#13783 - AcidGame - Mon Dec 22, 2003 7:53 pm
Ok, i just had an idea. A GBA game player for the GBC, without any GBC mods at all! Ok, you may all be thinking of me like i am crazy, but we all know that the GameBoy thing of the game-pak slot like its a permanent piece of hardware. Well, how about making a GBA type thing that slides into the GBC's cart-in, then having it override the GBC's proccesor with a built-in ARM processor of its own. Then overriding the GBC's screen and using it to display its own processing.. is this posible?
#13793 - torne - Mon Dec 22, 2003 11:20 pm
It would be possible with certain restrictions, though not how you explain. The problems:
1) Having no direct sound on the GBC, thus making it impossible to play GBA sound.
2) Having a smaller screen with less colours, thus requiring scaling or cropping.
3) The fact that compensating for hardware differences will use more power than the ARM7 has to spare, likely.
You would have to use the GBC's processor as an IO controller, relaying all IO through it. This would perhaps be too slow.
It's not particularly feasible.
#13804 - poslundc - Tue Dec 23, 2003 2:43 am
Perhaps I'm missing something obvious... but why would you ever want such a device?
Dan.
#13805 - XeroxBoy - Tue Dec 23, 2003 2:52 am
You'd also be lacking the two shoulder buttons.
#13813 - AcidGame - Tue Dec 23, 2003 6:29 am
Yes, those would be restrictions. But the idea was, the cartridge you plug in, would have the ARM processor in itself, as well as the memory and sound. And for the creation, so you can play GBA on the GBC. :P
#13816 - torne - Tue Dec 23, 2003 11:26 am
| AcidGame wrote: |
| Yes, those would be restrictions. But the idea was, the cartridge you plug in, would have the ARM processor in itself, as well as the memory and sound. And for the creation, so you can play GBA on the GBC. :P |
You would have to play the sound in the plug-in cart, not through the GBC's speaker, as there's no way to get the output from a GBA synth into the GBC. You would have to use a hardware display controller on the cart (which you would have to design and build to be totally compatible with the GBA's - this will mean making a custom ASIC or using a very expensive high-speed FPGA), to do sprite and tile rendering, then blit the data as a bitmap (scaled). And so on. You would end up building every single component of the GBA onto the cart, with the exception of the buttons and the LCD, and it would be many, many, many times more expensive than buying a GBA. Building the display controller alone would cost a fortune (as an ASIC, it would be hundreds of thousands of dollars just to make the masks, and as an FPGA the unit cost would be $100+).
You would end up with a device much the same as a GBP, which would then still suck due to no shoulder buttons, poor sound, display scaling, and probably the inability for the GBC's cart bus to transfer data fast enough to do full framerate screen updates.
If you want a nice hardware project, better think of something else.
#13820 - Lord Graga - Tue Dec 23, 2003 12:42 pm
oh, so what you are talking about is a gba without LCD, that instead plugs into the GBC, who lacks of buttons, and has a smaller screen?
Sure, you could put 2 extra buttons on the cartridge, and build in an extra Lcd ;)
Seriuously.
That's the dumbest idea I have ever heard, no offense.
#13899 - haduken - Wed Dec 24, 2003 6:08 pm
And the obvious question: WHY? Sure, It's a cool hack (sort of,..), but It's kind of worthless. Cutting up a perfectly fine GBA for use as a coprocessor in a GBC... It kind of goes against reality.
_________________
There were worms, lots of worms, worms that made me crazy,..
#14004 - sgeos - Sat Dec 27, 2003 6:28 am
It's a neat idea, but in reality it would be cheaper to buy a new GBA.
-Brendan