Reading real cartridges (Update - IT LIVES! - video)

[jadebenn]

If one had a suitably coded emulator, would it be possible to use your board to read directly from the cartridge like a real Gameboy does?

[abrugsch]

If one had a suitably coded emulator, would it be possible to use your board to read directly from the cartridge like a real Gameboy does?

Phase 2 won't even need to be specially coded. A FUSE wrapper will present the interface as an actual file that an emulator can use natively

[jadebenn]

If one had a suitably coded emulator, would it be possible to use your board to read directly from the cartridge like a real Gameboy does?

Phase 2 won't even need to be specially coded. A FUSE wrapper will present the interface as an actual file that an emulator can use natively

Would that work with cartridges that have nonstandard hardware, like the accelerometers in Kirby's Tilt and Tumble?

[abrugsch]

Would that work with cartridges that have nonstandard hardware, like the accelerometers in Kirby's Tilt and Tumble?

Probably not. But research is required! Got one to send me?

[jadebenn]

Would that work with cartridges that have nonstandard hardware, like the accelerometers in Kirby's Tilt and Tumble?

Probably not. But research is required! Got one to send me?

Unfortunately, not at the moment. If I manage to find one, I'll see what I can do.

[onimishra]

This looks awesome! How is your project coming along? It is a very interesting read

[abrugsch]

This looks awesome! How is your project coming along? It is a very interesting read

I'm in the process of converting from I2C based MCP23017 to SPI MCP23S17 chips as I've kinda hit the limit of what's doable with a PiZero and I2C, and it's about a factor of 10 too slow (compared to what a dedicated MCU can do, particularly BennVenn's Joey Joebags - which uses something like a maple mini for its core with USB to transfer the data. I had a play with one a while back and it absolutely wiped the floor with GBCartSlurp taking mere seconds to dump carts that took several minutes with mine.)
the project's not dead, just I get very little time to actually work on it. I'm converting one of my PCB's made for I2C to use SPI and then I have to re-write bits of the code to make it work... some of this will be happening tonight

TBH I'm beginning to regret not using Helder's and Kite's suggestion to use an ATMega 32U4 or similar... but you know, I like to do things on hard mode

[abrugsch]

I've shared the project for V0.1 on OSH park

It works but it's slow... https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/dTC1g6Jf

SPI version is all plotted out now and ordered from OSHPark so should be here in a few weeks

SPI-front.png (318.58 KiB) Viewed 7463 times

SPI-back.png (319.48 KiB) Viewed 7463 times

[Pap]

sorry abr but maybe i missed this somewhere. just went thru whole 7 pages of this topic at once and maybe i missed something up or didnt read it correctly
1. have you actually tried to fit this somehow in the shell with other boards? (helder's/kite's aio and a pi0, i would imagine regular pi would be impossible) or not yet at this step of prototyping? or any way how to have this, some aio, and pi together? or how you want this?
2. any example tiimes of cart reading? you mentioned minutes, but is it more like 3 minutes for tetris or 10 minutes for pokemon silver?
3. u mention the joey joebags, just checked that out. do you have this maybe or just seen it in action? was thinking of maybe puttin it in the shell depenging how big it is/how small it can be made. ever saw the insides of it w/ your own eyes?

[abrugsch]

No. This is only a prototype /standalone/proof of concept. The final version will either be integrated into my own AIO or be small enough to fit in with others. As it stands it won't actually fit into a gameboy shell mainly due to all the led's which are only there for test/debug/show purposes.

Tetris takes about 10 seconds, perfect dark takes about 5 mins.

The whole joey joebags is a 3D printed shell square slightly larger than the width of the cartridge. Inside it's a maple mini mcu board with an adapter board to the cartridge port. Not very conducive to putting inside a gameboy. Also there's an issue with drivers. I don't know if there any for Linux and the access software is written python with a gui