It seems that element14 is not pushing Ben into deadlines anymore so he could return to do what he does best, hack video games that are "smaller, better and portable". This is a return to the old format and I love it. Too bad that there's still a deadline to accomplish and that is the end of the BHS as we know it. We'll miss you Ben.
yep, there were so good that shores stop sell it here in israel as it kill the battery market ( people would buy only few rechargeable, and not buy every month)
Gp is a reputable battery maker. They do make some crappy leaky batteries though but that's only because there is a market for those as batteries to be delivered with cheap multimeters and guitar tuners. These ones looked like proper alkalines though and they are all good.
I have been a viewer for many years now, since 2014, And I am glad you are back to doing the things you are very good at, rebuilding it, making it smaller, better, portable! (If you get the reference you have been here for quite a long time ;).
The memories. My first true hack was deconstructing the game saves for Alone in the Dark back around 1992 on the PC. I used the DOS command "debug' on the hard drive stored binary file to get 255 shotgun shells.
Zip drive? I have all the necessary gear including a win98 machine, and it still works Last weekend, I tore down an old gateway machine that had an internal IDE Zip drive. I still need to test that to see if it works.
"It fits in my girl pocket, that's so exciting!" -Naughty Ben- BTW - last couple of episodes have been a welcome return to the stuff I used to watch Ben Heck for - many thanks!
Just to add a correction to a post that won't be tossed down, the NES don't actually use a lot of CPU time to play samples. It have a dedicated DPCM hardware that access the samples via DMA, but they don't sound that good because the NES don't have that much space on the cartridge for high sample rates and it's 1bit DPCM. Just to see how lightweight it is, just play any modernish konami game or SMB3.
Anyone who's had a fish out of water knows a drowning fish really doesn't make any sound. A fish drowning in water is just silly, they drown in air. MIND BLOWING. lol
Drowning is basically underwater suffocation. Thus, a drowning fish would be a fish in deoxygenated water. They would likely not make any noise then too, though.
I feel like Felix gets a lot of hate from people but I think he's great! he may not be able to be all excited on camera but he still does it. he's not an actor so he's just himself on camera. He's got my respect.
Elijah W. .... Elijah Wood maybe? Love the video but I really wish you'd have gone to see what the other chips were, maybe find out if it was an MCU or console-on-a-chip maybe!
I'd love to know if there's any way to reuse the screen if you wanted to, say, reuse it as a Raspberry Pi enclosure instead of having to buy a new screen.
that displaying of 4 digit number thing brought some memories of times when you define a variable as 3 character but the actual value has 4 character then you bang your head against the wall and wonder why crap doesn't work! I feel smart for the rest of the week...
I am almost positive the Basic Fun arcade collection is made specifically to be desk toys. The playability is merely a novelty. I have quite a few and love them! Each of the arcade ones have two games on them that represent both games from that release. Defender (which was never released) is on the Joust cab.
What would be cool is to pore over the program code to figure out WHAT is being emulated in there and if you can break it out to run it other software on there.
Not for this specifically, but in these small formfactor handhelds, could you mod in 3ds circle pads as analog sticks? It'd make for a nice slim design with modern controls.
Ever find out what chip its using? Its running off the DOS assets (Same with carman sandiago) but the NOR rom is wierd. It looks like raw disk images? No text either so very confused on hacking it.
I was hoping you would dump the program memory and show us the game assets like images and graphics and sounds. Other than that nice hack and very cool portable version of Oregon Trail. Also please post those DOOM levels. I'm still a DOOM player.
Bens pronunciation of "Oregon" really does show his Wisconsinite side, heh. Me also being from southern Wisconsin most people around here also pronounce it that way, but that might be because there is a town here people pronounce like that "Or-A-Gon" Or "Or-E-Gon". Also great build Ben!
You are allowed to have a backup copy of anything you own, but you may need to download a rom dump of this specific game. As said earlier no ones going to care either way.
Dude, I been programming since the 1970s and I never before realized that "Endian" was taken from Swift's famous novel. I mean, I knew both things for decades, but never connected them til you mentioned it. Weird. Also, take it from a hillbilly boy, all rivers make sloshing and burbling noises. You just have listen for them.
I had Hacked a Tiny Arcade Pac-Man, I found all 4 Tiny Arcade portable Arcade cabs use the exact same board. I had took out the 0 ohm resistor acting as a jumper and solder in a 4 way position switch, so the postilion of the switch chooses which rom boots up.
Ben Heck, could you please take apart an Atgames Sega Genesis Flashback HD and fix all the freezing, sound and emulation, frame skip problems. I would donate mine just for the cause. I bought it to play my Castlevania Bloodlines Cartridge and their is no reflections in the 2nd level and invisible sprites in the upside-down 6th level!
I wonder if one could count the horizontal pixels, subtract a few for the upscaling, and come out with an estimate of what the original screen size was. That might give a good clue as to the nature of the original system. I'm betting on C64 or IBM-PC, myself. Both are little endian.
The regrettable acting is strong in this one.
💀
Nice episode, guys. I wish we had more of these in the past few months, but at least you're doing some cool stuff for Ben's last few episodes.
It seems that element14 is not pushing Ben into deadlines anymore so he could return to do what he does best, hack video games that are "smaller, better and portable". This is a return to the old format and I love it. Too bad that there's still a deadline to accomplish and that is the end of the BHS as we know it.
We'll miss you Ben.
What is that last 'deadline' you're talking about? Infrequent viewer here.
He was his own channel again. Just like the old times
Tbh this is a really cool and well-made device for only $25, I dunno why people are calling it cheap crap.
I'm interested I buying tell me how
GP batteries are surprisingly good. (We even sell them in stores over here) Kinda surprised to see them being thrash talked lol.
Yeah, same here, GPs are good.
Yeah I was going to say the same thing, GP is a good make of battery, assuming they aren't china fakes of china originals
yep, there were so good that shores stop sell it here in israel as it kill the battery market ( people would buy only few rechargeable, and not buy every month)
Gp is a reputable battery maker. They do make some crappy leaky batteries though but that's only because there is a market for those as batteries to be delivered with cheap multimeters and guitar tuners. These ones looked like proper alkalines though and they are all good.
GP sells a very good battery.... the ones that come in that unit are NOT that good battery that GP sells.
Really good to see the oregon trail thing while originally portable, get an improvement over its previous version.
The Ben heck show is fun again.
Great episode all! I sure am going to miss you Ben!
This episode was awesome! Lots to be learned
I'm going on the Oregon Trail today for work it's called the I-5 Bridge.
I have been a viewer for many years now, since 2014, And I am glad you are back to doing the things you are very good at, rebuilding it, making it smaller, better, portable! (If you get the reference you have been here for quite a long time ;).
This was a great little build out of no where, nicely done!
The memories. My first true hack was deconstructing the game saves for Alone in the Dark back around 1992 on the PC. I used the DOS command "debug' on the hard drive stored binary file to get 255 shotgun shells.
The girl pockets bit really hit home. They really gotta start giving us better pockets.
I will bet that they limit the integers to printing just 4 characters, because 5535 bullets is printf("%s %4d", string, value), where value is 65535.
I was going to post the same thing.
Isn't it written in BASIC :p
Actually no, printf()'s formatting doesn't truncate numbers. See ideone.com/fsqzod for instance.
LGR's Clint would be so envious now!
I was looking for a reference to LGR. I was not disappointed!
Zip drive?
I have all the necessary gear including a win98 machine, and it still works
Last weekend, I tore down an old gateway machine that had an internal IDE Zip drive.
I still need to test that to see if it works.
this dudes just inventing new hand held systems that are the coolest things ive ever seen and its just nbd
...you don’t have an soic8 test clip?
Also, are the 4 banks exposed as individually addressed i2c eeproms? That would make sense as to why 4 showed up
“It sounds like a drowning fish.”
🤔
"It fits in my girl pocket, that's so exciting!"
-Naughty Ben-
BTW - last couple of episodes have been a welcome return to the stuff I used to watch Ben Heck for - many thanks!
Just to add a correction to a post that won't be tossed down, the NES don't actually use a lot of CPU time to play samples.
It have a dedicated DPCM hardware that access the samples via DMA, but they don't sound that good because the NES don't have that much space on the cartridge for high sample rates and it's 1bit DPCM.
Just to see how lightweight it is, just play any modernish konami game or SMB3.
Anyone who's had a fish out of water knows a drowning fish really doesn't make any sound. A fish drowning in water is just silly, they drown in air. MIND BLOWING. lol
Drowning is basically underwater suffocation. Thus, a drowning fish would be a fish in deoxygenated water. They would likely not make any noise then too, though.
Actually, drowning is NOT underwater suffocation. Drowning is when your lungs become filled with water.
You can drown without even being underwater.
I feel like Felix gets a lot of hate from people but I think he's great! he may not be able to be all excited on camera but he still does it. he's not an actor so he's just himself on camera. He's got my respect.
Elijah W. .... Elijah Wood maybe?
Love the video but I really wish you'd have gone to see what the other chips were, maybe find out if it was an MCU or console-on-a-chip maybe!
I'd love to know if there's any way to reuse the screen if you wanted to, say, reuse it as a Raspberry Pi enclosure instead of having to buy a new screen.
the acting part, when they change the camera angle and you can see the other actor's mouth not moving like in shitty tv shows, i fucking died.
Hack the LCD on the gamecom to have a better screen
that displaying of 4 digit number thing brought some memories of times when you define a variable as 3 character but the actual value has 4 character then you bang your head against the wall and wonder why crap doesn't work! I feel smart for the rest of the week...
I'm going to miss this kind of video
OMG MARKET THIS! The Ben Heck Pocket Dysentery Simulator!
Or maybe it can be a combination of both FPGA plus ASICS, what about dumping the whole 65536 bytes of code and see what's on the other I2C EEPROM
Are those tweezers "Non-Megnatic"?
I am almost positive the Basic Fun arcade collection is made specifically to be desk toys. The playability is merely a novelty. I have quite a few and love them! Each of the arcade ones have two games on them that represent both games from that release. Defender (which was never released) is on the Joust cab.
i bought one for my fiance to bring back some memories from her childhood. she beat it 1 time playing, we're married now.
I love the Oregon trail and original Dino Park wish Ben would sell his some of his awesome projects.
That was a really fun episode! Off to Target 😃
Will you guys be releasing the source files for the portable components? I want to hack mine! 😉
Where can I get the files for the 3D printed parts
I love the snarkiness. Great carryover from the podcast. Yes, all 12 of us who listen LOVE the podcast.
I wonder if the max amounts of digits can be changed.
Really enjoyed this episode, I want to learn more about i2c and dumping the chip to a txt file
What would be cool is to pore over the program code to figure out WHAT is being emulated in there and if you can break it out to run it other software on there.
Not for this specifically, but in these small formfactor handhelds, could you mod in 3ds circle pads as analog sticks? It'd make for a nice slim design with modern controls.
Any way I can get the .stl files the project parts?
Ever find out what chip its using? Its running off the DOS assets (Same with carman sandiago) but the NOR rom is wierd. It looks like raw disk images? No text either so very confused on hacking it.
I got Nostalgia Goosebumps on my Nostalgia goosebumps
"VEGETA, WHAT DOES THE SCOUTER SAY ABOUT HIS POWER LEVEL?!" "Its.... 190. Kick his ass Nappa."
Hi ben love your show. Can you please hacke the retromini so we can access the internal drive.
Can it play doom?
When is ur big trip Ben?
Ben Heck, I'm sad that you plan on retiring... it make me sad😭
But I'm also happy for you😊😥
I was hoping you would dump the program memory and show us the game assets like images and graphics and sounds. Other than that nice hack and very cool portable version of Oregon Trail.
Also please post those DOOM levels. I'm still a DOOM player.
Portableception. I had flashbacks to editing Bard's Tale so I can whatever amount of Firehorns I wanted.
You face death itself in the form of 99 Berserkers, 99 Berserkers, 99 Berserkers, and 99 Berserkers.
Will your stalwart band choose to Hexedit or Run?
What doom levels did you make, Ben?
Bens pronunciation of "Oregon" really does show his Wisconsinite side, heh. Me also being from southern Wisconsin most people around here also pronounce it that way, but that might be because there is a town here people pronounce like that "Or-A-Gon" Or "Or-E-Gon".
Also great build Ben!
What? He says OREGON like I do. But I'm also Wisconsinite. Not sure how people are suppose to say it without an (A).
The state should be pronounced "Or-eh-gen" but he flip flops between different pronunciations of it.
GEN? Meh, I'll stick with GONE
Yes, "Gen" like "Men" or "Ben"
To each there own! :)
You should do something with the case
Ben could you please do a rebuild of the psp or ps vita or at least any portable PlayStation system
GP Batteries are actually pretty good. I have a set of NiCd GP rechargeables that are still going strong. I bought them 7 years ago.
Mystery Science Theater 3000! One of my favorite shows. Heard Netflix revived the series with a new cast.
It's about time.
when at the screen where it asks for your name, just hit enter and it will use default
You should have made the save chip socketed, if possible. That way you can just socket it in, write your chests, and socket it into the handheld.
I wonder if it's piracy if u torrent the DOS version when u own this
well considering you can get Oregon Trail off of archive.org
Technically yes. But chances of anyone caring are really low
You are allowed to have a backup copy of anything you own, but you may need to download a rom dump of this specific game. As said earlier no ones going to care either way.
Oh my god someone needs to write an emulator for the rom dump.
Anyone got the rom dump for this?
LGR will be going crazy for this and the next episode :)
Your version is much better. Good work.
Dude, I been programming since the 1970s and I never before realized that "Endian" was taken from Swift's famous novel. I mean, I knew both things for decades, but never connected them til you mentioned it. Weird. Also, take it from a hillbilly boy, all rivers make sloshing and burbling noises. You just have listen for them.
How, exactly, would you drown a fish?
It's pretty close to the DOS version of Oregon Trail, though still not exactly that.
They must have made a lot of these because I got one. It doesn't have Nintendo written on it, apparently.
Ben's back...heating goes off again
We need to play these Heck Doom maps, man.
Wisconsin is a long ways away from oregon. However australia is hell of a lot further away!
Cool was waiting for someone.tp.dp this, so.I didnt have to work it out for myself. To many projects already. Thank you.
She totally wants you now you made her game more portable.
Have a question for Mr. Heck... how do you drown a fish?? ;)
you say it "Ory-gun"
I had Hacked a Tiny Arcade Pac-Man, I found all 4 Tiny Arcade portable Arcade cabs use the exact same board. I had took out the 0 ohm resistor acting as a jumper and solder in a 4 way position switch, so the postilion of the switch chooses which rom boots up.
try overflowing the names xD
That regrettable acting thing cracks me up every time.
Im about to go buy this haha Remember playing this game in elementary
Check out the open source calculator program SpeedCrunch - it's really useful for this kind of dec/hex/bits math (cross platform too)
Is not a bed of nails, it is a fixture with a pin bead, indeed they are spring loaded.
Ben Heck, could you please take apart an Atgames Sega Genesis Flashback HD and fix all the freezing, sound and emulation, frame skip problems. I would donate mine just for the cause. I bought it to play my Castlevania Bloodlines Cartridge and their is no reflections in the 2nd level and invisible sprites in the upside-down 6th level!
It would be cool if you could replace the the game with a different one
Someone has not visited a small shallow river with just a few rocks, they can sound a bit 'bubbly' ;)
it would be fairly trivial to just strip the left margin of dump.txt using awk
wow that looks amazing
Creator: is it possible to buy one of the custom portables like you made at the end of this video? I would not object to a significant price.
Now you can put a Pi into the empty Oregon Trail shell you just took apart!
I wonder if one could count the horizontal pixels, subtract a few for the upscaling, and come out with an estimate of what the original screen size was. That might give a good clue as to the nature of the original system. I'm betting on C64 or IBM-PC, myself. Both are little endian.
Ben, you are a pro.
The generic names are probably for the try-me mode.
Or the engineer's names :D
Usually, a safer bet to go with 0x7FFF (or 0xFF7F little endian) unless you want negative values :)
This brings back memories of hacking classic SimCity save files to give myself 2 billion simoleans to run my cities with. lol
God I love this weird show.
I just hope the original developers, or their current successors/representatives, does not file a lawsuit.
I wish they would make this an app already. Not a remake the original.
OR-EEE-GONE
i just keep hearing or-eee-gone and it makes my inner oregonian die inside
Ben learned how to pronounce Oregon in the middle of the video and then forgot by the end
It's so cool that Linux can concatenate binary files! Who would have thunk it??? lol
I was always taught to pronounce the trail and the state differently. I assumed the or-rih-GAHN pronunciation was the original back in the day.
If I had 1000 Oxen, how would I feed them all? Oregon Trail doesn’t feed its animals?