Pan Docs

Table of Contents

Overview

Game Boy Technical Data - Memory Map

I/O Ports

Video Display - Sound Controller - Joypad Input - Serial Data Transfer (Link Cable) - Timer and Divider Registers - Interrupts - CGB Registers - SGB Functions

CPU Specifications

CPU Registers and Flags - CPU Instruction Set - CPU Comparision with Z80

Cartridges

The Cartridge Header - Memory Bank Controllers - Gamegenie/Shark Cheats

Memory Bank Controllers

MBC1 - MBC2 - MBC3 - MBC5

Other

Power Up Sequence - Reducing Power Consumption - Sprite RAM Bug - External Connectors

Excerpt from Martin's document

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       Everything You Always Wanted To Know About GAMEBOY *
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                     * but were afraid to ask

        Pan of -ATX- Document Updated by contributions from:
     Marat Fayzullin, Pascal Felber, Paul Robson, Martin Korth
             CPU, SGB, CGB, AUX specs by Martin Korth

                  Last updated 10/2001 by nocash
               Previously updated 4-Mar-98 by kOOPa

Foreword

The following was typed up for informational purposes regarding the inner workings on the hand-held game machine known as GameBoy, manufactured and designed by Nintendo Co., LTD. This info is presented to inform a user on how their Game Boy works and what makes it "tick". GameBoy is copyrighted by Nintendo Co., LTD. Any reference to copyrighted material is not presented for monetary gain, but for educational purposes and higher learning.

Available Document Formats

The present version of this document is available at http://nocash.emubase.de/pandocs.htm

Also, a copy of this document is included in the manual of newer versions of the no$gmb debugger, because of recent piracy attacks (many thanks and best wishes go to hell) I have currently no intention to publish any such or further no$gmb updates though.

Pan Docs Wikification

Mission

Pan Docs is the single most comprehensive technical reference to Gameboy that is available to the public. It was originally written by Pan of Anthrox, and was later maintained by Martin Korth, also known for no$gmb. As Pandocs is an important resource, it is a priority to add it to the wiki.

The addition of information from the document is done under the following premises:

• It is thought that the information in the document was meant to be public domain by its authors.
• The document is no longer actively maintained by its original authors.
• Adding the information to a wiki allows people to correct or add information if needed.
• That the information can be presented in such a way that it is more appealing.

Update as of 1/30/2014 at 3:41 P.M.

I have provided a link to Pan's old webpage using the wayback machine. Here you can download some of his old tools that are so hard to find. I might provide a tutorial or two after I get enough time.

http://web.archive.org/web/19990209030645/http://www.anthrox.com/

Please click on free software to download the tools. We hold no liability for the tools that you download.

Ways to help

• Add information from Pan Docs. (To do: Formatting guidelines)
• Convert ASCII art into images or tables, or other formatting as appropriate.
• Condense information! Create a parallel article where the most important parts of a Pandocs article are condensed.

The copy of Pan Docs hosted on this wiki is considered deprecated.

Pan Docs is now officially hosted on gbdev.io as a living document. Please go to https://gbdev.io/pandocs/ to read Pan Docs or to https://github.com/gbdev/pandocs to contribute.

Click here to go to this section of Pan Docs in the new location: https://gbdev.io/pandocs/#aboutthepandocs