19 May
2004
19 May
'04
3:33 a.m.
While digging around in the basement last night I found my old Nintendo
GameBoy, with a 1999 manufacture date. That makes it 15 years old.
Does this now make it a classic?
The interesting thing is that the old 1999 GameBoy games will play in
my six year old's brand new 2004 Gameboy Advanced SP.
19 May
19 May
3:53 a.m.
um, 1999 is 5 years old, right?
And yes, Nintendo intentionally made the Gameboys like that.
-John Boffemmyer IV
At 08:33 AM 5/19/2004, you wrote:
While digging around in the basement last night I found
my old Nintendo
GameBoy, with a 1999 manufacture date. That makes it 15 years old.
Does this now make it a classic?
The interesting thing is that the old 1999 GameBoy games will play in my
six year old's brand new 2004 Gameboy Advanced SP.
----------------------------------------
Founder, Lead Writer, Tech Analyst
and Web Designer Boff-Net Technologies
http://boff-net.dhs.org/index.html
---------------------------------------
1:47 p.m.
Christopher McNabb wrote:
While digging around in the basement last night I
found my old Nintendo
GameBoy, with a 1999 manufacture date. That makes it 15 years old.
Does this now make it a classic?
[date correction: 1989]
Well, I was in a charity shop in Clevedon on Saturday and saw two
GameBoys for sale, at ?10 for the grey one and ?20 for the yellow
one. A few games, too, at about ?3 each. Seemed a bit expensive
for such a common machine. It's a Z80 processor in there, isn't it?
--
John Honniball
coredump(a)gifford.co.uk
3:44 p.m.
It's a Z80 processor in there, isn't it?
AFAIK, yes.
--
---------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Floodgap Systems Ltd * So. Calif., USA * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com
-- The fastest way to fold a map is differently. ------------------------------
20 May
20 May
5:34 a.m.
Nintendo seems to base their handhelds on their previous generation
handhelds. The original GameBoy was, mostly, a NES with a black-and-white
screen. The GBA is, mostly, a SNES.
Gameboys are great fun for hacking on. There are open source development
kits and languages out, the hardware is *very* well documented, and there
are tons of third party expansion and adapter cards.
http://gbdk.sourceforge.net/
http://www.devrs.com/gb/
There's the GameBoy Robot:
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~jfrohwei/gameboy/fl1.gif
and the GameBoy Music club:
http://www.gameboymusicclub.org/
and a PDA for your GameBoy Color, including, ahem, an "Advanced Phone
Dialer" app :)
http://home.att.ne.jp/gamma/TeamKNOx/gameboy/gb_pdae.html
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cameron Kaiser" <spectre(a)floodgap.com
To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 8:44 PM
Subject: Re: Nintendo GameBoy a valid discussion topic now?
http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
It's a Z80
processor in there, isn't it?
AFAIK, yes.
--
---------------------------------- personal: Cameron Kaiser, Floodgap Systems Ltd * So. Calif.,
USA *
ckaiser(a)floodgap.com
-- The fastest way to fold a map is
differently.
------------------------------
5:46 a.m.
On Thu, 20 May 2004, Jason McBrien wrote:
There's the GameBoy Robot:
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~jfrohwei/gameboy/fl1.gif
That's cool!
and the GameBoy Music club:
http://www.gameboymusicclub.org/
That's even cooler!
and a PDA for your GameBoy Color, including, ahem, an
"Advanced Phone
Dialer" app :)
http://home.att.ne.jp/gamma/TeamKNOx/gameboy/gb_pdae.html
And just when you thought it couldn't get any cooler than the above two
cooleties, THIS is WAY DAMN COOL!!
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
6:08 a.m.
Nintendo seems to base their handhelds on their
previous generation
handhelds. The original GameBoy was, mostly, a NES with a black-and-white
screen. The GBA is, mostly, a SNES.
I dunno if I'd go this far, especially w/r/t the processor and video:
obviously the video pipelines and coppers are radically different, and the
NES is a 6502 variant (N2A03) versus the Z80 of the GB, and the SNES is a
65816. There are some conceptual similarities between the GB and the NES,
and the GBA and the SNES, but I'm not sure if I'd call them architecturally
similar as well.
--
---------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Floodgap Systems Ltd * So. Calif., USA * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com
-- Sometimes Dilbert is so true, it's scary. -- Mike Jacobs -------------------
6:18 a.m.
Nintendo seems
to base their handhelds on their previous generation
handhelds. The original GameBoy was, mostly, a NES with a black-and-white
screen. The GBA is, mostly, a SNES.
I dunno if I'd go this far, especially w/r/t the processor and video:
obviously the video pipelines and coppers are radically different, and the
NES is a 6502 variant (N2A03) versus the Z80 of the GB, and the SNES is a
65816. There are some conceptual similarities between the GB and the NES,
and the GBA and the SNES, but I'm not sure if I'd call them architecturally
similar as well. 
8:25 a.m.
New subject: netBSD 1.5 on a 1994 Mac68K
I've been having fun working up this configuration,
thanks to Chris and a local netBSD company.
The onCD documentation for installing the OS was a little spotty,
It's taken a bunch of workarounds to get it this point: O/S loaded
and booting which I can make public if anybody wants.
It threatens to be entirely enjoyable experience, if it works reliably,
which it isn't at current. I get random segmentation and other faults
during medium level of challenge commands like df,du, and pstat.
I'm thinking there's three possibilities right now: (1) mis-configured
swap space, (2) feeble SCSI driver + marginal SCSI drive specs,
(3) bad memory. There could be another cause; I don't know.
#1 seems most likely since all I've done is create the swap partition,
no config changes were made, but the /etc/fstab at least looks OK to me.
#2 has been hinted at by some documentation, but the disk load
went without hiccup.
#3 hasn't been seen within the MacOS (7.5.1) but I don't know any
serious tests for it.
If anyone is dealing with BSD right and wants to comment,
be my guest.
John A.
10:52 a.m.
New subject: netBSD 1.5 on a 1994 Mac68K
I've been having fun working up this
configuration,
thanks to Chris and a local netBSD company.
The onCD documentation for installing the OS was a little spotty,
It's taken a bunch of workarounds to get it this point: O/S loaded
and booting which I can make public if anybody wants.
It threatens to be entirely enjoyable experience, if it works reliably,
which it isn't at current. I get random segmentation and other faults
during medium level of challenge commands like df,du, and pstat.
This sounds an awful lot like an FPU-less system running an FPU kernel.
Certain classes of LC040s do not properly allow emulation of F-line traps
and the result is exactly what you're describing; random faults once the
machine boots up.
What version of NetBSD and what Mac and specs?
#3 hasn't been seen within the MacOS (7.5.1) but I
don't know any
serious tests for it.
If it works okay in MacOS, but not NetBSD, that situation is my #1 suspect.
I run NetBSD 1.5.3 on a IIci (mostly for reasons of laziness) and NetBSD
1.6.2 on a LCIII that was turned into a Q605 with a mo'bo' swap (and then
upgraded to a true 68040 @ 25MHz), as well as NetBSD/macppc on a 7300 with
a G3/500, so I've got plenty of "MacBSD" boxes here. All of them are
production, and my IIci has had literally years of uptime.
--
---------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Floodgap Systems Ltd * So. Calif., USA * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com
-- Bowl angry. ----------------------------------------------------------------
6:49 p.m.
New subject: netBSD 1.5 on a 1994 Mac68K
On Thu, 20 May 2004 13:25:54 -0400
"John Allain" <allain(a)panix.com> wrote:
I've been having fun working up this
configuration,
thanks to Chris and a local netBSD company.
The onCD documentation for installing the OS was a little spotty,
It's taken a bunch of workarounds to get it this point: O/S loaded
and booting which I can make public if anybody wants.
It threatens to be entirely enjoyable experience, if it works
reliably, which it isn't at current. I get random segmentation and
other faults during medium level of challenge commands like df,du, and
pstat.
I'm thinking there's three possibilities right now: (1) mis-configured
swap space, (2) feeble SCSI driver + marginal SCSI drive specs,
(3) bad memory. There could be another cause; I don't know.
#1 seems most likely since all I've done is create the swap partition,
no config changes were made, but the /etc/fstab at least looks OK to
me.
#2 has been hinted at by some documentation, but the disk load
went without hiccup.
#3 hasn't been seen within the MacOS (7.5.1) but I don't know any
serious tests for it.
If anyone is dealing with BSD right and wants to comment,
be my guest.
John A.
I have had a lot of fun running NetBSD/mac68k on my SE/30 Macintoshes.
What the other writer says about an LC40 processor is probably what you
should chase down. There are tons of problems running with the
aforementioned processor, if that's what you have, and you should try to
find a true '040 processor to plug in. I believe they say that some of
the bugs are worked out on later releases. You might try one of the
later releases of 1.6 (1.6.1 comes to mind) and see if that runs better.
It is super-cool-fun running the X Window System on a teeny-tiny classic
1-bit Macintosh display. Even the Tab Window Manager leaves you feeling
widget-crowded. ;) It's a great setup to run GNU Chess on.
But you want to cross-build any packages on a faster box.
22 May
22 May
5:53 a.m.
New subject: netBSD 1.5 on a 1994 Mac68K
You might try one of the later releases of 1.6
(1.6.1 comes to mind) and see if that runs better.
This page makes plain the 68LC040 problems:
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/mac68k/curr_info.html
but it's talking about the 1.3.3 release.
Where a better place to look?... perhaps nothing significant
with Mac68K has been done since 1.3.3?
searching further:
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.6.2/mac68k/INSTALL.html
"NetBSD has known but unresolved problems running on the
68LC040 processor, ... ...Software emulation of floating point
operations is not a problem on the 68020 and 68030 processors."
(the last note actually makes the older Macs look better)
Looks like chip replacement is the only option.
If somebody has a good source for 68K chips in the
quantity=5 range, I'd be interested.
John A.
20 May
20 May
2:04 p.m.
Gameboys are great fun for hacking on. There are open
source development
kits and languages out, the hardware is *very* well documented, and there
are tons of third party expansion and adapter cards.
[...]
Elektor magazine published a design (alas without the source code to the
firmware) for an audio-bandwidth digial storage 'scope card for the
Gameboy. No, I am not joking...
-tony
3:30 p.m.
Elektor magazine published a design (alas without the
source
code to the
firmware) for an audio-bandwidth digial storage 'scope card for the
Gameboy. No, I am not joking...
I don't recall seeing the original Elektor article, but
I have seen adverts in various UK electronics mags for
said GB addon (about ?90 IIRC).
Elektor do have some useful projects every now and then :-)
Antonio
--
---------------
Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org
5:37 p.m.
Elektor do have some useful projects every now and
then :-)
One good change they've made recently is that for about 80% of the
microcontroller-based projects yuo can get the source code (either as a
download or on a floppy). They had a lot of moans (including from me)
when all the micro-based projects (which must have been well over 50% of
the circuits they publisehd) were based on an undocumented, unmodifiable
black box!
IO am not sure I like the new layout/style, though.
-tony
4:15 p.m.
Elektor magazine published a design (alas without the
source code to the
firmware) for an audio-bandwidth digial storage 'scope card for the
Gameboy. No, I am not joking...
-tony
Actually that's kind of cool. I assume this was for the older Gameboy and
not the GB Advanced? The newest version has a lot better screen.
Zane
5:32 p.m.
Elektor magazine published a design (alas without
the source code to the
firmware) for an audio-bandwidth digial storage 'scope card for the
Gameboy. No, I am not joking...
-tony
Actually that's kind of cool. I assume this was for the older Gameboy and
not the GB Advanced? The newest version has a lot better screen.
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17 comments
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allain＠panix.com -
arcarlini＠iee.org -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cmcnabb＠4mcnabb.net -
coredump＠gifford.co.uk -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
jbmcb＠hotmail.com -
john_boffemmyer_iv＠boff-net.dhs.org -
sastevens＠earthlink.net -
spectre＠floodgap.com -
vcf＠siconic.com