GatesBoy™ Cartridge Specs
GatesBoy™ Cartridge Specs
ROM
128 KBytes of Flash ROM.
RAM
2 KBytes of volatile RAM. The RAM can be made non volatile by adding a
3V battery inside the cart.
PCB
The double sided PCB has a gold plated edge connector and is tinned over the
rest of its surface. It does *not* have any resist (green paint). This
makes life a bit easier for hardware designers who therefore do not risk
damaging the PCB while trying to scrape off the resist.
Built in I/O ports
A built in female
DB25 connector
has 5 Bi-directional lines, 5 Output and 4 Input (all TTL) under user program
control.
+5V from the Game Boy is also present but you should use this with great care to
avoid damaging either your Game Boy or your GatesBoy™. In any case, you should
not draw more than 10 mA.
Program (ROM) Download
The female DB25 connector is also used to program the GatesBoy™ Cartridge
via the Parallel Port of an IBM PC.
We wanted to provide developers with the lowest possible startup costs, so we eliminated the need (and cost) of a special programmer to program the cart. All the many features of the GatesBoy™ cart are programmed via the Parallel Port of an IBM PC.
You will need a Parallel Port cable with a 25 pin male connector at
each end. If you want to make your own, connect pins 2-9 and 11-19 at one
end to the same pin numbers at the other end. If all 25 pins are connected
that is also fine.
The download cable is not supplied.
Plastic case
The GatesBoy™ cartridge case is in translucent plastic. There is plenty
of empty space in the case to mount your custom hardware. The case is
designed with openings for a DB25 connector and a slot for either a SmartMedia
card or through which you can pass a ribbon cable to connect to the outside
world.
Rapid hardware development
The GatesBoy™ cartridge has an
internal bus.
Provision is made for mounting a
SmartMedia Card connector.
and two
plug-in
Daughter Boards
on the main PCB
Mother Board.
No SmartMedia Card Interface is supplied with the GatesBoy™ cartridge
However, the
Mother Board PCB
has provision for mounting a
SmartMedia Card connector.
In addition,
there is a slot in the plastic case designed to take a SmartMedeia Card.
One possibility is to use a second 3.3V processor on a
Daughter Board
in a circuit that you design and build yourself, to interface to a
SmartMedia Card.
Rapid software development using free tools
Jeff's GB programming site
has an extensive range of software tools ranging from Assemblers, C Compilers,
Jeff's GB Basic, Tutorials, Graphic and music utilities. It is also a good source of GB development news and job opportunities.