Hacking GB into Slot 2

[Chase-san]

Okay, before you start on the bombardment of yelling, flaming and banhammers. I am going to try and sound as non-stupid as I can.

First of all, we all know the pins on the GBA cart and original GB/GBC carts are the same. I am not sure if they use different voltages, but lets skip all that for a moment. I am NOT interested in playing GB/GBC games on the DS, what I want to know is if you can strip the case off one of your GB games, plug it in and retrieve the saves from it, by developing a clever slot 1 program or via an existing one (eepinator etc). That is all.

Only other question I might have is if you can wire a GBA up to a pc to do similar (proabably via serial port) but thats for a different forum.

 

[FAST6191]

Voltage levels are different (if you have a GBA look at the little switch at the side of the port).

Dumping hardware for the PC, some of the old linkers work in that way (I saw a method to convert a GBA one into a GBC once too) but I know of no simple way.

The following site is probably of interest to you (on both counts):
http://www.ziegler.desaign.de/

There was also a big thread on this subject a couple of months back, I posted in but but that probably does not help much. If I remember when I get back I will try and dig it up.

 

[DanTheManMS]

The voltages are indeed different. GB/GBC operates at 5V while the GBA and the DS's GBA slot operate at 3.3V (or maybe the other way around). This means that the DS will have no clue what to do with a GB/GBC cart, and as such you cannot even read the save data off the cartridge.

The same thing happens with a regular GBA - even if you modify the cartridge so that it doesn't trigger the switch to launch it into GBC mode, no GBA program can read the cartridge at all. It's a shame, as I had a rather decent save file on my Azure Dreams cart that I wanted to get off of it before the cartridge died on me (shows opening logos but freezes right after).

 

[Chase-san]

Oh, thats to bad, I have a huge stack of older GB/GBC games of which I only care about the save games on. (I can get similar results using lameboy or goomba (I mostly use lameboy though)). I suppose I could shell out the 60 to 70 to get the converter for them, since half them cost me about as much to buy in the first place. (okay 30 to 40 for most of them, but meh).

 

[Chase-san]

Oh wait a moment! I have a N64 Gameboy Transfer Pak, a N64 controller and a way to hook a N64 controller up to the PC, I don't suppose there is a way to use that to transfer data to and from a GB game?

 

[FAST6191]

An interesting workaround there, I do not know of anything that can do it (although I do know the USB adapters could do N64 saves).
You may have to program your way out of this one N64 specs are a bit lacking (best I have right now is http://www.romhacking.net/?category=&P...itle=&desc= and http://www.zophar.net/documents/n64.html ) but GBC are available: http://nocash.emubase.de/pandocs.htm

I will however point to the link I gave, the GBC one at least was pretty simple as far as these sorts of electronics go (breadboard/stripboard simple):
http://www.ziegler.desaign.de/readplus.htm...mming%20systems

 

[Chase-san]

Well I am a programmer, but I don't normally deal in actual electronics (thats an electrical thing, and I am only a novice in that area), or port communication, I have done quite a bit of low level stuff though. My guess is the hardware in the transfer pak is probably just a miniature GBC core with some I/O to communicate with the N64, and thus the transfer pak does all the heavy lifting. If thats the case, it shouldn't be to hard to make an adapter.

Will probably have to disassemble the driver for the Adaptoid and see how it handles the rumble and the memory card. If i'm lucky the Transfer Pak, just allows the Reading of the GB as a n64 memory pak, writing would probably be limited to the carts actual save area (unless its a flashable cart). Getting such software to retieve data in an acceptable way however...