Songboy Turns GameBoys into MP3 Players

farfisa sent us linkage to Songboy which is a $99 addon for a gameboy which allows it to play MP3s. I just used my to play B mode tetris (Start at level 9 with the blocks all the way up and try to get 25 lines: total adrenaline). Its pretty amazing how general purpose these ancient little devices have turned out to be.

Comments

this has been tossed about for quite some time

[tzanger]

... in the gbdev mailing list. I run the archive at mixdown.org/gbdev.

The add-on would be a DSP or fast processor because, as one poster correctly put it, the GB processor (a bitched-up Z80) simply does not have the balls to decode an MP3 stream at any usable rate.

I too consider a GB MP3 device totally useless. A RIO gives you all that, has more memory (IIRC) and is better on batteries, to boot. The GB can't even be used as a (proper) audio output because there is only a single pin on the GB cartridge you can inject audio on, so that leaves stero operation out. Unless they've somehow used the GB sound chip in its digitized mode.

The people in that list have a lot of great ideas, but some seem to want to push the platform too far (read: beyond something economically worthwhile). Things like MP3 addons, PDA software, raycasted 3D graphics and <cough> a multitasking OS are, IMHO, a waste of effort and brainpower for otherwise bright minds. However... full-colour imagery, robotics and a multitude of cheap computing projects are well worth the effort.

If you've got one and you want to hack it, join up. You can buy Bung's cartridge to transfer your software to a real GB or use one designed by one of the list gurus. There are some people in there who do GB code for a living, others who are under Nintendo NDAs, and even others who seem to know more than Nintendo themselves knows about the GB. :-)