In my last post I talked about getting a yellow "block of cheese" (GameBoy Color). I never had one growing up...and I discovered why that might have been. When it came out I was in high school so had basically no money, and I was more into CD-I and spending my allowance on that. I think. Then when I did get a "job" as an intern and got a paycheck....the very first thing I ever bought was a MiniDisc Player. And after that it was saving up for a "beast of a gaming PC (for 2001 it kinda was)".
This post got long so don't read it if you don't want to. Nobody's forcing you.
Besides recollecting my memories I also played a few games on it, mostly Tetris as that is MY GAME! Basically the only one I ever had for the DMG gameboy. I also had Othello and NHL Hockey 95 but I did not really like them all that much. Other than the reasons above I really have no idea why I never got any other games for it. But I also never got that many for the SNES and NES. Looking back it feels really strange but I have to assume it was either a money or interest issue. I also had a bit of a darker period without work for a long time....so I did not have anything to spend.
I do remember getting my GBA SP somewhere in 2004 and buying second hand games from ebay for the most part. And...as I found out two years ago were actually fake! And I never new it! The games worked and behaved legit enough that I did not notice. It was the correct game and saving worked fine at the time. But being clones they did not have flash/eeprom saving but used SRAM and a battery.....and those ran out erasing my save games! I made a series of blog posts about that discovery 2 years ago.
I also talked about my "solar powered" gamecube, and I have been playing it a little and got a new silent fan for it. Still need to install that damn thing though! Since I got back into the gameboy games I also took a look at my GBA SP's (yeah...I have a few) and one of them is a AGB-101 with the better screen. But I got it quite cheap because it's shell was scratched like crazy! I ordered a replacement transparent blue one on amazon and completed the reshell successfully. almost. It's still working and it looks AWESOME....except I broke the volume slider! There was a transparent blue replacement included so I wanted to use that...but that slider was stubborn and I broke off the thingy it needs to click on! Whoops! Volume still works...but you need a sharp item to move it. Replacement is on the way...but customs is being annoying! Should come in next week though.
I have been playing a lot of Zelda Minish cap on the GBA...but I also tried to play my "new" GameBoy Color games on the actual gameboy color. I don't have that many though but just a few to try out. The biggest thing that keeps me away from the gameboy color is that the screen is not backlit and actually really tiny! I like a "low light environment" as I get headaches from a lot of direct light sources. Yeah, being outside in the sun is a joy...but it's "doable" most of the time. I guess it's just when reading screens...could be I ruined my eyes already and have a headache most of the time. Might have to face the reality I need glasses or something!
Because I also have a GameBoy Color from a friend that has a power issue that I have been trying to diagnose I needed a few parts. What I also have been wanting to do for a while was upgrade an original GBA to have an IPS/ITA screen. Looking at what would be required and where to get it I initilay wanted to order at Retrosix because I liked the specs of their products. Filled the cart....and 150 euro's of import duties!!!!!! WHAT THE FFFFUUUUHHHHSSS!!!!! I canceled/ not completed that order obviously! I found a shop in austria that had most of the components and also the ones from Retrosix for a more reasonable price and including EU VAT etc.
So I ordered screen replacements for a GBA and Gameboy color, GBA lithium battery pack, GBC power board and a couple of other misc components. Like shell's and buttons. At the same time I also got a few more used consoles: A Gameboy color (refurbished), A Gameboy Pocket, A GBA with the strangest damage to the shell I have ever seen (look melted with a lighter), and a "pearl white" GBA SP 001 that was super cheap for some reason. That SP looks to me in great condition so I have no idea why it was so cheap! Only 42 euro's while most others are 60-70 or higher! Both GBA's work great though!
Also ordered a replacement GameBoy color shell in NES style decals. It looks amazing but it feels...weird. You know that "soft touch plastic" coating stuff that get's sticky after a couple of years? Well....that is exactly what it feels like! Also got a a GBA replacement case in "color changing" purple/blue which also feels a bit wrong....like cheap plastic I guess but it might just be the coating. In my order from austria I also included a translucent red GBA and translucent black Gameboy color! They included a glass lens which should help prevent scratching the screens in the future a lot. They look legit to me but from all the modding video's I have watched there are many variations and quality differences.
Then I also got two wireless 8bitdo controllers...the idea is to use a "blueretro" adapter on the gamecube and connect them using bluetooth. I have a SNES+analog stick controller and a Sega Megadrive style controller with actual 9 pin receiver. Still need to test it on my megadrive that I got back from storage...but I got addicted to at least thinking of adding USB-C power to ALL my consoles now! It only needs 9V and then has an internal regulator for 5V so it will be fine. But I have also looked at what might be possible for other consoles! Already talked about the Wii and Wii-U but have not tried them yet. I did do some initial research into what might be possible for the PlayStation 2 3000! Yes, it's mains powered and the powerboard is internal. But from what I have found it's only 12V that leaves that board at a max of.....I forgot the power requirements. But it was below 100W that I know for sure! I also looked at PlayStation 1 (which I don't even have (yet)) and I am not the first one with that idea! It already exists!
And also have a bit of ChatGPT addiction thanks to a colleague of mine...it's so awesome what's possible! A task for work that took me 2-3 hours on my own was recreated in 99.9% equal code in less than 20 minutes! And since then I have tweaked the same script a few times. And I also needed to parse a 2.5GB log file and wanted to split it by date of the log entry that is in a weird format. All I really did was give ChatGPT a couple of lines of the log and said: extrapolate the date format and split it into a new file with the format "log-YYYYMMDD.txt" and a few other small guidelines. One of the annoying things of that log is that a single entry can consist of multiple lines. But it also starts a new one with "[" so I gave that as a requirement. In less than 15 min (not sure how long it took) I got a script that did exactly what I wanted!
The logs were still to big (more than 20k lines per day) so I had ChatGPT adjust the script to also sort by the hour "log-YYYYMMDD-HH00.txt". This was STILL to large so I gave it a complex new requirement to do the same thing but every 10 minutes....and there it went and gave me a script that did just that!
I have also tried to write a simple demo for the GameBoy Color...just for fun. And also asked ChatGPT to lend a hand to get started. While it knew what I wanted and it spits out code and stuff...NONE of it actually wanted to compile or did what I was trying to do! I think it was targeting another version or fork of the development kit or something. And yes...the idea of porting BatteryCheck to the gameboy color was one of the reasons for trying it! It's even more limited than the GBA for sure...but I just wanted to do the menu title screen to have a feel of what it could look like. My findings show this is going to take A LOT of time and require a full set of new sprites! We will see where it goes...but I do definitely want to port some of the simple examples I once ported from DS -> GBA into ->CGB. It's just one with a moving rectangle I think and the other is one with bouncing balls and a moving background.
I did also attempt to have ChatGPT rewrite the above text or summarize it....but it got too many details wrong and twisting my words a bit. hahaha. So we're stuck with this novel type of blog post, sorry.
You got to the end. Thanks for reading!
This post got long so don't read it if you don't want to. Nobody's forcing you.
Besides recollecting my memories I also played a few games on it, mostly Tetris as that is MY GAME! Basically the only one I ever had for the DMG gameboy. I also had Othello and NHL Hockey 95 but I did not really like them all that much. Other than the reasons above I really have no idea why I never got any other games for it. But I also never got that many for the SNES and NES. Looking back it feels really strange but I have to assume it was either a money or interest issue. I also had a bit of a darker period without work for a long time....so I did not have anything to spend.
I do remember getting my GBA SP somewhere in 2004 and buying second hand games from ebay for the most part. And...as I found out two years ago were actually fake! And I never new it! The games worked and behaved legit enough that I did not notice. It was the correct game and saving worked fine at the time. But being clones they did not have flash/eeprom saving but used SRAM and a battery.....and those ran out erasing my save games! I made a series of blog posts about that discovery 2 years ago.
I also talked about my "solar powered" gamecube, and I have been playing it a little and got a new silent fan for it. Still need to install that damn thing though! Since I got back into the gameboy games I also took a look at my GBA SP's (yeah...I have a few) and one of them is a AGB-101 with the better screen. But I got it quite cheap because it's shell was scratched like crazy! I ordered a replacement transparent blue one on amazon and completed the reshell successfully. almost. It's still working and it looks AWESOME....except I broke the volume slider! There was a transparent blue replacement included so I wanted to use that...but that slider was stubborn and I broke off the thingy it needs to click on! Whoops! Volume still works...but you need a sharp item to move it. Replacement is on the way...but customs is being annoying! Should come in next week though.
I have been playing a lot of Zelda Minish cap on the GBA...but I also tried to play my "new" GameBoy Color games on the actual gameboy color. I don't have that many though but just a few to try out. The biggest thing that keeps me away from the gameboy color is that the screen is not backlit and actually really tiny! I like a "low light environment" as I get headaches from a lot of direct light sources. Yeah, being outside in the sun is a joy...but it's "doable" most of the time. I guess it's just when reading screens...could be I ruined my eyes already and have a headache most of the time. Might have to face the reality I need glasses or something!
Because I also have a GameBoy Color from a friend that has a power issue that I have been trying to diagnose I needed a few parts. What I also have been wanting to do for a while was upgrade an original GBA to have an IPS/ITA screen. Looking at what would be required and where to get it I initilay wanted to order at Retrosix because I liked the specs of their products. Filled the cart....and 150 euro's of import duties!!!!!! WHAT THE FFFFUUUUHHHHSSS!!!!! I canceled/ not completed that order obviously! I found a shop in austria that had most of the components and also the ones from Retrosix for a more reasonable price and including EU VAT etc.
So I ordered screen replacements for a GBA and Gameboy color, GBA lithium battery pack, GBC power board and a couple of other misc components. Like shell's and buttons. At the same time I also got a few more used consoles: A Gameboy color (refurbished), A Gameboy Pocket, A GBA with the strangest damage to the shell I have ever seen (look melted with a lighter), and a "pearl white" GBA SP 001 that was super cheap for some reason. That SP looks to me in great condition so I have no idea why it was so cheap! Only 42 euro's while most others are 60-70 or higher! Both GBA's work great though!
Also ordered a replacement GameBoy color shell in NES style decals. It looks amazing but it feels...weird. You know that "soft touch plastic" coating stuff that get's sticky after a couple of years? Well....that is exactly what it feels like! Also got a a GBA replacement case in "color changing" purple/blue which also feels a bit wrong....like cheap plastic I guess but it might just be the coating. In my order from austria I also included a translucent red GBA and translucent black Gameboy color! They included a glass lens which should help prevent scratching the screens in the future a lot. They look legit to me but from all the modding video's I have watched there are many variations and quality differences.
Then I also got two wireless 8bitdo controllers...the idea is to use a "blueretro" adapter on the gamecube and connect them using bluetooth. I have a SNES+analog stick controller and a Sega Megadrive style controller with actual 9 pin receiver. Still need to test it on my megadrive that I got back from storage...but I got addicted to at least thinking of adding USB-C power to ALL my consoles now! It only needs 9V and then has an internal regulator for 5V so it will be fine. But I have also looked at what might be possible for other consoles! Already talked about the Wii and Wii-U but have not tried them yet. I did do some initial research into what might be possible for the PlayStation 2 3000! Yes, it's mains powered and the powerboard is internal. But from what I have found it's only 12V that leaves that board at a max of.....I forgot the power requirements. But it was below 100W that I know for sure! I also looked at PlayStation 1 (which I don't even have (yet)) and I am not the first one with that idea! It already exists!
And also have a bit of ChatGPT addiction thanks to a colleague of mine...it's so awesome what's possible! A task for work that took me 2-3 hours on my own was recreated in 99.9% equal code in less than 20 minutes! And since then I have tweaked the same script a few times. And I also needed to parse a 2.5GB log file and wanted to split it by date of the log entry that is in a weird format. All I really did was give ChatGPT a couple of lines of the log and said: extrapolate the date format and split it into a new file with the format "log-YYYYMMDD.txt" and a few other small guidelines. One of the annoying things of that log is that a single entry can consist of multiple lines. But it also starts a new one with "[" so I gave that as a requirement. In less than 15 min (not sure how long it took) I got a script that did exactly what I wanted!
The logs were still to big (more than 20k lines per day) so I had ChatGPT adjust the script to also sort by the hour "log-YYYYMMDD-HH00.txt". This was STILL to large so I gave it a complex new requirement to do the same thing but every 10 minutes....and there it went and gave me a script that did just that!
I have also tried to write a simple demo for the GameBoy Color...just for fun. And also asked ChatGPT to lend a hand to get started. While it knew what I wanted and it spits out code and stuff...NONE of it actually wanted to compile or did what I was trying to do! I think it was targeting another version or fork of the development kit or something. And yes...the idea of porting BatteryCheck to the gameboy color was one of the reasons for trying it! It's even more limited than the GBA for sure...but I just wanted to do the menu title screen to have a feel of what it could look like. My findings show this is going to take A LOT of time and require a full set of new sprites! We will see where it goes...but I do definitely want to port some of the simple examples I once ported from DS -> GBA into ->CGB. It's just one with a moving rectangle I think and the other is one with bouncing balls and a moving background.
I did also attempt to have ChatGPT rewrite the above text or summarize it....but it got too many details wrong and twisting my words a bit. hahaha. So we're stuck with this novel type of blog post, sorry.
You got to the end. Thanks for reading!
