Interfacing the Gameboy Advance

Short Description
1 The Gameboy Advance Game Console. Powered by a 32-bit ARM processor, the GBA is a hugely popular game console. Gameboy (and its newer siblings …

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Content
Interfacing the Gameboy Advance
Dhananjay V. Gadre
ECE Division
Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology
New Delhi, India
April 18, 2004
1 The Gameboy Advance Game Console
Powered by a 32-bit ARM processor, the GBA is a hugely popular game console. Gameboy (and its newer siblings
including the GBA) is a product from Nintendo and more than 100 million units have been shipped since 1989.
The features of the new Gameboy Advance are:
1. Color LCD with 240×160 display resolution
2. Stereo sound with volume control and headphone support,
3. Multiple input buttons including four in a directional configuration,
4. Serial port,
5. DC-power support: operates on 2 AA batteries for 10 to 15 hours,
6. Cartridge connector to load programs
The GBA runs a game from external game cartridge that is plugged into it’s cardtridge connector. The connector
provides an access to the internal ARM processor signals. The connector can be used to interface external memory
through the cartridge connector as well as I/O devices as memory mapped ports.
An important concern for developing a gaming or a non-gaming application would be interfacing gameboy to the
outside world and downloading programs into the GBA.
The…