Gameshark… Gameshark? Yes, the novelty of Gameshark is that it has
a parallel port interface for communicating with a PC, and although we
had no shortage of such interfaces on 1990s PCs, nowadays they are
quite hard to come by. In my particular case, I was looking for some
interesting use cases to test my pi-parport board that I have built,
and a Nintendo 64 Gameshark is one of them. The problem… can I get
the software to run on Linux? The original software was written for
Windows, but good news, there is at least one hobbyist development
that ported it to Linux.
20201029/DuckDuckGo open source game shark nintendo 64
20201029/https://hackaday.com/2019/01/11/nintendo-64-homebrew-via-game-shark/
So, follow the trail here. The Hackaday article links to a modded version designed to work with one particular model of those annoying cheap Chinese USB parallel port interfaces. Follow the link to the original project that was designed for direct use with traditional PC parallel ports. Yep, Linux support.
20201029/https://github.com/hcs64/gs_libusb
20201029/DuckDuckGo ppcasm gsuploader
20201029/https://github.com/ppcasm/gsuploader
Now, note that this project might be coded up to use the memory-mapped
addresses rather than ppdev, so it may require some minor
modifications on that front. Also note that it is specialized for the
purpose of uploading games through the parallel port interface to the
4 MB expansion ROM in a Nintendo 64.
Please note: There is also yet another implementation of gsuploader
that uses an Arduino instead.
20201029/https://gist.github.com/hcs64/c612fbccac417531ead4
Well, I have to break it with you, the “vintage gaming world” has an established standard on building SD card adapters to get games to your old game consoles wherever cartridges, optical discs, or hard disk drives were used. I’ve covered GC Loader for GameCube, and yes there is FloppyEmu, SCSI2SD, RaSCSI, and MacSD for classic Macintosh, Apple II, and others! Now, what about those Nintendo 64 game cartridges, Gameboy cartridges, Super Nintendo, NES, and so on? There is Everdrive.
20201029/DuckDuckGo nintendo 64 everdrive
20201029/https://krikzz.com/store/home/55-everdrive-64-x7.html
20201029/https://krikzz.com/store/content/4-about-us
20201029/https://krikzz.com/store/
Yes, I see the hardware is out there and out for sale, but is it Open Hardware or proprietary? My guess from the looks so far is that it is proprietary. It may have been Open Hardware in the past, but now they are so focused on commercialism that idea may be been drowned out.
Okay, reading up further on article links, the general class of these devices is called “ROM carts.” There is another one for Nintendo 64 called 64 Drive. This one is apparently much more open than the Everdrive. Well, better hardware documentation, but still a proprietary design. And, better yet, looks like 64 Drive hardware is designed to be upgradeable to a GameShark design!
20201029/https://www.retrorgb.com/romcarts.html
20201029/http://64drive.retroactive.be/
Oh, and GameCube DVDs? More information on those? These are not custom proprietary discs at all, they are stock DVD minidiscs. You can read the full data as a raw disk image using PC DVD drives with no issue. The only thing special about GameCube for security is that the barcode serial number in the center ring of the disc, called the “Burst Cutting Area” (BCA), is specially formatted for legitimate GameCube games. So yes, the disc manufacturer must be negotiated with to print this, DVD-R minidiscs use a pre-printed serial number that is invalid. But actually, this is where things get interesting. Even though the GameCube stock ROM could just check this info itself, the logic to check this for security is built into the DVD disk controller instead, and there is a “debug mode” pin that can be used to disable the security check. This is the common method to allow you to run homebrew GameCube game discs, there is a whole “mod chip” set to do this.
Well… apparently also the laser potentiometer needs to be adjusted to work with the weaker dyes inside DVD-R minidiscs.
Back in the day, the company that made Action Replay figured out how to get around thte GameCube disc security: their game disc had no serial number at all. Rather, they wrote the contents of the serial number barcode as part of the ISO disk image data, so they could get the proper formatting there. That was how they got around the disc security check.
But, the best method I, almost, like for homebrew games? Make a GameCube memory card mod that accepts a MicroSD card, and use Action Replay as your boot disk. This seems to potentially involve the least hardware modifications too, except for the fact that you need to buy a type of disc that almost nobody bought back in the day and is no longer in production. Also, apparently disc emulation like GCLoader is much faster. ODE = Optical Drive Emulator.
20201029/http://www.racketboy.com/retro/how-to-burn-retro-game-images-with-all-free-software
20201029/http://www.racketboy.com/retro/how-to-burn-retro-game-images-with-all-free-software#gcm
20201029/DuckDuckGo gamecube disc mod chip
20201029/https://www.instructables.com/Homemade-GameCube-Mod-Chip/
20201029/DuckDuckGo gamecube disc security
20201029/https://hackaday.com/2019/02/04/how-one-company-cracked-the-gamecube-disc-protection/
20201029/https://www.retrorgb.com/gamecubeode.html
Now, this is interesting, there is a Super Nintendo physical hardware clone out and about on the market, not sure if it’s Open Hardware, that means it probably isn’t.
20201029/https://www.retrorgb.com/gettingstarted.html
GameShark repair? Typically it’s just the flash memory that gets corrupted and needs to be rewritten. But, never fear, with the right GameShark version, you can stack up multiple GameSharks to reflash them all at once from the parallel port of a working one at the bottom. Stack a random game at top to terminate the bus.
20201029/http://micro-64.com/features/gsrepair1.shtml
The Nintendo 64 implements a blur filter on video output, interesting. This article is also how I came to many of my other informative articles on the Retro RGB website. It can be removed in software with the help of a GameShark.
20201029/https://www.retrorgb.com/n64blur.html
This is an interesting and useful website I’ve found with lots of links to help you get started on homebrew Nintendo 64 game development, or at least so I’m saying. A great idea I saw there? Dump Gameboy ROMs and save game data using the Transfer Pak and a GameShark.
20201029/DuckDuckGo open source game shark nintendo 64open source game
shark nintendo 64
20201029/http://n64dev.org/
Looking for hints of open source of the 64drive on GitHub, all signs point to third party developers.
20201029/DuckDuckGo 64drive github
20201029/https://github.com/rasky/g64drive
20201029/https://github.com/tj90241/64drive
20201029/https://github.com/buu342/N64-UNFLoader/
20201029/https://github.com/RenaKunisaki/64drive-usb-linux
So, hey, from the looks of this, software development is clearly a weakpoint for the original proprietors.
Random interesting GitHub repository. A utility to translate GameShark codes to patches for a WebAssembly translation of Super Mario 64 that can run on your PC.
20201029/https://github.com/sm64gs2pc/sm64gs2pc