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Flash Equipment > Help for Super card Newbie and Spectrum Emulation

#177647 - retromad - Sun Nov 04, 2012 12:58 pm

Hi - I wondered if anyone here would help out a newbie?
I recently bought a SUPER CARD and have been having great fun with it playing GB and GBC games no problems - also emulated Sega Master System and NES without a hitch... All just drag n drop onto the SD.
My problem is
1) I cannot get actual GBA Roms to work - they 'load' and then there is a blank screen.
2) Zx Spectrum emulation - something I REALLY wanted to be able to do and am pulling my hair out because I cannot work it out. Tried ZxAdvance AND Foon ... FOON seems to have an easier interface but after dragging a Zx80 file into the Inject exe what do you do ? Saving it just saves it as an res file ?? I tried saving it as Bin / gba ect too. What SHOULD I save it as and what do I put on the Flash cart cause nothing seems to work ??
I'd REALLY appreciate some tips. I know basics with this sort of thing but I'm not amazingly technical !
Thank you !!!

#177650 - dantheman - Wed Nov 07, 2012 11:44 pm

The built-in emulators are way out of date, and I would suggest rolling your own packages using Goomba Color, PocketNES, and SMS Advance. It's very simple, just use Goomba builder program and the PocketNES Menu Maker program to create the compilations. Run the output *.gba files through the Supercard patcher software with just the "save" patch applied in order to get them to run on the Supercard.

We cannot help you with commercial roms, as that is not what this community is about. Most homebrew GBA games and applications will run just fine when you put them directly on the card. For the few that don't, like the aforementioned Goomba Color and PocketNES and such, running them through the patching software with very few options enabled usually makes them work. I think I also had to use the patcher on videos output from METEO as well, if I recall correctly.

The reason for the patcher is because some homebrew programs try to read data from the "rom" faster than the Supercard can provide it (the Supercard uses RAM that is just slightly too slow) and the patcher forces the program to read the data at a slower rate. There's a bit more to it than that, but that's the basic idea.

No clue about your second problem.

#177651 - retromad - Fri Nov 09, 2012 2:44 pm

Thanks !
I was confused by your answer at first - but followed some of what you said and have had great results ! Thanks a lot - I am now enjoying the delights of the site !... Russ Prince's Bust a move for starters !
Thanks...
Anyone know anything about the spectrum emulation?