Looking at puyo puyo, they use 11x11 tiles for their puzzle pieces
once they have been placed on the game grid. I'm curious how they do
this. I was thinking that each piece would actually have to be 16x16,
but that would leave a 5 pixel transparent area around the graphic
and the tiles wouldn't be flush next to each other. Anyone have any
ideas how this is accomplished?

So with all of these messages in this thread, who's got a GBA Hard disk
in production?

-----Original Message-----
From: David Welch [mailto:gba@...]
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 3:40 PM
To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA Re: Re: (so many Re:'s)



Just quickly skimming the cowbite spec I see 16.384khz mentioned, assuming
8bits per sample (stereo) that is 32768 bytes per second uncompressed and
ready to feed into the
gba (which doesnt have much processing power to decompress in real time) so
20 hours is 72,000 seconds is 2.2gb.    Hmm, is that right?  20 hours is
11.8gb uncompressed (44.1khz stereo 16 bit) so 1.2gb is a realistic number
for mp3 compressed (approx. 10/1 ratio), and the difference between 44.1khz
16 bit stereo and 16.384khz 8 bit stereo is around 5/1 so yes 2.2gb for 20
hours of uncompressed gba music sounds about right (assuming 16.384khz and
8 bps stereo is correct)...

This 32768 bytes per second data rate also tells me my 64mbit flash cart
will hold about 4 minutes of music.  You can scale that up for larger flash
carts or mmc or sd or other medium mentioned in this thread.

You also need to move the data at least 262,144 mbits per second, so that
means your hard drive/mass storage has to be through the serial port
running in normal mode at 2mhz (does that mode work?) or through the
cartridge (what is that about 4MBps or 2MBps?)...

David


At 08:21 PM 1/29/2003 +1100, you wrote:
>Well, when you think that standard MP3 fits around 20+ hours of music at
>128k quality into about 1.2Gb, then on your standard 20Gb HDD that would
>be very easily stored in a less compressed format.
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: ninge
>   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
>   Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 8:22 PM
>   Subject: RE: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA Re: Re: (so many Re:'s)
>
>
>   im pretty sure that mp3 playback on the gba has already been covered
> and its
>   not possible to decode the data fast enough on the ARM processor - I
don't
>   remember the reasons but if you search the list you'll find them :)
>
>   I also cant see how caching the data to the drive would work? surely if
the
>   gba isn't fast enough to play back mp3 files then its going to take
longer
>   than the length of the album in play time to decode it and cache it?
> (i.e. >
>   60 minutes for most albums) so what you would end up with is something
>   that's so slow its totally impractical. The only solution would be to
store
>   the songs in a much less compressed format on the drive but that would
>   really defeat the whole idea!
>
>   for the cost of a laptop HD and battery plus the time and effort it
would
>   take and the ultimate impracticality of the device you would be better
off
>   just buying a stand alone MP3 player like the creative labs HD based
> ones...
>
>   ninge
>
>   -----Original Message-----
>   From: Fredrik Olsson [mailto:flubba@...]
>   Sent: 26 January 2003 15:48
>   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
>   Subject: Re: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA Re: Re: (so many Re:'s)
>
>
>   Den 2003-01-26 13:55:53 skrev "Scott Purcival"
<kasparzdomain@...>:
>
>   >I can see how it could be made feasible.
>   >
>   >First thing you would have to worry about is weather the gba can read
and
>   cache data from the hard drive at a fast enough rate, and then be able
to
>   decode it to create
>   skip free MP3 playback at at least 128K quality.
>   >One idea may be to use the hard drive itself as temporary swap space
> if the
>   GBA can't handle the load, converting the song to raw sound data first,
and
>   then using the
>   EWRAM for cache/buffer space.
>   >
>
>   128kbit mp3 = 32kByte/s I have never heard of any HDD that has such a
low
>   transfer rate.
>   I don't think we need a harddrive to see if it's possible to make a mp3
>   player on the GBA...
>
>   /FluBBa
>   PocketNES destroyer

Just quickly skimming the cowbite spec I see 16.384khz mentioned, assuming
8bits per sample (stereo) that is 32768 bytes per second uncompressed and
ready to feed into the
gba (which doesnt have much processing power to decompress in real time) so
20 hours is 72,000 seconds is 2.2gb.    Hmm, is that right?  20 hours is
11.8gb uncompressed (44.1khz stereo 16 bit) so 1.2gb is a realistic number
for mp3 compressed (approx. 10/1 ratio), and the difference between 44.1khz
16 bit stereo and 16.384khz 8 bit stereo is around 5/1 so yes 2.2gb for 20
hours of uncompressed gba music sounds about right (assuming 16.384khz and
8 bps stereo is correct)...

This 32768 bytes per second data rate also tells me my 64mbit flash cart
will hold about 4 minutes of music.  You can scale that up for larger flash
carts or mmc or sd or other medium mentioned in this thread.

You also need to move the data at least 262,144 mbits per second, so that
means your hard drive/mass storage has to be through the serial port
running in normal mode at 2mhz (does that mode work?) or through the
cartridge (what is that about 4MBps or 2MBps?)...

David


At 08:21 PM 1/29/2003 +1100, you wrote:
>Well, when you think that standard MP3 fits around 20+ hours of music at
>128k quality into about 1.2Gb, then on your standard 20Gb HDD that would
>be very easily stored in a less compressed format.
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: ninge
>   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
>   Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 8:22 PM
>   Subject: RE: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA Re: Re: (so many Re:'s)
>
>
>   im pretty sure that mp3 playback on the gba has already been covered
> and its
>   not possible to decode the data fast enough on the ARM processor - I don't
>   remember the reasons but if you search the list you'll find them :)
>
>   I also cant see how caching the data to the drive would work? surely if the
>   gba isn't fast enough to play back mp3 files then its going to take longer
>   than the length of the album in play time to decode it and cache it?
> (i.e. >
>   60 minutes for most albums) so what you would end up with is something
>   that's so slow its totally impractical. The only solution would be to store
>   the songs in a much less compressed format on the drive but that would
>   really defeat the whole idea!
>
>   for the cost of a laptop HD and battery plus the time and effort it would
>   take and the ultimate impracticality of the device you would be better off
>   just buying a stand alone MP3 player like the creative labs HD based
> ones...
>
>   ninge
>
>   -----Original Message-----
>   From: Fredrik Olsson [mailto:flubba@...]
>   Sent: 26 January 2003 15:48
>   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
>   Subject: Re: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA Re: Re: (so many Re:'s)
>
>
>   Den 2003-01-26 13:55:53 skrev "Scott Purcival" <kasparzdomain@...>:
>
>   >I can see how it could be made feasible.
>   >
>   >First thing you would have to worry about is weather the gba can read and
>   cache data from the hard drive at a fast enough rate, and then be able to
>   decode it to create
>   skip free MP3 playback at at least 128K quality.
>   >One idea may be to use the hard drive itself as temporary swap space
> if the
>   GBA can't handle the load, converting the song to raw sound data first, and
>   then using the
>   EWRAM for cache/buffer space.
>   >
>
>   128kbit mp3 = 32kByte/s I have never heard of any HDD that has such a low
>   transfer rate.
>   I don't think we need a harddrive to see if it's possible to make a mp3
>   player on the GBA...
>
>   /FluBBa
>   PocketNES destroyer
>
>
>
>
>
>
>   Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>
>
>         Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
>               ADVERTISEMENT
>
>
>
>
>   Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Not that it matters, but it'd be 44100 samples pr. second if we're only
talking about a 22050Hz stereo audio stream. For a mp3 or mp2 decoder it
would be sufficient to play the decoded stream at about
16000Hz/8-bit(ofcourse, 8bit!!)/mono, if it's to be used in a game or so (a
title screen or somthing the like) - that'd be in the case where there's
sufficient memory to spare for the coded stream. I think that stereo sound
is overkill for the GBA, as there's no stereo speakers in it anyway
(although I'm not sure about the new GBA..!) - I've not seen many people
playing the GBA with headphones on.. In fact I've never seen anybody, I'm
the only one I can think of - and that's only to test how "cool" my player
sounds in stereo... what a waste of resources ;)

Cheers,
Tom

> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: Damian Yerrick <d_yerrick@...>
> [mailto:d_yerrick@...]
> Sendt: 26. januar 2003 21:04
> Til: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
> Emne: [gbadev] MP2 instead of MP3
>
>
> --- In gbadev@yahoogroups.com, Fredrik Olsson <flubba@h...> wrote:
> > 128kbit mp3 = 32kByte/s
>
> More like 16 kByte/s.  Even a device connected to the GBA serial
> port could deliver data at this rate, as the serial port can in
> theory clock up to 2 Mbit/s, which is fast enough to move even a
> wav file if you want to put the decoder on the cart.
>
> > I have never heard of any HDD that has such a low transfer
> > rate.  I don't think we need a harddrive to see if it's
> > possible to make a mp3 player on the GBA...
>
> The problem here isn't data transfer from storage but about
> decoding time.  I don't think a 16.8 MHz ARM7TDMI processor
> can decode stereo MP3 in real time (44100 samples per second).
> I'd suggest investigating the much simpler MP2 codec instead.
>
> --
> Damian
>
>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>

--- In gbadev@yahoogroups.com, "Simon Read" <simon.read1@n...> wrote:


> Not sure if this is old news, but...


>


> http://www.quirky.remakes.org/html/gjumpscr.html


>


> Elite in all its glory, along with Chaos and Cyclone.


> Thank you, quirky and the gang.




Thanks to Chris Pinder's PC version really and dooby's mode 4 gfx and
maths libs. The source code (also on the site for Elite, you wouldn't
want to see the others) compiles with devkit advance almost out the
box if you have dooby's libs, though my makefile is not a pretty site!




Still, makes you realise what a great little box of tricks the GBA is,
and what a great devving community we have here, if someone with just
a year or so of GBA experience can knock up a decent-ish port of such
a classic in a few weeks :)

Well, when you think that standard MP3 fits around 20+ hours of music at 128k
quality into about 1.2Gb, then on your standard 20Gb HDD that would be very
easily stored in a less compressed format.
   ----- Original Message -----
   From: ninge
   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 8:22 PM
   Subject: RE: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA Re: Re: (so many Re:'s)


   im pretty sure that mp3 playback on the gba has already been covered and its
   not possible to decode the data fast enough on the ARM processor - I don't
   remember the reasons but if you search the list you'll find them :)

   I also cant see how caching the data to the drive would work? surely if the
   gba isn't fast enough to play back mp3 files then its going to take longer
   than the length of the album in play time to decode it and cache it? (i.e. >
   60 minutes for most albums) so what you would end up with is something
   that's so slow its totally impractical. The only solution would be to store
   the songs in a much less compressed format on the drive but that would
   really defeat the whole idea!

   for the cost of a laptop HD and battery plus the time and effort it would
   take and the ultimate impracticality of the device you would be better off
   just buying a stand alone MP3 player like the creative labs HD based ones...

   ninge

   -----Original Message-----
   From: Fredrik Olsson [mailto:flubba@...]
   Sent: 26 January 2003 15:48
   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
   Subject: Re: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA Re: Re: (so many Re:'s)


   Den 2003-01-26 13:55:53 skrev "Scott Purcival" <kasparzdomain@...>:

   >I can see how it could be made feasible.
   >
   >First thing you would have to worry about is weather the gba can read and
   cache data from the hard drive at a fast enough rate, and then be able to
   decode it to create
   skip free MP3 playback at at least 128K quality.
   >One idea may be to use the hard drive itself as temporary swap space if the
   GBA can't handle the load, converting the song to raw sound data first, and
   then using the
   EWRAM for cache/buffer space.
   >

   128kbit mp3 = 32kByte/s I have never heard of any HDD that has such a low
   transfer rate.
   I don't think we need a harddrive to see if it's possible to make a mp3
   player on the GBA...

   /FluBBa
   PocketNES destroyer






   Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/




         Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
               ADVERTISEMENT




   Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

Hi,

   I apologize in advance to those that have written me and I haven't
replied in several months. I have gotten more email questions than
I can deal with and I feel guilty that I haven't answered all.

Dennis Munsie wrote:
  > You definitely should NOT use a power supply with the USB linker when
  > using the USB port.  The power over the USB port is more than enough
  > for the linker.  Depending on the design of the linker, you could end
  > up frying the linker or even the USB port on the PC.

   The USB linker is my design. I have been reluctant to admit
that for various reasons. It is slower in USB mode, than in
parallel port mode, due to the execution speed of the 8051
in the linker, unfortunately. (In parallel mode the USB cpu
is not used.) It was assumed, by some, that the linker would
be faster in USB mode, but that PR mess was published before
the actual design was completed and tested. That only applied
to some of the Xtreme flash carts that were indeed faster to
program than some of the older generation flash carts.

   I designed it so that if both external power supply and USB
were connected at the same time then that would not fry
anything. In that case, the external supply is used instead.
However, the USB supplied power should *always* be enough unless
you have several USB devices connected to your PC and they
draw more power than is allowed by the USB specification and
don't go into low-power standby mode as is also required.

  > As for the problem at hand, I would make sure that the ROM loaded has a
  > valid header.  If it doesn't, then it won't on a real GBA.  I believe
  > there is an option in the flash software to fix the header when it
  > transfers it.  Or, alternatively, you can fix the header with one of
  > the tools available.

   Write a rom to your flash cart and then do a verify. If the verify
is successful, then the USB linker and flash cart are fine and the
problem lies elsewhere (bad ROM image, bad ROM header, etc.) One of
the menus I think has an option to turn on/off the verify function.
I think it's on by default but not sure.

   Dennis: I saw your post earlier about wanting to support the USB
linker on the MacOS X platform. Someone was paid to do that
(as well as support USB linux) but I haven't gotten anything
from them (yet anyway.) It is semi-complicated code since it
first has to download firmware before anything else can be done.
The PC software handles that in a different way by handing that
job off to a device driver. If you are still interested then
write me personally and I'll try to get their code or else try
to get you what I can. I did not write the PC version of software
that supports the USB linker.

   Cheers,
Jeff

Well. I didn't have to do that befor with my older parallel port
Flash 2 Advance linker -weird.  I'll try it

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Munsie [mailto:munsied@...]
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 7:02 PM
To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [gbadev] XtremeLink USB not working?


You definitely should NOT use a power supply with the USB linker when
using the USB port.  The power over the USB port is more than enough
for the linker.  Depending on the design of the linker, you could end
up frying the linker or even the USB port on the PC.

As for the problem at hand, I would make sure that the ROM loaded has a
valid header.  If it doesn't, then it won't on a real GBA.  I believe
there is an option in the flash software to fix the header when it
transfers it.  Or, alternatively, you can fix the header with one of
the tools available.

dennis

On Tuesday, January 28, 2003, at 04:52 PM, TJ wrote:

> You should definately use it with a power supply. Even though it draws
> power from the USB port it probably doesn't get enough and messes up
> the flashing process. Probably just as simple as that because there've
> been problems just like that when using fresh batteries. If not then
> the cart is bad, not really many things it could be.





Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Absolutely. Rather than build a hard disk interface specifically for
the GBA, wouldn't it be better to build something more like the IPOD,
but with a general purpose interface, which could be reprogrammed to
(say) connect with the GBA link port, or to one of the MP3 decoder
chips directly, or to a USB interface for example.

That way, you end up with a very multi-purpose portable storage device
which you tailor for your application with a cable, and firmware to
communicate with whatever you connect it to.

By the way, the 2.5" IDE interface is electrically identical to the
3.5" one, but the 4 extra pins supply the power (5V and GND) and the
pins are spaced at 2mm instead of 0.1". These connectors and the
ribbon cable are quite difficult to get hold of, or were last time I
made myself a battery powered IDE interface :)

Neil.


--- In gbadev@yahoogroups.com, "Mike Schwartz" <mykes@i...> wrote:
> This is starting to get ridiculous.
>
> The more I think about it, the less it makes sense.
>
> GBA has a slow CPU and only 8-bit samples.  It's not going to do much
> justice to MP3 playback.  To do it right, you should put 16-bit DACs
> (stereo) on the IDE board, and maybe even a faster CPU.  If you're going
> to go that far, may as well just build a walkman ;-)
>

You definitely should NOT use a power supply with the USB linker when
using the USB port.  The power over the USB port is more than enough
for the linker.  Depending on the design of the linker, you could end
up frying the linker or even the USB port on the PC.

As for the problem at hand, I would make sure that the ROM loaded has a
valid header.  If it doesn't, then it won't on a real GBA.  I believe
there is an option in the flash software to fix the header when it
transfers it.  Or, alternatively, you can fix the header with one of
the tools available.

dennis

On Tuesday, January 28, 2003, at 04:52 PM, TJ wrote:

> You should definately use it with a power supply. Even though it draws
> power from the USB port it probably doesn't get enough and messes up
> the flashing process. Probably just as simple as that because there've
> been problems just like that when using fresh batteries. If not then
> the cart is bad, not really many things it could be.

You should definately use it with a power supply. Even though it draws power
from the USB port it probably doesn't get enough and messes up the flashing
process. Probably just as simple as that because there've been problems just
like that when using fresh batteries. If not then the cart is bad, not really
many things it could be.
   ----- Original Message -----
   From: Rory Savage
   To: Gbadev@Yahoogroups. Com
   Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 9:20 AM
   Subject: [gbadev] XtremeLink USB not working?


   Hello,

     I just bought an XtremeLink USB development kit with a 256mb flash card.
   And I thought I would be happy with it until I tried to upload a backed up
   to it.  The rom transfers just fine to the flash card, but when I try to
   boot the flash card in my GBA, it will not work.  I've tried the card in
   two other GBAs, and still nothing.  Could I be doing something incorrect?
   Has anyone else experienced similar problems with this writer, and
   flash card?  If so, can you share your solution?

   Thanks!

   -Rory

Hello,

   I just bought an XtremeLink USB development kit with a 256mb flash card.
And I thought I would be happy with it until I tried to upload a backed up
to it.  The rom transfers just fine to the flash card, but when I try to
boot the flash card in my GBA, it will not work.  I've tried the card in
two other GBAs, and still nothing.  Could I be doing something incorrect?
Has anyone else experienced similar problems with this writer, and
flash card?  If so, can you share your solution?

Thanks!

-Rory

even if the screen was ok, just moving the scroll position would look pretty
naff (and a bit wierd).

you'd really need to move all of the x positions for every object in your game a
different amount depending on their distance from the camera.

but like everyone has already said, GBA screen isn't really a feasilbe device
for shutter goggles- they'd need to be giong a hell of a lot faster than 15fps
to not make your head hurt...

lx :)


-----Original Message-----
From: "Aaron Isaksen" <aisaksen@...>
Sent: 24 January 2003 20:01
To: "gbadev@yahoogroups.com" <gbadev@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: RE: [gbadev] (unknown)


>   GBA's LCD is interlaced,
>         (one pass darkens odd lines and lightens even lines
>          and second pass does the opposite)

Thats good news, not bad news.  Put the left eye on the odd lines and the right
eye on the even lines and you don't have to bother with page flipping.  Your
sprites can all be 3-D, using the same technique.

You will be sacrificing resolution for frame rate, but it seems worth it to me.

-Aaron




Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

im pretty sure that mp3 playback on the gba has already been covered and its
not possible to decode the data fast enough on the ARM processor - I don't
remember the reasons but if you search the list you'll find them :)

I also cant see how caching the data to the drive would work? surely if the
gba isn't fast enough to play back mp3 files then its going to take longer
than the length of the album in play time to decode it and cache it? (i.e. >
60 minutes for most albums) so what you would end up with is something
that's so slow its totally impractical. The only solution would be to store
the songs in a much less compressed format on the drive but that would
really defeat the whole idea!

for the cost of a laptop HD and battery plus the time and effort it would
take and the ultimate impracticality of the device you would be better off
just buying a stand alone MP3 player like the creative labs HD based ones...

ninge

-----Original Message-----
From: Fredrik Olsson [mailto:flubba@...]
Sent: 26 January 2003 15:48
To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA Re: Re: (so many Re:'s)


Den 2003-01-26 13:55:53 skrev "Scott Purcival" <kasparzdomain@...>:

>I can see how it could be made feasible.
>
>First thing you would have to worry about is weather the gba can read and
cache data from the hard drive at a fast enough rate, and then be able to
decode it to create
skip free MP3 playback at at least 128K quality.
>One idea may be to use the hard drive itself as temporary swap space if the
GBA can't handle the load, converting the song to raw sound data first, and
then using the
EWRAM for cache/buffer space.
>

128kbit mp3 = 32kByte/s I have never heard of any HDD that has such a low
transfer rate.
I don't think we need a harddrive to see if it's possible to make a mp3
player on the GBA...

/FluBBa
PocketNES destroyer






Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

i'm pretty sure that the interface for laptop harddrive is the same
as IDE, my brother made an adapter for it.  i can double check the
pinouts on it if anyone's interested.
about the power, i have an Archos Jukebox:
http://www.archos.com/lang=en/products/fam_music_mp3.html?country=us

they run off of 4 AA batteries (RECHARGEABLE 1.2V 1600mAh).  it
usually lasts for at least 2 hours, but i haven't tried resently
because i leave it plugged into power.

> For the hard drive, you would be looking at a laptop hard drive for size,
and power consumption reasons, a sufficiently sized Li-Ion battery mounted
underneath the hard drive itself should provide enough power for at least 2
hours continuous operation (how long does a discman last on 2 AA's!). If you
were to build into the hard drive "box" itself a cache (say 4-8mb), this
means that between loading, the hard drive could be switched off and in a
power-save mode. This could also help the GBA with its RAM limitations.

Actually the hardware end of things should be the easy part. After all Apple
did it with the iPod! It uses the IBM Microdrive, (about the size of a
flashcard) and the battery problem seems to work for them too.

Just my 2 cents

Tom

The GBA flash cart is a parallel interface wheras all the flash cart
I've ever played with are serial.  Serial works great for sequential
data (like pictures and mp3) but doesn't work so well for holding code
as you have to jump around all over the place.

Even the Sony Clie which uses a memory stick to hold programs loads the
program into internal ram before executing.

Ken

Damian Yerrick wrote:

> --- In gbadev@yahoogroups.com, "Jonathan Harbour" <jonathan@j...> wrote:
> > Why isn't a 512 MB flash media card (MMC/SD/SM) going to cut it?
> > That's not any different than a flash cartridge, as far as speed
>
> Can MMC and SM seek to an arbitrary address within 200 ns
> and read two bytes every 120 ns?  That's how fast a GBA
> flash cartridge has to be in order to achieve 3/1 ws timing.
> If you know more about the speeds of various flash formats,
> please point me to specifications.
>
> --
> Damian
>
>
>
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>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service
> <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/>.

You completely forgot about the possibility of using a CompactFlash IBM
MicroDrive, which is a 1 GB real-platter drive in CF format, which is
low-voltage. All you need is a CF port to use it. What do you need 40 GB on
the GBA for? Even if you pirated every GBA game ever made, they would all
fit easily on a 512 MB flash card.


Jonathan S. Harbour
http://www.jharbour.com

   -----Original Message-----
   From: Scott Purcival [mailto:kasparzdomain@...]
   Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 5:56 AM
   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
   Subject: Re: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA Re: Re: (so many Re:'s)


   I can see how it could be made feasible.

I guess it all depends on what you want to use the hard drive for... if
it's to play a game, you would need to have someplace to load the game
to... unless you just wanted to play a bunch of multiboot games :)

sometime, I want to look into making a cart with 32megs of RAM, and a
CF interface ... IBM makes a 1gig drive in CF form that would fit
nicely with a GBA.  Put this together with something like PogoShell,
and you could have a great little picture viewer, MOD player, emulator,
book reader, etc, etc.

This device would have some processor on board that would handle all of
the I/O between the drive and the RAM on the cart.  I don't know how
much a device like this would cost, but it shouldn't be any more than a
standard GBA flash cart -- even with 32mb CF cart to get you started.

dennis

On Sunday, January 26, 2003, at 07:55 AM, Scott Purcival wrote:

> I can see how it could be made feasible.
>
> First thing you would have to worry about is weather the gba can read
> and cache data from the hard drive at a fast enough rate, and then be
> able to decode it to create skip free MP3 playback at at least 128K
> quality.
> One idea may be to use the hard drive itself as temporary swap space
> if the GBA can't handle the load, converting the song to raw sound
> data first, and then using the EWRAM for cache/buffer space.
>
> If you can get all this to work, then you can worry about the power
> supply for the hard drive.
>
> For the hard drive, you would be looking at a laptop hard drive for
> size, and power consumption reasons, a sufficiently sized Li-Ion
> battery mounted underneath the hard drive itself should provide enough
> power for at least 2 hours continuous operation (how long does a
> discman last on 2 AA's!). If you were to build into the hard drive
> "box" itself a cache (say 4-8mb), this means that between loading, the
> hard drive could be switched off and in a power-save mode. This could
> also help the GBA with its RAM limitations.
>
> The only other thing to worry about is how to charge the Li-Ion
> battery in the hard drive box. For convenience you would make it able
> to be charged from a 12V power source, such as a car cigarette
> lighter, and simply have a separate adapter for a standard wall > outlet.
>
> I won't go in to all the lights and stuff you should have on it, but
> the idea of the small, low power laptop hard drive, utilizing a high
> capacity, lightweight rechargeable (for economical reasons) battery
> (Li-Ion) crossed with power-saving features, does make the idea
> feasible - but dont expect it to be very cheap...
> In the end though, the enormous space gained (20Gb+) for the
> relatively incredibly low cost (compared to Flash Cards) does make the
> price worth it. And if you were to make this, and market it - it could
> be used for more than just MP3's...
>
> A hard drive for the GBA could end up being something like the 64DD
> (if you are not familiar with this, it added an enormous capacity for
> extra features, better graphics, etc. to N64 games - discontinued due
> to piracy reasons.) this would allow massively larger GBA games with
> much more detailed graphics, and things such as FMV.
> After the initial purchase price (which when mass produced, could be
> expected at around $200-$400 retail) this form of storage for GBA
> would become much more economical than Flash Cards. How much is a
> 512MB flash card? Compare that to $200-$400 for a HDD... is it half
> the price? now think that the hard drive is roughly 20,000MB, thats
> about 40 times larger! To make flash memory even come close, a 512MB
> card would have to cost around $10!!
>
> Anyway, I'm not about to make one - but you guys go ahead.
> Only small probs you may run into:
> - I don't think laptop hard drives are standard IDE
> - You will have to find someone to make Li-Ion battery
> - You will also need someone to make the power saving/data cache
> computer for the HDD - unless... you were to hand that responsibility
> to the GBA - which may not be such a bad idea... (stop the HDD from
> sleeping in the middle of an FMV sequence). Perhaps be implemented by
> a "less smart" computer on HDD that runs off simple commands from GBA
> such as "sleep", "cache XXX", "delete XXX", etc. (only commands would
> not be in english like I just did them...takes to much processing
> power to interpret)
>
> Oh well, i've ranted for a good long while, time to let some other 2
> cents' in!
>
> Cya,

This is starting to get ridiculous.

The more I think about it, the less it makes sense.

GBA has a slow CPU and only 8-bit samples.  It's not going to do much
justice to MP3 playback.  To do it right, you should put 16-bit DACs
(stereo) on the IDE board, and maybe even a faster CPU.  If you're going
to go that far, may as well just build a walkman ;-)


=> -----Original Message-----
=> From: Fredrik Olsson [mailto:flubba@...]
=> Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 5:48 AM
=> To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
=> Subject: Re: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA Re: Re: (so many Re:'s)
=>
=>
=> Den 2003-01-26 13:55:53 skrev "Scott Purcival"
=> <kasparzdomain@...>:
=>
=> >I can see how it could be made feasible.
=> >
=> >First thing you would have to worry about is weather the
=> gba can read
=> >and cache data from the hard drive at a fast enough rate,
=> and then be able to decode it to create
=> skip free MP3 playback at at least 128K quality.
=> >One idea may be to use the hard drive itself as temporary
=> swap space if
=> >the GBA can't handle the load, converting the song to raw
=> sound data first, and then using the
=> EWRAM for cache/buffer space.
=> >
=>
=> 128kbit mp3 = 32kByte/s I have never heard of any HDD that
=> has such a low transfer rate. I don't think we need a
=> harddrive to see if it's possible to make a mp3 player on the GBA...
=>
=> /FluBBa
=> PocketNES destroyer
=>
=>
=>
=>
=>
=>
=> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
=> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
=>
=>
=>

--- In gbadev@yahoogroups.com, Fredrik Olsson <flubba@h...> wrote:
> 128kbit mp3 = 32kByte/s

More like 16 kByte/s.  Even a device connected to the GBA serial
port could deliver data at this rate, as the serial port can in
theory clock up to 2 Mbit/s, which is fast enough to move even a
wav file if you want to put the decoder on the cart.

> I have never heard of any HDD that has such a low transfer
> rate.  I don't think we need a harddrive to see if it's
> possible to make a mp3 player on the GBA...

The problem here isn't data transfer from storage but about
decoding time.  I don't think a 16.8 MHz ARM7TDMI processor
can decode stereo MP3 in real time (44100 samples per second).
I'd suggest investigating the much simpler MP2 codec instead.

--
Damian

Would not an ata-1 HD controller be easer than accessing smart media?  At
least the atapi info is easy to come by and there are more people who know
how to access a HD.

I think a smart media card or simiular would be better for demos.  That way
you could just give them away.  However, a HD would be great for on the go
development ;)  It should be a fun project also.  As for the speed.. I dont
see that as a problem.. From what I have read about ata-1 standard it will
place the data on the data lines when you request it....

Den 2003-01-26 13:55:53 skrev "Scott Purcival" <kasparzdomain@...>:

>I can see how it could be made feasible.
>
>First thing you would have to worry about is weather the gba can read and cache
data from the hard drive at a fast enough rate, and then be able to decode it to
create
skip free MP3 playback at at least 128K quality.
>One idea may be to use the hard drive itself as temporary swap space if the GBA
can't handle the load, converting the song to raw sound data first, and then
using the
EWRAM for cache/buffer space.
>

128kbit mp3 = 32kByte/s I have never heard of any HDD that has such a low
transfer rate.
I don't think we need a harddrive to see if it's possible to make a mp3 player
on the GBA...

/FluBBa
PocketNES destroyer

I can see how it could be made feasible.

First thing you would have to worry about is weather the gba can read and cache
data from the hard drive at a fast enough rate, and then be able to decode it to
create skip free MP3 playback at at least 128K quality.
One idea may be to use the hard drive itself as temporary swap space if the GBA
can't handle the load, converting the song to raw sound data first, and then
using the EWRAM for cache/buffer space.

If you can get all this to work, then you can worry about the power supply for
the hard drive.

For the hard drive, you would be looking at a laptop hard drive for size, and
power consumption reasons, a sufficiently sized Li-Ion battery mounted
underneath the hard drive itself should provide enough power for at least 2
hours continuous operation (how long does a discman last on 2 AA's!). If you
were to build into the hard drive "box" itself a cache (say 4-8mb), this means
that between loading, the hard drive could be switched off and in a power-save
mode. This could also help the GBA with its RAM limitations.

The only other thing to worry about is how to charge the Li-Ion battery in the
hard drive box. For convenience you would make it able to be charged from a 12V
power source, such as a car cigarette lighter, and simply have a separate
adapter for a standard wall outlet.

I won't go in to all the lights and stuff you should have on it, but the idea of
the small, low power laptop hard drive, utilizing a high capacity, lightweight
rechargeable (for economical reasons) battery (Li-Ion) crossed with power-saving
features, does make the idea feasible - but dont expect it to be very cheap...
In the end though, the enormous space gained (20Gb+) for the relatively
incredibly low cost (compared to Flash Cards) does make the price worth it. And
if you were to make this, and market it - it could be used for more than just
MP3's...

A hard drive for the GBA could end up being something like the 64DD (if you are
not familiar with this, it added an enormous capacity for extra features, better
graphics, etc. to N64 games - discontinued due to piracy reasons.) this would
allow massively larger GBA games with much more detailed graphics, and things
such as FMV.
After the initial purchase price (which when mass produced, could be expected at
around $200-$400 retail) this form of storage for GBA would become much more
economical than Flash Cards. How much is a 512MB flash card? Compare that to
$200-$400 for a HDD... is it half the price? now think that the hard drive is
roughly 20,000MB, thats about 40 times larger! To make flash memory even come
close, a 512MB card would have to cost around $10!!

Anyway, I'm not about to make one - but you guys go ahead.
Only small probs you may run into:
- I don't think laptop hard drives are standard IDE
- You will have to find someone to make Li-Ion battery
- You will also need someone to make the power saving/data cache computer for
the HDD - unless... you were to hand that responsibility to the GBA - which may
not be such a bad idea... (stop the HDD from sleeping in the middle of an FMV
sequence). Perhaps be implemented by a "less smart" computer on HDD that runs
off simple commands from GBA such as "sleep", "cache XXX", "delete XXX", etc.
(only commands would not be in english like I just did them...takes to much
processing power to interpret)

Oh well, i've ranted for a good long while, time to let some other 2 cents' in!

Cya,
     Asp.

   ----- Original Message -----
   From: Mike Schwartz
   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 9:56 AM
   Subject: RE: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA


   I thought of this myself, a while back.  A hard drive would let you turn
   the GBA into a nice e-book reader or MP3 player.  512M of RAM on a card
   isn't going to cut it.

   Since the GBA is powered by batteries, you'd have to figure out a way to
   give the drive its own power supply, and it just might not be so
   feasible.


   => -----Original Message-----
   => From: rsavage@... [mailto:rsavage@...]
   => Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 11:29 AM
   => To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
   => Subject: Re: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA
   =>
   =>
   => No I mean a real hard disk, single component.  Not SMC->FLASH->CART
   =>
   => On Fri, 24 Jan 2003, Damian Yerrick <d_yerrick@...> wrote:
   =>
   => > --- In gbadev@yahoogroups.com, "Jonathan Harbour" <jonathan@j...>
   => > wrote:
   => > > There are some options at Lik-Sang for using SmartMedia
   => > > (or I think SD/MMC) with your GBA.
   => >
   => > Don't you mean Game Gizmo?  Lik Sang doesn't sell GBA
   => flash products
   => > anymore.  Here's the Game Wallet at Game Gizmo:
   => > http://www.gamegizmo.com/products.php?sysID=5&catID=13&pID=701
   => >
   => > > Given that you can get a 256MB or 512MB card now, that's
   => as good as
   => > > a hard drive, maybe not as fast though.
   => >
   => > Because the Game Wallet connects to the serial port, you
   => still need a
   => > flash cartridge to store a program while you're running it. Flash
   => > cartridges (especially Visoly brand) are expensive, and
   => non-Visoly 64
   => > Mbit cartridges always seem to be out of stock whenever I check
   => > prices.
   => >
   => > Does the Game Wallet support running .mb (EWRAM-based)
   => games without a
   => > flash cartridge inserted?
   => >

Hi,

If you want some C source code to get a hd running:
http://www.myplace.nu/mp3/yampp3.htm

see "Download sourcecode for yampp-3" link near the bottom of the page

cheers,
Jamie


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Schwartz" <mykes@...>
To: <gbadev@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 3:23 PM
Subject: RE: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA


> http://www.wtysoft.com/ataref.htm
>
> => -----Original Message-----
> => From: Daniel [mailto:webmaster@...]
> => Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 8:57 AM
> => To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
> => Subject: Re: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA
> =>
> =>
> => Do any of you understand how the ide interface works?  Is
> => so, Im willing to convert one of my Xports into an ide
> => interface.  The flash will boot the gba then the xport with
> => up to 51 i/o signals will read the hard drive.  It should
> => work without much effort.  However, I do not know how to use
> => an ide interface so I will need help!  As for power, I can
> => take one of those large 6 volt batteries and build a small
> => switching power supply to supply 3,5, and 12 volts; no problem there.
> =>
> => Lets put an end to the question and just build one!
> =>
> => ldr    r0,Reality
> => ldr    r1,thought
> => str    r1,[r0]            ;moving thought into reality
> =>
> =>
> =>
> =>
> =>
> =>
> =>
> =>
> => Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
> => http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> =>
> =>
> =>
>
>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>

http://www.wtysoft.com/ataref.htm

=> -----Original Message-----
=> From: Daniel [mailto:webmaster@...]
=> Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 8:57 AM
=> To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
=> Subject: Re: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA
=>
=>
=> Do any of you understand how the ide interface works?  Is
=> so, Im willing to convert one of my Xports into an ide
=> interface.  The flash will boot the gba then the xport with
=> up to 51 i/o signals will read the hard drive.  It should
=> work without much effort.  However, I do not know how to use
=> an ide interface so I will need help!  As for power, I can
=> take one of those large 6 volt batteries and build a small
=> switching power supply to supply 3,5, and 12 volts; no problem there.
=>
=> Lets put an end to the question and just build one!
=>
=> ldr    r0,Reality
=> ldr    r1,thought
=> str    r1,[r0]            ;moving thought into reality
=>
=>
=>
=>
=>
=>
=>
=>
=> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
=> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
=>
=>
=>

Do any of you understand how the ide interface works?  Is so, Im willing to
convert one of my Xports into an ide interface.  The flash will boot the gba
then the xport with up to 51 i/o signals will read the hard drive.  It
should work without much effort.  However, I do not know how to use an ide
interface so I will need help!  As for power, I can take one of those large
6 volt batteries and build a small switching power supply to supply 3,5, and
12 volts; no problem there.

Lets put an end to the question and just build one!

ldr    r0,Reality
ldr    r1,thought
str    r1,[r0]            ;moving thought into reality

Why don't you understand that he is not interested in cartridges, Jonathan? He
is interested in a HARD DRIVE.

Guido

   ----- Original Message -----
   From: Jonathan Harbour
   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 4:57 PM
   Subject: RE: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA


   Why isn't a 512 MB flash media card (MMC/SD/SM) going to cut it? That's not
   any different than a flash cartridge, as far as speed, etc, goes. Hence, the
   name. If you want to play MP3's, get a MP3 player (or a Pocket PC). 2 AA
   batteries would last about 1 hour playing real-time decoded MP3's.


   Jonathan S. Harbour
   http://www.jharbour.com

     -----Original Message-----
     From: Mike Schwartz [mailto:mykes@...]
     Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 3:57 PM
     To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
     Subject: RE: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA


     I thought of this myself, a while back.  A hard drive would let you turn
     the GBA into a nice e-book reader or MP3 player.  512M of RAM on a card
     isn't going to cut it.

     Since the GBA is powered by batteries, you'd have to figure out a way to
     give the drive its own power supply, and it just might not be so
     feasible.

Well, I don't see having a hard drive on a machine with 10 hours of
battery time (or 1 of MP3 time) being an easy thing.  I think I said
that ;-)

The battery for my laptop is considerably bigger than 2 AA batteries,
and I think you'd need something similar to make a disk drive setup on
the GBA work well.

512M on a flash card isn't a hard drive.  It's got other uses.


=> -----Original Message-----
=> From: Jonathan Harbour [mailto:jonathan@...]
=> Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 2:58 PM
=> To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
=> Subject: RE: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA
=>
=>
=> Why isn't a 512 MB flash media card (MMC/SD/SM) going to cut
=> it? That's not any different than a flash cartridge, as far
=> as speed, etc, goes. Hence, the name. If you want to play
=> MP3's, get a MP3 player (or a Pocket PC). 2 AA batteries
=> would last about 1 hour playing real-time decoded MP3's.
=>
=>
=> Jonathan S. Harbour
=> http://www.jharbour.com
=>
=>   -----Original Message-----
=>   From: Mike Schwartz [mailto:mykes@...]
=>   Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 3:57 PM
=>   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
=>   Subject: RE: [gbadev] Re: Harddisk for GBA
=>
=>
=>   I thought of this myself, a while back.  A hard drive
=> would let you turn
=>   the GBA into a nice e-book reader or MP3 player.  512M of
=> RAM on a card
=>   isn't going to cut it.
=>
=>   Since the GBA is powered by batteries, you'd have to
=> figure out a way to
=>   give the drive its own power supply, and it just might not be so
=>   feasible.
=>
=>
=>
=>
=>
=>
=> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
=> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
=>
=>
=>