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NekoCart - CPLD Gameboy Cartridge

Open-source Gameboy Flash Cartridge using an Xilinx CPLD as MBC

wenting-zhangWenting Zhang
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There are tons of MBC5 flash cartridges out there, but all need you to salvage a MBC5 from an original cartridge. But luckily, MBC5 can be implemented with CPLD fair easily, so here it is.

A simple game boy flash cartridge supports MBC1\5 games.

Source files can be found in the GitHub repository.

  • 1 × Xilinx XC2C32A CPLD
  • 2 × 74LVC245A Logic ICs / Receivers, Transceivers
  • 1 × MX29LV640BB Memory ICs / FLASH Memory
  • 1 × CY62128EV30L Memory ICs / Static RAM (SRAM)

  • Working!

    Wenting Zhang • 02/01/2018 at 22:06 • 3 comments


    I will post more information later :p

  • Flash ID & CFI read correct

    Wenting Zhang • 02/01/2018 at 13:10 • 0 comments

    I am able to read out the Flash ID and CFI table now with the modified GB cart flasher!

    I am using a MX29LV640 in 8bit mode (since native 8 bit flashes are hard to find or too expansive nowadays). It turns out that though 8bit mode is enabled (means an additional A0 bit), the device is still expecting the address for things like CFI appears on the original 16bit mode address bus which is A[x:1] instead of A[x:0] for the 8bit mode address bus. And I also had some soldering issue, took me several days to debug and find out what it going on. But now it is working! (As you can see, 51 52 59 represents "QRY" which is the start of the CFI table, and other things well match the datasheet)

  • Prototype is living.

    Wenting Zhang • 01/24/2018 at 18:32 • 0 comments


    Debugging in progress.

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Luisão wrote 12/06/2023 at 23:08 • point

Hey Zhang! Don't know if you still working on Gameboy projects but and flash card adaptation for the mcb3 would be a blessing for the community. I've found out that there's the Altera II CPLD that should be able to replicate the MBC3 with ease but other than that I'm pretty much lost.

  Are you sure? yes | no

PixelDud wrote 02/06/2020 at 20:41 • point

Any plans to sell this, through Tindie maybe?

  Are you sure? yes | no

Jeremy g. wrote 02/03/2018 at 01:03 • point

the usb is attached to a 64 pin samd21. the pins are directly passed through too the ROM and ram as well as the header. to download games via usb and have direct controll over the header and ROM from fw. 

  Are you sure? yes | no

Wenting Zhang wrote 02/03/2018 at 18:46 • point

Wow that is a pretty interesting design! Would you mind if I do the same for my next revision of cartridge?

  Are you sure? yes | no

Jeremy g. wrote 02/03/2018 at 21:58 • point

I don' mind go for it. :) 

  Are you sure? yes | no

Jeremy g. wrote 02/03/2018 at 00:23 • point

Looking, good. I've been working on one as well. I need to finish it. If your interested checkout my site. Haven't had time to put it up on hackaday yet.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Wenting Zhang wrote 02/03/2018 at 00:42 • point

Wow cool. I have checked out your design, may be I didn't read careful enough, but what does that USB and QFN chip do?

  Are you sure? yes | no

Jeremy g. wrote 02/03/2018 at 01:03 • point

... forgot to hit reply. see above ^

  Are you sure? yes | no

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