Gameboy wi-fi cart

Anything goes
Post Reply
FourSeasons
Posts: 16
Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2019 7:38 pm

Gameboy wi-fi cart

Post by FourSeasons » Mon Dec 16, 2019 6:04 pm

This one isn't really assembly related, but I'm a sucker for articles about people who (ab)use old systems using new hardware to make them do new tricks.

In this one, Dave Darko attempts to create a wi-fi adapter for the original Gameboy.

https://hackaday.io/project/20769-wifi- ... -cartridge

IIRC, he originally started out with the idea of using a modern micro-controller (ESP32) to emulate a ROM chip.

You might think it would be easy for a micro-controller with a clock speed of 160MHz or more to emulate any given 80's era logic chip running at 4MHz/150ns clock. This would be particularly handy for replicating the various mapping and lock out chips that were used in carts of that era.

Sadly, in practice those chips are still not fast enough. From what I've read, while the controllers' CPU's may have the horsepower, the sticking point is their I/O ports are just not able to read the inputs and then switch their output state fast enough. :(

Enjoy.

Nick

EvilSandwich
Posts: 20
Joined: Wed Nov 13, 2019 7:36 am

Re: Gameboy wi-fi cart

Post by EvilSandwich » Fri Dec 20, 2019 2:55 am

It's a tale as old as CPUs. No matter how strong a CPU is, it's really only as good as the hardware attached to it.

Post Reply

Return to “General Off topic”