Difference between revisions of "Gameboy Bootstrap ROM"

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(Added links to the GB Dev file hub, and ISSOtm's disassembly)
 
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= The DMG bootstrap =
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== The DMG bootstrap ==
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On July 17, 2003, neviksti published that he had been able to extract the contents of the Gameboy boot ROM from a DMG-01. The boot ROM is a bootstrap program which is a 256 bytes big piece of code which checks the cartridge header is correct, scrolls the Nintendo bootup graphics and plays the "po-ling" sound.  
+
On July 17, 2003, neviksti published that he had been able to extract the contents of the Gameboy boot ROM from a DMG-01 on the Cherryroms.com forums. The boot ROM is a bootstrap program which is a 256 bytes big piece of code which checks the cartridge header is correct, scrolls the Nintendo bootup graphics and plays the "po-ling" sound.
 +
 
  
 
When the Gameboy is turned on, the bootstrap ROM is situated in a memory page at positions $0-$FF (0-255). The CPU enters at $0 at startup, and the last two instructions of the code writes to a special register which disables the internal ROM page, thus making the lower 256 bytes of the cartridge ROM readable. The last instruction is situated at position $FE and is two bytes big, which means that right after that instruction has finished, the CPU executes the instruction at $100, which is the entry point code on a cartridge.
 
When the Gameboy is turned on, the bootstrap ROM is situated in a memory page at positions $0-$FF (0-255). The CPU enters at $0 at startup, and the last two instructions of the code writes to a special register which disables the internal ROM page, thus making the lower 256 bytes of the cartridge ROM readable. The last instruction is situated at position $FE and is two bytes big, which means that right after that instruction has finished, the CPU executes the instruction at $100, which is the entry point code on a cartridge.
  
−
Neviksti managed to read out this memory area by opening the CPU of a Gameboy he got from [[User:Duo|Duo]], and looking at it with a microscope. That way he managed to read the code bit by bit.  
+
Neviksti managed to read out this memory area by opening the CPU of a Gameboy he got from [[User:Duo|Duo]], and looking at it with a microscope. That way he managed to read the code bit by bit.
 +
 
 +
== The SGB bootstrap ==
 +
On September 16th, 2009, Costis Sideris was able to extract the Super Gameboy bootrom using a form of clock glitching involving an FPGA. See [http://www.its.caltech.edu/~costis/sgb_hack/ Costis' page describing the dumping]. The clock crystal for the SGB was disconnected and instead controlled by the FPGA. After viewing an address bus trace (which shows the address as the bootrom is reading/writing to the $FFxx i/o space, but not the data), he found which exact clock cycle the write to the $FF50 register (which disables the bootrom) was. He then caused the FPGA to clock the SGB CPU at 4 times the normal speed for that write cycle only. This caused the CPU to glitch, the disable write to fail to properly occur, and the program counter to continue past there to $100 and onward, into cartridge rom space. A program was placed in that area which wrote the bootrom out byte by byte to the FPGA (using a bogus cartridge-address-space address which the FPGA recognized).
 +
 
 +
When the Super Gameboy is turned on, the first part of the bootrom is not very different from the DMG one; it sets up sound registers and clears vram, but also writes 0x30 to the $ff00 keypad port (which the sgb uses as a bit-banged serial output port in addition to its keypad reading function). After that however, it clears WRAM bytes $c05f to $c058, and then copies the cartridge header ($104 to $14f) to WRAM at $c000-$c057, placing count and sum bytes at $c000-$c001, $c010-$c011, $c020-$c021, $c030-$c031, $c040-$c041 and $c050-$c051. This data is then bit-banged as a giant packet over the $ff00 port to the snes. See Just Dessert's disassembly at [https://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=54179#Post54179 the Bannister MAME subforum]. Unlike the DMG and CGB bootroms, the bootrom does NOT lock out the cartridge if the header sum or logo is wrong; its the SNES which does that!
 +
 
 +
== The CGB bootstrap ==
 +
Neviksti has also tried to extract the bootstrap from a Gameboy Color (CGB-01) CPU. However, because that CPU uses NAND ROM and is laid out in a different way, he had no success in extracting that ROM.
 +
Based on some limited preliminary decapsulation work done by Dr. Decapitator, it was determined that the CGB CPU die has three roms on it: one 256 bytes, one 512 bytes, and one 1792 bytes.
 +
 
 +
On September 21st, 2009, Costis Sideris was able to extract the Gameboy Color bootrom using a combination of clock and power glitching involving an FPGA. See [http://www.fpgb.org/?p=17 Costis' page describing the dumping]. The clock crystal for the CGB was disconnected and instead controlled by the FPGA, as well as the 3.3v power pin for the CGB CPU. After viewing an address bus trace (which shows the address as the bootrom is reading/writing to the $FFxx i/o space, but not the data), he found which exact clock cycle the write to the $FF50 register (which disables the bootrom) was, but attempting a similar clock glitch attack as the SGB didn't work. Instead, he used a much more 'brute force' attack after observing that unlike the DMG and SGB, the CGB cpu uses dynamic logic and loses its state when not clocked for a few seconds. He HALTED the cpu clock before the write, and in addition dropped the 3.3v line down to near 0v (to help randomize the internal register contents). This caused both the disable write to fail to properly occur, and the CPU's program counter and other registers to be filled with random values. After doing this several times, the program counter ended up pointing into external cartridge rom space, which contained a long chain of NOPS and a dumping program. The dumping program wrote the bootrom out byte by byte to the FPGA (using a bogus cartridge-address-space address which the FPGA recognized). The rom dump includes the 256 byte rom (0x0000-0x00FF) and the 1792 byte rom (0x0200-0x08FF) which Dr. Decapitator observed, but not the 512 byte rom, which may be cpu microcode or lcd color lookup related.
 +
 
 +
== The 'Pokemon' CGB bootstrap ==
 +
An interesting 'prototype' or alternate version of the CGB bootrom can be found included in the "Pokemon Stadium" N64 cartridge rom. This might possibly have been a leftover from an earlier prototype "Pokemon Stadium" cartridge which actually had a variant CGB CPU on it which would retrieve its rom from the n64 rom. The final n64 cartridge does not have a CGB CPU on it, but it does emulate the CGB hardware using N64 software, but is locked to only running the pokemon CGB games, which are copied, ram and rom, out of the cart on startup. The pokemon stadium 'emulator' code probably does use the bootstrap when starting up.
 +
 
 +
== Impact ==
 +
Apart from amazement, the dumping of the DMG bootrom led to the inclusion of a feature to emulate the bootstrap ROM in the emulators [[KiGB]] and [[BGB]]. The dumping of the SGB bootrom led to the inclusion of support for it in the [[MESS]] emulator.
 +
 
 +
== Other findings ==
 +
As a result of the process, neviksti also published pictures of the rest of the chip. All material published in conjunction with the hack can be found here: [http://www.neviksti.com/DMG/]
 +
 
 +
== Patents ==
 +
The following invention is claimed for the bootstrap:
 +
* [http://www.google.com/search?q=patent+%235134391 US Patent #5,134,391] - System for preventing the use of an unauthorized external memory
 +
 
 +
== Contents of the ROMs ==
 +
 
 +
The boot ROMs can be downloaded as binary files from the [https://gbdev.gg8.se/files/roms/bootroms/ GB Dev file hub].
 +
 
 +
== Disassemblies ==
 +
 
 +
Various disassemblies of the boot ROMs exist.
 +
 
 +
* [https://github.com/ISSOtm/gb-bootroms/ ISSOtm's gb-bootroms]. (Recommended) This repo contains a well commented disassembly of the DMG, SGB and CGB boot ROMs, as well as the Pokémon Stadium version mentioned above.
 +
* [http://www.neviksti.com/DMG/DMG_ROM.asm Nevikti's original disassembly] of the DMG boot ROM. Also reproduced below. Good for a quick reference.
  
−
= The CGB bootstrap =
 
−
Neviksti has also tried to extract the bootstrap from a Gameboy Color (CGB-01) CPU. However, because that CPU uses NAND ROM and is laid out in a different way, he had no success in extracting that ROM. Up to this date, the exact design of the CGB bootstrap ROM is unknown.
 
  
−
= Contents of the ROM =
+
<pre>
−
Below is the disassembled code of the bootstrap ROM, together with Neviksti's comments.
+
LD SP,$fffe ; $0000  Setup Stack
−
A binary file of the 256 byte area can be downloaded here: [https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mantey/www/DMG/DMG_ROM.bin].
+
−
<pre>LD SP,$fffe ; $0000  Setup Stack
+
  
 
XOR A ; $0003  Zero the memory from $8000-$9FFF (VRAM)
 
XOR A ; $0003  Zero the memory from $8000-$9FFF (VRAM)
Line 47: Line 79:
 
JR NZ, Addr_0027 ; $0032
 
JR NZ, Addr_0027 ; $0032
  
−
LD DE,$00d8 ; $0034  Load 8 additional bytes into Video RAM
+
LD DE,$00d8 ; $0034  Load 8 additional bytes into Video RAM (the tile for ®)
 
LD B,$08 ; $0037
 
LD B,$08 ; $0037
 
Addr_0039:
 
Addr_0039:
Line 148: Line 180:
  
 
Addr_00D8:
 
Addr_00D8:
−
;More video data
+
;More video data (the tile data for ®)
 
.DB $3C,$42,$B9,$A5,$B9,$A5,$42,$3C
 
.DB $3C,$42,$B9,$A5,$B9,$A5,$42,$3C
  
Line 181: Line 213:
 
LD ($FF00+$50),A ; $00fe ;turn off DMG rom</pre>
 
LD ($FF00+$50),A ; $00fe ;turn off DMG rom</pre>
  
−
= Impact =
+
== References ==
−
Apart from amazement, the discovery led to the inclusion of a feature to emulate the bootstrap ROM in the emulators [[KiGB]] and [[BGB]].
+
[http://web.archive.org/web/20060507053755/http://forums.cherryroms.com/viewtopic.php?t=3848&start=75 Mirror of the original Cherryroms thread on archive.org]
−
 
+
−
= Other findings =
+

Latest revision as of 04:20, 18 November 2024

The DMG bootstrap

On July 17, 2003, neviksti published that he had been able to extract the contents of the Gameboy boot ROM from a DMG-01 on the Cherryroms.com forums. The boot ROM is a bootstrap program which is a 256 bytes big piece of code which checks the cartridge header is correct, scrolls the Nintendo bootup graphics and plays the "po-ling" sound.


When the Gameboy is turned on, the bootstrap ROM is situated in a memory page at positions $0-$FF (0-255). The CPU enters at $0 at startup, and the last two instructions of the code writes to a special register which disables the internal ROM page, thus making the lower 256 bytes of the cartridge ROM readable. The last instruction is situated at position $FE and is two bytes big, which means that right after that instruction has finished, the CPU executes the instruction at $100, which is the entry point code on a cartridge.

Neviksti managed to read out this memory area by opening the CPU of a Gameboy he got from Duo, and looking at it with a microscope. That way he managed to read the code bit by bit.

The SGB bootstrap

On September 16th, 2009, Costis Sideris was able to extract the Super Gameboy bootrom using a form of clock glitching involving an FPGA. See Costis' page describing the dumping. The clock crystal for the SGB was disconnected and instead controlled by the FPGA. After viewing an address bus trace (which shows the address as the bootrom is reading/writing to the $FFxx i/o space, but not the data), he found which exact clock cycle the write to the $FF50 register (which disables the bootrom) was. He then caused the FPGA to clock the SGB CPU at 4 times the normal speed for that write cycle only. This caused the CPU to glitch, the disable write to fail to properly occur, and the program counter to continue past there to $100 and onward, into cartridge rom space. A program was placed in that area which wrote the bootrom out byte by byte to the FPGA (using a bogus cartridge-address-space address which the FPGA recognized).

When the Super Gameboy is turned on, the first part of the bootrom is not very different from the DMG one; it sets up sound registers and clears vram, but also writes 0x30 to the $ff00 keypad port (which the sgb uses as a bit-banged serial output port in addition to its keypad reading function). After that however, it clears WRAM bytes $c05f to $c058, and then copies the cartridge header ($104 to $14f) to WRAM at $c000-$c057, placing count and sum bytes at $c000-$c001, $c010-$c011, $c020-$c021, $c030-$c031, $c040-$c041 and $c050-$c051. This data is then bit-banged as a giant packet over the $ff00 port to the snes. See Just Dessert's disassembly at the Bannister MAME subforum. Unlike the DMG and CGB bootroms, the bootrom does NOT lock out the cartridge if the header sum or logo is wrong; its the SNES which does that!

The CGB bootstrap

Neviksti has also tried to extract the bootstrap from a Gameboy Color (CGB-01) CPU. However, because that CPU uses NAND ROM and is laid out in a different way, he had no success in extracting that ROM. Based on some limited preliminary decapsulation work done by Dr. Decapitator, it was determined that the CGB CPU die has three roms on it: one 256 bytes, one 512 bytes, and one 1792 bytes.

On September 21st, 2009, Costis Sideris was able to extract the Gameboy Color bootrom using a combination of clock and power glitching involving an FPGA. See Costis' page describing the dumping. The clock crystal for the CGB was disconnected and instead controlled by the FPGA, as well as the 3.3v power pin for the CGB CPU. After viewing an address bus trace (which shows the address as the bootrom is reading/writing to the $FFxx i/o space, but not the data), he found which exact clock cycle the write to the $FF50 register (which disables the bootrom) was, but attempting a similar clock glitch attack as the SGB didn't work. Instead, he used a much more 'brute force' attack after observing that unlike the DMG and SGB, the CGB cpu uses dynamic logic and loses its state when not clocked for a few seconds. He HALTED the cpu clock before the write, and in addition dropped the 3.3v line down to near 0v (to help randomize the internal register contents). This caused both the disable write to fail to properly occur, and the CPU's program counter and other registers to be filled with random values. After doing this several times, the program counter ended up pointing into external cartridge rom space, which contained a long chain of NOPS and a dumping program. The dumping program wrote the bootrom out byte by byte to the FPGA (using a bogus cartridge-address-space address which the FPGA recognized). The rom dump includes the 256 byte rom (0x0000-0x00FF) and the 1792 byte rom (0x0200-0x08FF) which Dr. Decapitator observed, but not the 512 byte rom, which may be cpu microcode or lcd color lookup related.

The 'Pokemon' CGB bootstrap

An interesting 'prototype' or alternate version of the CGB bootrom can be found included in the "Pokemon Stadium" N64 cartridge rom. This might possibly have been a leftover from an earlier prototype "Pokemon Stadium" cartridge which actually had a variant CGB CPU on it which would retrieve its rom from the n64 rom. The final n64 cartridge does not have a CGB CPU on it, but it does emulate the CGB hardware using N64 software, but is locked to only running the pokemon CGB games, which are copied, ram and rom, out of the cart on startup. The pokemon stadium 'emulator' code probably does use the bootstrap when starting up.

Impact

Apart from amazement, the dumping of the DMG bootrom led to the inclusion of a feature to emulate the bootstrap ROM in the emulators KiGB and BGB. The dumping of the SGB bootrom led to the inclusion of support for it in the MESS emulator.

Other findings

As a result of the process, neviksti also published pictures of the rest of the chip. All material published in conjunction with the hack can be found here: [1]

Patents

The following invention is claimed for the bootstrap:

Contents of the ROMs

The boot ROMs can be downloaded as binary files from the GB Dev file hub.

Disassemblies

Various disassemblies of the boot ROMs exist.

  • ISSOtm's gb-bootroms. (Recommended) This repo contains a well commented disassembly of the DMG, SGB and CGB boot ROMs, as well as the Pokémon Stadium version mentioned above.
  • Nevikti's original disassembly of the DMG boot ROM. Also reproduced below. Good for a quick reference.


	LD SP,$fffe		; $0000  Setup Stack

	XOR A			; $0003  Zero the memory from $8000-$9FFF (VRAM)
	LD HL,$9fff		; $0004
Addr_0007:
	LD (HL-),A		; $0007
	BIT 7,H		; $0008
	JR NZ, Addr_0007	; $000a

	LD HL,$ff26		; $000c  Setup Audio
	LD C,$11		; $000f
	LD A,$80		; $0011 
	LD (HL-),A		; $0013
	LD ($FF00+C),A	; $0014
	INC C			; $0015
	LD A,$f3		; $0016
	LD ($FF00+C),A	; $0018
	LD (HL-),A		; $0019
	LD A,$77		; $001a
	LD (HL),A		; $001c

	LD A,$fc		; $001d  Setup BG palette
	LD ($FF00+$47),A	; $001f

	LD DE,$0104		; $0021  Convert and load logo data from cart into Video RAM
	LD HL,$8010		; $0024
Addr_0027:
	LD A,(DE)		; $0027
	CALL $0095		; $0028
	CALL $0096		; $002b
	INC DE		; $002e
	LD A,E		; $002f
	CP $34		; $0030
	JR NZ, Addr_0027	; $0032

	LD DE,$00d8		; $0034  Load 8 additional bytes into Video RAM (the tile for ®)
	LD B,$08		; $0037
Addr_0039:
	LD A,(DE)		; $0039
	INC DE		; $003a
	LD (HL+),A		; $003b
	INC HL		; $003c
	DEC B			; $003d
	JR NZ, Addr_0039	; $003e

	LD A,$19		; $0040  Setup background tilemap
	LD ($9910),A	; $0042
	LD HL,$992f		; $0045
Addr_0048:
	LD C,$0c		; $0048
Addr_004A:
	DEC A			; $004a
	JR Z, Addr_0055	; $004b
	LD (HL-),A		; $004d
	DEC C			; $004e
	JR NZ, Addr_004A	; $004f
	LD L,$0f		; $0051
	JR Addr_0048	; $0053

	; === Scroll logo on screen, and play logo sound===

Addr_0055:
	LD H,A		; $0055  Initialize scroll count, H=0
	LD A,$64		; $0056
	LD D,A		; $0058  set loop count, D=$64
	LD ($FF00+$42),A	; $0059  Set vertical scroll register
	LD A,$91		; $005b
	LD ($FF00+$40),A	; $005d  Turn on LCD, showing Background
	INC B			; $005f  Set B=1
Addr_0060:
	LD E,$02		; $0060
Addr_0062:
	LD C,$0c		; $0062
Addr_0064:
	LD A,($FF00+$44)	; $0064  wait for screen frame
	CP $90		; $0066
	JR NZ, Addr_0064	; $0068
	DEC C			; $006a
	JR NZ, Addr_0064	; $006b
	DEC E			; $006d
	JR NZ, Addr_0062	; $006e

	LD C,$13		; $0070
	INC H			; $0072  increment scroll count
	LD A,H		; $0073
	LD E,$83		; $0074
	CP $62		; $0076  $62 counts in, play sound #1
	JR Z, Addr_0080	; $0078
	LD E,$c1		; $007a
	CP $64		; $007c
	JR NZ, Addr_0086	; $007e  $64 counts in, play sound #2
Addr_0080:
	LD A,E		; $0080  play sound
	LD ($FF00+C),A	; $0081
	INC C			; $0082
	LD A,$87		; $0083
	LD ($FF00+C),A	; $0085
Addr_0086:
	LD A,($FF00+$42)	; $0086
	SUB B			; $0088
	LD ($FF00+$42),A	; $0089  scroll logo up if B=1
	DEC D			; $008b  
	JR NZ, Addr_0060	; $008c

	DEC B			; $008e  set B=0 first time
	JR NZ, Addr_00E0	; $008f    ... next time, cause jump to "Nintendo Logo check"

	LD D,$20		; $0091  use scrolling loop to pause
	JR Addr_0060	; $0093

	; ==== Graphic routine ====

	LD C,A		; $0095  "Double up" all the bits of the graphics data
	LD B,$04		; $0096     and store in Video RAM
Addr_0098:
	PUSH BC		; $0098
	RL C			; $0099
	RLA			; $009b
	POP BC		; $009c
	RL C			; $009d
	RLA			; $009f
	DEC B			; $00a0
	JR NZ, Addr_0098	; $00a1
	LD (HL+),A		; $00a3
	INC HL		; $00a4
	LD (HL+),A		; $00a5
	INC HL		; $00a6
	RET			; $00a7

Addr_00A8:
	;Nintendo Logo
	.DB $CE,$ED,$66,$66,$CC,$0D,$00,$0B,$03,$73,$00,$83,$00,$0C,$00,$0D 
	.DB $00,$08,$11,$1F,$88,$89,$00,$0E,$DC,$CC,$6E,$E6,$DD,$DD,$D9,$99 
	.DB $BB,$BB,$67,$63,$6E,$0E,$EC,$CC,$DD,$DC,$99,$9F,$BB,$B9,$33,$3E 

Addr_00D8:
	;More video data (the tile data for ®)
	.DB $3C,$42,$B9,$A5,$B9,$A5,$42,$3C

	; ===== Nintendo logo comparison routine =====

Addr_00E0:	
	LD HL,$0104		; $00e0	; point HL to Nintendo logo in cart
	LD DE,$00a8		; $00e3	; point DE to Nintendo logo in DMG rom

Addr_00E6:
	LD A,(DE)		; $00e6
	INC DE		; $00e7
	CP (HL)		; $00e8	;compare logo data in cart to DMG rom
	JR NZ,$fe		; $00e9	;if not a match, lock up here
	INC HL		; $00eb
	LD A,L		; $00ec
	CP $34		; $00ed	;do this for $30 bytes
	JR NZ, Addr_00E6	; $00ef

	LD B,$19		; $00f1
	LD A,B		; $00f3
Addr_00F4:
	ADD (HL)		; $00f4
	INC HL		; $00f5
	DEC B			; $00f6
	JR NZ, Addr_00F4	; $00f7
	ADD (HL)		; $00f9
	JR NZ,$fe		; $00fa	; if $19 + bytes from $0134-$014D  don't add to $00
						;  ... lock up

	LD A,$01		; $00fc
	LD ($FF00+$50),A	; $00fe	;turn off DMG rom

References

Mirror of the original Cherryroms thread on archive.org

Retrieved from "https://gbdev.gg8.se/wiki/index.php?title=Gameboy_Bootstrap_ROM&oldid=1140"