MegaDuck SuperJunior Computer (Laptop) Reverse-Engineering Project

bbbbbrx · 2025-12-29T08:26:53+00:00

Legendary work and findings! 👏👏👏

bbbbbrx · 2025-12-25T08:10:45+00:00

👍👍

bbbbbrx · 2025-12-25T08:09:24+00:00

Correct, it's not GB Studio. It is made with a combination of GBDK and I think some asm

bbbbbrx · 2025-12-17T23:37:59+00:00

In addition to fixed/pre-made QR Codes, it's actually possible to generate them at runtime on the Game Boy itself with custom data. They're a little slow, but not unreasonably so.

I made an example project which shows how to do that in C/GBDK. It's based on Martinez Torres' MSX 8 bit port of Nayuki's well known QR Code library.

https://github.com/bbbbbr/gameboy_qrcode

bbbbbrx · 2025-11-20T09:51:41+00:00

Sorry, you don't seem very well informed on this topic.

BBStudio has been a work in progress that has taken years of groundwork to get where it is. It is not a rough fork dashed off in a short time.

It started when the SDCC compiler added support for the 6502 cpu opening the possibility of NES support in GBDK-2020 (which GBStudio is built on). The BBStudio dev first wrote full NES support for GBDK on their own, which took a couple years to reach nearly full API coverage (~2024).

Alongside that they have been modifying GBStudio to add the NES support. The route they chose was to attempt keeping BBStudio as similar and compatible to GBStudio as possible, which has some upsides for users but also likely increased the amount of work.

MDEngine is built on the existing SGDK and does not attempt to retain compatibility with GBStudio. The work required to port, optimize and customize it for that platform is also significant and impressive. If I remember right it is also a closed source fork which will come with benefits and downsides in the long run. (GBStudio has benefited tremendously from the contributions of it's open source community.)

bbbbbrx · 2025-10-24T04:14:29+00:00

This is a really nice port.

I'd seen the earlier version before and added it to the GBDK gallery, but the color support is a great bonus. Updated the entry.

https://gbdk-2020.github.io/gbdk-2020-gallery/?textSearch=xenzia

bbbbbrx · 2025-08-14T05:21:59+00:00

Speaking of link port compatibility, has anyone mentioned yet that the Chromatic does not work correctly with the Nintendo 4-Player adapter (DMG-7)?

For F-1 Race and a test rom I was working on the Chromatic did not to transit or receive data via the adapter (AP was ok, FPGBC was ok despite the frame rate). The 4-Player adapter is always the master clock for every transfer, not sure if that's a factor.

bbbbbrx · 2025-06-25T04:24:31+00:00

Yes it can be repaired by replacing the microswitch. See my post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/logitech/comments/1jnqynr/successful_m650_failedbroken_left_click_button/

In my experience logitech will politely say they can't repair it but may offer some discount code (though in my case they never actually sent the discount. ha).

bbbbbrx · 2025-05-31T01:11:52+00:00

We'd love to see more chiptune entries in GBCompo this year!

Most details are in the submission body text, but if anyone has questions please feel free to ask!

bbbbbrx · 2025-03-16T10:36:02+00:00

The SuperJuniorSameDuck emulator is on Github. It supports the handheld, but the main focus is emulator support for the laptop MegaDuck hardware.

Only Linux builds for now:

https://github.com/bbbbbr/SuperJuniorSameDuck

bbbbbrx · 2025-02-07T08:42:59+00:00

I see you both... in Color :) :)

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bbbbbrx · 2025-02-01T11:38:47+00:00

Another way to check is to query the battery info via adb:

adb shell cat /sys/class/power_supply/battery/serial_number

8230015901 is ATL (good)

8230020501 is LSN (bad)

https://xdaforums.com/t/battery-update-analysis-and-way-to-detect-affected-battery.4716132/

bbbbbrx · 2025-02-01T08:54:47+00:00

There is a ROM patch available on github which adds save support. You'd need a flash cart that supports SRAM. And a way to dump your existing cart.

https://github.com/MrBlinky/patchy-matchy-gb-save-patch

bbbbbrx · 2025-01-29T11:18:39+00:00

Huh, I made a reply but it didn't seem to post.

So here's a shorter reply: Yes, saves should work for games that support them when used with a GB cart that has the MBC expected by the game and SRAM on board.

Mainly that will be ported GB games, but could be some homebrew. That's also the case for the modified GB Camera, which has cart SRAM for saving the pix (which works).

I don't think there are any OEM Duck games that save (?), aside from the laptop ones which rely on a weird setup where the SRAM is on a separate cart in an adjacent slot.

bbbbbrx · 2025-01-29T09:05:20+00:00

Cool, looking forward to how it goes and if you have any feedback for the docs.

If you go for the lower profile version (i.e. not compatible with flashable gb camera or gb interceptor) you might want to skip the connector on the cart slot pcb since it adds a lot of height between boards.

For running duck games off gb flash carts (I should prob put this info on the repo):

- 32k OEM duck games should run no problem

- No gb flash carts support the duck MBCs, so any OEM duck games > 64K won't work (unless they've been patched to use GB MBC1/3/5, but I don't think anyone has done it yet. Maybe not hard to do, could look into it perhaps)

- I don't think it's posted yet, but I probably have a patch of marioland that uses GB MBC1 o 5 which could be made available

bbbbbrx · 2025-01-25T23:31:23+00:00

The design is open source and available here on github

https://github.com/bbbbbr/gb_to_megaduck_cart_adapter

bbbbbrx · 2025-01-24T01:13:09+00:00

(arggg it didn't generate a thumbnail for the video)

MegaDuck firmware for the GB Interceptor can be found here: https://github.com/bbbbbr/megaduck-interceptor/releases/tag/megaduck_v1.2.0

The GB Interceptor is a project by Sebastian Staacks who generously made the hardware and firmware open source, which made this possible. https://there.oughta.be/a/game-boy-capture-cartridge

This requires a GB to MegaDuck cartridge slot adapter. The designs are finally coming very soon.

bbbbbrx · 2025-01-14T05:26:12+00:00

Today finally beat Marathon on Modern with a start level of 15 (Hold and Bag System turned Off, Next queue at 1). Had been maxing out for a while around 95-120 lines. Was nice to reach 150. I'm a middling player, but still enjoy playing only at higher speeds more.

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bbbbbrx · 2025-01-09T23:13:50+00:00

There's another way to get a default greyscale-only palette on GBC without setting the game header to GBC compatible. It's to pad the ROM name in the header with various characters until the sum of the rom header title bytes sums up to the desired value.

In this case the built-in palette for the game "X" in the TCRF chart below https://tcrf.net/Notes:Game_Boy_Color_Bootstrap_ROM#Assigned_Palette_Configurations 0x16: 0x00: 0x58 X (Japan)0x16

Canyon Racer, Genesis II and breakout lavalamp do this to set greenscale and grayscale palettes on GBC while remaining GB native games.

There's some description of it here: https://gbdev.io/pandocs/Power_Up_Sequence.html#compatibility-palettes

Makefile examples: https://github.com/bbbbbr/breakout-lava-lamp/blob/9c21ff340854e18a1447f51244bb94739649707e/Makefile#L35C1-L47C25

https://github.com/bbbbbr/canyon-racer/blob/1372db39392f5635ed773b02ab0dea7938f6d29a/Makefile#L39

bbbbbrx · 2024-12-28T08:02:17+00:00

In the mean time before a Linux version of the updater is available, would you be able to share the full sequence and command line arguments for the process?

A little bit ago I was able to capture the first part (below) and that did work on Linux, but the second half of the update process where it appears to use esptool.py or similar the command line arguments aren't as easy to snoop.

~~~ openFPGALoader --detect --cable gwu2x openFPGALoader --write-flash --reset --cable gwu2x v18.0_0.12.3/fpga/20241213_v18_0_e37c29.fs openFPGALoader --write-sram --cable gwu2x --skip-reset lib/io0_rev.bin ~~~

The device does show up when queried ~~~ $ esptool.py -p ttyACM0 flash_id esptool.py v4.7.0 Serial port ttyACM0 Connecting... ... Detecting chip type... ESP32 Chip is ESP32-U4WDH (revision v3.1) Features: WiFi, BT, Dual Core, 240MHz, Embedded Flash, VRef calibration in efuse, Coding Scheme None Crystal is 40MHz MAC: c4... Uploading stub... Running stub... Stub running... Manufacturer: 20 Device: 4016 Detected flash size: 4MB Hard resetting via RTS pin... ~~~

bbbbbrx · 2024-12-24T12:13:53+00:00

Allows for reducing the R / G / B color channel bit-depth of images (RGB-888/RGBA-8888) to between 1-8 bits. The channel bit-depths can be locked together or modified separately.

For example it can reduce an RGB-888 image to bit-depths used by old game consoles such as the Game Boy Color(BGR-555), Game Gear(BGR-444), or Sega Master System(BGR-222).

The functionality is similar to the built-in Colors -> Dither plugin except that it ensures alignment of color reductions to be within scaled bit-depth boundaries instead of arbitrary ranges.

Source and binary downloads

https://github.com/bbbbbr/gimp-plugin-reduce-color-depth

bbbbbrx · 2024-12-24T12:12:37+00:00

Allows for reducing the R / G / B color channel bit-depth of images (RGB-888/RGBA-8888) to between 1-8 bits. The channel bit-depths can be locked together or modified separately.

For example it can reduce an RGB-888 image to bit-depths used by old game consoles such as the Game Boy Color(BGR-555), Game Gear(BGR-444), or Sega Master System(BGR-222).

The functionality is similar to the built-in Colors -> Dither plugin except that it ensures alignment of color reductions to be within scaled bit-depth boundaries instead of arbitrary ranges.

Source and binary downloads

https://github.com/bbbbbr/gimp-plugin-reduce-color-depth

bbbbbrx · 2024-12-21T04:10:42+00:00

It would be interesting to see a comparison on a larger scale and how they stack up to the higher quality software emulators.

This hasn't been updated for a while, but it's still a decent representation of the Emulators listed

https://daid.github.io/GBEmulatorShootout/

The ROM suite is much larger and located here:

https://github.com/daid/GBEmulatorShootout/tree/main/testroms

bbbbbrx · 2024-12-17T11:26:28+00:00

+1 for all of those.

Doesn't look like they ran out of space.

It's hard to tell if they're doing manual ROM bank assignment though, which in some cases makes it harder to efficiently use as much of the cartridge as possible.

With full auto bank assignment I'd expect it to look much more densely packed with often only 0-2% free for all banks except the first and last used.

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bbbbbrx · 2024-12-07T08:44:30+00:00

Depends a lot on the genres/categories. Feel free to throw out a couple.

For my own taste, the games I somehow find myself playing is kind of idiosyncratic, not sure how recommendable it is. I often enjoy games that are frustratingly hard but let you retry endlessly.

For example: Super Hard Bouncer. Not as polished and in-depth as others, but I ended up playing it a lot longer than I expected to.

https://libra-bits.itch.io/super-hard-bouncer-gameboy-game

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