Serial Multiboot Cable (MSMC) ------------------------------- Originally by Matt Evans (http://www.axio.ms/) Modified by Steve Lynch (http://blog.evildro.me.uk/) v1.01 17th Match 2010, Steve Lynch (astephenlynch@gmail.com) -Added -d option (delay for 0 - 9 seconds after opening the serial port. -Added -p option path to the serial port connected to the multiboot cable. -Added a port of the microcontroller code to the arduino (should be portable plain avr-gcc fairly easily) v1.00 3rd July 2002, Matt Evans (matt@axio.ms) -Initial version. Before you start: Requires: a unix box with the GNU ARM binutils. Thumb is not required. a microcontroller-based cable to be built. This will need soldering etc. :P For 8051, the as31 assembler is needed. For Arduino, the arduino IDE is needed. 1. Introduction This archive contains three separate programs that together provide a means to 'multiboot' code into a Gameboy Advance. I have developed it to bootstrap developing code on my GBA. "Multiboot" is the process whereby a GBA listens on its link port, when it is first switched on, for another 'master' GBA. This GBA can then download code into the EWRAM (256K RAM) of the 'slave' GBA; by pretending to be another GBA one can download and run code on a GBA without using a cartridge. This is not a new idea. See the MBC2 on www.lik-sang.com for a commercial one, or www.godsmaze.org/gba for ajo's PIC-based parallel cable. These two cables both use microcontrollers attached to a PC parallel port. The former is not open source, and costs money. The latter is, but is tied to PC hardware. 2. Reasons... I built this because it was fun, and I had the bits lying around. It didn't justify mailing off $40 or so to buy the commercial cable. More to the point, I was irritated by the windows-twistedness that most GBA development tools have. I mean, *honestly*... ;-) My cable uses a plain old RS232 serial connection to a unix box. It has been tested on an x86 linux box, but there is no reason why it should not work on a Sun, Macintosh, SGI, iPaq etc. etc. Anything with a serial port that can do 115.2kbit/s and that can run my weird-ass bastard code should do just fine. Enough waffle! 3. How it works Three pieces of code. 3.1: Firstly the microcontroller code in: 8051cable/ (Original 8051 version of the code) arduinocable/ (A port of the 8051 code to the arduino). This is an example of how to make a smart serial <-> serial cable. I used an 8051. You might hate them and want to use something else. You might love them but not use quite the same brand of chip that I did. Either way you might need to do some coding here...... but it is very simple. The GBA requires a strange serial format, 1 start bit, 16 data bits, 1 stop bit shared over a single data wire (half-duplex) at 115.2kbit/s. The firmware in the cable receives 2 characters from the RS232 serial port and transmits them as a combined 16bit word. The GBA then replies with a 16bit word that is split up and sent back to the host as 2 bytes. My cable allows an escape sequence to be sent to it to detect it and to change its mode. It can be put into 'flat passthru' mode where any char received (from the host, or from the GBA) is sent through without alteration. This is done to allow the GBA's 'UART mode' to talk straight to the host after it boots your code. This allows: a) User code to send stuff down the GBA serial port for debug/networking etc. b) A second-stage bootloader (see later). The 8051 code in this directory stands as an example, hopefully if you have an 8051 lying around it should work without too much (but some) trouble. Also it should be readable so you can make your own compatible cable out of a PIC, AVR, etc. (and please do!) There is a lovely ascii-art schematic of my cable in the source. ....moving on to: 3.2: 2ndloader/ This is a smallish multiboot image written in ARM code, assembled and linked using the GNU ARM binutils. The cable multiboots this image into the GBA; the 2ndloader then relocates itself to IWRAM and starts a simple bootloader listening on the GBA serial port in UART mode. I found the download speeds using the multiboot protocol to be painfully slow (encryption plus the round-trip-time of 2 serial links). This tiny monitor downloads in a couple of seconds, and can then download the REAL multiboot code image at the full 11K/sec ish that the serial port can manage. This code has some extra frills not used by the front-end software which makes it larger than required. It's still about 796 bytes, not too bad, but could be smaller. Edit the arm-binutils names in Makefile and 'make'. This will produce loader.h that is included into the front-end sourcecode. 3.3: Linux/unix front-end code in the top-level directory. This relies on the 2ndloader/loader.h data. 'make' should build the util 'gbl'. It is configured to look for /dev/ttyS0 -- if you are not using this port, use the -p option! This is a very simple util; you just pass it a filename of the code you want to download. Make sure the cable is reset and ready for action. The code is lacking timeouts and various nice retry things, but it works reliably on my machine. And lo, $ ./gbl MattDemo3s.mb [Opening serial...done, fd = 4.] [Checking cable version: 'GBA:MBA RS232 cable v0.1, 15/5/2002 me'] -> Sending 2ndstage loader (796 bytes): 0 7202 Sending data. Please wait... CRC Ok - Transmision Done. -> Setting cable to passthru at 115k2...done! -> Loaded 229736 bytes from MattDemo3s.mb. Talking to monitor Offset 00038160 sum 0000d3b3 [####################### ] Running code...done! $ _ It downloads the 2ndloader using the (slow) multiboot protocol, sets the cable to do passthru, then downloads the code quickly via the monitor. 4. To do Neaten, tidy, scrub. Proper makefiles anyone? ;) The GBA supports speeds over 115kbits in the 32bit transfer mode. It may be possible to send data faster using a 230.4Kbit/s serial port on a PC by adding another transfer mode (and a different 2ndbootloader) to the cable that re-packages the serial data into 32bit chunks and sends them at 1Mbit or so. Needs experiments. Better (more) hardware support! Different (more common) uC cables. This is a jumble of mess but I hope it gets you started. I found Andrew May's website (http://program.at/Andrew) and Miguel Angel's site (http://www.godsmaze.org/gba/) very useful (shout out to them an' all dat jah.. er.) Hope you find this helpful. 5. Copyrights "multi.c" written by Miguel Angel and commented by Andrew May, (c) them. The rest of the front-end code is (c) 2002 Matt Evans. 2ndbootloader and 8051 cable code (c) 2002 Matt Evans. arduino cable code (c) 2010 Stephen Lynch You may distribute this code as you wish, making changes as you like or dislike, though I ask that all the files stay together when they move, along with this README. Please let me know of any usefulness you've added to the code! This software may be used and distributed according to the terms of the GNU General Public License. -matt