I ended up getting a partial refund which I used to get the tools I needed to opening the VB for repair as well as obtaining a proper battery module.
The seller played smart as he knew there was no way around it but to cooperate in compensating me for what was not revealed about the unit.
It was a good opportunity to learn about how it works anyways, despite the end result not being very impressive, the technology behind the VB is - Did you know that there are no 'screens' for the lenses? The display is generated by a single row of LEDs that are reflected through a synchronised vibrating mirror to get the image. Without the vibrating mirror, it would just be a single row of dots.
It is necessary to get a very high frame rate that prevents blurring since technically all the system is doing is lighting a single row of pixels for each eye. It is possibly better in this regard that modern VR headsets.
Here is the actual LED display ribbon:
This is all that it truly displays, the game image you get is literally mirror trickery:
What produces the game image is the mirror for each eye display that vibrate back and forth a at an incredibly fast rate which is synchronised to the LEDs. So the display ribbon shoots the LED dot image to the mirror which it rapidly changes angle so that the 'pixel' is projected at a particular part of the mirror and reflected into the eye piece at a desired position - This happens an insane amount of times times per second and eventually draws the image. From a human eye perspective, the whole screen is drawn although in reality, its just a single row of blinking lights.
Here are the mirrors:
Last edited by kup; 17th June 2016 at 08:33 PM.
Does anyone own an Arcade machine? (stock pic provided as an example only).
No, but I really want this 2000+ game arcade machine
http://www.casa.com.au/arcade-tables/
Maybe they'll make it, but they probably won't come up with it themselves... remember the tech inside Virtual Boy was actually invented by a company called Reflection Technology. A lot like the Wii Remote too ... there used to be a great story about it's inventor on CVG, but their site is gone... just a mention of it around the place now: http://kotaku.com/5961480/sony-and-m...-save-nintendo
This is a great article on the VB: http://www.fastcompany.com/3050016/u...20-years-later.
I've thought about it too. I did look at an ex-arcade machine on eBay once but couldn't justify buying it