little-scale — Sync Options for Game Boy Music (2008)

The census of Game Boy synchronisation as it stood in October 2008: eighteen devices, what each one can and cannot do, and who made it. Nothing else in the wiki maps this territory.

"A question that gets asks from time to time is 'How Do I Sync My Game Boy?'… I thought it might be a good idea to lay out all of the options that are available… This is not supposed to be a critique of each sync device (I'm not having a go at anyone!), I'm just trying to make this information available to people."

The chart, transcribed from the image#

yes* = "in MIDI sync mode only"; full** = "offers extensive control via MIDI". The # of GBs column is a coarse category, not the device's real maximum — his own prose gives higher figures for several of them.

Key claims from the prose#

• Link cables are the floor and the ceiling. AU$5–8 on eBay, plug'n'play, "set up your software to a master / slave configuration and there ya go" — but "you can only sync a Game Boy to another Game Boy (unless you have a MIDI sync box such as LSDJMC2, Arduinoboy or syncThing)". That sentence is repeated under every passive device.
• Passive multipliers exist. Delfy's Six Way Box syncs six Game Boys to one another ("As far as i know, there is only one in existence"). Low-Gain's 1x3 DMG-07 mod converts the four-player link connector into one master in and three slave outs, "can be used in an infinite daisy chain", and "can be used to multiply your number of sync outputs from a given MIDI sync device" — so a one-output MIDI box becomes a three- or nine-output one.
• Two devices need no microcontroller at all: gwEm's Pitch Control (coarse and fine tempo pots, "really made for live use", no MIDI) and gwEm's DIY MIDI Interface, "the only DIY MIDI clock sync device" that requires no chip programming. Its limitation is the one the $1 circuit shares: "The interface expects to only receive MIDI clock signals — other MIDI messages may / will interfere with the sync".
• Feature leaders in 2008: Firestarter's LSDJMC2 (PIC-based, premade by Low-Gain, MIDI thru, LSDj keyboard-mode notes, "sync up to 2 Game Boys") and Trash80's Arduinoboy (MIDI in/out/thru, keyboard notes, "four different sync modes for Nanoloop and LSDJ", "Stable and accurate").
• Gijs' Master Clock Generator runs the other way: it generates MIDI clock rather than following it, and drives "4 x LSDJ, 3 x Nanoloop, 2 x MIDI and 2 x Sync24 devices" from a tempo pot.
• His own devices: syncThing (6 × LSDj + 6 × Nanoloop = 12), syncTank (15 × LSDj), nanoGroover — "Generate weird timings for Nanoloop like 2:4, 3:4, 5:4 and 6:4. Finally, you can do triplets in Nanoloop!", at the cost of needing two Game Boys and two copies of Nanoloop — and nanoSync24, which syncs Nanoloop to a Sync24 signal "so that the C64 is controlling the speed of Nanoloop" (sid, Prophet 64).
• Three entries are not sync devices at all, and he says so: the PS/2 keyboard adaptor (sync, game-boy), Vawter and Whitman's Pushpin ("complete control over the Game Boy's sound output… Only works on Game Boy Color") and Trash80's mGB.
• The economics of the era, stated repeatedly: almost everything is "Premade units are not available" or "in the past". Only the link cable and the LSDJMC2 could be bought new.

The chart was peer-reviewed, in the comments#

The post credits "nitro2k01, Athleos and Low-Gain for pointing out my mistakes and inacurracies", and nitro2k01's two rounds are visible in the comments (2008-10-23 and 10-29): make the columns readable, distinguish MIDI thru from out, "Doesn't the nano MIDI cable actually work with LSDj in MIDI mode?" (this produced the yes* cells), add the PS/2 keyboard, Pushpin and mGB. little-scale rewrote the chart on 2008-10-28. On the second pass nitro2k01 caught "Nanoloop MIDI cable: Nanoloop sync says no" — "what a bad mistake of mine. i was in a real hurry when i made this" — and proposed dropping the notes column and replacing the LSDJ column with "sync, play or both", which little-scale refused: "nah, i disagree."

Practical takeaways#

• If both machines are Game Boys, you need a cable, not a box. Everything else exists to get a non-Game Boy into the chain.
• To sync more Game Boys than your MIDI box has outputs, put a passive splitter (a DMG-07 mod, a six-way box) after it and daisy-chain.
• Give a Game Boy sync box its own MIDI port carrying clock only. Several of these designs break on any other MIDI message.
• "MIDI out" and "MIDI thru" are different features and in 2008 almost nothing had either; the Arduinoboy is the only row with both.

Relevance to the wiki#

sync's Game Boy half was a paragraph of forum answers. This is the whole landscape, dated and attributed, and it names the devices — Arduinoboy, LSDJMC2, the Nanoloop MIDI cable — that later sources assume you already know.

To verify#

• The image today shows yes in the LSDJ notes cell for Arduinoboy + mGB, where little-scale told nitro2k01 on 2008-10-29 "it didn't. trust me." The post is stamped "Last updated: 29 October 2008", so he most likely changed it after replying; the disagreement is recorded here rather than resolved.
• infradead adds in 2010-01-11 that "low-gains firestarter box adds two midi thru ports" — after the chart was frozen.
• The # of GBs column's 1+ is not a real figure. Where his prose gives one (LSDJMC2 2, syncThing 12, syncTank 15, Master Clock Generator 4+3+2+2) the prose is used above.

Pages touched#

sync · lsdj · nanoloop · game-boy · nitro2k01 · little-scale · live-tracking · midi-in-trackers