PCB for the ATMega8515 / FT232RL based Gameboy Cart Flasher & some mods to make it work easily under MacOS
We needed to write a small text-based game, like Zork, for the gameboy. We wanted it to run on the original hardware and look like an original cartridge.
In order to flash a cartridge, you need to either mod an existing one by removing the ROM and replacing it with your own flash, but since the software was pretty simple, I figured I should make a PCB for a 32K flash that could be assembled easily. We had to make around 10 copies in a limited time.
One of the simplest and most used Gameboy Cart Flasher is the one designed by Kraku & Chroost. The schematics and software can be found on the awesome website maintained by Reiner Ziegler.
What you'll find in this repo are the eagle files ready to be sent to a fab house (I used elecrow), plus some instructions and a modified software to make it run easily on MacOS.
Full BOM can be found on Mouser :
The Gameboy Cartridge connector can be taken from a broken gameboy, but the easiest way to get one is to buy a Nintendo DS GBA Slot connector and cutting some little plastic tabs in order to get the original GB cartridges to fit.
In order to fit, the PCB for the cartridge needs to be 0.8mm thick, so be careful when ordering to check that your fab house can make it.
To program the ATmega8515, you'll need an ICSP programmer for AVR chips. I used an USBasp clone.
Using avrdude, fuses need to be set as low 0x1F and high 0xc9
avrdude -P usb -c usbasp -p ATmega8515 -qq -B 8 -U lfuse:w:0x1f:m -U hfuse:w:0xc9:m
I programmed my flasher using the .hex file found here. Be careful to flash the USB version.
avrdude -P usb -c usbasp -p ATmega8515 -qq -B 8 -U flash:w:gbcf-fw-2.1-usb.hex
The firmware has been rewritten in C in 2015 by Tauwasser, but I haven't tested that version personally.
On MacOS, when you plug the flasher, the OS loads one or more kexts to act as drivers for the hardware. Those kexts are AppleUSBFTDI and, if you installed the FTDI VCP drivers, FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext.
The host software uses libftdi to talk to the flasher, and those kexts are locking the USB port we need.
An easy solution is to unload the kexts before launching the host software :
sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBFTDI.kext/
sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext/
sudo kextunload /Library/Extensions/FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext/
But it's cumbersome, and I always forget that step...
Since kexts are loaded according to the USB VID / PID, we changed the VID / PID / Description of the FT232 chip using FT_Prog under Windows. Changing to those exacts values is required if you want to use the host software provided since they are hard-coded for the time being.
Product Description : gbcflsh
VID : 1209
PID : 6BCF
Those IDs are provided by the awesome pid.codes project.
By changing the IDs, MacOS no longer tries to load the AppleUSBFTDI & FTDIUSBSerialDriver kexts, and libftdi can do its work.
On mac, you'll need to install Qt4 & libftdi :
brew tap cartr/qt4
brew install cartr/qt4/qt libftdi
Then, in the gbcflsh_1.1_libftdi folder :
qmake && make
You should find a gbcflsh.app in the release folder.