He is using a cheap but full featured emulator board. It comes with 4 gigs of memory but also has an SD card slot. NES, Game Boy, and Game Boy color ROMs can all be played on the 2.8″ color LCD but the system also features a TV out connector for use with a larger screen as well.
The cuts that [airz] made in the case are amazing, easily eclipsing the last cartridge emulator mod we saw. The holes for the controls look as if the plastic was molded that way. For realism he also cut off the PCB interface on the business end of the cartridge and glued it in place. Apparently it took three cartridges, two controllers, and two of the emulators to make it this nice, but if you want to make an omelet…
It’s only been a week since the Super Gameboy’s boot ROM was dumped by [Costis] and he’s already at it again. This time he’s managed to grab the Gameboy Color’s boot ROM. He found the newer Gameboy Color’s hardware is able to cope with a clock speed up to 100MHz, so the original clock increase trick he used on the Super Gameboy wouldn’t work again.
Instead he discovered a quick disconnection of clock and power before 0xFF50 would make the Gameboy jump to a random area within the ROM. Then it was only a matter of entropy, luck, and some special NOP instructions until eventually he had the boot ROM. Keep up the good work [Costis].
Back in 2005, a member of a French robotics team named [Laurent] wrote a wonderful how-to that we somehow missed on using the Game Boy Camera as a vision device for a robot. The images above are actual shots from his project. The Game Boy Camera features a stunning 128×123 pixel resolution in a gorgeous 4 color gray-scale palette. Possibly the most attractive feature of this hack is that it is still possible to get a hold of these cameras for under ten dollars on ebay.
He connected the camera sensor to an Atmel AT90S4433 using a combination of digital and analog signals, and then used the microcontroller to echo the data back to his PC. His write up includes schematics for wiring up the sensor/microcontroller, the datasheet for the sensor, his C code for the whole project, and an easy to read pin out of the GBC connector. Although his project simply offloaded the image to a computer, it would be entirely possible to have the microcontroller respond to the image or simply just log and store it. It would also be just as easy to replace his Atmel chip with yourownfavorite microcontroller, as long as it has a couple Digital I/O ports and at least one Analog port (or an external analog to digital converter).
UPDATE: Good catch r4v5, it would require an ADC, not a DAC.
[Costis] managed to dump a copy of the boot ROM for the Nintendo Super Game Boy. This small piece of code (256 bytes) writes a graphic to the display at boot time as it loads the ROM on the game cartridge. He was able to dump the code by finding the exact point at which the device locks down the boot ROM. Just as that point approached he overclocked the device causing it operate so fast it couldn’t write the lockout bits into the register. Once past that single point of security, he executes a code that writes the boot rom out to a different address that he is able to read from. He’s got a copy of the dump along with the explanation up for your enjoyment.
[_n3o_] put together a nice external storage mod by fitting a 2.5″ drive into a broken Game Boy. This mod fooled quite a few people because it appears that the device still plays games with the drive stuffed inside of it. Sadly, this is not the case. The reflective backing has been removed from the screen and replaced by a piece of paper with a graphic printed on it. The LED from the hard drive was moved to the battery indicator for the Game Boy for added realism. There is no build log for this project but [_n3o_] did give a short explanation of it in a forum post. You can see two more pictures of the project after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
[Joey] sent us a link to the newest version of his Gameboy foot controller. In the video above, you can see how he uses it to control the loops in the background while he plays his guitar through an 8-bit filter. That is an old video, using the previous version. He tells us that several gameboys were used in the construction. At one point, he had to replace the guts because the music was so loud it knocked his equipment over and destroyed it. We can’t help but feel just a tiny bit of excitement as memories of renting a NES cartridge for the weekend fill our heads when we hear these riffs. His music isn’t too bad either. There is a growing crowd of people that support “chip music”. You can see what looks like a decent sized gathering enjoying a show with a little bit of a history lesson after the break.
In honor of Gameboy’s 20th birthday, Stupidinventions has released a video showing how to replace the screen. They tend to be a common weak point. Essentially, they just bought another , we’re assuming broken, Gameboy and swapped them out. Not a horribly complicated hack, but nice to know that it’s so easy. We have fond memories of the Gameboy, which came flooding back when he blew in the cartridge. Happy Birthday Gameboy.
Now that the Nintendo DSi has been officially released in the US, the team at iFixit has worked their magic. That magic being: completely disassembling it. They found the new 840mAh battery to be much smaller than the DS Lite’s 1000mAh. The device features two cameras, but both are a paltry 0.3megapixels. They note that this is the first Nintendo device that they’ve taken apart that didn’t require a tri-wing screwdriver.
Many more DSi compatible flash carts are available now than our initial report in December, so you can pick up a Nintendo DSi for homebrew without worry.
You can get most of the old NES games for the DS, but they just don’t feel the same. Sure your hands still cramp up, but its just not the same cramp we remember. What is the solution? Put an old Nintendo Entertainment System controller on your DS. [Parker] did exactly that. The method he used is fairly strait forward. He opened the DS, wired extensions onto the buttons he wanted to use to a controller. Instead of making it permanent though, he chose to wire it through the GBA slot. This allows him to plug the controller in whenever he wants to use it. This reminds us of the PSP with a SNES controller we covered back in October.
You can see a video of it in action after the break. You’ll notice in the video, he has also modded his buttons to have LEDs behind them.
In the comments, [tri-edge] points out that you can follow his build in the acidmods forum. There seem to be some other variations as well, including an SNES controller.
