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Looked at the GP32? I don't know how large it is in the world, but it has/had decent hardware and a homebrew scene. Console done right.
GP32 xtreme got news.
GBAX sells it.
Emuholic got emus.
GP32 devrs got the tools.

You missed the point. For us electronics hackers developing boards are extremely expensive beasts, while most cheap consumer appliances can be modified to work as embedded controllers. Most Wi-Fi access points contain MIPS+Linux based boards at 1/5 the price of a similar board, and the GBA itself is an excellent uber-cheap ARM based controller.
Take a look here and here for some great examples of what can be done with a GBA.

Correction: Lik-Sang used to sell the flash carts. That is where I got mine. They were sued by Nintendo which shut down the entire website until the Flash units were removed. You can find them elsewhere however.

Even better place for gba development resource is at http://www.devrs.com/gba/

Heh. Homebrew games on closed platforms have been getting stronger every year. Have a look at pdroms.com, gbadev.org, devrs.com, et cetera. We all hold competitions like this all the time. It's what keeps us going.

The thing to also remember is that you can get more games for PDAs and PCs. Why? because the cost of entry for game programming on a PDA or PC is lower.

Er. GCC, VisualBoy Advance, (checks wallet) = Free.

I would contest that the difference is that people don't have a clue just how easy it is to write GBA games. Go here and learn. (or here or here.)

Any joe can get a compiler and write a game for a PC or a PDA.

It took me almost 20 minutes to get PRC-Tools working. VisualHAM was up and running after the installer, which also has good music. DevKitAdvance and the SGADE are similarly easy to use if your'e already used to GCC.

They don't need proprietary development software or testing/emulation systems

The Palm Pilot SDK is CodeWarrior dependant, actually, which is the reason I avoided it for so long.

they don't need to buy and license ROMs from Nintendo

This is only a problem if you live in the fantasy world of making money off of your video games.

What we really need is an open alternative to the Gameboy, something that had a free development environment and connects to the PC with a USB cable to download games, yet remains cheap as a GBA (of course, things like the GBA are usually cheap because it is subsidised but you get the idea). You can even still have the rom slot so commercial game companies can still sell boxed games for it.

Ah, yes. And we see how well that keeps working. Viva la Indrema! I'm sure someone will get it to work soon.

(sigh) No I'm not.

I guess since everybody is being negligent in discussing the cool hacking opportunities for your GBA/GBASP I guess I'll have to step in.

First of all there is a huge development community out there to get you started. Lots of libraries, utilities, and best of all, an ARM GCC port http://devrs.com/gba/

And the ultimate in GBA hacking, the XPort. 16mb of more RAM, 16mb of flash, and a programmable FPGA make this in my opinion the coolest thing you can do with a GBA. Plus it's so affordable how can you NOT get it? http://www.charmedlabs.com/

Second, forget Linux, it's too hefty. You may be able to do it with uncompressed flash and XIP, though. Who cares, here is a eCos port, though, from the same fine people who brought us the XPort. http://sourceforge.net/projects/gbaxport

(I don't work for Charmed Labs, but they make such a cool product I wish I did. ;] )

Nanoloop

Little Sound DJ

Other stuff under development

Here's a couple of good ones.
Devr's
GBADev

Cybiko does this. Am I supposed
to dance around and clap at motorola's innovative entry into the teen PDA
market?

P.S. I'm just P.O'd slash doesn't do more coverage on this device, I
have 3, they're a hell of a lot better than luggin a laptop through the house
for IRC or IM'ing. Really cool toy.

Then, I bought a bunch of 10/100 Ethernet cards that had EEPROM sockets and used EtherBoot to create a boot image for it. You can also make a boot image on the web here, here, or here .

You'll need a way to program the EEPROM, but there are lots of places to get info about that.

The only directories that are not identical across the virtual machines are /etc, /var, along with the obvious /dev, /boot, /proc, and so on. /usr and /home are the same mount on each "machine."

It's available in the UK now.

Yeah, it cost ~$150, how much does a PDA cost?

These dev kits seem free enough.

Who mentioned gameboys? Oh, it runs GB/GBC games just fine, and a GBA emulator (several, actually) are in the works.

Snow White for GP32

Sure, you won't get a chance to work on the latest 3D hardware, but you could create a viable commercial product. And the GP 32 isn't a dream, it's here and anyone can fool around with it and do innovative things.

(This also goes for PalmOS devices, PCs and the like.)

Sure, it isn't Indrema, but I like the fact that soon after I heard this new, innovative console hyped up, I could actually buy one.

Not to mention the GP32 - a fine little handheld game console with independent developer support. I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned more often on here.

The parallel port & USB flash ROM tools also appear to be gone. This has nothing to do with BIOS, by the way. These are tools that allow you to upload binaries (either copied or original code compiled with GCC and other tools) to a flash ROM and run it on any GBA. These products are likely offensive to Nintendo because:
1) consumers could pirate games with them
2) smalltime and wannabe developers could create demos and games with them without forking out big money for the official GBA dev hardware

I'm sure #1 is the main concern for Nintendo. But they've really done a disservice to the GBA demo scene and developers & students that want to get their feet wet with a really great platform.

If you're unfamiliar with #2 (developing your own demos/games/apps for GBA), please take a look at some GBA developer scene links:
GBADEV
GBAEMU
Yahoo GBADEV Group
GBA Dev'rs

• IRC: #gbadev on EfNet - fairly active channel full of developers, mostly amateur but a few commercial. DO NOT ASK FOR ROMS OR COMPILER DOCS HERE! You would be summarily banned. This is a legit ONLY channel.
  
• Yahoo! Groups "GbaDev". Many of the same crowd as above, but a larger populace, and by email, not realtime chat. Also, there are archives. :) Many of your problems - even surprisingly difficult ones - can be answered just by digging through the archives. Moderated.
  
• There are more tutorials than just The Pern Project, but I can only ever remember that one. :) I got started before that tutorial, so I have no idea of its quality (many people seem to have started with it)
  

• SGADE - The Socrates GameBoy Advance Development Environment - Good, complete, fairly easy to install, completely unrestricted open source. Developer is tireds and overbusy, and wants someone to take over the development. (Yahoo group also available
  
• HAMFree for non-commercial development. Has an installer; fairly painless for Win32 people. There are requirements about using is commercially which I personally do not dig.
  
• DevKitAdvance - The modified distro of GCC that the bulk of us use. You'll see Jason's name on GCC mailing lists from time to time. Thanks, Fenix. (This is the kit I use, though rather heavily modified)
  
• Someone whined and GCCGBA was taken away from us, because it wasn't a whole GCC distro or something (the discussion was never made public, and I'm going by rumor); the remaining packages don't seem to have trouble, but I'm a little will happen to other compilers over time.
  

• Snap together and play GBA Game Creator
  
• Quake Level 1 displayed realtime on gameboy: Article and Video
  

• GbaDev.org - The canonical news source, especially since AGBDEV.NET died. Most things are covered here. Those that aren't can be found at
  
• Jeff Froweihn's Devrs.Com. Jeff Froweihn wrote the lnkscript and various other stuff that you're likely using if use use the homebrew community's stuff. Thank him. Also, he maintains an aswesome, if difficult to take in at once, news site.
  
• GameBoy Land
  

The link in the article refers to the MacOS X port. Check out this for the "original" Unofficial Gameboy Advance SDK. It has been available for about a year or so. It has always worked on Win32 platforms too, so the submitter did a really bad job. The compiler in the SDK is actually GCC.

Check out www.gbadev.org and www.devrs.com/gba/ for some other GBA development stuff. (And while you're at it, check out my own GBA-page for some of the demos i've written for the GBA :)

This sort of stuff has been around for a while.
here is one dev kit
here is some more stuff
that should give you plenty of links to play with.

Oh, and if you get a GP 32, a smart media card, and go to GP Developers to get the free launcher, you can get games for it for free....

Wolfenstein 3D (the original shareware) and Spear of Destiny (the original shareware) run really well, and they didn't cost me a dime. (Doom is coming along nicely too..)

For a while if you were looking for reasonable priced games in the U. S., the Dreamcast has been a good choice (I got Unreal Tournament new for just $9.00), too...

Another interesting handheld console to check out is the GP32 (Note: site's mostly in Korean). I think it's been mentioned on /. before. Very similar layout to GBA, but where the GBA runs at ~16mhz, the GP32's ARM processor can have its clockspeed set by software up to 133mhz (though obviously this drains batteries faster). It doesn't have any custom graphics hardware, you just write 16-bit RGB colour values to a linear frame buffer, but even at the more-usual 60mhz clock speed, it runs Doom very nicely. Oh yes, and the screen is 320x240 as opposed to the GBA's 240x160.

Of course, it's not a Nintendo, so it's almost guaranteed to fail, as Ninty have that market pretty sewn up. Still, if you just want to write something for your own entertainment, the GP32's sweet.

> I have been looking for a more open game console

Well the most open console available is Korea's GamePark 32. Some good info can be found at Lik-Sang and also dev'rs.

The console basically uses standard flash media for cartridges and plays back mp3s, has the same resolution as a SNES, etc.

"But my challenge still stands regarding the SNES emulator."

Umm, why should a person have to write one?

A number of opensource ZSNES emulators already exist, port it yourself. :P

ZSNES page on sourceforge.net

Considering how many quality SNES games are being improved upon and having a GBA version released though, why would you want to bother with 16bit quality when Nintendo is quickly coming out with 32bit quality GBA games? -_-

Hmm, a SMS emulator and a Spectrum emulator also appear to exist.

(heh, Z80 support, who'd have thunk it, eh? -_- I think that the Z80 has to win some type of an award for the chip that just won't die. :) )

If you are really interested in porting the software (uh, it will get your chicks?) you can go to

This GBA developers documention page that I found in about 5 seconds on google

It uses off the shelf parts pretty much, so the tech docs are all out there and easily available. (legally too).

In fact emulators to run GBA roms existed BEFORE the GBA even came out! The second Nintendo announced the specifications for it people started rushing to emulate it.

Oddly enough there is more legitimate emulation going on for the GBA then perhaps any other system within the last six or so years.
I would say that a good percentage (10% or so) of people using GBA emulators are doing so for legal reasons. (well hell, choosing between PSX, N64, Arcade, and GBA games on your computer, which one are YOU going to play for fun? Portable games sacrifice somethings for portability, granted some are good enough to take people away from their big consoles, but it IS a portable system after all, do not expect miracles. :) ).

A lot of those people using the GBA for legal reasons are actually doing it for development, and a good sized scene of demoers has already appeared around the GBA platform.

Nintendo should really be encouraging this, it could be not only a good source of revenue, but it holds all of the hope that the PSX programming box did for Sony, but with none of the initial investment costs on the companies part.

Yes some people are going to be using these devices for pirating games.

But most people are not going to be. Most people who PIRATE games do not want to spend an initial startup charge on something.

Remember who the primary crowd of GBA game users are, kids under the age of 18. 98% of them without credit cards, and those who do have credit cards are still not likely to be tech savvy enough to even know that products like this exist.

People who are running these devices are most likely people who already have large quantities of GBA games in these possession and who just want to be able to carry a large amount of games with them inside of one device.

And everybody here does realize that the MINIMAL entry level cost for these devices is $109.99

Yaaaaah right. I can just see little Jimmy asking his mother

"Uh, mommy. Can I have a $109.99 Flash Advance Linker 64M Kit so that I can pirate games for my GBA?"

Now while in my younger years I _MIGHT_ have been able to pull that one off (I pulled off a few sales pitchs that were even more far fetched then that one, then again my parents were the type who perfectly understood the concept of 'saving' money. :) ), the odds of very many kiddies getting these FAL kits in their hands is pretty much minimal.

Which leaves one market left.

Young adults with way to much money on their hands.

Who already have likely boughten an assload of GBA games anyways and will continue to buy them (often times just to say that they legaly own them, hell I STILL buy an NES game now and then just because I want to be able to say that yes I do legaly own that game) even if they can pirate them for free (after the $109.99 cover charge.)

Hell, at this price level, Nintendo should just release their OWN device of this type.

Have it use mostly write ONCE Static RAM. You know, a WORM type of a storage device.

Have a few megabits left over in it for save game information (one or two megabits should do it) and sell the buggers off for the same price.

Then again mabye that is exactly what they plan on doing. :) :) :)

Also enable them to be able to act as a bridge between a PC and a GBA, so that developers could use them to try out their GBA games on an actual GBA system.

Of course being tethered to a PC all the time would completely remove any desire for people to actually, you know, play PIRATED games with this thing.

Unless they are Super Uber Desperate for playing a GBA game, but even then they can already play GBA games with GBA emulators on their PC, so the device makes no difference at all. It just reduces the screen size that the pirated games are played on. :) :) :)

Anyways, the general idea would be that Nintendo would reap huge amounts of profit off of this device (it would not give any specific instructions as to what to DO with this device, though they could also very well run a pay for download system over the web that directly downloaded games to the WORM device, thus bypassing using any sort of pirated channels for distribution all together, which knowing Nintendo's feelings on piracy, is the most likely source).

Think about it. They would be charging $100 for a cart that cost them A LOT less to produce then $100 and likely around the same cost to produce as a regular GBA card.

And somebody would to write what, 3 games to the darned thing? 3 *$30= 90, but with the case of just one distribution medium you get lower overall production packaging and shipping costs.

In other words;

DUDES, YOU AT NINTENDO, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, RELEASE YOUR OWN DEVICE!

Maybe that is what they are planning on doing and they are just shutting down there competitors. If that is the case then I can't say that I blame them, as a standard WORM style of a device with a link to allow developers to test their products out would be just as useful to the legitimate end consumer as these devices here are, but it would not have any illegal uses.

(well outside of pirating $90 of games onto a device that you just paid $100 for. ^_^ )

This thing is more widespread and older! I went down to a local Software, Etc and Target and saw them! Why hasn't NOA went at it?

NOA has become a bully, and I won't stand for it. Next one I see on eBay, I will buy!!! Even better, directly give the money to the company by purchasing it through them! The poster should get them out his stores through eBay (much quicker + would NOA be able to make you break the legal contract between buyer and seller off ebay?)

If you are interested in the development for this device, you can check out the SDK, emulator, and other items here from Jeff Frohwein, the staple of the Gameboy, gameboy advance, and other hand held home brew development 'scenez'.

I hope it works out well in practice. The only thing I fear is that we will only have a batch of emulators running on the gp32. For most home brew development platforms (ps1, dreamcast, gameboy, gameboy advance), emulators and demos are about all that exist; full games, even puzzle games, can take an awefull long time to develop.

Toodles

A CF to PIC interface was described in Circuit Cellar a while ago. A word of caution if you plan something like this is that the 8-bit ATA mode might or might not be supported on newer CF cards. (What! I NEEDED 256 MB)

I found the link att Jeff Frohwein's

My university is looking at Cybikos. There seems to be an active development community, and best of all, they cost 1/4 of the Zaurus. Plus they come with wireless stuff which should be interesting in lectures. We only just got them so I don't know whether all this will pan out. Maybe ucLinux could be ported? I doubt a full linux OS is really needed though, gcc+newlib should be enough.

I just got my GBA for Christmas (yes, I'm 30 years old... what's your point?) and the first thing I started thinking about was how to start programming for it. Here's some of the stuff I found:

• Dev'rs GBA Dev FAQs
• GBXemu Gameboy Emulator site Coolness. Emulators for GBA and GBC and ROMS. Try before you buy...
• Lik Sang Game Boy products Check out the blank 256Mg cartridges for the GBA and GBC with optional adapter. Very, very cool.
• Gameboy Advance Developer's site

And of course a Google search will bring up a bunch more, but these are the nicest I've found so far. The last link is great because it has "demo" programs that include the code - which is key for learning how the insides of this thing work. There's an asteroids example that's really nice.

One thing that I just realized is that the GBA is based on a ARM/Thumb processor and includes a "Z80 like" processor also for when you insert GBC games. This is pretty wild. I think I'll submit an article to /. on how many companies are using ARM-based processors now. I just read that Simbian has just been ported to the ARM, PocketPCs use them exclusively, etc.

-Russ

From what I've read the GNU toolset can target the the gameboy advance. Check this site for more information on programing the gameboy advance. To get the code into them there is a flashable card or a cheaper adapter that will allow you to send code directly to your gameboy advance. Both of those are available at this site

If you want to hack the GBA you'll just need a little extra-hardware (that you can easily order on the web). Here's a good place to learn more about GBA development.

Why not just code on the gameboy advance there's a lot of utils and examples out there in fact you could use good old GCC compiled for the ARM processor. Then you could use the linker from Lik Sang. A good page to start is http://www.devrs.com/gba/.

There are other uses for these things than playing copied games...it's just that there are too many chumps out there that give us devrs a bad name. Check www.devrs.com for info into *this* community.

• Q: Is it my imagination or is the GBA screen darker than the GBC screen?

  A: It's not your imagination, it is darker. Also the viewing angle appears to be worse. It is more difficult to view things on the screen than it was on the GBC.

:(( I was hoping the reverse would be true.

Otherwise though, I'm amazed that emulators are out so quickly and that there's so much dev info for it.
--

Am I the only person who didn't realize that the GB still used a Z80 processor still?

Actually, it's not a Z80 -- it has a couple of specialized instructions, and is missing the exchange register set. But it's pretty damn close.

Actually, it's pretty close to an 8080 with different mnemonics, but I digress.

Check out here for the instruction listings, if you'd like to know more, or here for info on D-I-Y original gameboy and gameboy color development.

Simon

Am I the only person who didn't realize that the GB still used a Z80 processor still?

Actually, it's not a Z80 -- it has a couple of specialized instructions, and is missing the exchange register set. But it's pretty damn close.

Actually, it's pretty close to an 8080 with different mnemonics, but I digress.

Check out here for the instruction listings, if you'd like to know more, or here for info on D-I-Y original gameboy and gameboy color development.

Simon

I have the PDA cart you speak of, it does have a learning IR remote. Try the GameBoy Dev'rs site for more stuff. There's a MIDI cart, an MP3 player cart and someone even managed to get a robot running using a GameBoy and Lego...

The Game Boy uses a processor similiar to the z80, but it is not a true z80. It is missing all indexing instructions (IX/IY), 16 bit loads, port instructions (IN/OUT), shadow registers, and some other that I'm forgetting. The GB processor also executes instructions differently than the regular z80, making the timings completely different.

I just recently started looking into programming for the gameboy and have found out there's a huge online community. In fact, the biggest development tool out there (the c compiler gbdk) is a sourceforge project. From what I understand there is no 'official' gameboy compiler because commercial gameboy games are ALL written in assembly! I don't know about you, but I'd much rather mess around with pointers in C than fiddle with registers in asm! I know, I know, real programmers twiddle the bits on there hard drives with tiny magnets. Still, I opt for a compiler. If you absolutely have no desire for any speed of exectution, theres also a BASIC interpreter out there for gameboy.

Nintendo claims that the gameboy is the best selling game system of all time, and considering how many there are out there in the world, its really not all that suprising that it has such a strong development community. Still it sends shivers down my spine to see people taking a closed source model and turning it around, making it accessable to all.

I've also heard rumors of a gameboy emulator for palm. Can anyone confirm this? I think something like this would really open up the floodgates to legitimate gameboy development, since you would no longer need fancy flash rom carts or eprom burners to get some code running on an actual portable.

Anyway, here's the best gb development sites I've found on the net so far...

The motherload for gameboy development:
GameBoy Devrs

A great forum for gameboy developers:
GBdev bulletin board