gbadev.org forum archive

This is a read-only mirror of the content originally found on forum.gbadev.org (now offline), salvaged from Wayback machine copies. A new forum can be found here.

Flash Equipment > Flash Linker Advance with Windows 7 64bit or Mac OS X?

#177314 - Ghouzam - Fri Apr 06, 2012 10:02 am

Hello,

I dug out my old stuff and want to use it once again. I have a Flash Linker Advance (from Visoly Inc.) with a 256M Flash Advance Card.

My current PC runs Windows 7 64bit and Mac OS X 10.7.3 (it's a custom built Mac clone). I also have Windows 8 Consumer Preview installed, but I doubt that helps.

I have no parallel port on my PC. I bought a USB parallel port adapter that works with Windows 7 without requiring extra drivers.

Is there any way that I can flash new software onto the cartridge with my current setup? Or do I need to install another old OS somewhere?
Do USB-to-parallel port-adapters even work with the Flash Linker Advance in general? Can I run an old OS in a virtual machine (like VirtualBox) to use old flashing software instead?

I managed to download LittleWriter from the archive.org copy of the homepage that used to be at http://mapage.noos.fr/dadywriter/

The latest archived version of the page seems to be from 2005:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050304162746/http://mapage.noos.fr/dadywriter/
I installed it and ran into the error message "DLPORTIO.SYS device driver is not loaded. Port I/O will have no effect."


I also tried Flash Advance Writer 3.2 for Windows 2000/NT but that just told me
"Could not open the DriverLINX driver."

Best regards!

Last edited by Ghouzam on Fri Apr 06, 2012 11:02 am; edited 1 time in total

#177315 - Ghouzam - Fri Apr 06, 2012 11:01 am

I downloaded DriverLINX Port I/O driver
at http://www.winfordeng.com/support/download.php
but Windows 7 64bit refuses to run it. I guess it's 32bit only.

I found another version at http://www.jalcds.de/files/
but it suffers from the same problem.

I found Inpoutx64 which apparently also solves the problems with parallel port access, but for 64bit systems.
I read at http://forum.velleman.eu/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3773 that since V1.0.0.8 it is compatible with DLPortIO.

I downloaded the latest version 1.5.0.0 from http://www.highrez.co.uk/Downloads/InpOut32/default.htm
I installed it using the installer in the Win32 directory.
I coped the files from the Win32 directory into the LittleWriter\bin\ directory.
Then, I made a copy of the inpout32.dll in that directory and named it "DLPortIO.dll".

The README of InpOut32 states that it will not work with USB parallel port adapters. Oh no! I'll try anyway.

LittleWriter starts without complaints.

However, in the lower window it reports: "Linker not found".

#177316 - Ghouzam - Fri Apr 06, 2012 1:00 pm

I'm wondering if I can get the flash advance linker to work with any software, with any OS with the USB to parallel interface...?

The one I have has USB VID 067B PID 2305 REV 0200 according to the Windows 7 control panel device manager.
It is listed among the USB-controllers as "USB printer support".
It has no I/O address.

Perhaps I'll buy a cheap PCI parallel port controller card. And try ucon64.

--------
Edit:
I ended up using an old PC I am about to sell that has a parallel port and is running Ubuntu 11.10.
Flashing worked right away using ucon64.

Using Linux, I also found out about my USB parallel port adapter: It's a Prolific PL-2305. However, that doesn't really help me using it :-)

#177320 - Quirky - Sat Apr 07, 2012 8:08 pm

Thanks for posting this, even if nobody could help. I still have to dust off an old Win98 laptop when I want to flash GBA games and I'm worried about it giving up the ghost eventually. Not to mention the inconvenience of it all. I use `python -m SimpleHTTPServer` from my dev machine, fire up Firefox 1.5 on the old clunker, download the gba file, and finally flash it... not pretty. Shame the usb -> parallel port adapter didn't work under anything, would have been a good workaround.

#177321 - Ghouzam - Sun Apr 08, 2012 1:04 am

Yep, it's quite a mess really. I'll probably get a PCI or PCIe parallel port card for 4-10 EUR or maybe a EZ Flash IV (around 23 EUR at the cheapest place I've found).