ram instead of the 256MB in the B boards we have. But they managed to negotiate a price on them and now the A and B boards have the same RAM, which is great(think its just the NIC thats missing on the A now).

I have a feeling that this Raspberry Pi might lead some people on to larger more expensive boards like the pandaboard and its ilk. Which is a great thing to get people interested in these kinds of projects but you'll find it hard to get something as small and relatively powerful as the Pi and keep the price so so low. Only a non profit can do it I suppose as they aren't interested in turning a direct profit.

Anyway, I can nerd blab on about this all night but I think you know what I mean :rolleyes:

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Dale Parish · 24-04-2012 8:27pm

In reality 256mb of RAM is a LOT. Look what could be done on an XT or a C64.

The Last Bandit · 24-04-2012 9:18pm

Meh, ye still have it too easy. In my day you had to wire wrap your own designed board, write everything in assembler and erase eproms purely by staring at them

Great project, keep up the good work.

Its a pity HDMI can't supply enough juice to power one of this, I'd love to see one fitted inside an Atari 2600 controller (or similar) running Mame and connected directly to HDMI port on telly

Steve X2 · 25-04-2012 12:02am

I just cheated on my Pi :eek:
And ordered an Pandaboard ES to play around with. It's also going in an as yet to be decided retro system to power more resource hungry emulators.

Specs:

Core Logic OMAP4460 applications processor

Dual-core ARM® Cortex™-A9 MPCore™ with Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) at up to 1.2 GHz each.
Full HD (1080p) multi-standard video encode/decode
Imagination Technologies’ POWERVR™ SGX540 graphics core supporting all major API's including OpenGL® ES v2.0, OpenGL ES v1.1, OpenVG v1.1 and EGL v1.3 and delivering 2x sustained performance compared to the previous SGX530 core
Low power audio

Memory

1 GB low power DDR2 RAM
Full size SD/MMC card cage with support for High-Speed & High-Capacity SD cards

Display

HDMI v1.3 Connector (Type A) to drive HD displays
DVI-D Connector (can drive a 2nd display, simultaneous display; requires HDMI to DVI-D adapter)
LCD expansion header
DSI Support

Audio

3.5" Audio in/out
HDMI Audio out
Stereo audio input support

Connectivity

Onboard 10/100 Ethernet
Wireless Connectivity
802.11 b/g/n (based on WiLink™ 6.0)
Bluetooth® v2.1 + EDR (based on WiLink™ 6.0). Bluetooth Low Energy Capable.
1x USB 2.0 High-Speed On-the-go port
2x USB 2.0 High-Speed host ports
General purpose expansion header (I2C, GPMC, USB, MMC, DSS, ETM)
Camera expansion header
LCD signal expansion using a single set of resistor banks

Debug

JTAG
UART/RS-232
2 status LEDs (configurable)
1 GPIO Button
Sysboot switch available on board

Dimensions

Height: 114,3 mm
Width: 101,6 mm
Weight: 82 grams

I'm still loyal to the Pi but this just something else to experiment with.

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Doge · 25-04-2012 12:09am

Oh stevie you're such a player! Not only did you have the wife and vectrex in your bed, you'll be sleeping with a panda soon too!

Game Boy PC

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