Tweet
By Ethan Zonca
nitro2k01 got his hands on a Game Fighter, a clone of the original Game Boy. While there’s a ton of information about the boot ROM and operation of the original Game Boy, not much is known about these clones.
nitro2k01 wanted to learn more, so he used a clock-glitching technique to dump the device's ROM and made some interesting discoveries about its copyright protection and boot process along the way.
Reading the contents of the Game Boy ROM is a bit challenging. The ROM is readable while booting, but afterwards the address space of the ROM is remapped for interrupt vectors and other uses.
There are a couple of methods to get around this, but the simplest method involves glitching the crystal by grounding one of its leads. This causes the CPU to jump to random locations in memory. Eventually the CPU will jump to a location where the boot ROM is accessible (if you’re lucky!).
Although nitro2k01's clone can run the same games as the Game Boy, it has a different boot ROM and also has some significant hardware differences. nitro2k01 managed to use a modified version of the crystal-grounding technique to glitch his clock and dump the clone’s boot ROM. He found that the clone uses an unusual variation on the Game Boy’s copyright-checking technique, along with some other oddities.
nitro2k01 also posted a disassembly of the boot ROM, which he explains in detail.
Thanks for the tip, Ove.
nitro2k01 got his hands on a Game Fighter, a clone of the original Game Boy. While there’s a ton of information about the boot ROM and operation of the original Game Boy, not much is known about these clones.
nitro2k01 wanted to learn more, so he used a clock-glitching technique to dump the device's ROM and made some interesting discoveries about its copyright protection and boot process along the way.
Reading the contents of the Game Boy ROM is a bit challenging. The ROM is readable while booting, but afterwards the address space of the ROM is remapped for interrupt vectors and other uses.
There are a couple of methods to get around this, but the simplest method involves glitching the crystal by grounding one of its leads. This causes the CPU to jump to random locations in memory. Eventually the CPU will jump to a location where the boot ROM is accessible (if you’re lucky!).
Although nitro2k01's clone can run the same games as the Game Boy, it has a different boot ROM and also has some significant hardware differences. nitro2k01 managed to use a modified version of the crystal-grounding technique to glitch his clock and dump the clone’s boot ROM. He found that the clone uses an unusual variation on the Game Boy’s copyright-checking technique, along with some other oddities.
nitro2k01 also posted a disassembly of the boot ROM, which he explains in detail.
Thanks for the tip, Ove.