USB Transferer (AKA USB gameboy card interface)

posted Jan 10th 2008 8:42pm by Will O'Brien
filed under: gameboy hacks, nintendo hacks

[Jose] sent in his efforts to build his USB Transferer. I’m pretty sure it’s a gameboy flash cartridge interface based on the Atmel AT90USB647 AVR microcontroller. Once the prototype board came in, he soldered the controller, gutted an old gameboy for the cartridge connector and had the device showing up on his PC by the end of the day. Oddly, the card he’s interfacing with is a USB device on it’s own. Until a few more details are published, I’d assume that the interface would be useful for connecting to more than just that particular card.

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I apologize, as I haven’t really been in the homebrew gameboy loop since the the gameboy color. How is this any different from just using a cart player that reads off an sd card which can then be plugged into the computer for dragging and dropping of files? Is there something more grand here that I’m missing?

Posted at 12:15 am on Jan 11th, 2008 by Eric

@ 1 This interface could be used to transfer rom files from commercial GB cartridges

Posted at 7:40 am on Jan 11th, 2008 by Iceykitsune

Well, among other things, making a direct cart interface will usually allow you to “dump” (copy) commercial carts, since the interfaces are usually designed to read as well as write.

Of course, I can’t speak for this guy’s homebrew device, but I have seen a number of the ones you can buy in the shadier corners of the Internet ;-)

Posted at 11:19 am on Jan 11th, 2008 by James

I realize theres educational fun in making electronic toys, but an easier solution for the would-be programmer is a used psp for $130 plus a 1gb pro duo card. Psp emulates gameboy at 100% although it doesnt have the nostalgic feel i guess.

Posted at 3:17 pm on Jan 11th, 2008 by Ferm

in the pictures he shows his new board with the atmel uC with on-chip usb. he also shows what i think is the LPC board from sparkfun with the cart connector on it. which is he using?

he also suggests that there is a xilinx fpga on the cart? is this even possible given how old that hardware is?

Posted at 3:47 pm on Jan 11th, 2008 by scott

The PSP doesn’t re-create the gameboy sound effectively. Sadly, no emulator does. Its passable for video games, but the purpose of this is to write music on the original gray brick gameboy, which has a unique, bassy sound.

Posted at 12:53 pm on Jan 13th, 2008 by David