NAME

Device::GBA - Perl Interface to the Gameboy Advance

VERSION

version 0.004

SYNOPSIS

    use Device::GBA;

    my $gba = Device::GBA->new(buspirate => '/dev/ttyUSB0') or die "No such device!\n";
    $gba->upload('helloworld.gba');

DESCRIPTION

The Nintendo Gameboy Advance can either boot from cartridge or over link cable. The latter is caled multiboot mode and is basically SPI and a homebrew encoding scheme. Unfortunately, the Bus Pirate doesn't have a 100k SPI mode, so we are using 125000 instead. If you encounter problems with booting, use the next lower speed (30000) as bitrate. This utility allows uploading multiboot GBA images via Device::Chip::Adapters. Don't forget to pass -specs=gba_mb.specs to devkitARM GCC if you want to link a multiboot image. The package's share/ subdirectory contains an example Makefile for cross-compilation. The wiring is as follows:

    GBA     Bus Pirate
    SO  --> MISO
    SI  <-- MOSI
    CLK <-- CLK
    GND --- GND

(Note to myself:) The cable I made looks like this:

                             ___________________
    .--------GND (white)----/      .-------._  |
    |  .-----SD (black)------------|SD (B) |_  |
    |  |  .--SO (yellow)---,      -|SC (R) |_--+-.
   _|__|__|_                \     -|GND (W)|_--' |
  / 6  4  2 \                \____-|SO (Y) |_    |
  \_5_ 3 _1_/                  ___-|SI (O) |_    |
    | \_/ '-- VDD (n/a)       /    '-------'     |
    |  '----- SI (orange) ---/                   |
    '-------- SC (red) --------------------------'

Note: This is still work in progress!

METHODS AND ARGUMENTS

new()

Opens specified device and returns the corresponding object reference. Returns undef if an attempt to open the device has failed. Accepts following parameters:

adapter

An instance of Device::Chip::Adapter capable of SPI communication.

verbose

if true, methods on this instance will narrate what they're doing. Default is 0.

upload

    $gba->upload($firmware_file)

Reads in $firmware_file and uploads it to the Gameboy Advance.

spi_readwrite

    $miso = $gba->spi_readwrite($mosi)

reads and writes 32 bit from the SPI bus.

crc

    $c = Device::GBA::crc($w, [$c = 0x0000c387])

Calculates CRC for word $w and CRC $c according to the algrithm used by the GBA multiboot protocol.

GIT REPOSITORY

http://github.com/athreef/Device-GBA

SEE ALSO

gba -- The command line utility

AUTHOR

Ahmad Fatoum <athreef@cpan.org>, http://a3f.at

Based on The uploader written by Ken Kaarvik.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2018 Ahmad Fatoum

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later.