I thought about this today because the GBA slot on the ds can't play older original Gameboy/ color games, but the GBA can. I was wondering if this is even possible unless the 2 slots differ to each other in the amount of pins on them or if the DS would even recognize the older Gameboy games.
I believe that the DS (and DS Lite, for that matter) have some sort of software recognition in place to prevent DMG Game Boy and GBC games from being played. I might be mistaken, but I think there's a way around this but it requires some homebrewing of your DS to get it to work. If you have the parts and tools, though and you really want to play DMG and GBC games on your DS, you might as well try to swap the slot for a GBA slot. Not sure if it would work but might as well try it on a junker system or something like that if you have the chance.
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A Game Boy Advance knows that a Game Boy or Game Boy Color cartridge is inserted since a physical switch is depressed by the cartridge (the reason for that notched corner of GBA cartridges is to avoid depressing said switch).
When that switch is activated the system enters backwards compatibility mode. The Z80 processor takes over, the GBA's ARM7 cpu deactivates, and even the voltage that the cartridge port operates at changes compared to GBA mode.
Backwards compatibility was eliminated to kill off the physical Z80 cpu on the DS that enabled backwards compatibility on the Game Boy Advance, reducing costs and the footprint of the internals (It's still present on the Micro, so a mod perhaps is more viable there). And since there's no Z80 processor laying in wait inside the DS (not to mention you'd need the GB bios), a cartridge port swap isn't going to do you any good.
Ultimately if you really want to enjoy GB/GBC on your DS, the answer involves homebrew emulation. And for that you'll have to research it on your own since that's not an area open for discussion here (even though GB/GBC patents are expired which leaves the physical hardware in the public domain, their bios files remain under copyright as do all commercially released software for both systems).
Edit: In response to the below post that felt the need to correct my referring to it as a bios, here's what the mGBA author has to say on that topic.
@Atariboy It's not a BIOS, it's a boot ROM. All it did was check that cart was authorized, and on the GBC it initialized the palette and identified what console it was. Software cannot utilize it all (that's the main distinction between a BIOS and a boot ROM, a BIOS gives use to software), that is the reason it took so long for the community to dump them, they had to find tricks.
It is such a thing if Nintendo doesn't support "GBA Mode" on the Zelda Oracle games on NSO. Hey, Nintendo, if you want to try to deter unofficial emulation, one of the smallest things you can do is support a feature that is as simple (to the original game) as swapping a single byte of RAM. You could give people the option to boot all GB/GBC games as if they were on either console. True, this feature by itself wouldn't change much but at least supporting such simple to include features would show a sign of caring. I don't have NSO, so I can't comment, but do they STILL not support button remapping (one of the most basic of all emulator features)?
I'd say the best way to play gb/gbc games now is buying a pocket analouge not sure if it does gba i think ds has its own slot as the board is different too
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Topic: Are the GBA slots on the DS and GBA interchangeable?
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