Hardware Environment

This chapter describes the game debug environment for the Nintendo Nintendo 64 system. It briefly explains the hardware and software environments, illustrates recommended programming model, tells you how to get started with the debug environment, and introduces you to the most commonly used debugger features.

For the development system, the ROM on the game cartridge is replaced by RAM on the development board; in this chapter, we refer to it as “virtual ROM.” This allows the game developer to load the game program into memory, control its execution, and observe the effects of modifying the game without having to rebuild from source.

The development board plugs into the GIO bus of the workstation. Audio and video output connections are provided. Communication facilities between the workstation (referred to as the host in the rest of this chapter) and the development board (called the target) are via the RAM devices that emulate the cartridge ROM and several registers provided for handshaking and synchronization.

Copyright © 1999 Nintendo of America Inc. All Rights Reserved Nintendo and N64 are registered trademarks of Nintendo Last Updated January, 1999