Wouldn't it be cool if the core could watch changes to wram over uart (or other IO)?

[chrisgervang]

Hey there, I'm hoping to pick the communities brain a bit on a project I've started.

I'm interested in developing a modified gbc core to help me journel my pokemon crystal gameplay for fun - to essentially make a map of where I've been, and when my pokemon were caught. My current goal is to log changes to a few wram values that represent the players position in the world, such as the wXCoord - the "x coordinate" of my player in a given zone. Before openFPGA existed, and I was stuck with immutable GBC hardware, I tried ROM modifications and sniffing the cart bus to access this data. I've had some success, but now I'd like to explore openFPGA a bit to change the core itself.

The dbg_tx uart peaked my interest as a way of sending changes out to an external serial device capable of saving the output (i.e. my laptop with a USB UART serial board).

I'm equally (if not moreso) curious to find out if it'd be possible to log wram changes on my Pocket without any additional hardware, to perhaps append data to a txt file on the Pocket's SD card. Perhaps a Hex Register Display is a way to make a POC of printing wram data out?

I really enjoy this project and all of these open cores. I'm new to openFPGA, and am only beginning to learn about it's features. I'm looking for any ideas, suggestions, or advice as I go down this exploration. Thanks!