It's been almost four years, and I decided it was about time to dig this all up and release it. It's collected quite a bit of dust on my hard drive and will need a little tweaking to get it working again, but it's almost all there.

The Devtendo hardware requires both the communication software for the NES and PC. The package just released includes the full source code. It will need a few tweaks as some stuff is hard coded, but otherwise is good to go.

NES cartridges can be read/written with it, and the software supports many different mappers. In addition, I built a Game Boy adaptor, so the software even supports GB carts fed through the NES!

You should now have everything you need to make and use your own Devtendo (with a few tweaks)!  [View]

I'm finally getting around to sorting through my old unreleased dev stuff and putting it up here! A special thanks goes out to the people who emailed me about this stuff, without them I probably would've never gotten around to releasing it, and it would've all bit-rotted on my hard drive :)

On that note, let's start the releases with a bang! The Devtendo Schematics!

They should work just fine, but as it's been so long, I can't remember if I made any changes while building it. It's only a list of the chips/connectors and their connections, but the other small components should be quite straight forward. Good luck!  [View]

Immediately after the original GBlinkdl, I whipped together this GB hardware modification which eliminated the need for the cartridge swap. However, I didn't get around to updating the site until now! Oh well, better late than never! Here it is...

The GBlinkdl DevBoy is an extension of the original GBlinkdl project, which required no hardware modification. The DevBoy eliminates the need for cartridge swapping and gives full development control of the Game Boy from the PC. It uses the same simple 4-wire cable between the Game Boy's link port and PC's parallel port, allowing for the two devices to communicate with each other. It also uses the same GBlinkdl.exe program as the simpler version. Just as the original GBlinkdl, it gives you the ability to write to a flash cart, dump cartridges, read and write save data, probe the GB, reverse engineer mappers, and more... but this time without the need for cartridge swapping or the use of a Game Genie.

The PC program also has been updated to support more MBC types, and is compatible with the old GBlinkdl!

You can download the GBlinkdl DevBoy package here (55KB). It includes everything you need to take control of your GB from your PC, as I've included the full source code to the PC and GB programs and schematics. Have fun!

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I have put up an in depth look at the Hong Kong original version of Super Mario Bros. 3 for the Game Boy/Color.

It includes a review, loads of screen shots, techincal information, a mapper patch, and information on how to dump it!

 [View]

I present the first of a number of updates! GBlinkdl!

GBlinkdl uses a simple 4-wire cable between the Game Boy's link port and PC's parallel port, allowing for the two devices to communicate with each other. By running GBlinkdl.gb on a flash cart and GBlinkdl.exe on your PC, you can read and write the Game Boy's memory and registers from the PC. It gives you the ability to write to a flash cart, dump cartridges, read and write save data, probe the GB, reverse engineer mappers, and more... all without any hardware modification!

I originally built this to dump some cartridges before they suffered from bitrot, and some other obscurities, including the Super Mario 3 Special HK Original. The busier I get, the more I'm about simplicity, or more specifically, taking the best approach which can be done in the least possible time. Building a GB cart dumper with the features I wanted would've taken more time, and I already had the link port<->parallel port cable handy from my flash kit, the 'PC Linker'. As well, because this goes through the real Game Boy, the mapper and such is written to directly as it is under normal execution.

You can download the GBlinkdl package here (52KB). It includes everything you need to take control of your GB from your PC, as I've included the full source code to the PC and GB programs and the cable schematic. Have fun!

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With all the news about the upcoming handheld, the Gizmondo, I became reminded of the old handheld from eight years ago, the Tiger Game.com. It's appearently not the same Tiger developing it, thought I'm not sure if that's the only reason it reminds me of it, heh.

With this recent reminder, I decided to take a little time to dig into the little known handheld and have whipped together some pages with my findings. Of the findings include details on how the LCD and video signal work, along with pinouts.

As a bonus, with my new video capture device adaptor, I've taken nearly a hundred screen shots of Game.com games. Have a look and see what games you could have been playing eight years ago *laughs*!

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Building the extendable Video Capture Device 2 with the ability to work on a wide variety of systems, you must have figured I had more in mind than just the Game Boy! You were right. I've built another adaptor for it, this time for the Tiger Game.com! Have a look, and see the games in all their... glory?  [View]

I've completed my latest gizmo, the Video Capture Device 2! The Video Capture Device 2 is a data sampler which, when clocked, stores an incoming stream into SRAM chips. The data on the RAM can then be read by a connected PC, and in the case of a video stream, displayed through it. It is the next step from the original Game Boy/Game King Video Capture Device, and supports much more, including 16-bit video.

This versatile device can be used on many different systems with simply an adaptor. So far, I have done adaptors for the Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Advance! More will come eventually!

Simply put, it allows you to play your GBA on your PC monitor!  [View]

Here's another MMC5 document... the ROM pinouts! I posted these back on the old NESDEV message boards a while back, but here they are, updated, and easily accessible!  [View]

I've posted some updated versions of old documents/notes I wrote about the Nintendo MMC5 mapper. This document describes how to properly access/write to the nametable EXRAM in MMC5 games.  [View]

My NES experiment of October 2004 is the bizarro of PC 3D Accelerators! The NES PC2C02 Video Card gives a PC NES video acceleration using the original 2C02 Picture Processing Unit (PPU) found in Nintendo Entertainment Systems. It operates just as in the NES, but is controlled by x86 code instead of the original NES 6502.
Imagine an NES game running natively on a Pentium CPU! Imagine the complex game play, collision detection, virtually unlimited program code and RAM, and everything else fast PCs can produce, fueling an NES game! The NES PC2C02 Video Card makes it possible!  [View]

Today I built an adaptor for my Game King devcart so it can use all 5V EPROM/SRAM/Flash ROMs on the 3V system. Additionally, using my Game King ROM Graphics Editor, I modified a ROM's title screen to have a nice little BriPro.com screen instead, flashed it to a ROM, and it ran perfectly! For more information on the adaptor and how it was built, check it out!  [View]

In the process of reverse engineering the Game King ROMs, I whipped up a graphics editor for them. The Game King ROM Graphics Editor allows you to load up GK ROMs, find the graphics embedded in them, and view, extract, and edit them! It can efficiently find the graphics in the correct width and height, as well as groups of frames. The entire ROM can be scanned through, or the graphics can be searched for by their width and/or height...  [View]

I've compiled a page with information on the Game King ROM files including the graphics file formats. Check it out...  [View]

With a spare cartridge lying around, I have built the first Game King Development Cartridge! I've put up a page with information on how it was built and more...  [View]