![You suck at protoshop. No, you [i]really[/i] oo.](http://blog.gg8.se/images/you-suck-at-photoshop-you-really-do-your-awful.png)
A little competition… WTF is going on here??
October 3rd, 2008
Time to test your association skillz. Look at the picture above. What does it depict? It’s a view that’s no doubt familiar to you Mac users out there, but still somewhat different. So, tell me the story of this picture. Make something up if you need to. If I made it myself, what did I do/how did it happen? If someone else made it, where did it come from? I’ve been trying to install OSx86 on my PC, which might or might not be related to the picture. (That’s right, it could be a tarp!)
If someone guesses somethin that’s spot-on, you’ll win… A cookie? Perhaps I can make a personal chiptune for you? I don’t know. But get guessing!
V Comment field below V
Edit: The answer is here: http://gameboygenius.8bitcollective.com/wordpress/2008/10/18/the-failed-competition/
Nintendo announces DSi, the next generation NDS
October 2nd, 2008
Today Nintendo announced the new DSi, the next generation of thei DS line of handheld gaming consoles. Well, not exacly the next generation, but the next version. Looking at the specs, the DSi is to the DS what the GBC is to the DMG.(The original 1989 version of Gameboy) A spiced up version, but still basically the same thing. This is good in that games can have a smooth transistion between version 1 and 2, but because it means the hardware is still as weak performance-wise as it was in the first DS.
So let’s have a look at the specs. The information comes from Joystiq.
- CPU power - Unchanged. Period. Unless Joystiq have received too early info and it sports some kind of turbo mode à la GBC, this is a disappointment.
- Graphics - Unchanged. Two 256*192 screens of which one is (still) a touch screen. The rumours of the DSi having dual touch screens seem to be proven wrong too. At best the screens are a little brighter and have a little more contrast than the DSLite, and the screens are a little bit bigger, even though that’s not a real killer. (The DSlite had a pretty good display)
- Cameras - Here we go… The DSi has not one, but two cameras. One high-res on the back (Presumably) and one low-res on the hinge consequently. Seeing that they’re targetting girls, judging from their video, it’s not surprising that they’re trying to break into a market that has been dominated by cell phones in Japan for the last few years. But will they succeed? Future will tell. They promise video chat, but I suspect the CPU is a bit too slow to cope with simultaneous compression and decompression of video and audio data. Just saying.
There’s also a camera app with a few warp effects and other meaningless things. - Wi-Fi - Joystiq’s comparison just says Wi-Fi, but let’s just hope they upgraded the wireless card to one with 11g instead of just 11b, and that they implemented hardware support for WPA. As of today, WPA is probably possible, but would eat up all CPU power, leaving nothing to the actual application. (Not cool!)
- The GBA slot is gone - This was an anticipated change. Seeing that it was only really used by Guitar Hero, Opera (The browser) and backup devices, I can see why they want it gone, since removing it also allowed for a slightly slimmer form factor. We’ll have to live without Guitar Hero, we’ll get a new browser for free, and N wants us to stop pirating and using homebrew. All is as it should.
- Storage - Here’s something that’s interesting for me, since I’m mainly interested in homebrew. 1) Nintendo is promising onboard storage. They’re not saying how much, but hopefully more than the current 256 kB firmware area. 2) A built in SD slot! I mean wow, here’s a great ptoential for a new kind of cheap passcards. The danger with that is that N will come with a firmware upgrade that breaks the compatibility with said devices, and since they wouldn’t be upgradeable. (Since in my little fantasy that’s what’s going to make them cheap in the first place) But yeah, I’m excited about the SD slot actually. Might be the killer feature for homebrewers, although my M3Real already has an SD slot that works perfectly fine.
- App Store - To make the onboard storage useful, they’ve added an App Store, much like the Wii Shop Channnel. In fact they renamed the Wii Points to Nintendo Points just honour this new feature.
- Music player - An MP3 player, possibly with the possibility to buy music online.
- On a more superficial level… I’m also noticing that they re-arranged the LEDs a bit. They’re now on the left side rather than on the right side. The power LED changed from green to the evr so popular blue, and wireless activity has now got it’s own dedicated, yellow LED.
So, in essence, all new known hardware features are the cameras and the SD slot. It will sell, I am sure of it, but with its under-powered hardware, will it last?
Through: Engadget, Joystiq
Official Nintendo DSi homepage (Japanese)
For the G-Bot: New Gameboy 2008
An actual circuit bent Gameboy this time :o
September 28th, 2008The last time I thought someone had bent a Gameboy, I was wrong. It was a fake.
This time, coming from SeanBroccoli, it’s for real, but the bend is simply a freeze button, which is not very interesting. This is not Sean’s fault of course - it’s the Gameboy’s. The GB is a microcomputer, and almost anything will make it crash rather than produce interesting circuit bent effects. If the CPU comes across any invalid CPU instructions, it will simply lock up. The NES can handle a little more action, but that’s because in most cases you’re targetting the graphics chip rather than the CPU when bending it. (I think)
Even my old laptop, a Thinkpad 600E did a better job bending itself. <– Click that link for some tasty glitches.
A better way to do it is to use some GB music making software like LSDj, Nanoloop or perhaps PocketNoise which is an art project by Christoph Kummerer which has a glitchy almost circuit bent look to it. If Chistoph could just reply to my mails… :/
So yeah, if I were to “bend” a Gameboy myself, I’d write custom software for it, or use existing Gameboy music software.
A couple of side notes: The first drone sound is actually an example of the Gameboy’s flexible PRNG (Pseudo Random Noise Generator) Without going too much into technical details, it’s a digital noise generator that can do sort of melodic noise.
As for clocking the Gameboy and other stuff, super-bender Gijs has a few tips: one two. There’s even a way to clock it freely to any frequency using a component called LTC1799. Check derWarst’s video for some info on that.
So I hope you learned something new today!
Gameboy Circuit Diagram, GB development wiki/forum and som breaking news
September 20th, 2008
I’m writing this post because every once in a while, people end up here when googling for thing like “Gameboy circuit” or “Gameboy schematic”. This is why this post is placed in the category circuit bending, so that people will find it.
If you googled for that, here’s probably what you’re looking for:
Gameboy DMG schematics
SuperGameboy SGB schematics
A word about that wiki linked above. It’s a Gameboy development wiki that I’m hosting together with a Gameboy development forum. It’s a narrow subject, and the forum it’s typically low traffic. But if you do have questions about Gameboy software development, feel free to drop by the forums and ask.
In other news:
1) The GBC bootstrap is about to be dumped. What is the GBC bootstrap, you may wonder… (If you’re not into low level software development, you’ll likely not understand the following) The bootstrap is the vey first piece of code that runs on any (Z80 type) Gameboy when it boots up. It checks that the header checksumsare correct and displays the Nintendo logo. This tiny piece of code is only 256 bytes big. For you GB developers out there, the bootstrap is the reason why the entry point is $100 and not $0. The reason why this piece of code is interesting is of pure curiosity, and because it’s the last undocumented secret of the Gameboy.
5 years ago, Neviksti managed to dump the bootstrap from the DMG. (The original Gameboy) Read about it here. The news I have today is that the corresponding bootstrap ROM for the GBC is about to be dumped. And in fact it’s not just a 256 byte area located at $0-$FF but to other memory areas sized 512 bytes and 1792 ($700) bytes. These are believed to be storage for the the big “Gameboy” logo shown on CGB’s during bootup and palettes for colorizing monochrome games.
At this point I can’t tell you who’s working on dumping the bootstrap ROMs (At that person’s request) but hopefully I will be able to distribute the contents of the bootstrap ROMs when they have been dumped.
2) The other breaking news is that dwedit and Palmertech, have, at least partially succeeded in booting GBC games on a GB micro by doing a special software trick. At the very least they’ve managed to enter GBC mode. I’m not sure whether they succeeded in actually running GB code after the mode switch, but they’ve managed to make it run the GBC bootstrap. (In principle the same bootstrap as mentioned above) I’ve tried the hack too, ona GBA 1st gen and a GBA SP, and both showed a black screen but played the startup sound. But I’m trying to contact dwedit for more info, and I’ll try to do my own research on the subject, so expect to hear more about it.
For now, check this thread on pH if you’re interested: http://boards.pocketheaven.com/viewtopic.php?p=49041
RGBDS development taken up by Lai
September 4th, 2008The development of RGBDS, Redneck GameBoy Development System has been taken up by someone called Lai. In his version he has added the features that are available in the latest official RGBDS version (For which there’s no source code available) It’s also possible to add aligned sections and use a sort of sections called “contained” sections. The documentation has been updated to reflect his changes.
He’s also willing to implement new features, so if you have a suggestion, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.
Download: Source Code
I might make a binary distribution available when I come backfrom my vacation. (In about one week)
The sexiest thing ever! (255 Gameboys)
August 28th, 2008
Look at that! 0xFF (Hexadecimal for 255) pieces of DMG-01. Could there be anything sexier that that? The number is just right too. 255 is the largest number that can fit into an 8-bit CPU register, making the number completely ideal. Look at the top picture and you’ll see that most of them are traditional gray-boys while a couple have other colours, and exactly two of them are transparent. (Goose-bumps starting to grow)
Also notice in the bottom picture that one of them looks pale yellow. Don’t be fooled by the crappy camera shot! That’s is in fact one of the ultra rare white DMG’s, supposedly only sold in Japan.
The catch? Unfortunately they’re not mine, but Nonfinite’s. He bought them wholesale from what appars to be the last wholesale reseller in the US. (But if you know of more people doing Gameboy wholesales, feel free to contact me)
Knowing Nonfinite, he will mod the Gameboys and sell in his shop. Yup, painstakingly go through each and every one of them, fix them where needed, put in backlight and ProSound mods, finish them off by painting the case in the most awesome ways, so they’re ready to be shipped to enthusiasts all over the world.
And even if you already have a Gameboy, he sells flash cartridges for Little Sound Dj (Music software for Gameboy) too.
Back from NorbergFestival 2008 (Video and image dump)
July 28th, 2008
Left: Foona, (Roots dub) Right: Ayhan Aydin (Illbient)
I’m back from the Norberg Festival, and I had a great time. A shout out to some of the great artists: nordloef, Foona, Dj Peter Ericsson, Bitmobilen, PH1 Axid Cerw, all of the X-Dumpians, Veqtor, AWT, Food for Animals, Ayhan Aydin and to finish off the perfect Saturday evening, some breakcore from Babyshaker and Bong-Ra.
Below is a video of my own gig. More snippets available in this Youtube playlist.
LDL by nitro2k01 (Me) Nevermind the inrt2o0k bollocks!
This brings me to another point. You might be wondering why I’m not using any Gameboys or anything on stage in those videos. Here’s the story: About two weeks before an SD card in my M3DS crashed. (I’m using the Lameboy emulator for the DS - actually pretty handy and pretty clean sound as well.) Because of this, 6 months worth of work went down the drain in an instant. I trusted an SD card to be a stable form of storage and didn’t even have a backup. (Gah!!)
So, I had to rush together a live set, using only pre-recorded material. I could’ve brought a real DMG and played some of my old stuff, but I figured I’d better just use my computer for everything this time.
Because of the data crash, I collected all the songs that I had actually recorded before the crash and made 10 CD’s that I sold on the festival. Each with a limited edition number and a hand drawn CD cover. The CD is called “Lost Tracks” due to the fact the source files for the tracks on it were lost. I wish to thank all of the people who bought a copy! I’m planning to release these songs as a free net release on OXO Unlimited, but if you’re interested in buying a physical copy with a hand drawn cover, don’t hesitate to contact me.
I’m going to use the small profit I made from it to buy a WiiMote. My plan for the future is to pre-record a number of loops and play around with on the fly using a combo of Ableton Live and Reaktor.
Left: Acid Balloon at camp303 Right: Veqtor’s Mac
Stoppa FRA-lagen - Remix av Blogge’s 198FRA
June 16th, 2008Blogge gjorde två versioner med olika musik, en med Megadeth-musik och en med musik av Alicia Keys. Jag bestämde mig för att göra en variant med min låt nuracl, som passade snuskigt bra. Inte bara fångar den den dystopiska stämningen utan med en liten tidsförskjutning på en sekund så visade den sig vara väl tidssynkad också.
Men eftersom Youtube valde att knulla mig i röven och inte tillåta mig att ladda upp videor med hög ljudkvalitet med det trick som tidigare lät en undgå Youtube’s konvertering och t ex ladda upp videor med stereo så fick den hamna på Vimeo istället.
198FRA (Chip remix) from Gameboy Genius on Vimeo.
Veqtor & 2tronik01 - Analogik2 [OXOMP3002]
June 3rd, 2008
When I’m not doing Gameboy music, I’m doing other experimental stuff. Like patcing cables and turning knobs on modular synthesizers.
This release is recorded live by me and Veqtor using a STS/Serge and Buchla Series 200 together with a spring tank reverb. On track 3 I came up with the great idea of using feedback with the reverb, which created some very eerie and moodful sounds indeed.
Available for download here: http://oxo-unlimited.com/wordpress/2008/06/03/veqtor-2tronik01-analogik2-oxomp3002/
Info
Format: MP3 (320 kbps, 48 kHz)
Cat.No: OXOMP3002
Release date: 2008.06.03
Genre: Experimental, Rhytmic Noise, Electronic, Live Analogue Electronics
Download:
Track list
- Veqtor & 2tronik01 - Sequentrouvenchance
- Veqtor & 2tronik01 - Azimuth Wrap Zenith
- Veqtor & 2tronik01 - nLog43168
- Veqtor - Parasiticurrent Modulations
