To dump the bootrom/bios from the final retail GBC, a hardware modification technique called Clock Glitching was used. The system clock was briefly made to run much faster, causing the CPU's program counter (PC) to glitch outside of the bootrom area, and begin executing code from the cartridge instead. Normally the bootrom removes itself from the memory map, and is not readable when running code from the cartridge. But glitching the program counter (PC) into the cartridge area causes the bootrom to remain mapped in memory and be readable. From there, the program on the cartridge would copy the Bootrom contents into the save memory on the cartridge, then you could back up the save memory.
I heard recently that its possible to create gameboy roms in a similar way. By crashing a gameboy and waiting around 20 minutes the game cartridge's data begins to "leak" in such a way that it is played as raw audio. By getting a good recording of the gameboy speaker's beeps, it is possible to reconstruct a full rom of whatever game is in the system.
As I read your comment I kept thinking to myself “their avatar looks really familiar--wait, is that from Suzukisan? That’s a deep cut.” immediately followed by “NO FUCKING WAY” when I looked at your channel and realized you were the person responsible for that fever dream.
The contacts above the CPU are a footprint for a zero insertion force socket - this board has been likely used to qualify pre production multi project wafer test runs of the CPU and these sockets allow to switch between samples without soldering. The soldered on chip without the markings is likely also a pre mass production version and some of the glitches you see in more modern games might be hardware issues fixed in later retail versions of the processor.
The early GBA and even 3DS development kits were large PCBs from Nintendo, created by Intelligent Systems. With the GBA the amount of RAM was a lot smaller. When Nintendo got spooked with the rumours that Sony was entering the market with PSP they replaced it with a new PCB with a larger RAM. With all the prototypes we had to send them back to Nintendo. They replaced them with regular IS systems. The 3DS PCB even had the two screes on the PCB.
We actually had one when we were doing one of the early GBC games (Quest for Camelot) for Nintendo US. The one we had was a bit different though (the screen was in the middle of the board as far i remember, but that was last century so my memory might be fuzzy here). They sent us the actual devkit afterwards but i'm pretty sure they never asked for the early kit to be sent back.
@@Bos_Meong Thanks. The game was far from being stellar but that was my entry point in the game industry. It's crazy how primitive the toolchain was back then, we were still using mostly DOS based tools, all code being done in asm and the art with deluxe paint animation on PC. An interesting anecdote is that at some point, Nintendo sent us a tester from the Mario Club and you could tell this guy knew his work as i remember him spending a whole day testing all the collision on every wall in the game.
The NVC-VUE is a custom tweaked version of NEC v810 CPU. If I had to guess why it was on that board, I'd edge towards it being used as a coprocessor for handling the debug harness. Edit: From a little research the SCSI controller is an NEC chip, which requires a NEC CPU to be run in tandem
Also the nvc 810 had been used in the snes development kit so I assume Nintendo already had debug tools to work with it (memory seeks/mapper and the likes). Also the predecessor of the v810 were commonly used in dev kits to implement stuff like lockstep and this could function as one when paired with the attached gbc dev kit
@@lilkitsune very true! It would be great if @MachoNachoProductions could upload some high res pics of the board, the few floating around are way too low res to ID the chips
Gotta be super rare hardware. I feel this is a prime time for people to start learning how to make these games, especially when we live in a world now where they want to steal our online titles and say that we don't own them. We're now we could start learning how to develop our home video game and claim them as our own
yea all you need now a days is an analogue pocket or if you wanna go 100% instead of 99.99% just get a flash cart. test on an emulator and then run against hardware towards the end for validation. There's even options for the coding side depending how far you want to get into the weeds there, GB Studio is perfect for beginners
Worth mentioning for viewers before misunderstandings spread: the FPGA inside is not at all doing the same job as what's in a MiSTer or Pocket. The CGB "EMULATOR" is only emulating the cartridge itself. The probe is basically just a long extension cable you could plug into any Gameboy, which is why it worked with the prototype GBC. Hell you could use it with a Super-Gameboy or Gameboy Player! The CGB-CAPTURE however, is it's own standalone thing with video output and a dummy system as a "controller". Lemme know if you'd like to take a look at that Tito
I’m actually working on something similar to this right now that uses a raspberry pi to take all of the interfaces and present them over a web interface, turns out the experience from building the game boy switch provided all the missing pieces needed to make this happen
I doubt the glitches are from firmware incompatibility. The firmware is really only present during booting to verify the ROM header and display the logo. After that, it's no longer present in memory space at all. There's no BIOS or OS, games talk directly to the registers inside the CPU. My theory is that either something in the chip itself changed, or that on this revision there was an issue with the LCD not being able to handle the faster clock timings of 8MHZ mode. Try playing a game that is compatible with both CGB and DMG, those typically leave the system in 4MHZ mode, even when running on a CGB.
@@MachoNachoProductionsShame the owner did not give you more info to showcase the software debugger and whether it could e.g. take game state dumps from the gameboy that's hooked up to the probe. Does the big GBC dev board have an IR sensor and an Ext port? Wish you would have have talked about those a bit. Cheers
You must look at the two devices separate. One is software development and the other was BIOS and hardware development. on the H/W board Connector US2 is the BIOS chip and you can dump and write a current GB bios , but do take note that within the bios is the code that controls the lcd (initital setup etc) and games use that to work , some coders included their own code instead of using the bios and thats where your LCD issue comes in, if you check the lcd on that board you will see it has different timings to a factory retail lcd. On the Software box the ram was changeable so it could support newer models even though they not been designed yet and also gimp you on features(upsell whats already there) , some units could just emulate carts and others would do a form of dual access ram giving you full debug of real time memory.
It's interesting that you could dump this bios and then try a retail bios to ser if there are still detectable errors in some games, that would be due to a hw flaw in the prerelease cpu.
I would hesitate to call the boot code on the CGB a "BIOS" or a "Firmware". It's more of an initialization routine and signature check. Very short in length and hidden from sight as soon as the code on the cartridge starts running.
I remember even at the time some people were ordering 'backup' flash cartridges from places like lik sang and using those with retail gameboys to make cheap devkits. I used to code small games and demo effects with one...
some of the features of the bootrom seem to align with a early document leaked in the gigaleak. the version listed happens to also allow you to open up a pallet selector similar to the super gameboy. according to the document, you accsess the menu by pressing A+B+Select+Start. if you get a chance, please test it out. and please dump the bios, it is possible and it will probably be done in a way similar to what was done for the final Gameboy color.
That laptop was my childhood kinda. My Russian friend’s dad was obsessed with the fact that my 9 Y/O self was coming to him for advice kids just NEVER asked back in 2003. He worked for Dell and his basement was littered in what little me would describe as “My mother’s hell but my heaven” He noticed I was interested in the static film sealed processors and RAM sticks that were new. I could feel him judging me with what I knew about the PCs I found in dumpsters around town that I built into my gaming machine. I had no idea what a GPU was and he showed me a GeForce 4 card making my games play better after putting it in my pc. I was the son he wanted but had to barrow from my uninterested parents. My parents had a hatred towards my friends parents. They easily provided and were interested in what just annoyed my parents because they just simply weren’t interested. My friend’s dad gave me a Windows 98 Toshiba Satellite and my god as underpowered as it was it was perfect for the last leg of its lifecycle. AOL free trial CDs in every grocery store with off line flash games I could play anywhere any time? If you remember when Bejewled and Collapse were popular you lived in my time
Fun video thanks, Tito but 9:15 as someone who was working in IT support when that old laptop was current let me just say, please, please *do not* open old laptops like that from one corner! You will put stress on the hinges & they will eventually brake. Less relevant now but OEMs like Toshiba would not cover the repair of broken hinges under warranty back in the day if we could get the customer to admit they opened their laptop by one corner & I have had many customers screaming at me &/or crying because I had to refuse a repair under warranty.
That's a good rule in general, not just for old laptops. Learned the hard way - recently left hinge on my 3 year old HP Envy (out of warranty) teared off screw post inserts from the plastic in the lid. Okay, I confess, it did suffer a risky fall about a year ago, so structural integrity was kinda questionable in the first place, but still, from now on, I'll be using two hands to open the lid (or at least will grab by the middle only).
There's something really charming about them using SNES power supplies for this. It was probably more because the power supply was quite generic (my SNES supply died ages ago and I have been using an non-specific supply I picked up in a random electrical retailer since) but them keeping it 'in the family', much like with the Virtual Boy chip there, is very much in keeping with the 'new things with outdated technology' ethos that gave us the Game Boy in the first place.
I've seen one at spaceworld in a conference room with about 10 Nintendo employees way back in 93 or 94 I think. Intelligent systems made the FDS and the FC dev kit after using the original dev methods to change the world
Awesome kit, and an FPGA from 1998 on it's own is a seriously cool thing to see. I know we talk about FPGA all the time now but I had no idea they were around back in the 90's. Very cool! Thanks for share all this with us Tito!
GmaeBoy and GameBoy Color run at different clock rates. I'm almost positive looking at this video capture that the prototype board is simply running at too slow of a clock speed when in GBC mode, considering GB mode works just fine. I wonder if there is a way with the available traces to probe for, and adjust the clock speed to make it match a retail unit.
GBC games need to manually enter double speed mode, it's not automatic. It also appears that the game logic, music, and gameplay speed was correct even with the games flickering badly, so the processor was indeed in double speed mode at the time.
As other peopke have mentioned, it would be neat to dump the boot ROM. If you're interested in doing this, I have practical experience and could help you with it.
Nit pick about the IS-CGB-EMULATOR : "This device uses a Super Nintendo power supply." The jack is for a Famicom and Super Famicom power supply, the SNES connector is different. The CGB-STB-X2 of course uses a Super Nintendo power supply as stated. The CGB-STB-X2 cannot use a Super Nintendo pad on connector P9 unless you want to bypass the controller's shift register IC and wire buttons in directly. I wonder if the main chip may be faulty or has a less than complete GBC implementation, which might explain the board's relatively clean state.
Such a cool look at how games were tested back in the day! I just started learning how to use Game Boy Studio to design my own game, and while it doesn't need any external hardware, it feels really cool to be in the developers seat. I know it's not your style per see but it would be cool do do a GB Studio feature video and maybe a tutorial.
The featured PCB is probably more for devs working on launch titles. I did a bit of GBC testing around then, and we mostly used flash cartridges. We also had a N64 with a GBC emulator for testing on a TV, although it wasn't trusted as much as the regular hardware due to occasional differences that crop up with emulators.
I don't think its the firmware the issue, as it is basically just a cartridge validity checker that makes itself invisible to the game as soon the check passes. I would bet the glitches are more a incomplete hardware thing.
Your modding videos are great, but i think the videos about obsecure or rare hardware are my favorites, your presentation style is really well suited to them
This is a piece of history in many ways. The blue/silver Nintendo logo is like the Nintendo logo used for some Japanese ads in/around the SFC era. That’s a neat touch! Thanks for sharing
I didn't know paper Mario wasn't intelligent game. When I think of games that use your brain I think of stuff that you could apply the word puzzle to. Like for example Dr Mario and puzzle League. Thats where i usually see the intelligent systems logo.
Wow, I didn't know that this episode was going to turn into an installment of LGR. Very nice! The GBC is probably my favorite system ever. Logged so many hours on it growing up and still play em to this day.
7:30 I don't think there is a firmware on the board, it's just hardware that runs code from the cartridge. The "bios" just checks nintendo logo and locks if failed, nothing more. The glitches might be created from something else, like hardware differences.
If it is possible to dump the firmware of the big prototype board, do it, and upload it online, as it would be interesting to have this unique firmware available to use and tinker with.
I worked on a Nintendo DS launch title and the very earliest DS developer kits looked sort of like this: big raw PCB with a bunch of stuff on it, and a hodgepodge of the minimum-necessary stuff to get started with programming. I’ve never seen any of those units or anything about them turn up online.
That NVC-VUE chip is a VRAM chip. The same one is used in the Virtual Boy because internally they are basically the same as a GBC, the 3D effect is just a mirror trick.
Did some game testing for GBC around then. We had flash-type cartridges for putting builds on, and also a N64 with a cartridge that could emulate the GBC, with its own cartridge slot. Mostly we used GBC's for testing. I can't remember if they were mudded, but I suspect they were. Wasn't a fan of the link cable for multiplayer.
The compatibility issues are because of hardware differences, not firmware. The only firmware in a GB or GBC is the bootloader. It's a 256 byte piece of code that's burned into the CPU when that part is manufactured. All it does it display the logo animation, load the Nintendo logo from the cartridge, display it and check if it's the correct logo data. If it is, it fully disables access to the bootloader code and turns full control of the hardware over to the game cartridge. For the GBC, it also checks if the cartridge is GBC-enhanced/exclusive. If it isn't, it puts the hardware into GB compatibility mode and lets you change the color palette if you push buttons during the logo screen. Since GBC games mostly work just fine on that board apart from the graphical issues, I would guess the hardware incompatibility is in the PPU -- GPU basically but it processes sprites and background tiles rather than polygons and shaders. Most other incompatibilities, I would expect to see the game run at half speed, have many of the graphical elements replaced by garbled Missingno-looking boxes, announce that it only runs on GBC (in the case of Crystal), or most likely crash very quickly like when you select the wrong MBC. This would also explain why non-GBC-enhanced games run better -- the GBC PPU has two modes that behave differently, one legacy mode that replicates the old Gameboy PPU, and one that has some tweaks and enhancements beyond just the addition of color. So most likely they made some late revision to the PPU between making that dev board and making the final design. Also, I would guess that dev board is probably for internal use by the team and partner companies designing the GBC hardware itself, not for developing games to run on it. Features like unpopulated holes in the board where you can add debug probes or solder in wires to connect a controller, are something you'd give a hardware dev, not a software dev. Software devs are scared of soldering irons and leery of exposed ESD-sensitive circuit boards. They also need something that connects to a PC for debugging and controls using an actual GBC to see how the game feels on real hardware.
the blue nintendo boot-up screen is likely in reference to the old nintendo slides at the end of the japanese commercials, it even shines like the commercial one did which is cool :)
The only thing that I think would have made more sense is if the battery connectors were designed the way they could use any GameBoy model for the dev kit. Then again, this thing was internal material anyway and from the time before the retail release also. Pretty cool to see the Color version now, Tito.
Nintendo prototypes are X units... NX is the Starfleet registration for prototype starships. NX is also the Nintendo Switch's project name. NX-01 is the USS Enterprise, pre-Federation. Rambling over.
You rekindled my love for modding and refurbing tito. Being stuck in Norway i dont have to much interesting to refurbe ATM but I'm aving up to get a sharp twin famicom to use and refurb. I want all the pc engines to but need to recap my duo first to justify getting more 🤣
the firmware is definitely dumpable. likely using a clock glitching attack or a power killing attack similar to what was used on the Gameboy color. in addition you can't flash the firmware as the program is embedded into the CPU die
This hardware, or at least the idea of it is in the film “Tetris” on Apple TV, I had assumed that it was an over the top idea but I guess it’s nice to see it did exist
The reason why it doesnt work for more recent retail games, is it's designed to run debug software, not final builds. It's probably shutting down on purpose. I dont know, as I never tried running retail games on the thing back in the day (and if im honest, most of our dev back in the GBC days was done on pc emulators.. but that's another story)
I'm curious - what's your process when you decide whether to plug something (like a different debugging hardware or modern game cartridges) without risking damage to the device? How do you approach it and ensure that there's no potential risk of something short-circuiting or other issues?
I'm REALLY interested in this early GBC hardware, especially since it has all the test pins broken out, INCLUDING the normally unconnected (NC) pin 39. If you have a multimeter, if you can, I'd probe that pin on the board on the diode setting to see if it's connected internally. If it is, then call me crazy, but this early hardware may be what the GB Boy Colour is based on. I got some hardware test ROMs I'd like to see run on it too!
It would be great to run the tests on both the current bios and then try a retail one. Why dos the presence of pin 39 here point yo this being the origin of the GB Boy Colour and why does this pin do in that unit?
This was really awesome to see. I hope collectors with really rare stuff like this keep lending it to you so we get to know these things better. Cool piece of history.
It may not necessarily be an earlier "version" of the board. This board kinda screams to me that it was used for the development of the GBC ability to colorize DMG titles, and focuses more on that feature than it does actual GBC titles.
I think that chip you asked about is Nintendo experimenting with 3D graphics since the game boy advanced is technically 3D capable possibly they were trying to push something like that on an earlier console
Hi Tito. Your videos are always excellent. One small suggestion though. I can see your microphone wobbling in every video. Its very distracting (to me, at least) lol. Any way to secure it better?
Awesome video Tito! Has anyone dumped that early firmware? It would be cool to see the differences in a hex editor, Maybe bring the different slash screen over to the retail firmware.
@@MachoNachoProductions Since it's a prototype board, it's possible that it doesn't have the bootrom protection like a retail gameboy (pure speculation, but worth a shot imo). If you're interested I could try to adapt the dumper program (with my very limited ASM knowledge) I'd really appreciate it as this could easily be lost with how rare the hardware is! Also thanks for making the video :)
@@MachoNachoProductions I know Costis personally, and I think he was the one that dumped the original GBC BIOS. It's been a long time since I've talked to him (I think around 08-09) and maybe too long to remember the details, but I think he used an FPGA to do clock glitching. If I recall it went something like, you wire up the address, data, and some modified clock lines from some accessible address space (WRAM/ROM or something) and I think all the address accesses would show up there as the CPU executed, with exception of if the address space was within the actual IROM space, and then since you can now externally control the clock, you then tick the clock and count the clock cycles and wait for the lockout register address to show up on the address lines where it goes to write to some internal register to disable the IROM access, and that address I believe still shows up on the address lines (I could be wrong) and then now knowing how many clock cycles into the boot process the lockout register write happens, you do the process again, only this time now knowing how many instructions you have to clock in before you get to the clock cycle that executes the instruction to write to the lockout register, you then do a very quick extreme overclock at that exact moment to glitch the CPU to NOT execute the actual lockout register write instruction, which then will eventually fall into user controlled code on the cart with the BIOS still actively able to be read out. I'd almost be sure it could be achieved today more easily with a RPI Pico.
I wonder if there's a BIOS update out there somewhere that could potentially fix the issues with newer Gameboy Color game and/or enable the use of Gameboy Advanced games.
its crazy how far handheld technology has come since 1998. for me it feels like just yesterday the gameboy color came out, literally everyone but me on my school bus had one.
being an early DEV board they would have been using OG gb software as a test bed as nothing specific to the GBC would have been developed yet. also you'll find the wardware etc has alot in common with the SNES or s famicom because the GBC was essentially a shrunk down to hand held SNES thats why alot of SNES titles are on the GBC. obviously there are changes to account for the smaller form factor
The reason the GBC games shown don’t work is likely because they were developed using a later version of the SDK which features abilities and op codes not on the early debug kit. Maybe try something very early like Wario Land 2 or Tetris DX.
To dump the bootrom/bios from the final retail GBC, a hardware modification technique called Clock Glitching was used. The system clock was briefly made to run much faster, causing the CPU's program counter (PC) to glitch outside of the bootrom area, and begin executing code from the cartridge instead. Normally the bootrom removes itself from the memory map, and is not readable when running code from the cartridge. But glitching the program counter (PC) into the cartridge area causes the bootrom to remain mapped in memory and be readable. From there, the program on the cartridge would copy the Bootrom contents into the save memory on the cartridge, then you could back up the save memory.
These kinds of comments are why I dare to scroll into the comments section. 👍
I heard recently that its possible to create gameboy roms in a similar way. By crashing a gameboy and waiting around 20 minutes the game cartridge's data begins to "leak" in such a way that it is played as raw audio. By getting a good recording of the gameboy speaker's beeps, it is possible to reconstruct a full rom of whatever game is in the system.
@@DawnApon That is for the GBA, not the game boy. None of that applies here at all.
As I read your comment I kept thinking to myself “their avatar looks really familiar--wait, is that from Suzukisan? That’s a deep cut.” immediately followed by “NO FUCKING WAY” when I looked at your channel and realized you were the person responsible for that fever dream.
Very interesting, even if for the GBA, thanks for sharing info :) @@DawnApon
The contacts above the CPU are a footprint for a zero insertion force socket - this board has been likely used to qualify pre production multi project wafer test runs of the CPU and these sockets allow to switch between samples without soldering. The soldered on chip without the markings is likely also a pre mass production version and some of the glitches you see in more modern games might be hardware issues fixed in later retail versions of the processor.
Just like he said….
The early GBA and even 3DS development kits were large PCBs from Nintendo, created by Intelligent Systems. With the GBA the amount of RAM was a lot smaller. When Nintendo got spooked with the rumours that Sony was entering the market with PSP they replaced it with a new PCB with a larger RAM. With all the prototypes we had to send them back to Nintendo. They replaced them with regular IS systems.
The 3DS PCB even had the two screes on the PCB.
We actually had one when we were doing one of the early GBC games (Quest for Camelot) for Nintendo US. The one we had was a bit different though (the screen was in the middle of the board as far i remember, but that was last century so my memory might be fuzzy here). They sent us the actual devkit afterwards but i'm pretty sure they never asked for the early kit to be sent back.
I love hearing how these things were used by actual developers, not just "collectors" later down the road ❤
wow youre quest of cameloy gbc dEv? thars cool
@@Bos_Meong Thanks. The game was far from being stellar but that was my entry point in the game industry. It's crazy how primitive the toolchain was back then, we were still using mostly DOS based tools, all code being done in asm and the art with deluxe paint animation on PC. An interesting anecdote is that at some point, Nintendo sent us a tester from the Mario Club and you could tell this guy knew his work as i remember him spending a whole day testing all the collision on every wall in the game.
@@micdune sounds like an absolute nightmare. modern game devs really dont know how good they got it, thanks for all your hard work
@@sweetypuss As a dev who's crossed different generations, it's a different sort of nightmare now.
The NVC-VUE is a custom tweaked version of NEC v810 CPU. If I had to guess why it was on that board, I'd edge towards it being used as a coprocessor for handling the debug harness.
Edit: From a little research the SCSI controller is an NEC chip, which requires a NEC CPU to be run in tandem
Also the nvc 810 had been used in the snes development kit so I assume Nintendo already had debug tools to work with it (memory seeks/mapper and the likes).
Also the predecessor of the v810 were commonly used in dev kits to implement stuff like lockstep and this could function as one when paired with the attached gbc dev kit
@@lilkitsune very true! It would be great if @MachoNachoProductions could upload some high res pics of the board, the few floating around are way too low res to ID the chips
Gotta be super rare hardware. I feel this is a prime time for people to start learning how to make these games, especially when we live in a world now where they want to steal our online titles and say that we don't own them. We're now we could start learning how to develop our home video game and claim them as our own
you probably don't need all this hardware for development, remember how many bootleg games was made for GBC?
yea all you need now a days is an analogue pocket or if you wanna go 100% instead of 99.99% just get a flash cart. test on an emulator and then run against hardware towards the end for validation. There's even options for the coding side depending how far you want to get into the weeds there, GB Studio is perfect for beginners
Im not sure about retro consoles but game engines like unity and unreal are free to download and play around with
Wait, who's going around stealing online titles!? wym?
@@kphaxxgame and media companies in general have been moving in the direction of making games (edit to add: and media) a rent seeking enterprise
Worth mentioning for viewers before misunderstandings spread: the FPGA inside is not at all doing the same job as what's in a MiSTer or Pocket. The CGB "EMULATOR" is only emulating the cartridge itself. The probe is basically just a long extension cable you could plug into any Gameboy, which is why it worked with the prototype GBC. Hell you could use it with a Super-Gameboy or Gameboy Player!
The CGB-CAPTURE however, is it's own standalone thing with video output and a dummy system as a "controller". Lemme know if you'd like to take a look at that Tito
A single functioning gameboy on a huge pcb board
I’m actually working on something similar to this right now that uses a raspberry pi to take all of the interfaces and present them over a web interface, turns out the experience from building the game boy switch provided all the missing pieces needed to make this happen
Very cool, I’ll be interested in seeing how it turns out 👍
I doubt the glitches are from firmware incompatibility. The firmware is really only present during booting to verify the ROM header and display the logo. After that, it's no longer present in memory space at all. There's no BIOS or OS, games talk directly to the registers inside the CPU.
My theory is that either something in the chip itself changed, or that on this revision there was an issue with the LCD not being able to handle the faster clock timings of 8MHZ mode.
Try playing a game that is compatible with both CGB and DMG, those typically leave the system in 4MHZ mode, even when running on a CGB.
Pokémon Crystal runs in 4MHz mode and that has the same issues in this video.
Tito is really good at presentation no wonder everybody sends him stuff to review
Thank you! Glad you enjoy the presentation! 🙏
I wish someone can send him over a DMG 102, 103, or 104 for review. Those projects are amazing in the modding community
@@MachoNachoProductionsShame the owner did not give you more info to showcase the software debugger and whether it could e.g. take game state dumps from the gameboy that's hooked up to the probe.
Does the big GBC dev board have an IR sensor and an Ext port? Wish you would have have talked about those a bit. Cheers
Been saying that since 2020 when I found the channel. I'm surprised large companies aren't using him to explain various internal processes.
Shout out to Andrew for sending that over to Tito to showcase for us! Thanks guys!
You must look at the two devices separate. One is software development and the other was BIOS and hardware development. on the H/W board Connector US2 is the BIOS chip and you can dump and write a current GB bios , but do take note that within the bios is the code that controls the lcd (initital setup etc) and games use that to work , some coders included their own code instead of using the bios and thats where your LCD issue comes in, if you check the lcd on that board you will see it has different timings to a factory retail lcd. On the Software box the ram was changeable so it could support newer models even though they not been designed yet and also gimp you on features(upsell whats already there) , some units could just emulate carts and others would do a form of dual access ram giving you full debug of real time memory.
This is very interesting, thank you for sharing! I’ll let the owner know that it should be possible to dump the bios.
It's interesting that you could dump this bios and then try a retail bios to ser if there are still detectable errors in some games, that would be due to a hw flaw in the prerelease cpu.
I would hesitate to call the boot code on the CGB a "BIOS" or a "Firmware". It's more of an initialization routine and signature check. Very short in length and hidden from sight as soon as the code on the cartridge starts running.
@@MachoNachoProductionsPlease let us know if you archive the bios!
Imagine a world where we don’t have flash carts or products like the GBxCart or GB Operator and only had hardware like this to test the games we make.
Thank goodness there are incredible and cost effective tools nowadays for game boy development!
I remember even at the time some people were ordering 'backup' flash cartridges from places like lik sang and using those with retail gameboys to make cheap devkits.
I used to code small games and demo effects with one...
@@MachoNachoProductions Once somebody had once of these duplicating it might not have been that hard, legal issues aside.
That huge board would be a good piece to frame up on the wall
As a former GBC developer, this brings me back!!
Ok, before I watch this any further, I have to do this:
**DUMP! ALL! THE! THINGS!** This is literally historical - please help preserve this!
some of the features of the bootrom seem to align with a early document leaked in the gigaleak. the version listed happens to also allow you to open up a pallet selector similar to the super gameboy. according to the document, you accsess the menu by pressing A+B+Select+Start. if you get a chance, please test it out. and please dump the bios, it is possible and it will probably be done in a way similar to what was done for the final Gameboy color.
That laptop was my childhood kinda.
My Russian friend’s dad was obsessed with the fact that my 9 Y/O self was coming to him for advice kids just NEVER asked back in 2003.
He worked for Dell and his basement was littered in what little me would describe as “My mother’s hell but my heaven”
He noticed I was interested in the static film sealed processors and RAM sticks that were new. I could feel him judging me with what I knew about the PCs I found in dumpsters around town that I built into my gaming machine.
I had no idea what a GPU was and he showed me a GeForce 4 card making my games play better after putting it in my pc.
I was the son he wanted but had to barrow from my uninterested parents.
My parents had a hatred towards my friends parents. They easily provided and were interested in what just annoyed my parents because they just simply weren’t interested.
My friend’s dad gave me a Windows 98 Toshiba Satellite and my god as underpowered as it was it was perfect for the last leg of its lifecycle.
AOL free trial CDs in every grocery store with off line flash games I could play anywhere any time?
If you remember when Bejewled and Collapse were popular you lived in my time
Fun video thanks, Tito but 9:15 as someone who was working in IT support when that old laptop was current let me just say, please, please *do not* open old laptops like that from one corner! You will put stress on the hinges & they will eventually brake. Less relevant now but OEMs like Toshiba would not cover the repair of broken hinges under warranty back in the day if we could get the customer to admit they opened their laptop by one corner & I have had many customers screaming at me &/or crying because I had to refuse a repair under warranty.
That's a good rule in general, not just for old laptops. Learned the hard way - recently left hinge on my 3 year old HP Envy (out of warranty) teared off screw post inserts from the plastic in the lid.
Okay, I confess, it did suffer a risky fall about a year ago, so structural integrity was kinda questionable in the first place, but still, from now on, I'll be using two hands to open the lid (or at least will grab by the middle only).
There's something really charming about them using SNES power supplies for this. It was probably more because the power supply was quite generic (my SNES supply died ages ago and I have been using an non-specific supply I picked up in a random electrical retailer since) but them keeping it 'in the family', much like with the Virtual Boy chip there, is very much in keeping with the 'new things with outdated technology' ethos that gave us the Game Boy in the first place.
I've seen one at spaceworld in a conference room with about 10 Nintendo employees way back in 93 or 94 I think. Intelligent systems made the FDS and the FC dev kit after using the original dev methods to change the world
Awesome kit, and an FPGA from 1998 on it's own is a seriously cool thing to see. I know we talk about FPGA all the time now but I had no idea they were around back in the 90's. Very cool! Thanks for share all this with us Tito!
the NVE-VUE chip is a 16 bit v810 rom cpu hybrid that handles ram addressing, IO, and timing.
GmaeBoy and GameBoy Color run at different clock rates. I'm almost positive looking at this video capture that the prototype board is simply running at too slow of a clock speed when in GBC mode, considering GB mode works just fine. I wonder if there is a way with the available traces to probe for, and adjust the clock speed to make it match a retail unit.
Oh that’s very interesting! Definitely worth checking out!
GBC games need to manually enter double speed mode, it's not automatic. It also appears that the game logic, music, and gameplay speed was correct even with the games flickering badly, so the processor was indeed in double speed mode at the time.
Would be cool to poke around the test pads and see if it’s possible to dump the old bios. It’s a neat piece of history that’s for sure.
That would make things quite interesting on an emulator
Wouldn't be surprised if it magically appeared sometime in the next month.
As other peopke have mentioned, it would be neat to dump the boot ROM. If you're interested in doing this, I have practical experience and could help you with it.
Nit pick about the IS-CGB-EMULATOR : "This device uses a Super Nintendo power supply." The jack is for a Famicom and Super Famicom power supply, the SNES connector is different. The CGB-STB-X2 of course uses a Super Nintendo power supply as stated. The CGB-STB-X2 cannot use a Super Nintendo pad on connector P9 unless you want to bypass the controller's shift register IC and wire buttons in directly. I wonder if the main chip may be faulty or has a less than complete GBC implementation, which might explain the board's relatively clean state.
No
Such a cool look at how games were tested back in the day! I just started learning how to use Game Boy Studio to design my own game, and while it doesn't need any external hardware, it feels really cool to be in the developers seat. I know it's not your style per see but it would be cool do do a GB Studio feature video and maybe a tutorial.
The featured PCB is probably more for devs working on launch titles. I did a bit of GBC testing around then, and we mostly used flash cartridges. We also had a N64 with a GBC emulator for testing on a TV, although it wasn't trusted as much as the regular hardware due to occasional differences that crop up with emulators.
Love the shade thrown at heritage auctions.
I don't think its the firmware the issue, as it is basically just a cartridge validity checker that makes itself invisible to the game as soon the check passes.
I would bet the glitches are more a incomplete hardware thing.
Your modding videos are great, but i think the videos about obsecure or rare hardware are my favorites, your presentation style is really well suited to them
Thank you so much 🙏 Really glad you think so, I’ve got more videos like this planned. Stay tuned 😁
It’s amazing that people even find and could get their hands on things like these.
Thé Virtual boy CPU is probably using thé stick of RAM and use to report debug info from thé GBC SoC
It surely drive thé SCSI ports
Thé firmware on thé prototype GBC isn't thé problem i think thé SoC is an buggy revision
try flashing that early firmware to a finished game boy to see if it works
Just got back from school to a brand new macho nacho vid! Lets GO!
This is a piece of history in many ways. The blue/silver Nintendo logo is like the Nintendo logo used for some Japanese ads in/around the SFC era. That’s a neat touch! Thanks for sharing
It's soo dope how this was all dev'd out back in the day.
0:14 why are you holding it like that
To turn on while getting that shot, clearly.
The music in the background on 4:20ish is from a video game, right? It's in my head, but I can't work out where it's from.
8:07 is that Bomberman? Lol
I didn't know paper Mario wasn't intelligent game. When I think of games that use your brain I think of stuff that you could apply the word puzzle to.
Like for example Dr Mario and puzzle League. Thats where i usually see the intelligent systems logo.
Wow, I didn't know that this episode was going to turn into an installment of LGR. Very nice! The GBC is probably my favorite system ever. Logged so many hours on it growing up and still play em to this day.
7:30 I don't think there is a firmware on the board, it's just hardware that runs code from the cartridge. The "bios" just checks nintendo logo and locks if failed, nothing more. The glitches might be created from something else, like hardware differences.
If it is possible to dump the firmware of the big prototype board, do it, and upload it online, as it would be interesting to have this unique firmware available to use and tinker with.
I worked on a Nintendo DS launch title and the very earliest DS developer kits looked sort of like this: big raw PCB with a bunch of stuff on it, and a hodgepodge of the minimum-necessary stuff to get started with programming. I’ve never seen any of those units or anything about them turn up online.
That NVC-VUE chip is a VRAM chip. The same one is used in the Virtual Boy because internally they are basically the same as a GBC, the 3D effect is just a mirror trick.
Did some game testing for GBC around then. We had flash-type cartridges for putting builds on, and also a N64 with a cartridge that could emulate the GBC, with its own cartridge slot. Mostly we used GBC's for testing. I can't remember if they were mudded, but I suspect they were. Wasn't a fan of the link cable for multiplayer.
The compatibility issues are because of hardware differences, not firmware. The only firmware in a GB or GBC is the bootloader. It's a 256 byte piece of code that's burned into the CPU when that part is manufactured. All it does it display the logo animation, load the Nintendo logo from the cartridge, display it and check if it's the correct logo data. If it is, it fully disables access to the bootloader code and turns full control of the hardware over to the game cartridge. For the GBC, it also checks if the cartridge is GBC-enhanced/exclusive. If it isn't, it puts the hardware into GB compatibility mode and lets you change the color palette if you push buttons during the logo screen.
Since GBC games mostly work just fine on that board apart from the graphical issues, I would guess the hardware incompatibility is in the PPU -- GPU basically but it processes sprites and background tiles rather than polygons and shaders. Most other incompatibilities, I would expect to see the game run at half speed, have many of the graphical elements replaced by garbled Missingno-looking boxes, announce that it only runs on GBC (in the case of Crystal), or most likely crash very quickly like when you select the wrong MBC. This would also explain why non-GBC-enhanced games run better -- the GBC PPU has two modes that behave differently, one legacy mode that replicates the old Gameboy PPU, and one that has some tweaks and enhancements beyond just the addition of color. So most likely they made some late revision to the PPU between making that dev board and making the final design.
Also, I would guess that dev board is probably for internal use by the team and partner companies designing the GBC hardware itself, not for developing games to run on it. Features like unpopulated holes in the board where you can add debug probes or solder in wires to connect a controller, are something you'd give a hardware dev, not a software dev. Software devs are scared of soldering irons and leery of exposed ESD-sensitive circuit boards. They also need something that connects to a PC for debugging and controls using an actual GBC to see how the game feels on real hardware.
Tito I'm digging the smooth jazz background music 👌
0:53 Says “Without any further adieu” but immediately adds more adieu. 😅
the blue nintendo boot-up screen is likely in reference to the old nintendo slides at the end of the japanese commercials, it even shines like the commercial one did which is cool :)
The only thing that I think would have made more sense is if the battery connectors were designed the way they could use any GameBoy model for the dev kit.
Then again, this thing was internal material anyway and from the time before the retail release also.
Pretty cool to see the Color version now, Tito.
That blue Nintendo logo looks great.. Great video as always.
It would have been neat to see the real-time debugging features of the PC software while running code on the GBC emulator.
Nintendo prototypes are X units...
NX is the Starfleet registration for prototype starships.
NX is also the Nintendo Switch's project name.
NX-01 is the USS Enterprise, pre-Federation.
Rambling over.
I must be from the future because I thought you already covered this lol. Great video!
Edit: Also those old Toshiba laptops had awesome keyboards!
Another Awesome Video! Love the Gameboy content and the work you put into all your videos!
Thank you so much!! 🙏
Nice! I'm glad to see some of the GB history.
You rekindled my love for modding and refurbing tito. Being stuck in Norway i dont have to much interesting to refurbe ATM but I'm aving up to get a sharp twin famicom to use and refurb. I want all the pc engines to but need to recap my duo first to justify getting more 🤣
Insanely cool stuff, really neat that it works standalone too
NVC-VUE is a modified NEC V810 CPU. I think it's being repurposed here as a general purpose microcontroller. (SCSI stuff perhaps?)
Tito, is there anyway to dump that firmware from the CGB-STB-X2?
I’m told by the owner it’s not possible. It would be amazing if someone could pull it off. Definitely needs to be preserved.
@@MachoNachoProductions that’s too bad. Would definitely be worth preserving. That boot logo, I’m kind of in love with it. Hahaha
What a great explanation of things! You have my sub!
what a cool prototype. Didn't think anyone would see prototype hardware that's this early in development
It would be cool to flash the production firmware to it.
But then you lose out on the historical value. Which is really all it has going for itself
It would be cool to somehow dump the current firmware, although I’m told it couldn’t be done
@@MachoNachoProductions Very interesting.
I know lots of people would take that as a challenge!
the firmware is definitely dumpable. likely using a clock glitching attack or a power killing attack similar to what was used on the Gameboy color. in addition you can't flash the firmware as the program is embedded into the CPU die
If it's like a retail GBC, then the bootrom would be mask ROM physically stored inside of the CPU, and not be writable at all.
Given that one of the debugging units uses a retail board, can you hook up the cartridge plug from the emulator to a retail Game Boy Color?
This hardware, or at least the idea of it is in the film “Tetris” on Apple TV, I had assumed that it was an over the top idea but I guess it’s nice to see it did exist
Very cool and interesting!
Thank you for this dip in history
The reason why it doesnt work for more recent retail games, is it's designed to run debug software, not final builds. It's probably shutting down on purpose. I dont know, as I never tried running retail games on the thing back in the day (and if im honest, most of our dev back in the GBC days was done on pc emulators.. but that's another story)
Imagine transforming this into a proper handheld with the exclusive boot screen
Very cool video! Also, any chance we will ever see the video of the PS5 Developer console?
I'm curious - what's your process when you decide whether to plug something (like a different debugging hardware or modern game cartridges) without risking damage to the device? How do you approach it and ensure that there's no potential risk of something short-circuiting or other issues?
Super cool piece of history, I love these kind of deep dives into prototypes.
I'm REALLY interested in this early GBC hardware, especially since it has all the test pins broken out, INCLUDING the normally unconnected (NC) pin 39.
If you have a multimeter, if you can, I'd probe that pin on the board on the diode setting to see if it's connected internally. If it is, then call me crazy, but this early hardware may be what the GB Boy Colour is based on. I got some hardware test ROMs I'd like to see run on it too!
It would be great to run the tests on both the current bios and then try a retail one.
Why dos the presence of pin 39 here point yo this being the origin of the GB Boy Colour and why does this pin do in that unit?
This was really awesome to see. I hope collectors with really rare stuff like this keep lending it to you so we get to know these things better. Cool piece of history.
It may not necessarily be an earlier "version" of the board. This board kinda screams to me that it was used for the development of the GBC ability to colorize DMG titles, and focuses more on that feature than it does actual GBC titles.
Development is no job for a gameboy... This unit here is a gameman!
I think that chip you asked about is Nintendo experimenting with 3D graphics since the game boy advanced is technically 3D capable possibly they were trying to push something like that on an earlier console
So cool of your friend to let you borrow these to show them off
Hi Tito. Your videos are always excellent. One small suggestion though. I can see your microphone wobbling in every video. Its very distracting (to me, at least) lol. Any way to secure it better?
I don't know what it is, but you have it. Your videos are awesome. I can't explain it, but it gives me a lot of joy and a little nostalgia.
After the Game Boy, Nintendo proudly presents the Game Man.
Awesome video Tito! Has anyone dumped that early firmware? It would be cool to see the differences in a hex editor, Maybe bring the different slash screen over to the retail firmware.
Not that I’m aware of. It seems that it’s not possible or very difficult to do. It needs to be preserved.
@@MachoNachoProductions Since it's a prototype board, it's possible that it doesn't have the bootrom protection like a retail gameboy (pure speculation, but worth a shot imo). If you're interested I could try to adapt the dumper program (with my very limited ASM knowledge)
I'd really appreciate it as this could easily be lost with how rare the hardware is! Also thanks for making the video :)
@@MachoNachoProductions I know Costis personally, and I think he was the one that dumped the original GBC BIOS. It's been a long time since I've talked to him (I think around 08-09) and maybe too long to remember the details, but I think he used an FPGA to do clock glitching. If I recall it went something like, you wire up the address, data, and some modified clock lines from some accessible address space (WRAM/ROM or something) and I think all the address accesses would show up there as the CPU executed, with exception of if the address space was within the actual IROM space, and then since you can now externally control the clock, you then tick the clock and count the clock cycles and wait for the lockout register address to show up on the address lines where it goes to write to some internal register to disable the IROM access, and that address I believe still shows up on the address lines (I could be wrong) and then now knowing how many clock cycles into the boot process the lockout register write happens, you do the process again, only this time now knowing how many instructions you have to clock in before you get to the clock cycle that executes the instruction to write to the lockout register, you then do a very quick extreme overclock at that exact moment to glitch the CPU to NOT execute the actual lockout register write instruction, which then will eventually fall into user controlled code on the cart with the BIOS still actively able to be read out. I'd almost be sure it could be achieved today more easily with a RPI Pico.
I wonder if there's a BIOS update out there somewhere that could potentially fix the issues with newer Gameboy Color game and/or enable the use of Gameboy Advanced games.
always love seeing the classic tech reviews while playing space engineers keep up the good work :3
its crazy how far handheld technology has come since 1998. for me it feels like just yesterday the gameboy color came out, literally everyone but me on my school bus had one.
Agree!
Your content is so great, I really appreciate your uploads.
Your previous music was epic, where did it go?
I’ll still use it, it’s reserved for my modding videos.
Ohh understood 😁 keep up the good work Tito!
Nice, so we can make a Gameboy XXL Maxi in future? 😆
Thanks for the video. It's a pleasure to discover new and original material every week.
being an early DEV board they would have been using OG gb software as a test bed as nothing specific to the GBC would have been developed yet. also you'll find the wardware etc has alot in common with the SNES or s famicom because the GBC was essentially a shrunk down to hand held SNES thats why alot of SNES titles are on the GBC. obviously there are changes to account for the smaller form factor
Elliot Coll is going to go nuts for this.
lol I wanna see a proper shell with buttons and vents made for that proto-dev board.
@3:19 Lol my family member used to be an executive at Xilinx
What an awesome bit of kit, thanks for sharing Tito! Hope you're doing well!
The reason the GBC games shown don’t work is likely because they were developed using a later version of the SDK which features abilities and op codes not on the early debug kit. Maybe try something very early like Wario Land 2 or Tetris DX.
Can’t unsee “File ROM Registory.”
Have you been able to dump the firmware?
Virtual Boy chip might have been a cost saver? When V B system didn't take off & was discontinued, the may gave had a ton of extra chips leftover...