WiFi Game Boy Cartridge 

Jepp, I think that would be what I would try if I ever do a next version. To be honest, the current design was based on using the ESP-12F (ESP8266) that I know and still had "in stock" and the naive assumption that interrupts were fast enough. On the other hand, my current method only has negligible overhead for the ESP-to-GameBoy direction (the one wasted read at the beginning) and speeding up the interrupt code is probably more important at that point. For the other direction, things are quite differen - here a buffer would greatly improve things. In the end, it is the design that finally worked and designing another PCB, buying components, soldering everything and updating the code for a pure fun and proof-of-concept project is not really worth it. So, I think I will mention some of the many suggestions from the comments around the web in a follow up video, to share it with those who want to learn from such projects.

I think the cleanest solution would be to add a CPLD that handles the address decoding and contains latches to handle the read and write data - When you write to the logic, it stashes the value written into the latch and then gates it out to the ESP data lines later. The other way, you write to the CPLD from the ESP and have a GB readable status register that has "I got stuff for you" flag. It would also get rid of the discrete decode logic.

I have to admit that I do not even know precisely what a CPLD does :) Sounds like something I should look into.

@@ThereOughtaBe Mostly, a CPLD does precisely what you tell it to. It's a bunch of programmable logic functions, mostly like those gates you used for address decoding, but often including a handful of registers. A typical use is for bus arbitration, and you may have seen a few of the smaller variants, PALs or GALs, handling glue logic in small computers. FPGAs tend to extend this with far more registers, many more internal functions, and some memory - to the degree they can fully implement a computer like the GameBoy. Together they're known as Programmable Logic Devices.

@@ThereOughtaBe The name pretty much sums it up - "Complex programmable logic device" - it's basically a smaller and less capable version of a FPGA, but also a lot cheaper. A couple of latches with 3-state outputs, an address decoder and some logic is exactly the sort of level of complexity they are targeted at.

Or even the opposite… smart stuff. And when I say smart I also mean useful. I love the because I can too thing but nothing about this is stupid in my opinion. A Gameboy with Internet?? I’d use that today. I’m pretty much on one as I’m typing this… IPhone 10 😊

Maybe some online multiplayer too :o

bruh that’s a fantastic idea

This is what I though this would be.

USB might be faster? (I have an SD2SNES which has an USB port, but afaik it doesn't have that functionality - you have to use SD cards, which would get tedious if you'd want to test your own software)

If you open one of the Everdrives up you'll understand why, especially the Everdrive GBA X5.

this is exactly what i was thinking aswell! I think this has amazing potential. you might even be able to do it without resetting the gb, but just feeding it a jump instruction to the right memory address at the end of your write. I would love to work on something like this. I can imagine a small OS running on the cartridge being able to put anything (like roms) on the ram chip from the internet, so you can have a bunch of programs on a NAS share and download these live with the wifi chip. Flash it onto the ram chip and bam. Might need to incorporate a button on the cartridge to reflash the OS onto RAM so you can change the program. Maybe this could also be done for a GBC/GBA cartridge

It definitely does, people use ESP32s to build Gameboy emulators

Quoting cartridge got me dying

Ehhm. Except we don't?

Yup :)

Maybe we don't need this as a product yet, until Seb finds a way to steam games onto the Game Boy. And Oh Boy, then many will want this cartridge

@@Tutterzoid Now I can just imagine CS:GO on the Gameboy💀💀💀

Would be pretty nice to call my mom on a GB

I would use it on a Gba sp. Ultimate flip phone

I think GBs don't have a PCM channel, or anything like that. They only use the built in sound font (oscillators). Could be wrong though.

@@westelaudio943 The audio pin in the cartridge interface works.

uh mom could never call during gameplay... and also..." lemme just install the right game card to call emergency services" 👀🤪 i mean better than nothing and derpy but at least it'd work. know what I mean?

Imagine getting cancelled through a gameboy

aw yeh I loved the hand drawn animations they were so fun ^_^

the board animation looks very clean, i also liked the transitions between 3d and real life

My thoughts exactly. Lol

Too many acronyms

The bigger issues is the non deterministic interrupt latency for the ESP32. ESP-IDF is not effective at sub millisecond realtime applications. The esp8266 is actually more effective at realtime applications since it has way less bloat than ESP-IDF on the ESP32.

Hehe, I usually write the voice over first and then add the visuals with some shots of the device, some renders, some schematics etc. But at that point I had no idea what to show without actually figuring out how many cycles the CPU really needs. So, yeah. I decided to fully own that quick doodle style (partly because I don't think I could draw better if I tried).

"a similar thing for GBA" Keep following gen 3 ROM hacking scene

That was a very cool 😎 video and i would love if that project was expanded and more people explored it

Thanks, I found Tom7's video from another comment and enjoyed it a lot. But I already achieved video streaming through my cartridge (teaser here: studio.ru-vid.comcxs_nHnqNB0/comments, still working on the full video with details) and my solution is surprisingly different from his because of how different the Game Boy works - or rather which different limitations it imposes. The NES cartridges have two distinct memory buses. One for the "ordinary" ROM, accessed by the CPU, and one for video data that is directly accessed by the "Pixel Processing Unit" (PPU). Tom7 can therefore directly feed the graphics data from his cartridge to the PPU, but he has to deal with the problem that he cannot tell it what to do and hence he needs to predict its reads. On the Game Boy, I need to write the graphics data to VRAM through the CPU. I do not have to predict anything, because I can tell the CPU exactly what to do and when to read the data from the ROM, but I have to deal with a different limitation: The PPU only allows the CPU to write to VRAM in short intervals when it isn't accessing VRAM itself (1ms inbetween frames and about 60µs inbetween lines), which makes it quite hard to get the data for a full image in there at a rate that can still be called "video" (I had to write the video streaming entirely in Assembly). BTW: Huge fan of yours and a subscriber (with my private account) since your first appearance on Computerphile :)

er ist deutsch😂

@@h3ryfx Darum ist mein Kommentar ja auch in Deutsch. Habe mich auf die technischen Hintergründe und nicht auf die Sprache bezogen.

wait, this isn't the guy from LiveOverflow?

I guess he would, I was admin on his discord for a while and we had a channel for updates concerning my wifi cartridge project. I had plans to send him one once it was finished. (But sadly he fired us because me and the mods pointed out a issue with the patreon bot and took it badly).

@@JS7457 that sounds pretty cool, how similar was it to this one? also did you guys split up roughly or was it just a sort of business decision, sorry to hear it

@@ethand4784 Oh no I was the only one working on it, the mods liked so I made a channel for updates. Eliot wasn't even aware of it since he was mostly inactive. My cartridge isn't finished, was quite busy, I got the first prototype working tho, now I'm gonna use a proper pcb to avoid messy wires. I post updates on my discord server times to times.

fu, this 3D model was pure beaty with the texture of real GB and others with the mix of PCB renders

@@filda2005 One day you'll read this conversation and be embarrassed. You're welcome.

That's kinda what keeps me from learning hardware. I'm super interested in it, but just don't have the energy + time to sink into it. So i enjoy living vicariously through vids like this.

Yeah I wish more things would use cartridges, imagine how cool it would be if someone made a open source handheld console that uses cartridges see how far the hardware/software could be pushed

Really? Because this is fixing the limitation of a cartridge-based system.

@@fossforever512 Like, seriously dude? Now we have USB port, that pushed technology to an unimaginable level. Where have you been for the last 20 years dummy?

@@dIancaster With a cartridge. DVDs and game downloads are incapable of this.

One day, games may come packed again in cartridges made of SSDs, as it is becoming less expensive and games are sucking so much storage from users SSDs.

It’s been done

I think it's Blender! :)

If you want to do it why don't you?

@@tylermcnally8232 I continue to learn more and more - these wizards are nice to look up towards, tho.

Looks like Sebastian has a Blender video on it. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1Pjr0xkuyhU.html

we are barely scratching that wihth thirdtube on the new 3ds

Blender. The Game Boy is a model I bought on CGTrader. The PCB is based on an exported 3d model from KiCad. I have once recorded the process for an earlier project (although the tedious assigning of materials is not necessary anymore): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1Pjr0xkuyhU.html

@@ThereOughtaBe awesome! Just found this tutorial on your channel. Thanks so much for posting it ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1Pjr0xkuyhU.html

@@chochkeys Not sure though, if recording a 4 hour session of talking to myself can be called a tutorial ;)

There is a game called Mission Impossible that can be used as remote control for the TV on GBC, i dunno about DMG GB/GBP/GBL

@@lucss21a thank you so much bro, but isn't there an homebrew for game boy color? Because I don't want buy that game only for this feature xD

The DMG does not have an IR transmitter, so such a cartridge would need to bring its own.