Preamble
- Music from Game Boys –
- For the original Game Boys are best, see Game Boy Sound System, and for more details Gameboy sound hardware.
- Instructables – The ultimate guide to creating chiptues on the game boy, an excellent guide, which also features a DIY repair guide for GameBoys
- GameBoy Advance, or Nintendo DS are not so useful
- C64 SID, MOS Technology 6582, see SID. Also 8580R5 and 6581, Video chip 6567 (VIC20)
- General Instruments AY-3-8910
- YM2149F, a derivative of the AY-3-8910
- Texas Instruments SN76489
See also
Links
- The original writer for the Arduino, Linus Akesson, The hardware chiptune project
- A customarily bad guide from Instructables – Arduino Chiptunes
ArduinoBoy
- Game boy and ArduinoBoy
- (=Arduino Uno + MIDI shield (not SparkFun MIDI Shield – DEV-12898 – SparkFun Electronics), $16/17/21/22 from CatSkullElectronics),
- Github: catskull/Arduinoboy (Code and Eagle files.zip)
- PDF, arduinoboy-assembly
- See Use your Gameboy as a MIDI instrument
- Requires:
- Shipping worldwide is $15 (US $5)
- The ArduinoBoy is no longer fully supported and the TeensyBoy is sold instead $33/47
- TeensyBoyPro, $45/60
- ArduinoBoy variants –
- Arduinoboy, using an internal Mini, MiniPro
- Github: trash80/Arduinoboy
- Instructables: Build an ArduinoBoy
- ShieldBoy, see video: YouTube – ShieldBoy Demo
- Requires:
- [Dual head] modified Game-Link Cable to Gameboy (see below), and Midi cable to keyboard/MIDI device
- Requires:
Building your own shield with Veroboard
You don’t need to pay loads for a kit, and a pretty looking Arduino Uno shield. See x-post from Gameboy – Arduinoboy perfboard and shield schematics + mGB guide for making chiptunes with Gameboy and Midi!.
Single board ArduinoBoy using an ATmega8 IC
After thinking about this for a while, and considering the simplicity of the ArduinoBoy, I thought that it would be simple enough to dispense with the Arduino Uno, and just use an ATmega328 and build the whole thing on one board. A subsequent search showed that I was obviously not the first person to think about this.
From Instructables – Build an ArduinoBoy, a simple guide, using a BareBones Arduino kit.
Useful tip for the Vref, see building an arduinoboy from scratch on PC (without arduino board), from Analogue to digital conversion on an ATmega168, use an inductor and capacitor to stabilise the analogue reference voltage:
Barebones Arduino, using the internal clock, not an external crystal:
- ATMEGA8 BREADBOARD CIRCUIT – PART 1 OF 3 – POWER SUPPLY
- ATMEGA8 BREADBOARD CIRCUIT – PART 2 OF 3 – THE MICROCONTROLLER
- ATMEGA8 BREADBOARD CIRCUIT – PART 3 OF 3 – THE FIRMWARE
See Barebones Arduino for more information on the Arduino side of the board.
MIDI sockets
As a comment points out on SparkFun MIDI Shield – DEV-12898 – SparkFun Electronics
Last, the MIDI ports themselves are a cheap, bendy plastic. Mine haven’t died on me yet, but I’m just counting the days. Sparkfun would do well to provide better quality parts for this kit.
The best DIN sockets I have found are 61NC5F.
Their horizontal (flat) placement means that there is no stresses placed on the solder joints, as there are on the more common vertical placement sockets, such as these, 57PC5F:
They are more pricey though, at $4.86 versus $2.89
Game Link cable
Only four of the wires in the Game Link cable are required:
- Serial in,
- Serial out,
- Clock and
- GND
For the ArduinoBoy, as it has a Game-Link connector port, a standard cable ca be used. The ShieldBoy does not have this connector and therefore a hacked cable is required, i.e. a standard cable with one end having the plug removed ad wires exposed.
From ShieldBoy
Connections
Plug Position Board Function ShieldBoy GB Header Bottom-Left Top-Left NC Bottom-Middle Top-Middle Serial IN (SIN) 1 Bottom-Right Top-Right Clock (SCLK) 0 Top-Left Bottom-Left Serial OUT (SOUT) 2 Top-Middle Bottom-Middle NC Top-Right Bottom-Right Ground (GND) GND
AliExpress:
- 1M Link Cable Cord Apater For Nintendo GameBoy Pocket GBC GBP Black 2 players
- High quality 2 player Game Kumite Connect Online Link Cable for Nintendo for Gameboy color For GBC, £1.38
Game Link Connectors
Note that the Original GB had a different connector than the Pocket (GBP) and Color (GBC), and the advance was different again. From Wikipedia – Game Link Cable:
- DMG-04 (Original)
- MGB-004 (adapter to Pocket/Color)
- MGB-008 (Pocket/Color)
- DMG-14 (adapter to Original)
- CGB-003 (Pocket/Color)
- DMG-14 (adapter to Original)
- MGB-010 (Dual)
- AGB-005 (Advance)
Japanese GameBoys
There are a lot of GameBoys available from Japan, in Japanese. There may be restrictions on playing US games on them, but then again a lot of games will still work. This should not apply to mGB or LSDj though.
MIDI stuff
Yamaha PSR300 – MIDI keyboard comes in useful.
Noticed you linked our ShieldBoy, which works great!
I experimented on a few things though, such as if I could make a rackmount version (easier to use multiple ArduinoBoys in a 1U) but ended up settled on what I call the StageBoy (https://github.com/m00dawg/stageboy). This is what we use for both recording and live performances of the GameBoy with the band.
It combines an ArduinoBoy with the PISS Box design (though with a MUCH bigger and better transformer) into a single metal box. I had meant to make 3D printed panels for it but the open sides haven’t been enough of a bother to mess with it (if I do, I’ll be sure to add them to the project).
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HI there, thanks for the comment. Yes, I like your design. Do you actually sell the board (either as a kit or assembled)? You should really add a few photos of the board (at different angles) to the page, as the only image of it is a brief blurred shot of it in the video. By the way, there is an unfortunate typo in your menu item, and URL, of the AdvanceRack (Ardunio) page, the “i” is in the wrong place.
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