I think you got the "optocoupler" part wrong. The printhead is "dumb" and all the pins are connected directly to the heating resistors. The two "opto couplers" are darlington arrays. A quick look with the scope will show this. Also, there is only a single motor. The advancement of the paper is done with gears.
That's crazy, I was just thinking you should tear down a gameboy printer. You read my mind. It is still impressive how they made such a small printer back in the 90's. Great video!
Nah, teeny thermal receipt printers go back a way before then. In the early 80s Epson made a primitive laptop (8-bit CPU, 8-line LCD screen) with a tiny thermal printer built in. Thing also had a tape drive for Dictaphone tapes. That's impressive! Nintendo did a good job on the price though. It's likely that they didn't build the printer themselves, or at least not the mechanical parts. Possibly one of the big receipt printer companies did a special job for them.
There was at least one Gameboy personal organiser cart, came with a teeny keyboard. Still the Gameboy has an onboard font, somebody could write a word processor if they wanted to, burn it to a flash cart, and use the GB Printer. The method for driving the printer is known among Gameboy hackers. You wouldn't need to tear anything open.
If that was the original paper supplied with the printer then the heat reactive part of it may have expired by now. You should be able to find till receipt/credit card machine paper the right size that will give a much better image.
Toaster well, the device would be too big to be portable if it wont be an emulator, and he will need to program a whole new OS from scratch to power the device... but a good idea though..! :D
I love this kind of detailed reverse engineering but explained in a way i can actually understand it :) luckily i know a bit about how binary works and computers in general, so this video was just a dream to watch ! Please make many of more of this kind of videos! xD
This video made me subscribe. I thought to myself, "who in the world and why would you ever reverse engineer a gameboy printer" pause... "Why wouldn't you reverse engineer a Gameboy printer"? Love your shows Ben!!!
Why they used expired thermal paper is beyond me? i owned one of these when they were new and they printed very dark. You can buy fresh paper now not nintendo brand.
Not good enough, apparently, because Ben ends the video convinced that it prints in only 1-bit color, when in fact it does print 2-bit color, white and 3 shades of darkness.
The Ben Heck Show Maybe try out the Limits of this little Printer and try to use if for Jobs it wasnt made to do and maybe just try to print stuff from the Gameboy Camera directly to a New Printer :3
Don't think that'd work. It's not faded because the printer didn't put enough heat onto the paper, it's faded because the paper is old. That's as dark as it will get. As far as Nintendo sprites, early Pokemon games let you print your 'mon out using the GB Printer if you had one.
Hey Ben! Not sure if you knew this, but if you hold down the big pink button on the printer for a few seconds, it triggers a test print image. Not particularly helpful to you at this point, but cool to know, I guess, for anyone else trying to reverse engineer this thing on their own.
when I got this when I was like 9 or 10 years old, this was literally the coolest thing anyone ever had. You gained in popularity just for owning one of these things
19:17 You can use the PROGMEM macro to store large arrays in AVR flash storage rather than RAM and access them with the pgm_read_* macros if you're running low on space
19:14 I just had flashbacks when I was helping one of my buddies with his senior design project. He essentially made this very long array of 32 bit integers and was telling me he was getting the low RAM error when he compiled the code and the usage of the index of the array was inexplicit however when he explicitly defined a static index for the array the code compiled no errors. I explained compilers are very smart with memory, if you had the usage of the array's index set to a variable i.e. 'i' and have that value increment it will load all the static values you defined in this array to memory however if you compiled your code and have it set to the first index of the array it will only load that first static value because the compiler knows it will never go past the first index of the array. Though like Ben said though if you want to guarantee those values are in memory set the array as constant.
I mean, here he figured out how the data is stored. You could use an arduino to just record that data coming in, maybe output it to a CSV File and then recreate the image?
There isn't any striking. It's a thermal head. The paper is impregnated with a chemical (often a bisphenol, dangerous cancer-causing DNA-ripping, but anyway...). When you heat the chemical, it turns from transparent to dark. Most receipt printers do this. Next time you get a receipt from a shop, or a bus ticket, try writing on it with something hot, a soldering iron or a heated pin. You'll see. So the print head has 16 tiny little heating elements in it. They can heat and cool in tiny fractions of a second. While you could, possibly, vary the current and thereby temperature of the print head's pixels, it wouldn't be reliable, the paper isn't intended to do grey scales, it's just black or white. The problem would be different batches of paper would give different, bad looking results. So Nintendo and everyone else who does thermal printing, just uses 1 shade, dark or light.
No. In what sense does "striking" mean "heating"? Impact printers, like dot matrix and daisywheel, strike the paper (well, a ribbon). It's logical to assume perhaps our guy got confused between the two types.
greenaum ok maybe he confused them, but still, hitting and striking etc are not always literal, when its warm you can say damn that heat hit me hard! or whatever, would you go complain that they are using the term "hitting" wrongly ? :P
You know, Mad Catz has a USB cable that lets you connect the Game Boy Printer to a computer and use a special program to print stuff out. But where's the fun in that?
It's actually an LED and a phototransistor in an opto-isolator. Though phototransistors are often housed in LED-looking packages. While an LED will work as a light sensor, a phototransistor gives much more reliable, clean switching. And yup, they're used to pass data while electrically isolating 2 circuits from each other. Not sure if that's something to do with surges from the tiny heating coils, surely a capacitor would smooth those out? Also seems to have lots of pins, so maybe each one contains 8 sets of optos. Or maybe they're used to isolate the different voltages of the Gameboy and the printer. To transmit data without bothering worrying about converting voltages in both directions. Also it's not unlikely that there's only one motor in there, moving the head and feeding the paper with a bit of mechanical cleverness. Other tiny printers have done that, famously the ZX Printer. Perhaps the extra 2 lines are some sort of jam detection or something.
Woah, rig one of those up to be a mini PORTABLE FAX! Fax machines are awesome, you'd have so much anticipation waiting for important messages to come out from that.
This video was such an awesome find for me. I've wanted to do something similar like this. Thanks for going into all the signal detail, looking forward to more cool uploads. Subscribed!
It would be really cool to have some kind of memory stick attached to the Game Boy that allows the GameBoy Camera to record some video footage. I know you can do the same thing with the Super Game Boy and a video capture device, but it would be nice to do it with the Game Boy itself. Thanks for your videos! I don't understand half the thing, but I always find very creative and entertaining!
You might want to invest in some zoom lens, it is nice that you explain things and point at them, but when the whole DUT (device under teardown) is only like 2% of the pixels of the screen, the thing you point to is barely visible.
I'd love to learn how you did this and see some code so I can hook this up to a PC and print from there. I have the original MadCatz Printer product if you're interested (I used to work at MadCatz).
I think I'll try adding to an existing reverse engineer of a force feedback racing wheel I have. See if I can get that working without a gameport, or write a windows 7 driver for it.
I think one kid at our school had one and the novelty wore off really quickly. It was fun for a few minutes until we all realized that the quality of the prints was so bad that we might as well sketch them ourselves and probably be faster and better too. But printing pictures on the go via Polaroids was a thing in the 90's, so I guess this thing did appeal to some consumers.
I have one of these. I've been wanting to hax it to use it on my computer. I don't have any paper anymore but I'm sure I could find some. Where is the source for all the code written in this video...?
A shipping company that I have to support from time to time still uses a dot matrix printer to print their bill of ladings. I had to replace their print ribbon a year ago and I was shocked that their still using that technology. I wonder if the printhead needs cleaned or if it is just really old thermal paper. I know that thermal paper seems to degrade over time. I wonder if it would be possible to source some new paper that is the right size for that printer.
What a great video ! :) Ben, I noticed some blue hues in the reflection of your glasses, are you using those blue filtering finishes on yours ? If true, how effective are they ? I might buy some next time I change mine.
It does do dithering / shading, so it must be sending all 4 to the printer, did you actually take a photo of something with the camera, then print it? - lots of images have dithering...
I think it would be really neat to make a camcorder with the Gameboy Camera! Would you be able to get the data from the camera and send it directly to something like an Arduino and record video?
Ben I have one of these little printers, Bought it off amazon. I was wondering if there was a way to print from my PC without hacking it all up. I use thermal receipt paper to print on as it works better. I like the arduino idea. maybe make some type of adapter that goes between the PC and print. I have an extra Gameboy cable I wouldn't mind cutting up for the project.
I don't get it, did he solve the checksum issue? I understood from his comment it only printed half of the lines with the valid checksum, but then he said it was OK in the Arduino code. Was that code his? Did I miss something?
i think there is a part of video missing, one moment he is discussing the checksum problem, the next moment he suddenly has all the code and the checksum is working
You could have used regular thermal print paper in the printer lol it would have been much better. That's what I use and it's a superior image to the old thermal sticker paper.
What does that have to do with a typo being in the disclaimer page? And if I am, does it make a difference somehow? Prople do read that wall of text at the end sometimes.
Hey Ben I'm just wondering where did you get that tri wing screwdriver? I'm lookong for a good sturdy one since the one I bought on Amazon was pretty cheep and broke easily. Also can't seem to find any other ones around The Home Depot or Amazon.
I got one in a 10 piece security bit set from Rat Shack years ago and I've found them in other security bit sets from Lowes before.Although if you're looking for a regular screwdriver I think its going to be off of the internet,unless you go to Fastenall,Snapon etc ;)
Thanks guys! I really appreciate you helping me out! I have seen them in bit sets but didn't want to pay a lot for just for one bit I needed. I ordered one from Ifixit as James recommend. Still thanks for all the help :)
@Ben Heck, If you had done some googleing, you would have discover Jeff frohwein Had a ton of information on the printer and the cables. Supermario DX made use of the printer and used to print banners.
I bought a Gameboy Printer with the hope i could mod it to work with the Elektor GBDSO oscilloscope cartridge I made for the Gameboy... I never got around to it. It has the option to output data over the serial port.
AVR constants don't have to be loaded into RAM if they are defined as PROGMEM in the source. I forget exactly how to do it, but it would save a LOT of RAM with that giant array.
It wouldn't have been portable either. The Gameboy Printer was cheap because it is basically a thermal calculator printer. A color inkjet printer in the 90s was still a new thing.
Yep. Brand new "Taxi receipt" thermal paper prints great. Hit up Amazon for some, it's readily available. Be warned though a single roll isn't as cheap per roll as an 8 pack but I don't know who is going to use it all?
Huh. I always thought my "new" Game Boy Printer (sold my original Pocket Printer) was just busted. So if I find thermal paper that fits with the GBP it will print perfectly again?
How about a part 2? Connecting a modern Thermal Printer to the gameboy camera and Gameboy color. For me it would impossible however i get the feeling The Ben heck show could figure something out with relative ease.
I got back into GB printers and tinkering with them led me to this video. I just tried printing a 4-tone flat bands picture and it does print 4 flat bands in 4 shades of faded, so there definitely is more to it. :)
You know, I had a game ON the Gameboy that could pretty much make shapes and text, I once printed out a whole collage of images and made it say stuff like "Mario is Awesome", because it came from a Mario game. (Super Mario Deluxe is the name of the game) it had puzzles you could collect from beating levels and then print them. Fun game. (I still have my Gameboy Printer too)
"i don't know if I can start flashing though" unintentional innuendo is the best.
glad im not the only one who caught this
Gameboy Camera is definitely one of the best Game Boy games ever made.
They sell this type of paper on Amazon... The paper goes bad over time.,,which explains why it's so faded
and Taxi receipt paper is an excellent subsitute
I think you got the "optocoupler" part wrong. The printhead is "dumb" and all the pins are connected directly to the heating resistors. The two "opto couplers" are darlington arrays. A quick look with the scope will show this. Also, there is only a single motor. The advancement of the paper is done with gears.
That's crazy, I was just thinking you should tear down a gameboy printer. You read my mind. It is still impressive how they made such a small printer back in the 90's. Great video!
Nah, teeny thermal receipt printers go back a way before then. In the early 80s Epson made a primitive laptop (8-bit CPU, 8-line LCD screen) with a tiny thermal printer built in. Thing also had a tape drive for Dictaphone tapes. That's impressive!
Nintendo did a good job on the price though. It's likely that they didn't build the printer themselves, or at least not the mechanical parts. Possibly one of the big receipt printer companies did a special job for them.
I'd love to see Ben put the code onto a modded cartridge and make a sort of word processor.
There was at least one Gameboy personal organiser cart, came with a teeny keyboard. Still the Gameboy has an onboard font, somebody could write a word processor if they wanted to, burn it to a flash cart, and use the GB Printer. The method for driving the printer is known among Gameboy hackers. You wouldn't need to tear anything open.
Yes! More reverse engineering videos please!
"See how it has really wide threading there?"
I would if someone would zoom the damn camera in! I can barely see the details!
If that was the original paper supplied with the printer then the heat reactive part of it may have expired by now.
You should be able to find till receipt/credit card machine paper the right size that will give a much better image.
one of the coolest videos so far! love how comprehensive the coverage was in this video versus some of the others. keep it up guys!
Can you try building a time machine?
A watch?
:D
Seriously, honestly, laughed out loud. Not just a normal laugh, but the kind of laugh that starts with a *Pwwffffbbtt* then you laugh.
hehe, How about the ultimate Sega? Combine the Master System, Genesis, 32x, Sega CD, Saturn, and Dreamcast.
Toaster well, the device would be too big to be portable if it wont be an emulator, and he will need to program a whole new OS from scratch to power the device...
but a good idea though..! :D
The Ben Heck Show I meant something like a Delorean from Back to the Future.
He...He....He just threw a gameboy camera.....
It's ok, they used to build them with Nokia 1100 quality standards back then
you mean 3310
Most of the phones were well built, not just the 3310.
Retro Aspie but the 3310 is the one that was in the meme
But the 1100 is the one I owned :V
I love this kind of detailed reverse engineering but explained in a way i can actually understand it :) luckily i know a bit about how binary works and computers in general, so this video was just a dream to watch ! Please make many of more of this kind of videos! xD
This video made me subscribe. I thought to myself, "who in the world and why would you ever reverse engineer a gameboy printer" pause... "Why wouldn't you reverse engineer a Gameboy printer"? Love your shows Ben!!!
Silly me, expecting to see a PS4 Pro Teardown this week. Instead we got the GameBoy Printer, which is a gazillion times more interesting! Awesome!
Why they used expired thermal paper is beyond me? i owned one of these when they were new and they printed very dark. You can buy fresh paper now not nintendo brand.
Because it came with the printer? And it gave good enough results, so Ben couldn't be bothered chopping the end off a roll of fax paper.
Probably because they had it, and it was good enough for testing purposes.
Not good enough, apparently, because Ben ends the video convinced that it prints in only 1-bit color, when in fact it does print 2-bit color, white and 3 shades of darkness.
Yeah you can buy rolls of thermal paper at Office max for things like credit card machines
+Corrodias That's enough to film a moon landing
We need a Second Part :3 With more stuff to do with the Printer :D
What would you do with the printer?
make it print in shades by hitting the same pixel multiple times ;) and maybe tweak the code to make it faster
Id Print out 8bit Nintendo sprites and stick them all over the place..could you make the printing darker?
The Ben Heck Show Maybe try out the Limits of this little Printer and try to use if for Jobs it wasnt made to do and maybe just try to print stuff from the Gameboy Camera directly to a New Printer :3
Don't think that'd work. It's not faded because the printer didn't put enough heat onto the paper, it's faded because the paper is old. That's as dark as it will get.
As far as Nintendo sprites, early Pokemon games let you print your 'mon out using the GB Printer if you had one.
Hey Ben! Not sure if you knew this, but if you hold down the big pink button on the printer for a few seconds, it triggers a test print image. Not particularly helpful to you at this point, but cool to know, I guess, for anyone else trying to reverse engineer this thing on their own.
when I got this when I was like 9 or 10 years old, this was literally the coolest thing anyone ever had. You gained in popularity just for owning one of these things
19:17 You can use the PROGMEM macro to store large arrays in AVR flash storage rather than RAM and access them with the pgm_read_* macros if you're running low on space
Fun fact, the cover of Neil Young's album "Silver & Gold" was shot with a Gameboy camera.
I wonder if Pokemon Silver and Gold was a nod to him...
What about connecting it to the giant GameBoy?
Kirono Hasama Yes!
now I want to see a Giant Game Boy Printer :)
More Reverse Engineering Episodes please!
19:14 I just had flashbacks when I was helping one of my buddies with his senior design project. He essentially made this very long array of 32 bit integers and was telling me he was getting the low RAM error when he compiled the code and the usage of the index of the array was inexplicit however when he explicitly defined a static index for the array the code compiled no errors. I explained compilers are very smart with memory, if you had the usage of the array's index set to a variable i.e. 'i' and have that value increment it will load all the static values you defined in this array to memory however if you compiled your code and have it set to the first index of the array it will only load that first static value because the compiler knows it will never go past the first index of the array. Though like Ben said though if you want to guarantee those values are in memory set the array as constant.
Just a thought, can you use your existing knowledge to back up the images from a Game Boy Camera?
I mean, here he figured out how the data is stored. You could use an arduino to just record that data coming in, maybe output it to a CSV File and then recreate the image?
what if the printer does gray scale by double striking?
oooh, that would fck up his whole theory xD
There isn't any striking. It's a thermal head. The paper is impregnated with a chemical (often a bisphenol, dangerous cancer-causing DNA-ripping, but anyway...).
When you heat the chemical, it turns from transparent to dark. Most receipt printers do this. Next time you get a receipt from a shop, or a bus ticket, try writing on it with something hot, a soldering iron or a heated pin. You'll see. So the print head has 16 tiny little heating elements in it. They can heat and cool in tiny fractions of a second.
While you could, possibly, vary the current and thereby temperature of the print head's pixels, it wouldn't be reliable, the paper isn't intended to do grey scales, it's just black or white. The problem would be different batches of paper would give different, bad looking results. So Nintendo and everyone else who does thermal printing, just uses 1 shade, dark or light.
greenaum
in this context the striking means heating the paper to create a pixel, ffs, wasnt that obvious?
No. In what sense does "striking" mean "heating"?
Impact printers, like dot matrix and daisywheel, strike the paper (well, a ribbon). It's logical to assume perhaps our guy got confused between the two types.
greenaum
ok maybe he confused them, but still,
hitting and striking etc are not always literal, when its warm you can say damn that heat hit me hard! or whatever, would you go complain that they are using the term "hitting" wrongly ? :P
You know, Mad Catz has a USB cable that lets you connect the Game Boy Printer to a computer and use a special program to print stuff out.
But where's the fun in that?
Or if you have a flash cart you can transfer the images, dump the save, and use some utilities for it too :)
>usb
if only
ericbazinga also in the last year the BitBoy was released which replaces the printer and allows you to save printouts to an SD card.
It's actually an LED and a phototransistor in an opto-isolator. Though phototransistors are often housed in LED-looking packages. While an LED will work as a light sensor, a phototransistor gives much more reliable, clean switching.
And yup, they're used to pass data while electrically isolating 2 circuits from each other. Not sure if that's something to do with surges from the tiny heating coils, surely a capacitor would smooth those out? Also seems to have lots of pins, so maybe each one contains 8 sets of optos. Or maybe they're used to isolate the different voltages of the Gameboy and the printer. To transmit data without bothering worrying about converting voltages in both directions.
Also it's not unlikely that there's only one motor in there, moving the head and feeding the paper with a bit of mechanical cleverness. Other tiny printers have done that, famously the ZX Printer. Perhaps the extra 2 lines are some sort of jam detection or something.
Woah, rig one of those up to be a mini PORTABLE FAX! Fax machines are awesome, you'd have so much anticipation waiting for important messages to come out from that.
Maybe reverse engineer the camera so I can connect the gameboy to arduino-pc and store the pictures in the pc
Is that a Seiko printer mechanism?
Your videos are AMAZING!Big up from Venice
This video was such an awesome find for me. I've wanted to do something similar like this. Thanks for going into all the signal detail, looking forward to more cool uploads. Subscribed!
I would love to see the camera done like this, just to see what kind of data is coming out of it.
Love the GB camera, love Buffy...love this vid
It would be really cool to have some kind of memory stick attached to the Game Boy that allows the GameBoy Camera to record some video footage. I know you can do the same thing with the Super Game Boy and a video capture device, but it would be nice to do it with the Game Boy itself.
Thanks for your videos! I don't understand half the thing, but I always find very creative and entertaining!
"You see how this screw has a very course threading?" No, I can't. You're zoomed so far out I can see my house from here.
Great show always look forward to the next episode
have you seen that gbprinter prints gameboy images but squished a bit with a wrong aspect ratio?
Is there anyway to get the code you uploaded to the arduino?
I dont know about his work but I looked a while ago and there was some stuff on github that should get you going ;)
Do you have a link by chance?
github.com/thebenheckshow
Andy Chrzanowski No but they do lol
Cannot find the code for this project on GitHub.
You might want to invest in some zoom lens, it is nice that you explain things and point at them, but when the whole DUT (device under teardown) is only like 2% of the pixels of the screen, the thing you point to is barely visible.
I'd love to learn how you did this and see some code so I can hook this up to a PC and print from there. I have the original MadCatz Printer product if you're interested (I used to work at MadCatz).
You have the printer link cable for the camera? The one where you 'print' to PC? They're hard to come by these days :/
Does the ink ever end? is the ink cartridge replaceable?
Can you forward engineer something next episode?
I think I'll try adding to an existing reverse engineer of a force feedback racing wheel I have. See if I can get that working without a gameport, or write a windows 7 driver for it.
I think one kid at our school had one and the novelty wore off really quickly. It was fun for a few minutes until we all realized that the quality of the prints was so bad that we might as well sketch them ourselves and probably be faster and better too. But printing pictures on the go via Polaroids was a thing in the 90's, so I guess this thing did appeal to some consumers.
Also could you write some software that would allow us to hook up gb printer to a pc via link cable to usb connector and print our own images or text?
I have one of these.
I've been wanting to hax it to use it on my computer. I don't have any paper anymore but I'm sure I could find some.
Where is the source for all the code written in this video...?
A shipping company that I have to support from time to time still uses a dot matrix printer to print their bill of ladings. I had to replace their print ribbon a year ago and I was shocked that their still using that technology. I wonder if the printhead needs cleaned or if it is just really old thermal paper. I know that thermal paper seems to degrade over time. I wonder if it would be possible to source some new paper that is the right size for that printer.
can we get the arduino program for this?
Wonder how hard it would be to create a modern version as well as a color version.
20:06, hahaha no comment about flashing.
do a tear down video about the ridgid hyper drive cordless brush less mailer and see what can you do with the brush less motor
Hey Ben, are you going to do a review on the NES Classic Mini?
This is such a rad video. Thanks for the knowledge. We love when you mess with the older Nintendo stuff.
I had, and still have both of these!! Never used... But totally necessary with a game boy...
I would be great to know how to make a printer that prints larger images
Who are you running from?
What a great video ! :) Ben, I noticed some blue hues in the reflection of your glasses, are you using those blue filtering finishes on yours ? If true, how effective are they ? I might buy some next time I change mine.
is the printer broken?
Would this be possible to do with an old daisy wheel typevritter that is missing its parallel port print interface?
Can you make the gameboy send its raw camera data to another source so we can see all four shades of grey it can capture?
Done years ago.
can you do a nes mini hand held
It does do dithering / shading, so it must be sending all 4 to the printer, did you actually take a photo of something with the camera, then print it? - lots of images have dithering...
What if you made a casing for an iPhone that made it into a GameBoy?
Liam's Films Productions it's been done already look up a company named hyperkin they have invented one already
Could i build an Arduino nano inside of the printer and use ist as an usb-printer?
This Mario mocking, though!!! LMAO 😂😂😂
I think it would be really neat to make a camcorder with the Gameboy Camera! Would you be able to get the data from the camera and send it directly to something like an Arduino and record video?
Already been done. avr-gameboy-cam
Ben I have one of these little printers, Bought it off amazon. I was wondering if there was a way to print from my PC without hacking it all up. I use thermal receipt paper to print on as it works better. I like the arduino idea. maybe make some type of adapter that goes between the PC and print. I have an extra Gameboy cable I wouldn't mind cutting up for the project.
You can already do that for years.
zawzero
Well how do you do it?
coondogtheman1234
Search for avr-gameboy-cam and github.com/davedarko/GBPrinter
Thanks ben!! Best ep of all
I don't get it, did he solve the checksum issue? I understood from his comment it only printed half of the lines with the valid checksum, but then he said it was OK in the Arduino code. Was that code his? Did I miss something?
i think there is a part of video missing, one moment he is discussing the checksum problem, the next moment he suddenly has all the code and the checksum is working
raafmaat
It *might* have been an editing blunder? Or maybe he thought we didn't care how it was solved?
ricarleite
im guessing that they already had found the working code for this online, but decided to try to reverse engineer it live for show
I reckon they found a working code, Ben makes a comment that he found a thing to do continuous printing
can i get the arduino code anywhere
This was very cool. I've never reversed engineered anything, but I wish I had the knowledge and skills to do so.
You should do a teardown of the Sinclair ZX Printer. It was a spark printer. Interesting bit of old tech.
So, this thing is finally completely reverse engineered? USB interface and driver on the way?
finally? What do you mean? What was wrong with the hacks from nearly a decade ago?
zawzero Oh my gosh, I had no idea. That makes this whole video anything from pointless to staged.
kduhtdkzrt
The video is very informative and entertaining/educational. Just the outcome is nothing new.
You could have used regular thermal print paper in the printer lol it would have been much better. That's what I use and it's a superior image to the old thermal sticker paper.
There's a typo in the disclaimer at the end. >> ("element14)" -- uhh, shouldn't the ending quotation mark be _inside_ the ending parenth?
Are you austistic?
What does that have to do with a typo being in the disclaimer page?
And if I am, does it make a difference somehow? Prople do read that wall of text at the end sometimes.
*****
Thanks for confirming.
Huh? I'm confused here, what just happened?
Don't mind the trolls Robert
5:35 Is Ben reading the datasheet upside down as some kind of weird flex lol.
So... what happened to the SNES Super Disc?
Will You Do a PS4 Pro Teardown video Ben?
Nice vidoe except one thing. You should have used fresh fax paper!
hm. this makes me wonder if its possible to make a normal thermal printer print images from the Gameboy.
What happened with element14
Hey Ben I'm just wondering where did you get that tri wing screwdriver? I'm lookong for a good sturdy one since the one I bought on Amazon was pretty cheep and broke easily. Also can't seem to find any other ones around The Home Depot or Amazon.
Ifixit I think would be good one to buy. Linustechtips recommends them.
I got one in a 10 piece security bit set from Rat Shack years ago and I've found them in other security bit sets from Lowes before.Although if you're looking for a regular screwdriver I think its going to be off of the internet,unless you go to Fastenall,Snapon etc ;)
Thanks guys! I really appreciate you helping me out! I have seen them in bit sets but didn't want to pay a lot for just for one bit I needed. I ordered one from Ifixit as James recommend. Still thanks for all the help :)
awesome episode! ⚡️
@Ben Heck, If you had done some googleing, you would have discover Jeff frohwein Had a ton of information on the printer and the cables.
Supermario DX made use of the printer and used to print banners.
I bought a Gameboy Printer with the hope i could mod it to work with the Elektor GBDSO oscilloscope cartridge I made for the Gameboy... I never got around to it. It has the option to output data over the serial port.
Why didn't you print out a large image, using the paper as one line of the image
AVR constants don't have to be loaded into RAM if they are defined as PROGMEM in the source. I forget exactly how to do it, but it would save a LOT of RAM with that giant array.
Ben, please do the NES Mini teardown and whether it can be hacked in any way. thanks
Can you do it with COLOR?
No
I mean, can Ben hook it up with color printing?
Curious Pineapple Damn, they should have made one for GameBoyColor.
In the 90's that would've been expensive as hell.
It wouldn't have been portable either. The Gameboy Printer was cheap because it is basically a thermal calculator printer. A color inkjet printer in the 90s was still a new thing.
Is that code available on git?
why did it stay so dim, i know as you used it more it got darker, but this seems pretty naff.
It's because he is using 20 year old thermal paper.
Yep. Brand new "Taxi receipt" thermal paper prints great. Hit up Amazon for some, it's readily available. Be warned though a single roll isn't as cheap per roll as an 8 pack but I don't know who is going to use it all?
Huh. I always thought my "new" Game Boy Printer (sold my original Pocket Printer) was just busted. So if I find thermal paper that fits with the GBP it will print perfectly again?
Yes. I thought the same thing about my gbp. Search Amazon for game boy printer paper and you'll find something compaTible.
Brice Campbell The official ones? I have a few rolls of official ones (sealed) and those gave crappy results =/
I'm so lucky I found a bundle for the camera and printer for 20 bucks back in the early 2000s
How about a part 2? Connecting a modern Thermal Printer to the gameboy camera and Gameboy color. For me it would impossible however i get the feeling The Ben heck show could figure something out with relative ease.
@6:30 Unintentional "Shave and a haircut"
Two bits!
Fingerless gloves: when your fingers are warm, but your palms are cold.
I got back into GB printers and tinkering with them led me to this video.
I just tried printing a 4-tone flat bands picture and it does print 4 flat bands in 4 shades of faded, so there definitely is more to it. :)
wasn't a Neil young cover made with one of those
You know, I had a game ON the Gameboy that could pretty much make shapes and text, I once printed out a whole collage of images and made it say stuff like "Mario is Awesome", because it came from a Mario game.
(Super Mario Deluxe is the name of the game) it had puzzles you could collect from beating levels and then print them. Fun game. (I still have my Gameboy Printer too)