Zipplet's Stuff

Electronics hobbyists on a budget with a desire to measure frequency fairly accurately might find my low-cost 60MHz 8-digit frequency counter a welcome addition to the hobbyist lab. It is cheap and easy to build, and gives good accuracy even without calibration!



I know the writeup is not finished yet, I need to draw a schematic and such but for now, enjoy.

Edited by zipplet on Thu, 19th Nov 2009 at 22:35 UTC

I finally got around to adding my USB powered headphone amplifer to the electronics projects section.



This is a good amplifier that can be built at a very reasonable cost. You can easily adapt it to run from batteries or a different power supply if you want to use it for a different purpose. Enjoy

Edited by zipplet on Thu, 19th Nov 2009 at 23:30 UTC

I have now fully completed both of my megadrive mods.

• Sega Megadrive (Version 1) Digital Multi-region Switch
  
• Megadrive 1 PAL 60 modification
  

After applying both, not only will your megadrive play games from all regions but it will be able to output a valid PAL signal in 60hz modes through composite and RF, so you do not need an expensive RGB cable! I did not find instructions for that anywhere on the Internet so I believe I may be the first for the PAL 60 composite mod.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think.

I have managed to improve my all-region megadrive mod. The megadrive now outputs a valid PAL signal from composite/RF at 60hz giving a full colour picture. Previously this was only possible using an RGB cable, but now a cheaper composite or RF cable can be used.

This also solves a problem some TVs have with modified PAL megadrives running in 60hz mode with RGB cables due to the bad composite signal that is also being fed into the TV.

Details coming soon once I write it up!

I have some great news. zipNES has been revived!



I am rewriting it for high accuracy right now using new knowledge I have of how the NES works. Once I'm done accuracy should be among the best of all NES emulators.

That's too long to wait for you say? What about the old version that worked even though it wasn't perfect?
You can download it here!

Make sure you check the zipNES project page for updates, and my blog.

Edited by zipplet on Sat, 28th Mar 2009 at 03:02 UTC

Edited by zipplet on Sun, 29th Mar 2009 at 16:26 BST

FTDIclass is an FTDI class library for delphi - providing easy access to the FTDI chip D2XX driver. Easy to use classes are provided to create applications rapidly, and there is even built-in support for asynchronous events (D2XX does not implement them but FTDIclass does). All control signals and FTDI features will be supported eventually.

Currently windows only and only tested with the FT232R (USB to serial) as this is an early project.

The currently included example works with the UM232R evaluation module and even demonstrates basic asynchronous comms!

See the project page on google code.

As some of you have noticed the site has been down for a few days recently. There is an issue with the server and everything possible is being done to correct it. Most likely there will be more outages so patience.

(hides something he wants to put on this site)

As the title says - Dataforce ( http://home.dataforce.org.uk/ ) deserves a huge thank you for hosting my website for the past few years, and for paying for my domain when I was unable to do so before I had a job.

A big thank you to Dataforce who continues to host this site even today with much better uptime + service than I could have ever expected. His server will also be running the ZSIC system when it goes live (which wont be until the PPC project progresses a lot more). Without his support this would be impossible as I would be unable to run a system like this with a normal webhost. Now to make something good of it and push on with PPC!

Cheers!

His AuthGate system deserves another mention as it now supports OpenID. As Zipplet's Stuff supports AuthGate authentication, you can now login to Zipplet's Stuff using OpenID! This is mostly pointless now as there is nothing to do once you login but it will be useful later on.

Hi,

I've been doing a lot of work with PIC microcontrollers recently and I'm currently working on my universal memory programmer, which is a precursor to a lot of other projects I want to work on. This, work and a social life are taking quite a bit of my time so I'm afraid I don't have much to update this site with for a little while.

It'll be worth it when I do, though

I will be releasing the designs for my electronics projects openly so others can reproduce them. However, the software might not be open, I'm not sure yet.

I have drawn up a set of milestones/deadlines which I am going to follow for PPC. This may be dissapointment for some and good news for others; remember a project like this is very large in scope and will take an immense amount of time to complete.

Not only is Pokemon a very difficult game to clone perfectly, it also contains an immense amount of data for the maps and such. This is not trivial to put in quickly for me, remember PPC is mostly a one-guy project (me) so I'm doing the programming, the majority of the design, the map editing, all of the debugging, tool programming (e.g. map editors) and I am even using my own multimedia API.

I will be looking out for some serious testers, probably by the end of Q2 2008. Game freak have an entire team of people working on their own games, and it still takes them a couple years.

Remember deadlines CAN STILL SLIP as I have personal commitments, I'll try my best though. I may also have to make adjustments to my LightX multimedia API as the project progresses, as this will be the first real use it has (other than the PTA engine demo).

• November 2007: Basic map editing functions complete, map engine work started, game core drawn up.
  
• December 2007: Player can navigate maps to some extent. First video to youtube.
  
• Q1, 2008: Script compiler, interpreter - script functions for world map. Full engine state keeping. Battle engine work. Full night/day transitions and weather effects anywhere on the map with the dynamic weather system. Second video to youtube.
  
• Q2, 2008: Well under way - battle system working properly with many attacks, gyms and suchlike too. 33-50% of the first region data complete. Battle animations may be missing. An early test version may be released.
  
• Q3, 2008: 75%-80% of first region data complete. Main storyline complete. Early beta version to testers invited. ZSIC service working; allowing trading and chat atleast.
  
• Q4, 2008: First region complete including first ending. Public version released of the first part of the game. ZSIC service fully operational.
  

When the project is further I'll put up a page for it on this site and keep an up to date milestone/deadline list there.

To keep up to date with major announcements about PPC, I suggest subscribing to the site news RSS feed, and perhaps the blog feed too. If you use Opera or Firefox, you should see an RSS subscription alert in your browser. I will be setting up a site especially for PPC when it's nearing completion.

Edit: Pokemon PC on the Pokemon Fan Game Wiki

Edited by zipplet on Thu, 11th Oct 2007 at 12:33 BST