Shonumi writes technical articles on emulating obscure Game Boy, GBA and DS hardware and peripherals, such as sewing machines and infrared adapters.
HN commenters recommend it as an in-depth devlog on rare, hard-to-emulate peripherals, and link its articles for the technical detail and nostalgia.
https://shonumi.github.io/articles/art16.html
Wow, that brings back childhood memories.
> I should mention that I was a huge Battle Network fan growing up with the GBA. I joined my first online community (GameWinners.com) specifically for the Mega Man forum.
> My first username (Team Shadow V2) was actually a riff on one of the new features found in MMBN2.
> In a way, Battle Network is a huge reason why I'm here trying to preserve old games.
> The Battle Network games will always hold memories of joy and nostalgia for me, so I wanted to see the Battle Chip Gates fully emulated not only for the benefit of video game history, but also for my own enjoyment.
Me too... MMBN2 is a big reason why I learned English and became a programmer. Huge respect.
I still love it so much. It's fun to think back on it and reflect on how oddly prescient it was.
PCs reachable directly from the internet, hosting home pages: a world without NAT. Internet connected doghouses and dishwashers. Mobile handheld AI capable personal computers. Everyone has their own custom AI agents that help navigate the complexity of the cyberworld, and also for self-defense. What I can only assume to be vulnerabilities, reified as literal weapons used by the AIs. Underworld networks normal people don't dare to navigate into. Cyber terrorists everywhere doing things like trying to burn people's houses down by electronically sabotating ovens, causing major damage and loss of life by hacking water mains, power…
The in-depth technical article linked from TFA is worth a read[0]. It's amazing to me is that a 20 year-old sewing machine needs to be reverse-engineered and requires other hardware to make it useful. The oldest of my sewing machines is closing in on 100 years old and anyone who understands how a straight-stitch machine works could have it running in 5 minutes.
Does it embroider? No. Hell, it doesn't stitch in reverse, never mind zigzag or sew any fancy stitches (which are all combinations of zigzag and reverse). Nonetheless, it remains a useful machine. For those who aren't aware: fancy stitches can be (and were) implemented purely mechanically for decades, mostly after WWII for consumer machines. My machine is just too old.
I realize that the point of the machine in TFA is to introduce a new group of people to sewing. It seems that doing so by creating something so lacking in long-term maintainability is unfortunate.
[0] https://shonumi.github.io/articles/art22.html
Amazing effort, but just makes me pine for the write-ups of Byuu (or the Dolphin devlog in more recent times).
I would highly recommend Shonumi's contemporary devlog focusing mainly on rare or difficult to emulate peripherals for the gameboy and GBA, ranging from infrared modems to Sonar-based fish detection dongles!
https://shonumi.github.io/articles.html
I like the Play-Yan adapter. It's an official media player which includes its own DAC and headphone jack, avoiding the GBA's own disappointing audio DAC. It also adds hardware decoding[1] - the GBA's CPU is a little too puny to handle media playback by itself.
[1] https://shonumi.github.io/articles/art32.html
And in Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal on GameBoy Color you could send Mystery gifts via IR!
Someone even ported it to an emulator! https://shonumi.github.io/articles/art11.html
https://shonumi.github.io/blog/nds_rolling.html
More context on how this value affects (at least one) DS game- see post from December 27th, 2019.