The Nintendo Virtual Boy was released with a design flaw to the LED ribbon cables. Over time, the glue that secures the ribbon cables to the LED displays often degrades. The result is an image that can present itself as faded, with lines, garbled, or even stop working all together. Segasonicfan aims to solve this issue once and for all. The solution is a 2 PCB design that will allow the cable to remain connected without rubbing or degrading over time! Finally, the VB LED problem may have a permanent fix!

Pre-orders are on-going, and the kit is currently priced at $38.99. Please see the project page link below for more information and to place your order!

Project Page

On-going Discussion

Installation Tutorial

 

[Deleted User]

Except they don't if you buy in bulk like all manufacturers do or when you're making a product to resell, ribbon cables to buy yourself can literally cost pennies each, we're talking about ribbon cables here, nothing special about them, they carry a signal, voltage and data nothing more.

That's not me saying this product isn't worth the money btw, if you've got a product nobody else has and it works, you can basically charge what you like.

I'm pointing out that nobody should be paying $20 for a ribbon cable

m8 the ribbon cable that converts the screen for the GBA SP for the original model can be up to $13 and that thing is considerably less significant than this entire package. and why would comsumers be selling in bulk to resell

 

[Jonnysert]

VFX is a complicated profession.

 

[Evilengine]

HOLYMOTHEROFG*D, instabuy. 7
edit: The wait is overrr.
Someone wants to buy faulty original VB cables from me?

 

[moto4mods]

You are literraly a poor pathetic loser. This is not mass produced in a plant. 40$ is damn cheap to revive such a legacy console.

Pip'

I completely agree with you. With all my talk of piracy and never paying people for their work, these are things people specifically shouldn't have to do themselves, as it's really the companies responsibility.

This is the exact thing someone deserves to be paid on their efforts for. Nintendo fucked up, "no one cared" so Nintendo didn't either.

Well fuck at least someone cares, segasonicfan is a ledgend IMHO, you don't do this for fame or fortune, it's not a get rich quick scheme, he literally brought back from the dead a legacy console. I have very little to my name and I still would buy this no problem if I owned a VB. These both cost more to make, and cost less to buy, than the switch chips.

 

[Hambrew]

Thanks! Now let my find my Virtual Boy...

 

[eskinner3742]

Didn't know such an issue existed. Glad to see the community creating a fix so many years later... If only I opened a virtual boy

 

[segasonicfan_designs]

Hi everyone, Segasonicfan Designs here (the designer of the Virtual Ribbon):

First and foremost, thank you @Another World for the shoutout! That was really nice of you to promote what I'm developing for the community

Second - Thanks to the supporters and fans that encourage this work - I really couldn't do it without you!

Third - Cost concerns. I really hear ya folks, I never want to charge more than necessary for PCBs. I've been active in the online gaming / modding scene for 15+ years and I remember those times in high school when I was soldering motherboard add-ons and emailing people like JROK and Viletim for any possible discounted PCBs (they both were super nice to me). I didn't understand their prices and shared similar frustrations. I am a small designer working out of my home and am not making any of the big bucks. I'd like to share some info that may help:

1. I spent over a year and hunderds of hours of work fine-tuning this design through many iterations.
(you can see some of the steps in the History of the Virtual Ribbon section here).

2. While these PCBs look simple on the surface, they are not as simple as you might expect. The cables and plugs are completely non-standard (keep in mind the VB is 25+ years old now) and have to be special ordered and have a much larger than usual markup. Also, due to fairly small and unpredictable demand, I don't get bulk discounts.

3. A lot of time is spent answering emails and customer concerns, managing shipping, developing how-tos, install videos, etc. It's surprising how much work there is beyond the cost of materials.

4. I'm offering a steep discount for installation of these PCBs, which is far below my usual rate of repair work.

5. For anyone unable to afford the current v3.0, v3.1+ official release, I still have v2.0 prototypes which I can sell at a significant discount (although, not with any support or guarantees of course - they are protos but they tested fine for me).
​

JROK and Viletim sold me discount prototypes back in the day, and I'd be happy to do the same thing. Fortunately, I've gotten a lot of support and enough orders to ship a nice batch around the world. So thank you everyone! Looking forward to healing some damaged VBs out there

 

[segasonicfan_designs]

Update: Pre-order PCBs arrived from the fabrication !

I went ahead and did a v3.2 bump for a couple improvements - I think it will be worth the wait (I'm always perfecting my designs, even after official releases

Thank you all for your patience. I know it's been a long week, and there's a lot going on in the world slowing things down. But I haven't forgotten about anyone and I'll do another batch of orders in a couple months after I finish all these installs and shipments. Full refunds are available at any time prior to shipment as well.

In the meantime, contact me through my website if you'd like to be on the waiting list

 

[segasonicfan_designs]

I realized I never updated this post with the latest big version bump - Virtual Ribbon V4.0:

There's also a great install and (unsponsored) review here:


Happy to say these have been quite popular! You can order direct from me (promo discount for Virtual Lens right now) or from Stone Age Gamer, which also does an install service.

I also designed more things for the Virtual Boy!
- Virtual EZ-Mount (makes installs easier for Virtual Ribbon)
- Virtual Juice USB-C power adapter (more info here too)
- Virtual Lens (eye cover replacement)
- Virtual Boy Keychain

Designed, manufactured, assembled and shipped from USA by me!

 

[segasonicfan_designs]

Hi guys! I've got a nice little repair kit now for the Virtual Boy eyes, with new versions beyond when this thread was first made
and I put together a special discount package for Black Friday this week!

Also restocked all other Virtual Boy items at Stone Age Gamer

Everything lovingly designed and assembled in USA by yours truly. I put this kit together so people have a discount way to try the Virtual Lens V2.0, which is a big improvement over the cloudy easy-to-scratch stock lenses.
It also includes a fun Blockbuster 90s sticker ad I made here in the shop:

Thank you, as always everyone, for your love and support to keep these repair kits going for our community here