GBCartRead the Arduino based Gameboy Cart Reader project is now completed. I’ve done everything I set out in terms of saving and restoring my Gameboy saves :). GBCartRead has been updated to version 1.3 which has all the features of reading the ROM, reading RAM and writing to RAM.
The video above shows all features being used.
Now I just need to think about what my next project will be… the logical thing would be do the same with the SNES or I was thinking of working more on the gameboy by emulating a gameboy cartridge with the Arduino 😉
I purchased your PCB and the suggested components.
Here are a few comments:
The cart slot didn’t sit flush against the PCB, so I bent and glued it to be perpendicular with the PCB. In the end, I liked the look of the game sticking straight up.
Also, the cart slot had some plastic pieces that needed to be trimmed to allow gameboy/gameboy color games to be inserted.
I can successfully read the sav file and ROM from my pokemon yellow. However, I can’t seem to write sav files to it. When I try to resume the game, I get “The file data is destroyed!” message. Then in a hex editor, when I re-download the sav that I just uploaded, it looks similar to the one I that I originally uploaded, but some values are changed to 00’s or FF’s. I can’t seem to figure out why.
Hi Royce,
I found that for the gameboy header to fit flush you can to remove the 2 small mounting posts on the underside. Yes you do need cut the plastic pieces for it to fit GB/GBC games. I’m just checking that you’ve soldered a wire from the 74HC595 VCC to the 5V VCC? (as this was a design fault).
Can you run the ROM with the save file on an emulator to see if that works?
Can you provide me with both save files to alex@insidegadgets.com ?
Hello Alex,
I’m about to embark on the journey of making a game boy cartridge reader, though using a Mega 2560 instead of the Duemanlove. I’m planning on taking this a step further, and allowing for use with Game Boy Advance and DS cartridges as well. Have you considered expanding this to the additional cartridge types? Have you (or anyone else) ported this to a Mega2560 yet?
Thanks.
Hi Darren,
I haven’t ported it to the Mega2560, mostly it’s just the pin mappings which you’ll have to modify.
The GBA cartridge pinout looks to be identical to the Gameboy’s except that the GBA is 3.3V instead of 5V for the Gameboy – I may think about doing it in the future, it will require level shifting for 5V Arduino’s.
I haven’t really looked into the DS too much but I believe that there is an official way from Nintendo to extract saves though it’d be nice to have an all in one Gameboy reader that would read all types, it could be a possibility later on but nothing that I have planned at the moment.