arduinogbdump

This is a project that can create GB/GBC ROMs from real cartridges, as well as copy save data to/from real cartridges.

Required hardware: a supported Arduino, an N64 controller, an N64 Transfer Pak, and a pull-up resistor.

arduinogbdump is heavily based on brownan's Gamecube-N64-Controller

#Features/Compatibility Note: All GB and GBC Pokemon games should be possible to dump with arduinogbdump. Not every Pokemon game has been tested, but it is believed by the author that all Pokemon games use a supported MBC.

There is currently support for dumping ROMs from cartridges of the following types:

1. ROM Only (32 kiB)
2. MBC1
3. MBC2
4. MBC3
5. MBC5 (mostly complete support, but only works for ROMs up to 4 MiB. However, the author doesn't know of any games that are larger than 4 MiB anyway.)

There is currently support for dumping RAM from cartridges of the following types:

1. MBC1
2. MBC2
3. MBC3 (No RTC support yet)
4. MBC5

There is currently support for restoring RAM to cartridges of the following types:

1. MBC1
2. MBC3 (No RTC support yet)
3. MBC5

All testing of the communicator program has been done on Linux. It is not known whether it would even compile on other systems, but there's a good chance of it working on other Unices (such as FreeBSD).

#How to Connect the Arduino Board to the N64 Controller Here is a schematic of the setup:

Note that the Arduino pins used for everything are intended to be the same no matter which type of Arduino is used.

Also, here is a photo of the setup (taken in January, 2015):

Note: It is not necessary to break the N64 controller's cable (though the controller cable can certainly be re-connected if the user chooses to break it). Wires can be inserted into the holes at the end of the N64 controller's cable. The holes correspond to the red, white, and black wires of the N64 controller. Here is a schematic of the N64 controller's connector.

#Arduino Board Compatibility As is the case with the Gamecube-N64-Controller project, the Arduino <-> N64 controller timing code is specific to Arduino boards with 8-bit AVRs clocked at 16 MHz.

The following Arduino boards have been tested and are working with this project for sure:

1. Arduino Micro
2. Arduino Mega 2560

However, it is likely that the other Arduino boards that use the following AVR microcontrollers would work as well:

1. ATmega32U4 (includes the Arduino Leonardo)
2. ATmega1280 (includes the original Arduino Mega)
3. ATmega2560 (This is what the Arduino Mega 2560 uses.)

Support for the Arduino Uno is planned as well.

#Credits/Thanks As previously mentioned, arduinogbdump is heavily based on This

The 1964 emulator and the NRage plugin (compiled with debugging functions) were really helpful in figuring out how real games (Pokemon Stadium 2 in particular) used the Transfer Pak. The NRage docs were also instrumental for getting this to work. Some of them have been included with this project for reference.

The two CRC-related functions were taken from libdragon (though only one of them is in use).

There were also various websites whose URLs escape me.

Additionally, the folks of IRC channel #n64dev on EFnet have been very helpful, especially when I was first working on this project in Spring 2013.