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From Wikipedia's article on the (Nintendo) Game Boy Color[1]: "The processor, which is a Z80 workalike made by Sharp with a few extra (bit manipulation) instruc

by erikano 16y ago

From Wikipedia's article on the (Nintendo) Game Boy Color[1]: "The processor, which is a Z80 workalike made by Sharp with a few extra (bit manipulation) instructions, has a clock speed of approx." From Wikipedia's article on the (Texas Instruments) TI-84 Plus Series[2]: "CPU: Zilog Z80 15 MHz, with 6 MHz compatibility mode." Does this mean that a simple program written in Z80 Assembly could be run on both V4Z80P and Game Boy Color and/or TI-84 Plus with minor to no modifications? Does anybody know of any examples of this? [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy_Color http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy_Color [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-84_Plus_series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-84_Plus_series

rbarooah 16y ago
No, because these machines have different I/O & graphics hardware and no common operating system or BIOS layer to abstract them.
- chipsy 16y ago
  The specs are not just different, they're pretty much unresolvable. The TI-8x series - even the 68k-based TI-89 - uses a 1-bit raster display(grayscale is achieved with CPU-heavy high-frequency toggling) with different resolutions and wider aspect ratios than the Game Boy, and it has no built-in audio. The Game Boy has character-mapped sprite, background, and foreground layers and audio functions with pulse, DPCM, and noise channels(it should also be noted that like the NES before it, sound functions are integrated onto a custom CPU; it has a substantially different instruction set that is a cross of 8080 and Z80 capabilities). They both have plenty of buttons, so there is at least a common functionality subset there. The main advantage of the TI is that there's a large amount of memory/storage for an 8-bit processor(128kb, 48kb user data within the OS, 1.5MB flash). The Game Boy, like most cartridge consoles, is memory-starved and relies on ROM for everything. So there's little hope for porting TI games to Game Boy, as well. Edit: Despite this, someone did a GB emulator: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a9ZhxMREj0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a9ZhxMREj0 It has quite a few quality issues.

by erikano 16y ago

rbarooah 16y ago

No, because these machines have different I/O & graphics hardware and no common operating system or BIOS layer to abstract them.

chipsy 16y ago
The specs are not just different, they're pretty much unresolvable. The TI-8x series - even the 68k-based TI-89 - uses a 1-bit raster display(grayscale is achieved with CPU-heavy high-frequency toggling) with different resolutions and wider aspect ratios than the Game Boy, and it has no built-in audio. The Game Boy has character-mapped sprite, background, and foreground layers and audio functions with pulse, DPCM, and noise channels(it should also be noted that like the NES before it, sound functions are integrated onto a custom CPU; it has a substantially different instruction set that is a cross of 8080 and Z80 capabilities). They both have plenty of buttons, so there is at least a common functionality subset there. The main advantage of the TI is that there's a large amount of memory/storage for an 8-bit processor(128kb, 48kb user data within the OS, 1.5MB flash). The Game Boy, like most cartridge consoles, is memory-starved and relies on ROM for everything. So there's little hope for porting TI games to Game Boy, as well. Edit: Despite this, someone did a GB emulator: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a9ZhxMREj0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a9ZhxMREj0 It has quite a few quality issues.