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Prex Game Boy Advance - HOWTO

Version 0.8, 2008/09/24

Table of Contents

HOWTO Technical Note

How to run Prex on the Game Boy Advance?

There exist some hardware to run Prex on the Game Boy Advance. Currently, I am using "Boot Cable USB" which is sold by Optimize. And, its control software is available for download from this page. Unfortunately, these are only japanese page... :-(
You may find other useful information to run your program on GBA at http://www.gbadev.org.

USB Boot Cable
Figure 1. Boot Cable USB

How to run Prex with the VisualBoy Advance?

VBA - VisualBoy Advance is most popular GBA emulator. You can find the latest release at http://www.vba.ngemu.com. To run Prex with VBA, simply select file->open and open the prex image. There is no need to prepare the original GBA BIOS.

Important: You must rename the file name of the image to "prexos.gba". It seems VBA is checking the file extension to validate the image.

The default keyboard setting of VBA is as follows:

Table 1. VBA Key Assign
PC Key GBA Button
Cursor Keys Up, Down, Left, Right
Z Button A
X Button B
A Button L
S Button R
Enter Start
Backspace Select

How to compile Prex for Game Boy Advance?

At first, you have to prepare the toolchain for cross compiling ARM code. And then, the shell variables must be set for the arm-gba target.

Step 1. Unpack Archives

You have to download and unpack the following files. 
$ cd /usr/src
$ tar zxvf binitils-2.15.tar.gz
$ tar zxvf gcc-core-3.4.3.tar.gz

Step 2. Build Binutils

Configure and build binutils. 

$ mkdir binutils-2.15-arm-elf
$ cd binutils-2.15-arm-elf
$ ../binutils-2.15/configure --prefix=/usr/local/arm --target=arm-elf --disable-nls \
 --with-cpu=arm7tdmi
$ make
$ make install

You must set the path to this binutils. 

$ export PATH=/usr/local/arm/bin:$PATH
$ cd /usr/src

Step 3. Build gcc

$ mkdir gcc-3.4.3-arm-elf
$ cd gcc-3.4.3-arm-elf
$ ../gcc-3.4.3/configure --prefix=/usr/local/arm --target=arm-elf --with-gnu-as \
 --with-gnu-ld --with-cpu=arm7tdmi --disable-nls --enable-languages=c \
 --enable-interwork
$ make LANGUAGES="c"
$ make LANGUAGES="c" install
$ cd /usr/src

Step 4. Unpack Sources

Unpack the sources and move to top level directory of the source tree. 
$ cd /usr/src
$ tar zxvf prex-X.X.X.tar.gz
$ cd prex-X.X.X

Step 5. Configure

Setup target architecture and platform. 
$ ./configure --target=arm-gba --cross-compile=arm-elf-

Step 6. Make

Run make.
$ make

Note: There is a cross-compiling kit for GBA named DevKit Advance. It may be usable for compiling Prex.

How to use On-Screen Keyboard?

On-Screen Keyboard
Figure 2. On-Screen Keyboard

The driver for on-screen keyboard is provided to emulate a generic keyboard by using the GBA keypad. You can input any key by moving the cursor on the on-screen keyboard. The user can show/hide the on-screen keyboard on the GBA screen by pressing select button. The key assign is different for each case.

Table 2. Key for On-screen Keyboard
GBA Key Function
A Input current pointed key
B "Enter" key
Select Hide on-screen keyboard
Start N/A
Right Move keyboard cursor right
Left Move keyboard cursor left
Up Move keyboard cursor up
Down Move keyboard cursor down
R Toggle shift state
L Toggle shift state

Table 3. Default Key (No On-screen Keyboard)
GBA Key Function
A "A" key
B "B" key
Select Show on-screen keyboard
Start "Enter" key
Right Cursor "Right" key
Left Cursor "Left" key
Up Cursor "Up" key
Down Cursor "Down" key
R "R" key
L "L" key

Technical Specs

GBA H/W Spec

Table 4. GBA Spec
Processor ARM7TDMI, 16.78MHz
IWRAM (Internal) 32 kB
EWRAM (External) 256 kB
VRAM 96 kB
LCD 2" TFT 240 x 160 pixels

Memory map

Table 5. Memory map
00000000 - 00003FFF BIOS - System ROM
02000000 - 0203FFFF EWRAM (256K)
03000000 - 03007FFF IWRAM (32K)
04000000 - 040003FF I/O Registers
05000000 - 050003FF Palette RAM
06000000 - 06017fFF VRAM
07000000 - 070003FF Object Attributes

Prex VRAM Usage

Table 6. Prex VRAM Usage
06000000 - 06003FFF Tile 1 - Font
06004000 - 06005FFF Tile 2 - Keyboard Image (non shift)
06006000 - 06007FFF Tile 2 - Keyboard Image (shift)
06008000 - 06008FFF Background 3 Map (Console text)
06009000 - 06009FFF Background 1 Map (Keyboard non-shift)
0600A000 - 0600AFFF Background 2 Map (Keyboard shift)
0600B000 - 0600FFFF Not used
06010000 - 0601FFFF Cursor Data

System Call

Since the GBA BIOS does not allow to handle the SWI event by the program, we need some trick to handle the system call. The system call will be handled by the following steps. 

#define SYSCALL0(name) \
        .global name; .align; \
name##: \
        stmfd   sp!, {r4, r5, lr}; \
        mov     r4, #SYS_##name; \
        ldr     r5, =0x202007c; \
        add     lr, pc, #2; \
        mov     pc, r5; \
        ldmfd   sp!, {r4, r5, pc};

ENTRY(syscall_entry)
        mov     r5, lr
        mrs     ip, cpsr
        bic     ip, ip, #PSR_MODE
        orr     ip, ip, #PSR_SVC_MODE
        msr     cpsr_c, ip
        mov     lr, r5
Since a program can not change the ARM processor mode during the USR mode, all applications are always executed in SYS mode in Prex arm-gba port.