We (micro500, p4plus2, mediamagnet, serisium, Tompa and I) are all at AGDQ and we did a rehearsal yesterday. Unfortunately, one of the new PSoC devkit boards had the MicroUSB port snap off the board before the rehearsal so we only had two working at the time. The sound techs were troubleshooting some wiring issues so we opted to defer our rehearsal to midnight and work some more. We managed to get another board flashed with the correct firmware to replace the failed one but over the course of the evening leading up to midnight we started seeing strange, strange behavior with the consoles such as consoles not powering on when connected to the board.
Eventually, the MicroUSB connector snapped off a second board and we discovered that it was likely shorting out the 5v to ground and causing problems. As we were packing up for the second rehearsal attempt we discovered that a third MicroUSB connector had popped off leaving us with only one currently working board. We have a good idea of what the problem is (the DevKit boards don't have solder around the outer legs of the connector leaving only the 5 legs for data and power as the only connection point) and how to prevent it from happening again (add solder before they snap off). We have two extra boards but no other spares so we don't have margin left. I believe serisium is going to attempt the solder work today.
We have great news - the one thing that did go well during rehearsal was a complete NES Classic resync of Gradius (adelikat's run resynced by link_7777, replete with a spirited attack against the volcano that caused the AGDQ 2014 desyncs) . We are exploring the option of making it a donation incentive, but that will only happen if the schedule is not too far behind and we can demonstrate that we will not be running over. That will require extensive commentary rehearsal which will likely take place on Thursday and Friday. I'll try to keep updating here. I've neglected the top post, I'll update it now..
One other last piece of good news - we've fully confirmed the $1k award from GeekPwn, we've received $770 out of the $2k we have in expenses, and we'll be donating 10% of whatever we receive. That brings the donation I'll be making on behalf of the site and the TASBot team up to $1,077 with an additional $500 pledged as a matching donation to the Prevent Cancer Foundation from my employer after the event making the current final donation $1,577. I'm very happy about this but could still use some help with the remainder of our expenses; if our expenses are fully covered (meaning I give $200, i.e. 10% of $2k) it'll bring the final total to $1.8k! If we're fully funded I may even be able to sell some Bitcoin to push that donation even higher. Thanks again to everyone for the support, and it's not too late to help out - details are in my signature and on this post with
the list of current donors. Thanks again for the support, everyone!
