New to Pokemon Mini

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VirtualChris
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New to Pokemon Mini

Post by VirtualChris »

Hi all. I am very new to the Pokemon Mini. How new? I had to google what the 151st Pokemon was as required by the activation question! Anyway, I just overpaid for a used Pokemon Mini on eBay. Straight from Japan. I am supposed to get it in about 2 weeks. I just thought it was so cool looking so I just had to get it. I have a few questions.
#1 - What type of battery do I need? Just a common round one for most electronic stuff?
#2 - Is there some sort of flashcart so I can play homebrew games on my Pokemon Mini?
#3 - How hard is it to program homebrew games for it? (If you recognize my username, I am working on a Virtual Boy game over on PVB.)
Anyway, I hope to release a homebrew game for this and I am super excited about getting my hands on one, even though I overpaid for it and have to wait a few weeks to get it from Japan.
RayXambeR
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Joined: December 13th, 2012, 23:58

Re: New to Pokemon Mini

Post by RayXambeR »

Welcome Chris! Happy to see you involved in Pokemon mini development! Some of your "little" Videopac games could be great on this small system!

1- only one AAA 1,5 V battery
2- yes, you have to see the flash cart from Lupin. It works well!
3- I cannot answer because I am not a programer...
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YasaSheep
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Re: New to Pokemon Mini

Post by YasaSheep »

Programming isn't so bad but the C stuff isn't very complete, so you mostly have to do everything in asm. If you're used to that you'll be ok.
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KR155E
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Re: New to Pokemon Mini

Post by KR155E »

Welcome, Chris! Have a look at this thread for a complete C development environment.
VirtualChris
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Re: New to Pokemon Mini

Post by VirtualChris »

I downloaded all that stuff and made a "hello world" type program, but I have no idea how to compile it.
I'm using Windows 7 if that helps.
zoranc
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Re: New to Pokemon Mini

Post by zoranc »

What you were able to achieve and what you failed?

You first need to build the tools in the development environment. Last time I tried I believe I was able to build all with the free msys environment on Windows. You will end up with three executables:
1. The C -> ASM compiler.
2. ASM -> binary assembler.
3. Pokemon mini emulator to run the binary.

The assembler and emulator are outdated but still totally usable. You might want to update those, and especially the emulator. You can even skip building it and just get its latest binaries.

Then there are a few example projects in there that have make file. So building and running them should be possible by just typing out 'make' in the directory of the corresponding project. You will need some make tool for this and the above three executables in your path. If you manage to get Emulator running the example project, then the dev environment is fine. Next step is to actually burn the binary to a flash cart and run it on the device.

As a side note the C compiler supports a limited subset of ANSI C and has issues/bugs. I am not very happy with it but don't feel inclined to extend it. Would rather invest time in LLVM when (if ever) I have the time.

Good luck and feel free to post here any questions you might have.
VirtualChris
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Re: New to Pokemon Mini

Post by VirtualChris »

How do I build things?
zoranc
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Re: New to Pokemon Mini

Post by zoranc »

VirtualChris wrote:How do I build things?
Define "things".

If you are referring to the PM development environment all is done by running the build_all.sh from the main directory of the archive. Once this finishes you will have vbccpm and pmas executables in the ~/bin directory (possibly the PokeMini emulator too, if you don't have it download the executable and put it there).

If you are referring to build PM ROM out of the C file, and assuming that ~/bin is in your path you go to subdirectory prj/petals and run make.

All of this I will work on any posix like system: linux, MacOS, etc. On Windows similar behavior would be expected with msys and mingw installed. Alternatively someone could just compile the pmas and vbccpm and upload them.
VirtualChris
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Re: New to Pokemon Mini

Post by VirtualChris »

I can't run anything. It asks for a program to use to run it when I try to open anything I downloaded for PM development.
zoranc
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Re: New to Pokemon Mini

Post by zoranc »

Ow I guess you don't have the needed tools to extract the archive. It is .tar archive compressed with gzip. On windows you can use 7-zip for that.

Alternatively on msys (not cmd.exe) command line you type:
tar xzvf pmdev.tar.gz

in the directory where you have the archive file. That will create pmdev subdirectory where you execute the steps from the above posts.
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