My guess is that it was used at GameBoy Player manufacturing plants to test random completed units off the assembly line as a means of quality control. That "Test machine for complete products" certainly makes it sound that way, as well as the physical setup of the machine allowing for easy, quick setup of a GBP.
I doubt this being a factory tool. When you send out a destruction order to a plant, the device will not show up as nice individual sets. Also this is too much polish for a factory tool. (The game cube read a retail player disc - a factory tool has to be ready before you start production, so you would not waste time pressing disc) I guess this is a nintendo service center tool. That would justify using a retail game cube and pressing disc for it.
My thought is the software that goes in the game cube is a special test software that interfaces with the other cartridge through the ribbon cable and that completes a circuit of sorts for hardware testing that all the connections in the game boy player are functional.
Did you happen to reach out to the homebrew developer who wrote Game Boy Interface, Extrems? AFAIK, he's the only gamecube homebrew developer who has interfaced with the gameboy player and may be able to provide some insight on getting it to work. From what I understand the gameboy player sits on top of ARAM and this testing unit may be placing it elsewhere in memory since it interfaces with the memory card port (serial bus) instead of the high speed port. This could explain why the official retail gameboy player disc cannot see the device. I'm sure Extrems could modify his homebrew software to try to interface with it(the Game Boy Interface homebrew software is sadly not open source)., Also, I would love some high res photos of the boards inside the unit if you could provide those.
There was a device made by Intec that connected to the memory card slot. It had it's own boot disk and it played GBA games. ua-cam.com/video/HfZTK2XStME/v-deo.html Gaming Historian did a story on it. So booting GBA games from memory card was a thing.
Tony this may be my A.M. iced coffee rambling, but can I just point out that this channel has made me smile since I discovered it in 2015 when I was dealing with my depression after losing my 1st job? I thank you guys for helping me get out of my depression so I will raise my iced coffee to Tony, John , Richie , Dan & the rest of the Hard4Games crew. Thanks!
I first discovered this wonderful channel in 2015 right after my brother was diagnosed with cancer. When he went to treatment for a week at a time I’d binge watch all the Zelda 64 beta questing with Richie and almost died of laughter. Then got myself a gameshark
Tony, loved this video! Gives us a glimpse of the messier (often frustrating) part of hardware testing, and shows that these kinds of things don't always just "work" as soon as you flip the switch and turn them on. Thanks for documenting the journey instead of scrapping the video in frustration!
Dumb question? The best kinda question... Has anyone checked if its a stealth dev kit... eg a test or dev kit stuck into a retail shell. Try booting a dev NR disk? If not that then i'm guessing its trying to load software from the memory card and the box needs to be connected to a larger testing rack that sends software to like 8 of these test boxes at once and they all send report data back.. On the read wright speed, i'm guessing your yellow junk data cart might be a test data cart, the reader reads all the junk data off the card and then verifies it as legit checks against a known checksum.. i'm guessing anyways... psp electronic alignment disk does the same sorta thing so when you stick the umd into a normal psp it only sees a corrupted disk.
He kinda has checked by inserting the startup disc onto the GameCube and having it boot to enough of a point where it says that the Gameboy Player couldn’t be detected. NR GameCubes can’t read retail discs.
hmmmm This reminds me of the Datel Advance Game Port - which was a clone of the Gameboy Player but used software emulation and connected via the Memory Card port. I'm sure you already knew this, but perhaps that's how the Gameboy Player was also initially developed
I have a feeling it was meant to test the Gamecube games which could connect to GBA games, not the other way around. But maybe there is some sort of software emulator as well to do similar to the Datel AGP.
@@Techburn997 that thought also crossed my mind. It would make sense, but those games would also have to access the GBP via the high speed serial port. Though I also wonder if the memory card slot connector is just a red herring in general. Ah, oh well, in sure we'll get the answers some day
Look at the super gameboy: It is a very Nintendo thing to just put a Gameboy into a new housing and plug that into their current home system. Emulation is messy. Frame grabbing from memory avoids all shorts of issue.
@@sarowie oh absolutely, but if you look at the next generation, the Wii and it's virtual console titles - it's possible they were in that mindset as early as the GameCube
I'm a 90s baby.. never knew I was a retro guy until recently.. the new games just don't hit right.. thank you for continuing to grow and expand my experience with my childhood. So many gems I've missed. thank you greatly
This is one of your best videos yet. Even not getting the GBS to work, we now have confirmation that the thing exists, and an entertaining demonstration of how tricky it is to get the thing to work. Also 10/10 on the ceiling fan footage.
I'm inclined to agree with many of the other comments in that it's missing a specific software disc only meant to work with the GBS. But I will also bring up the possibility that the disc itself could have had something proprietary printed onto it's surface that the machine could also have to look for to authenticate it's the real thing. Might just be a disc for internal use but I wouldn't put it past Nintendo to have a security check on it as if it were a retail game disc.
@@renakunisaki the software needs the usual protection - but it can also contain "unusual" or even accidental copy protection. Like: For e.g. Swiss is using memory card 1, and this piece of software sets memory card 1 into an unusual high speed mode, kicking out Swiss access to the memory card.
Looks like a system to test GB Players or GBA systems that were sent back to Nintendo for service... Maybe you tried this combo, but try to plug a test cart into the GB Player and the ribbon cable into GBA. I do not think a disc is needed. Possibly, the GBA may be used as a visual display to navigate the test screens for testing the GB Player or the actual GBA. I speculate the wired memory card can possibly dump data to the other memory card? Maybe as a way to back up a save file if a system needs to be serviced or just a diagnostics data dump. BTW, was the save file a GBA or a GameCube save file? Interesting... But for sure there is nothing about the Gamecube that would be connecting to the GB Player, so the GameCube output seems non-essential. But, someone mentions data can flow through the memory port. I still feel the real output would be on the GBA attached to the ribbon cable. Good Luck, can't wait for the day it is all figured out!
Was this ever solved? From what I know the Memory Card Slot A slot and the Gameboy Player interface share the same bus, so its possible they just used a special build of the Gameboy Player Startup Disk that interfaced with it from the memory card slots. Although I'm not sure if they actually used Slot A, usually Slot B is the one used for debugging because it has its own bus. Maybe the people working on the homebrew Game boy Interface know more?
To me, this smells like a diagnostic tool for Gameboy Player hardware, which is why it's upside down and readily accessible (fast swap out different Players to test them). Only output you'd really need for diagnosis is success messages or status messages which can easily, easily be sent through the memory card. The GBA and GBC carts are probably used for testing both GBA and GBC functionality. Also I wonder if that link cable is actually used to transfer multiboot to the Player and there's additional multiboot software that is used to kick everything off on the Player side of things. Did you try plugging in a GBA to that link cable, switched on without a cartridge, and hitting one of the arcade buttons?
Why would it use a whole GC simply to output message? That's a task for basic leds or a small LCD screen. There's clearly a task which is easier to do over a GC. There could be some sort of handshake between the GC and the GB Player, done by the software, thus reusing the same code on the GC was easier than porting it (or adding a PowerPC cpu over the board). It also keep that handshake closest to the reality, as merely the output change. It wouldn't explain why they aren't using the port under the GC directly though...
@@dwild92 considering it's a bespoke game system and is Nintendo I don't think it's too crazy to imagine them using a GC as purely the display and program communication medium. Money and cost isn't an issue with such a low volume of hand built machines. This isn't too far outside the realms of what Nintendo do with their hardware, either. Let's imagine the alternative: buying a very small volume of LCD displays and building a hardware platform specifically for booting, sending commands and displaying output. At a very low volume, a GameCube is probably cheaper. That being said, a GBA would surely be even cheaper at that, and itself has an LCD display, button input and support for general purpose serial communications, so I'm not convinced my theory is correct.
@@Xilefian Buying an LCD at a really low volume would have been more expensive than a whole GC? Lol in what world do you live. They cost a few dollars, and on that board there's clearly an expensive FPGA. A cheap LCD that cost a few bucks won't be an issue. The implementation in itself too would have been much more complex too for litterally no gain to go for a more expensive solution. There's a reason there's a GC there instead of anything else. If it's neither to simplify the implementation nor save cost, then it means that we are missing some facts.
I've watched this channel since like before the jamology days and I miss those times but I also really love the direction it's gone in as well. I still look forward to every upload
I've gotten the service disc to work in Swiss before and played around with it. It looks like you have a WAY outdated version of Swiss so maybe it'll work if you get a newer build (I say newer instead of newest because the service disc worked for me until I updated Swiss, I think, to v0.5r990 so I think v0.5r963 might work but it wouldn't hurt to try different versions). I was also using a GC Loader to boot Swiss, which might make a difference
probably it is what it says it is: A tester to test the GB Player. For factory use or repair department, so they can stick it on easy (on top) and run the test software via the memory card, so it does not need to be booted by CD (= slow and time consuming = expensive).
I wonder if this was more of a "debugging on actual hardware" kind of deal? I imagine that integrating those two systems would be hard, and a unit that was "almost retail" but still had a basic set of debug things?
If I had to guess, the unit was probably for testing the Game Boy Player itself; the connection type was altered to allow for the units to be quickly swapped out, and an alternate software disk would've been used in tandem with the included flash cart; the GBA hardware in the player would run the GBA test cart to verify if any issues were with the GBA hardware, while the proprietary Gamecube service disk would interface with the board through the memory card slot to determine if anything was wrong with the connectors between player and system. They likely created the alternate board and connection type so that the GBP could still recieve power from the unit as a whole without necessarily connecting to the Gamecube directly, so that if the GBA hardware in the player worked fine but the player's connectors didn't, that could be ruled out. That even diagnosing this kind of thing could be as difficult as it was is honestly a testament to just how much engineering work got the GBP to work. It's almost certainly one of my favorite oddities of the Gamecube.
The memory card cable should work just fine, the GameCube uses the EXI bus for pretty much every peripheral and it's accessible from the bottom of the system and the memory card slot.
If there's anything I took away from this video it's a reminder of how horrifying the "Gameboy Player not connected" error sound is. Brought back memories of booting mine up late at night trying to be sneaky and a horror movie sound effect would echo through my entire house, waking everyone up in the process. That and solving how to get the GBS to work will prove to be the greatest puzzle of our generation.
The memory card is connected via cord because the Game Boy Player actually allowed games to save to the Gamecube memory card. no games actually supported this feature but it was possible.
My input is probably useless but maybe that random one piece game on the memory card is a part of the eqaution? And maybe it is meant for flashing ROMs to the flash cart?
I'm thinking you need a 1.1 or higher diagnostic disc or a special version of the GBA player, the GBA cartridge that connected to the board is meant to connect some how to a pc, the reader is meant to be plug to port B, or damage to parts of the board due yo age
Software would not allow the GBC to work. The GBP itself is just a capture device. The software can't acess the GBP via memory card slots. you need the high speed port directly connected in order for it work. The early later revisions of the Gamecube will not run the Service Disc due to deliberate hardware changes with the laser and motherboard revision.
Something tells me there is a hidden menu in the gamecube itself, perhaps by holding one of the arcade buttons on startup or something. The fact it came with so much and the other person with one of them had the same components may suggest that the software is already there somewhere.
its almost certainly missing its software disk, it might have ended up in that big leak and you could find it there but removing the disk this may have been a deliberate choice by nintendo to cripple them for some reason or they could have just gotten lost
That's what i was thinking, it'll have to have some sort of software disc or maybe by someone using the retail software disc its soft-locked itself beyond repair
@@ohmlord i doubt its beyond repair unless they disabled it like the nintendo playstation but its certainly not going to work with the wrong software, the workboy also looked dead until its software was found
i think this was flashed to run a special disk with that special hardware and it the gamecube itself was flashed with a modified bios to accommodate the special design
Did you try using a logic analyzer or an oscilloscope to check out what signals its sending out, and on what pins? That could give us a very strong hint about how (and what) it's trying to communicate.
My guess is that maybe it had a special boot disk for it to see the gameboy player from the memory card because as you said its a un usual connection for a gamecube so maybe the regular boot disk cant see the stuff on the special memory card (ps the gameboy player it self is region free so you waisted a bit of money buying a Japanese one)
oh, just ask them to setup the build system for the current project on their developer machine. To increase the challenge, give them the instructions you got when starting with your handwritten notes added. Nothing increases the challenge just like specific, yet not precise, slightly outdated and very helpful in the begin instructions written by a software engineer.
Have you posted the dumps/pictures anywhere? I'd love to take a look. I got the AGB Aging 7.1 ROM from another owner (the new owner of this one?) but the CGB ROM looks to be a bad dump. I'm curious what the board that the player connects to is doing but my thoughts are that the Aging software (AGB) is running on the game boy player and sending data back to that board which is then handing it off to the game cube over the memory card adapter and the game cube is only part of the equation for diagnostic purposes. This would mean that you're missing software but that doesn't make too much sense because this sort of thing would usually be NR reader territory. That also doesn't explain the CGB cart and what exactly "slave mode" is. Unless that's where diagnostic data is going (which seems weird too) but then why the game cube at all? One clue to figuring this puzzle out would be to figure out how the AGB Aging 7.1 ROM differs from the current 7.0 ROM. I can see that they changed the main menu text and added a "GBS" type option in addition to "AGB" and "AGS" but that doesn't seem to change anything above board. I suspect it's doing something different under the hood, however, and trying to report diagnostic data on memory addresses I'm not monitoring (like perhaps the link port). I'm not too good with software disassembly so I'd have no idea what to look for but maybe someone who does can probe. Another piece of the puzzle is that CGB Test Cart. That can't be plugged directly into that daughter board, can it? I assume not because it looked like there was a bracket holding that AGB flash cart in. Anyway... Thanks for sharing
I genuinely don't think the GameCube memory card port (even the serial bus in slot 2) is fast enough to transmit the picture and sound output from the Game Boy Player. It looks more likely that this was used only to test if a GBP was faulty, rather than to launch any game from it.
Try the memory card in slot b!! The GameCube used the microphone via the memory card slot so it must be functional and be able to receive some sort of information? I don't know :) Awesome video
Im curious if the interface is similar to the EXI-to-USB adapter (kind of like an official USB Gecko) that Nintendo had distributed with select devkits.
I'm pretty sure it prolly needs a specific diagnostics/early GB Player disc for it to work, but that START button really got me curious: What happens if you boot up the GameCube while holding down that Start button? A lot of Nintendo aging software and hardware have some "Hold this button during startup to do a different thing" kind of deal (even the retail consoles have similar stuff for system diagnostics!) so maaaaybe that could be worth a shot? Then again, I'm totally talking out of my ass, so take this like a grain of salt. This is still a super amazing find nonetheless!
Just stumbled across your channel the other day, great content man. surprised you don't have more subscribers. also are you from the upper peninsula of Michigan?
The GBS would need a disk to access memory card IO and have it run like the Swiss. The read speed is beyond 64 blocks a second. A software engineer working for a long time could get it running... But the software to access the card IO would still be missing !
For someone curious about what the red error messege says... it says... "Game Boy Player is not connected. Please turn the power off, and connect Game Boy Player." Damn, there is really no clue to work the machine...
I'm not really good at anything past 5th gen systems, but I agree it probably needs a specific disc to boot. My best suggestion would be for someone who has basic GC development skills to take a look at the setup, and try to write a very basic disc that can cause the handshake to happen. Also, this is even stupider... But have you tried switching the Memory Cards into the opposite ports? I seem to remember a Karaoke game I had as a kid using slot 2 for the mic, as opposed to slot 1. Since the memory card on your left seems to be carrying data (As opposed to save files)... It may be worth a shot.
Maybe there's bios in the GBA SpaceWorld addition? Did you try that already? Or the flash card needs to have something flashed to it? (That empty flash card hidden inside)
It is true that the Gameboy player is region free so any disc will work but the gamecube has to be capable of reading it as well. Maybe it isn't able to read the normal commercial discs?
Thinking way outside the box (or Cube...); it's not used to test GBA connectivity via a controller port, for Four Swords Adventures, PacMan VS, etc? Will it run Japanese retail GameCube discs, for starters? And if so try a "Four Swords cable" compatible game via the Gameboy Player device to see it it recognises it. I doubt it'll solve the mystery - probably just the ramblings of a mad man... 😁
Weird thing about the GB player is that it’s region free when playing the GB/GBA games but it’s not region free when it comes to the startup disc. Did you use the right region startup disc?
given the gameboy player had a disc to... initialise? just start? the hardware up, it makes sense for debug hardware to have.. did you try the normal disc? can't find error would indicate its not being started or perhaps a cable issue but then that 2nd one shouldn't also have... unless that's the reason these units are even out there
What is the power that's needed for the Gameboy player? Also could a ground be ran from the GameCube to the Gba player? I have a feeling that may help.. wish I could see it in person.
You lucky SOB! I see you have a Pioneer Laseractive there! Been looking for one of those for years! Do you have any of the add-on thingies for either the Mega CD or PC Engine?
You do need that disc software to make it run, so theres no need “to connect this into there and that into there and that into thee snd that into there” damnit.
I'm curious what happens when you plug that "memory card with a cable" on a regular Game Cube, and then check the contents of the memory card on the boot screen. Does anything appear? Couldn't the software for the handshake be opened this way, maybe?
isnt the memory card slot slower than the normal slot that the GBP connects to? wouldnt be entirely surprised if there was an extra cord that went from the main units bottom into the GBPTS board
Could it be an overcomplicated method to do something simpler, due to a worry that a "simpler" method would be less secure for the GC, and they wouldn't want to risk that going to random factories?
Things preserved thanks to this video:
-Knowledge that the GBS does in fact exists.
-8 ways to NOT get the GBS to work.
This person thinks like a scientist!
My guess is that it was used at GameBoy Player manufacturing plants to test random completed units off the assembly line as a means of quality control. That "Test machine for complete products" certainly makes it sound that way, as well as the physical setup of the machine allowing for easy, quick setup of a GBP.
It could also be used to test "faulty" units sent back to Nintendo.
I doubt this being a factory tool. When you send out a destruction order to a plant, the device will not show up as nice individual sets.
Also this is too much polish for a factory tool. (The game cube read a retail player disc - a factory tool has to be ready before you start production, so you would not waste time pressing disc)
I guess this is a nintendo service center tool. That would justify using a retail game cube and pressing disc for it.
Are there any other codes on rear
My guess is maybe it needs a differen gb player disc that isnt the retail one.
Hence why he kept talking about other software
My thought is the software that goes in the game cube is a special test software that interfaces with the other cartridge through the ribbon cable and that completes a circuit of sorts for hardware testing that all the connections in the game boy player are functional.
I think it is using a development GB Player disc so that it can work with the GBS (GameBoy Station).
no way, i think we watched the same video!
Did you happen to reach out to the homebrew developer who wrote Game Boy Interface, Extrems? AFAIK, he's the only gamecube homebrew developer who has interfaced with the gameboy player and may be able to provide some insight on getting it to work.
From what I understand the gameboy player sits on top of ARAM and this testing unit may be placing it elsewhere in memory since it interfaces with the memory card port (serial bus) instead of the high speed port. This could explain why the official retail gameboy player disc cannot see the device. I'm sure Extrems could modify his homebrew software to try to interface with it(the Game Boy Interface homebrew software is sadly not open source)., Also, I would love some high res photos of the boards inside the unit if you could provide those.
Vegetta
@@Josiwi 777? Socket T? Xd es el vegetita q todos conocemos
The "mother fu-" cutaway after the Japanese gameboy player attempt made me laugh so hard haha
Aiii I was the guy who found it on Taobao x3 Great to see it in good hands now !
3:13 That’s got to be the funkiest test cartridge music I’ve heard
I was just thinking how funny it would be as a technician at work testing Game boy players and hearing that everyday.. lol
@@mrburns366 Funny, for the first day or two!
Wow this is insane. Keep grabbing up obscure testing and beta hardware for retro video game consoles. It never gets old watching these videos. Cheers!
There was a device made by Intec that connected to the memory card slot. It had it's own boot disk and it played GBA games. ua-cam.com/video/HfZTK2XStME/v-deo.html Gaming Historian did a story on it. So booting GBA games from memory card was a thing.
yea, and be sure to use slot #2 on your gamecube. not slot one.
wait could that be why the gbs isn't working? or did he try slot 2 and i just missed it
Tony this may be my A.M. iced coffee rambling, but can I just point out that this channel has made me smile since I discovered it in 2015 when I was dealing with my depression after losing my 1st job? I thank you guys for helping me get out of my depression so I will raise my iced coffee to Tony, John , Richie , Dan & the rest of the Hard4Games crew. Thanks!
I first discovered this wonderful channel in 2015 right after my brother was diagnosed with cancer. When he went to treatment for a week at a time I’d binge watch all the Zelda 64 beta questing with Richie and almost died of laughter. Then got myself a gameshark
this channel deserves more subs for sure
Tony, loved this video! Gives us a glimpse of the messier (often frustrating) part of hardware testing, and shows that these kinds of things don't always just "work" as soon as you flip the switch and turn them on.
Thanks for documenting the journey instead of scrapping the video in frustration!
2:12 Elliot Coll/The Retro Future sure loves to get his hands in those cartridges.
I think it's kinda funny that you have all of these rare stuff but you don't have a japanese Game Boy Player, which is way more common
I have 2 japanese but no PAL (my region), they're way too pricey over here.
@@RisingRevengeance ^^^^ - was thinking about picking up a PAL unit as there's a place near me selling one but it's like £100
The players are region free lol he owned one
Why would he need to own a JP Game Boy Player, ever? And this is a borrowed piece of equipment as stated right in the first seconds of the video.
Dumb question? The best kinda question...
Has anyone checked if its a stealth dev kit... eg a test or dev kit stuck into a retail shell.
Try booting a dev NR disk?
If not that then i'm guessing its trying to load software from the memory card and the box needs to be connected to a larger testing rack that sends software to like 8 of these test boxes at once and they all send report data back..
On the read wright speed, i'm guessing your yellow junk data cart might be a test data cart, the reader reads all the junk data off the card and then verifies it as legit checks against a known checksum.. i'm guessing anyways... psp electronic alignment disk does the same sorta thing so when you stick the umd into a normal psp it only sees a corrupted disk.
He kinda has checked by inserting the startup disc onto the GameCube and having it boot to enough of a point where it says that the Gameboy Player couldn’t be detected. NR GameCubes can’t read retail discs.
hmmmm This reminds me of the Datel Advance Game Port - which was a clone of the Gameboy Player but used software emulation and connected via the Memory Card port. I'm sure you already knew this, but perhaps that's how the Gameboy Player was also initially developed
I have a feeling it was meant to test the Gamecube games which could connect to GBA games, not the other way around. But maybe there is some sort of software emulator as well to do similar to the Datel AGP.
@@Techburn997 that thought also crossed my mind. It would make sense, but those games would also have to access the GBP via the high speed serial port.
Though I also wonder if the memory card slot connector is just a red herring in general. Ah, oh well, in sure we'll get the answers some day
Look at the super gameboy: It is a very Nintendo thing to just put a Gameboy into a new housing and plug that into their current home system.
Emulation is messy. Frame grabbing from memory avoids all shorts of issue.
@@sarowie oh absolutely, but if you look at the next generation, the Wii and it's virtual console titles - it's possible they were in that mindset as early as the GameCube
I'm a 90s baby.. never knew I was a retro guy until recently.. the new games just don't hit right.. thank you for continuing to grow and expand my experience with my childhood. So many gems I've missed. thank you greatly
Loving the dramatic editing Tony!
This is one of your best videos yet. Even not getting the GBS to work, we now have confirmation that the thing exists, and an entertaining demonstration of how tricky it is to get the thing to work.
Also 10/10 on the ceiling fan footage.
I'm inclined to agree with many of the other comments in that it's missing a specific software disc only meant to work with the GBS. But I will also bring up the possibility that the disc itself could have had something proprietary printed onto it's surface that the machine could also have to look for to authenticate it's the real thing. Might just be a disc for internal use but I wouldn't put it past Nintendo to have a security check on it as if it were a retail game disc.
Well, if it didn't have protection it would be a an easy open door to running software from the memory card slot if it were to get out in the wild.
Well it would have to have the usual protection to be able to run at all.
@@renakunisaki the software needs the usual protection - but it can also contain "unusual" or even accidental copy protection. Like: For e.g. Swiss is using memory card 1, and this piece of software sets memory card 1 into an unusual high speed mode, kicking out Swiss access to the memory card.
Looks like a system to test GB Players or GBA systems that were sent back to Nintendo for service... Maybe you tried this combo, but try to plug a test cart into the GB Player and the ribbon cable into GBA. I do not think a disc is needed. Possibly, the GBA may be used as a visual display to navigate the test screens for testing the GB Player or the actual GBA. I speculate the wired memory card can possibly dump data to the other memory card? Maybe as a way to back up a save file if a system needs to be serviced or just a diagnostics data dump. BTW, was the save file a GBA or a GameCube save file? Interesting... But for sure there is nothing about the Gamecube that would be connecting to the GB Player, so the GameCube output seems non-essential. But, someone mentions data can flow through the memory port. I still feel the real output would be on the GBA attached to the ribbon cable. Good Luck, can't wait for the day it is all figured out!
Was this ever solved? From what I know the Memory Card Slot A slot and the Gameboy Player interface share the same bus, so its possible they just used a special build of the Gameboy Player Startup Disk that interfaced with it from the memory card slots. Although I'm not sure if they actually used Slot A, usually Slot B is the one used for debugging because it has its own bus. Maybe the people working on the homebrew Game boy Interface know more?
To me, this smells like a diagnostic tool for Gameboy Player hardware, which is why it's upside down and readily accessible (fast swap out different Players to test them).
Only output you'd really need for diagnosis is success messages or status messages which can easily, easily be sent through the memory card. The GBA and GBC carts are probably used for testing both GBA and GBC functionality.
Also I wonder if that link cable is actually used to transfer multiboot to the Player and there's additional multiboot software that is used to kick everything off on the Player side of things.
Did you try plugging in a GBA to that link cable, switched on without a cartridge, and hitting one of the arcade buttons?
Kinda funny if the official testing kit uses a link cable to load GBA multiboots, considering you can do that from the GameCube itself.
@@KopperNeoman you can do it via that player too, and doing it via the player also tests its link and multiboot features so would be desirable
Why would it use a whole GC simply to output message? That's a task for basic leds or a small LCD screen.
There's clearly a task which is easier to do over a GC. There could be some sort of handshake between the GC and the GB Player, done by the software, thus reusing the same code on the GC was easier than porting it (or adding a PowerPC cpu over the board). It also keep that handshake closest to the reality, as merely the output change. It wouldn't explain why they aren't using the port under the GC directly though...
@@dwild92 considering it's a bespoke game system and is Nintendo I don't think it's too crazy to imagine them using a GC as purely the display and program communication medium. Money and cost isn't an issue with such a low volume of hand built machines.
This isn't too far outside the realms of what Nintendo do with their hardware, either.
Let's imagine the alternative: buying a very small volume of LCD displays and building a hardware platform specifically for booting, sending commands and displaying output. At a very low volume, a GameCube is probably cheaper. That being said, a GBA would surely be even cheaper at that, and itself has an LCD display, button input and support for general purpose serial communications, so I'm not convinced my theory is correct.
@@Xilefian Buying an LCD at a really low volume would have been more expensive than a whole GC? Lol in what world do you live. They cost a few dollars, and on that board there's clearly an expensive FPGA. A cheap LCD that cost a few bucks won't be an issue.
The implementation in itself too would have been much more complex too for litterally no gain to go for a more expensive solution.
There's a reason there's a GC there instead of anything else. If it's neither to simplify the implementation nor save cost, then it means that we are missing some facts.
I've watched this channel since like before the jamology days and I miss those times but I also really love the direction it's gone in as well. I still look forward to every upload
I've gotten the service disc to work in Swiss before and played around with it. It looks like you have a WAY outdated version of Swiss so maybe it'll work if you get a newer build (I say newer instead of newest because the service disc worked for me until I updated Swiss, I think, to v0.5r990 so I think v0.5r963 might work but it wouldn't hurt to try different versions). I was also using a GC Loader to boot Swiss, which might make a difference
There’s atleast 3 of these test stations out there. I know of 2 private collections that have them.
probably it is what it says it is: A tester to test the GB Player. For factory use or repair department, so they can stick it on easy (on top) and run the test software via the memory card, so it does not need to be booted by CD (= slow and time consuming = expensive).
I wonder if this was more of a "debugging on actual hardware" kind of deal? I imagine that integrating those two systems would be hard, and a unit that was "almost retail" but still had a basic set of debug things?
I really am starting to miss “We’re Hard 4 Games, and you should be toooooo!”
Wow this looks insane
The game boy player (hardware)is indeed region free
If I had to guess, the unit was probably for testing the Game Boy Player itself; the connection type was altered to allow for the units to be quickly swapped out, and an alternate software disk would've been used in tandem with the included flash cart; the GBA hardware in the player would run the GBA test cart to verify if any issues were with the GBA hardware, while the proprietary Gamecube service disk would interface with the board through the memory card slot to determine if anything was wrong with the connectors between player and system. They likely created the alternate board and connection type so that the GBP could still recieve power from the unit as a whole without necessarily connecting to the Gamecube directly, so that if the GBA hardware in the player worked fine but the player's connectors didn't, that could be ruled out.
That even diagnosing this kind of thing could be as difficult as it was is honestly a testament to just how much engineering work got the GBP to work. It's almost certainly one of my favorite oddities of the Gamecube.
The fact that you just casually have a prototype Spaceworld GBA sitting on the counter is hilarious to me lol
The memory card cable should work just fine, the GameCube uses the EXI bus for pretty much every peripheral and it's accessible from the bottom of the system and the memory card slot.
If there's anything I took away from this video it's a reminder of how horrifying the "Gameboy Player not connected" error sound is. Brought back memories of booting mine up late at night trying to be sneaky and a horror movie sound effect would echo through my entire house, waking everyone up in the process. That and solving how to get the GBS to work will prove to be the greatest puzzle of our generation.
the CGB Test cartridge actually contains a Super Mario Land "GBS Player". There is more.
The memory card is connected via cord because the Game Boy Player actually allowed games to save to the Gamecube memory card. no games actually supported this feature but it was possible.
Omg, the dramatic fan shots are amazing! Lol
My input is probably useless but maybe that random one piece game on the memory card is a part of the eqaution?
And maybe it is meant for flashing ROMs to the flash cart?
5:14 yeah the gameboy players themselves are region free much like the regular gameboy. the software is region locked though
Stuff like that is just cool. Thanks for all the work you put into this
I bet Ben Heck could figure this out!
Great use of secret of mana music
I'm thinking you need a 1.1 or higher diagnostic disc or a special version of the GBA player, the GBA cartridge that connected to the board is meant to connect some how to a pc, the reader is meant to be plug to port B, or damage to parts of the board due yo age
Software would not allow the GBC to work. The GBP itself is just a capture device. The software can't acess the GBP via memory card slots. you need the high speed port directly connected in order for it work. The early later revisions of the Gamecube will not run the Service Disc due to deliberate hardware changes with the laser and motherboard revision.
Something tells me there is a hidden menu in the gamecube itself, perhaps by holding one of the arcade buttons on startup or something.
The fact it came with so much and the other person with one of them had the same components may suggest that the software is already there somewhere.
its almost certainly missing its software disk, it might have ended up in that big leak and you could find it there but removing the disk this may have been a deliberate choice by nintendo to cripple them for some reason or they could have just gotten lost
That's what i was thinking, it'll have to have some sort of software disc or maybe by someone using the retail software disc its soft-locked itself beyond repair
@@ohmlord i doubt its beyond repair unless they disabled it like the nintendo playstation but its certainly not going to work with the wrong software, the workboy also looked dead until its software was found
i cannot imagine how the Game Boy Player could possibly connect to the GameCube through its memory card port. This sure is puzzling.
Skies of Arcadia?! You sir have impeccable taste
i think this was flashed to run a special disk with that special hardware and it the gamecube itself was flashed with a modified bios to accommodate the special design
Did you try using a logic analyzer or an oscilloscope to check out what signals its sending out, and on what pins? That could give us a very strong hint about how (and what) it's trying to communicate.
What a journey this must have been! lol It's disconcerting that you guys couldn't get it to connect but this was still an interesting watch.
huh i swear the aging test booted with swiss
like there's a recording of the disc running
unless that was the actual disc
For a test system that thing looks insanely clean.
This box was designed so in the year 2021 Hard for Games could make a video about it. Crazy how did those Japanese designers and engineers know.
My guess is that maybe it had a special boot disk for it to see the gameboy player from the memory card because as you said its a un usual connection for a gamecube so maybe the regular boot disk cant see the stuff on the special memory card (ps the gameboy player it self is region free so you waisted a bit of money buying a Japanese one)
Maybe it was used to haze new Nintendo employees.
"Good job, Hiroshi. Now can I get you to boot up the GBS? It's right over there."
oh, just ask them to setup the build system for the current project on their developer machine.
To increase the challenge, give them the instructions you got when starting with your handwritten notes added.
Nothing increases the challenge just like specific, yet not precise, slightly outdated and very helpful in the begin instructions written by a software engineer.
Could I request that you upload the little video/audio test portion without commentary? I liked that song actually. Is that from anything?
My guess is that maybe there's a dev version of the Game Boy Player, and that's all it'll work with. That's me throwing something out there though.
Have you posted the dumps/pictures anywhere? I'd love to take a look. I got the AGB Aging 7.1 ROM from another owner (the new owner of this one?) but the CGB ROM looks to be a bad dump.
I'm curious what the board that the player connects to is doing but my thoughts are that the Aging software (AGB) is running on the game boy player and sending data back to that board which is then handing it off to the game cube over the memory card adapter and the game cube is only part of the equation for diagnostic purposes. This would mean that you're missing software but that doesn't make too much sense because this sort of thing would usually be NR reader territory. That also doesn't explain the CGB cart and what exactly "slave mode" is. Unless that's where diagnostic data is going (which seems weird too) but then why the game cube at all?
One clue to figuring this puzzle out would be to figure out how the AGB Aging 7.1 ROM differs from the current 7.0 ROM. I can see that they changed the main menu text and added a "GBS" type option in addition to "AGB" and "AGS" but that doesn't seem to change anything above board. I suspect it's doing something different under the hood, however, and trying to report diagnostic data on memory addresses I'm not monitoring (like perhaps the link port). I'm not too good with software disassembly so I'd have no idea what to look for but maybe someone who does can probe.
Another piece of the puzzle is that CGB Test Cart. That can't be plugged directly into that daughter board, can it? I assume not because it looked like there was a bracket holding that AGB flash cart in. Anyway...
Thanks for sharing
I genuinely don't think the GameCube memory card port (even the serial bus in slot 2) is fast enough to transmit the picture and sound output from the Game Boy Player.
It looks more likely that this was used only to test if a GBP was faulty, rather than to launch any game from it.
I'm just guessing here, but I have a feeling this was for factory workers, to test gameboy players before packaging and being sold.
Try the memory card in slot b!!
The GameCube used the microphone via the memory card slot so it must be functional and be able to receive some sort of information? I don't know :)
Awesome video
Im curious if the interface is similar to the EXI-to-USB adapter (kind of like an official USB Gecko) that Nintendo had distributed with select devkits.
Bummer! Hope somebody gets it running someday. 🤞
I'm pretty sure it prolly needs a specific diagnostics/early GB Player disc for it to work, but that START button really got me curious: What happens if you boot up the GameCube while holding down that Start button?
A lot of Nintendo aging software and hardware have some "Hold this button during startup to do a different thing" kind of deal (even the retail consoles have similar stuff for system diagnostics!) so maaaaybe that could be worth a shot?
Then again, I'm totally talking out of my ass, so take this like a grain of salt. This is still a super amazing find nonetheless!
Just stumbled across your channel the other day, great content man. surprised you don't have more subscribers. also are you from the upper peninsula of Michigan?
My guess is a test for the software side of things. Itd make sense to onky have a couple units to work on the software side if things
The GBS would need a disk to access memory card IO and have it run like the Swiss. The read speed is beyond 64 blocks a second. A software engineer working for a long time could get it running... But the software to access the card IO would still be missing !
For someone curious about what the red error messege says...
it says... "Game Boy Player is not connected. Please turn the power off, and connect Game Boy Player."
Damn, there is really no clue to work the machine...
Here's hoping that the compatible software eventually surfaces.
Take a high resolution picture of the circuit board inside and send it to an electronics engineer like Ben Heck to see what it is and what it does.
Try the GameCube with the Gameboy player add-on & connect the gba cable tat turns into a GameCube port & stick it in the Black GameCube dev unit ...
Did you try to connect in memory card port B ?
Interesting stuff! I have never seen this before. Thanks for sharing Tony!
9:18 I love how you GCN looks but... WHY THAT CONTROLLER!?!
I love it. The madcatz gc controller is king 🤴
I'm not really good at anything past 5th gen systems, but I agree it probably needs a specific disc to boot. My best suggestion would be for someone who has basic GC development skills to take a look at the setup, and try to write a very basic disc that can cause the handshake to happen. Also, this is even stupider... But have you tried switching the Memory Cards into the opposite ports? I seem to remember a Karaoke game I had as a kid using slot 2 for the mic, as opposed to slot 1. Since the memory card on your left seems to be carrying data (As opposed to save files)... It may be worth a shot.
Maybe there's bios in the GBA SpaceWorld addition? Did you try that already? Or the flash card needs to have something flashed to it? (That empty flash card hidden inside)
The memory card slot thing is kinda neat
It is true that the Gameboy player is region free so any disc will work but the gamecube has to be capable of reading it as well. Maybe it isn't able to read the normal commercial discs?
So excited this video is out now!
GOD why did they have to make the red error message so god damn creepy??? am i the only one that gets goosebumps from it?
Theres a action replay gameboy player that uses a memory card to read the gba cart
Thinking way outside the box (or Cube...); it's not used to test GBA connectivity via a controller port, for Four Swords Adventures, PacMan VS, etc? Will it run Japanese retail GameCube discs, for starters? And if so try a "Four Swords cable" compatible game via the Gameboy Player device to see it it recognises it.
I doubt it'll solve the mystery - probably just the ramblings of a mad man... 😁
Weird thing about the GB player is that it’s region free when playing the GB/GBA games but it’s not region free when it comes to the startup disc. Did you use the right region startup disc?
How funny would it be if the last part of this vid was him saying goodbye to his family and explaining why he had to do this?
given the gameboy player had a disc to... initialise? just start? the hardware up, it makes sense for debug hardware to have.. did you try the normal disc? can't find error would indicate its not being started or perhaps a cable issue but then that 2nd one shouldn't also have... unless that's the reason these units are even out there
That aging cart is like an advanced shitpost.
Giant Bulky Station
i really want a rip of that GBA test cartridge music
Wow I'm a GC fanatic and have never even heard of this.
The GB Player hardware is region free btw, the only difference is the discs.
What is the power that's needed for the Gameboy player? Also could a ground be ran from the GameCube to the Gba player? I have a feeling that may help.. wish I could see it in person.
You lucky SOB! I see you have a Pioneer Laseractive there! Been looking for one of those for years! Do you have any of the add-on thingies for either the Mega CD or PC Engine?
You do need that disc software to make it run, so theres no need “to connect this into there and that into there and that into thee snd that into there” damnit.
Hmm. That's not something you see everyday. But I do own the regular Game Boy Player.
I'm curious what happens when you plug that "memory card with a cable" on a regular Game Cube, and then check the contents of the memory card on the boot screen. Does anything appear? Couldn't the software for the handshake be opened this way, maybe?
that piano drop error sound tho
Excellent video keep it up 🔥🔥
was the music also part of the dumped cartridges or did you edit that
The GBA checker had that music natively. Pretty wild!
isnt the memory card slot slower than the normal slot that the GBP connects to? wouldnt be entirely surprised if there was an extra cord that went from the main units bottom into the GBPTS board
Could it be an overcomplicated method to do something simpler, due to a worry that a "simpler" method would be less secure for the GC, and they wouldn't want to risk that going to random factories?
It like make a product that never works, it more like having a display. Unlock the code to find the secret