Gameboy Hardware Interfacing

Gameboy Hardware Interfacing

After writing Doubletalk, I knew the Gameboy had great potential for musicians. Specifically, if a hardware interface could further extend the Gameboy’s audio input/output capabilities, the platform offered possibilities as a programmable metronome or alternative instrument.

Hardware interface to Nintendo Gameboy
Hardware interface to Nintendo Gameboy
Hardware interface to Nintendo Gameboy
Hardware interface to Nintendo Gameboy

To further explore this idea, I built a connector to access the Gameboy circuitry using a solderless breadboard. With this connector and breadboard, I successfully interfaced flash memory and an 8-bit Digital to Analog Convertor (DAC) to the Gameboy.

This experience inspired me to use the Gameboy as the platform for an assembly language programming course I taught at Wichita State University in 2008.

Similar Posts

  • Contrapuntal Composer

    Contrapuntal Composer is Prolog code which writes music for three simultaneous voices. Depending on initial parameters, it can write a fugue, a rondo, or any other contrapuntal form. Contrapuntal Composer obeys the rules of good voice leading within each voice and between the voices.

  • Ballet Wichita: Innovations

    As part of the Ballet Wichita’s Innovations performance April 2024 I teamed up with Wichita State University’s Shocker Studios to track a dancer live, reinterpreting their motions on a stage-sized display behind them. Wichita State University’s Fairmount String Trio accompanied the dance, performing Dohnányi’s Serenade. To track the dancer we used 3 Vive 3.0 trackers…

  • Assembly Language Programming

    In the Spring of 2008 I taught Wichita State University’s Assembly Language Programming for Engineers course. As explained in the syllabus, the course used the Z80 microprocessor and the GameBoy platform to introduce general concepts of computer architecture, machine and assembly language programming. Students practiced the ideas and concepts introduced in the course with programming…

  • Have a Seat!

    Have a Seat! is a playful interactive installation in which a video of a traveler of both time and space urges viewers to sit on a couch. When three people sit close together on the couch a special broadcast or snippet of The Muppet Show plays. Strangers coming to view the work find themselves uncomfortably…

  • SoundScratch

    SoundScratch is a set of extensions I wrote to manipulate audio in a children’s programming language called Scratch. The environment emphasizes the expressive capabilities of sound through the act of creation and design.

  • The Incubator

    The Incubator is an art piece which was initially installed as part of TechArtICT’s Dreamgrass installation at Exploration Place Fall 2022. Within the installation it was the machine where faceless children were created and indoctrinated. A Center TV displayed a teleprompter which offered encouragement for viewers to become participants, reading into a microphone placed at…