In the quickstart note I recapped what I did (in very terse form) to compile some example code for GameBoy Advance (using a docker container) and then executed it in mgba on the development system.

I want to be able to run it on real hardware, but it's just not feasible. Still remains to be seen if I can use any of the link cable stuff in an emulator on the 3DS, but for now, the best place for me to test it is in mgba on the 3DS. But first I have to get the files there.

From the 3DS:

• launch FTPD.

• The first time on a new system, a user and pass of user and pass

From the development system, for example, copying T383838hello.gba:

curl -T hello.gba ftp://user:pass@192.168.1.2:5000/roms/gba/

From the 3DS:

• run homebrew launcher

• find mgba and launch it

• browse to the rom and launch it

I created a spiffy script that launched python, hosted a web server, qr encoded a url, and displayed it on a terminal that I then used FBI on the 3DS to scan! And it didn't work. For some reason, FBI does not play nicely with the http.server module. So for now, I'm stuck using FTPD on the 3DS.

Tags: devkitpro

created: 2026-02-28

(re)generated: 2026-07-17