nintendo gameboy hacks
[Bunnyboy] pulled off some wizardry with this custom NES cartridge. Inside is the mainboard for a Game Boy as well as his own custom PCB with the comb connector needed to interface with an original Nintendo Entertainment System. In his own words it’s “a Super Game Boy without the Super”. The expansion port to for the handheld is still accessible for some head-to-head Tetris or use with the obscure Game Boy printer.
[Thanks Maxym]
[Gijs] cracked open his Game Boy and added some parts to give him more sound synthesis control. He uses Little Sound Dj (LSDj), a popular Game Boy program used to pump out those classic 8-bit sounds. The unit seen above and heard in the clip after the break has an added potentiometer and circuit board. He’s got a few other hacked Game Boys on his site as well, including an Arduino generating random music on the handheld.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRKB5FT3Feg]
A bit light on the details, but we enjoyed seeing this video out device for the Nintendo Game Boy. A parallel cable connects to a modified Game Boy and transmits signals to the adapter which is housed in an old VHS cassette. We gather that some Super Game Boy hardware does the signal processing but from there your guess is probably better than ours.
[NeX] mentions that he originally wanted a screen to be included in the cassette. We’ve seen custom portables with small screens before, but he’s also developed a bare bones hand-held without a screen so that’s where the inclusion in the cassette would have been handy. We also wonder how the images will look on a big TV of the 50+ inch size. [NeX] has been pretty busy with the hacking lately, don’t miss the wire porn of his homemade Game Boy project.
[Thanks Jose]
[Steve] wanted to do some ARM development and set his sights on the Game Boy Advance as a development package. In order to get his code onto the device he build an Arduino-based communications cable. It is necessary to have a microcontroller involved because the GBA uses a peculiar 16-bit serial communications protocol. This cable is an adaptation from the 8051-based cable developed by [Matt Evans] several years ago. [Steve’s] got it working by porting the 8051 assembler over for the Arduino, but we’d recommend adding a level converter to his hardware setup to step down from the Arduino’s 5v logic to the 3.3v logic the GBA expects.
He didn’t make up a wiring diagram, but in the code comments [Steve’s] laid out the connections as follows:
Arduino 8 to GBA SO Arduino 9 to GBA SI Arduino 10 to GBA SD Arduino 11 to GBA SC
That’s it, follow the README in his source code package and you’re on your way to some ARM development.
[Brad] has continued working on the Super Pixel Bros game. We saw a glimpse of this a few months ago but he’s added a lot since then. The game now has enemies; one type is similar to Bullet Bill, another type drops from the sky and walks toward you, kind of like a Goomba. Game play is quite responsive and it’s amazing what he has accomplished with such low resolution. In the video after the break [Brad] mentions that a friend is working on sound effects for jumps and block breaking. We’re assuming that the audio track in the background is already coming from the LEDBOY speaker.
Which reminds us, if you haven’t checked out the hardware, do so now. That enameled wire mess makes us shudder just a bit. There many be a kit version coming that will save you the point-to-point soldering madness. If that’s part of the fun for you keep an eye out for the forthcoming release of the hardware schematics.
Continue reading “Update: Most Interesting Game In 64 Pixels”
We extend our congratulations to [airz] over at the ben heck forums. He put together a mod that fits an emulator into an original NES cartridge and utilizes a butchered original NES controller; and he did an amazing job!
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…
Continue reading “Emulator In NES Cartridge – So Clean It Looks Factory Made”
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].
