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Welcome to the Gameboy Development Wiki.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one small step

~ Old Chinese Proverb

Developer Information

Documentation.

Tutorials.

Code examples.

Hardware information.

Development software

Assemblers.

Compilers.

Tools.

Emulators.

Hardware development

Cart/Interface information.

Serial port interfaces.

Modding.

A few articles up

There a couple of articles up on the Wiki. To follow the process, check out Special:Allpages. If you want to contribute, you need to register an account. (See below) For an introduction to the MediaWiki platform, please see these articles: Starting a new page and How to edit a page.

How to register an account

Anyone may register an account to edit this wiki. However, to protect us from spam, this wiki is a bit different... You must first register register a forum account. Wait for the activation e-mail, and log in once to the forum area to activate your account. When you've successfully done that, you may log in to the wiki with the same user name and password. If it doesn't work somehow, please make a post in the forums.

About the Gameboy Development Wiki

The GBDev Wiki is an effort to collect and systemize information about the Game Boy's Z80-like CPU, its hardware, tools for software development, perhaps example source code, and serve as a reference for people who might be interested in Game Boy software development and hardware modification. The information is out there. But as I see it there are a couple of problems that with the fact that the information is scattered over the internet.

  • It might be hard to find some of the more obscure information. Having the information in a Wiki will make it more readily accessible for those who might search for it.
  • Most information on the net is not editable. By putting this information in a Wiki, anyone can contribute to the information.
  • As time passes by, some information will vanish, because people who used to develop for and document the old Game Boy models will probably have forgotten their passwords/not care about their old web space accounts, etc. I will guarantee that the information in this Wiki will survive many years to come.

Therefore, I believe a Wiki is a good format for the information.

Mission/Guidelines

What goes into the wiki?

  • Technical documents that exist as text documents should be converted to Wiki formatted pages.
  • Emulators, debuggers, compilers and other tools should have their own page with a short description. If applicable, screenshots and other useful information should exist on the same page.
  • Hardware information, such as schematics, pinouts and other information. One problem here is that I have a limited space so, adding too many images will make me run out of space. Using free image hosts is not a good option either, since they will sooner or later expire, and thus it is counter-productive to the mission of this Wiki.
  • Games - This is not a game database, alas no (commercial) games should be added. If information about a game is added, there should be a good reason. A couple of possible exceptions: Pocket Music, Gameboy Camera, documentation of games that are using interesting programming techniques.
  • I officially support the idea of adding information about Gameboy music and related software here. However, this Wiki should be more of a technical database, not a general chiptune Wiki. So no artist bios and the like here. The 8bitcollective Wiki is better suited for such articles.

What about the structure?

Here are some suggestions of categories/article series:

  • Gameboy models (Where each model has a page with information, release year, model number, quirks etc)
  • Music software
  • Other homebrew
  • Tutorials
  • Development tools
  • CPU and I/O reference
  • Peripheral devices, both official ones (Such as the Gameboy Printer) and homebrew devices (Like FirestARTer's MIDI converter) Where applicable and possible, such articles should contain some information on how to interface the peripheral.

Copyright Issues

I expect most information added to this Wiki to be implicitly or explicitly in the public domain, or being an original creation for the Wiki. But nevertheless, I want all information to have a source. (Even if that source is yourself) This is not only a copyright issue, but I aso want all information to be traceable. However, if in doubt whether to add a certain piece of information, ask me at nitro2k01@gmail.com