#92266 - smoothingeye - Wed Jul 12, 2006 12:41 pm
Anyone can tell me how those supercard or flash card works and how do i make one ? Any reference to it . Also how dos those mini passthrough device works tjose that do not need any original games anymore
smooth
#92373 - Dwedit - Thu Jul 13, 2006 6:53 am
While it's possible to build your own flash cartridge, it's very impractical and more expensive than just buying one.
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#92422 - smoothingeye - Thu Jul 13, 2006 2:47 pm
hi,
Thanks for the advice . my am just inetrested to build it as a hobby i alrady own a supercard myself just curious how ti works and how to built one
thanks
#92496 - Dwedit - Thu Jul 13, 2006 5:54 pm
While building your own flash cartridge with 32MB of flash and 64KB of SRAM is possible, you're not going to be able to build a supercard, since it uses its own mapper. The supercard contains 32MB of RAM, a bios, a CF controller, some SRAM, and a mapper that switches between RAM, BIOS, CF, etc. Unless you're a wizard with Verilog, custom hardware which requires a mapper may be too difficult.
_________________
"We are merely sprites that dance at the beck and call of our button pressing overlord."
#92659 - ps2aich - Fri Jul 14, 2006 11:09 am
This is site that handles gba flash carts (but is not
uptodate (last update 16. Jun 05):
http://www.reinerziegler.de/GBA/gba.htm
#93147 - phonymike - Mon Jul 17, 2006 5:08 am
http://www.dl9sec.de/gbacart/gbacart.htm
this has schematics and circuit board plans to make your own. no sram, but hell, you could just reflash part of the 32mbit flash chip to store data. I might try and get a few of these made, they look schweet!
#93196 - jake2431 - Mon Jul 17, 2006 5:18 pm
I see that on the page above you use a multiboot cable and the GBA to program the flashcart. So, is it possible to just by any flash cart and program it using say an XBOO cable, GBA, and that flashmanager program on the site? That way(if you already have everything else) you could just by the flashcart and not have to worry about buying anything else.
#93764 - phonymike - Fri Jul 21, 2006 2:35 am
no, different flash cards have different protocols (read/writes to the cart) before you actually have full control over the flash chip. I don't know if the mentioned software will do it. you need software that will use a certain multiboot cable, and the gba rom it uploads has to have the right protocol for flashing a certain cart.
so for this raw homemade cart, you don't need a certain protocol to flash the chips, or banckswitch the flash and sram. so you use the software they provided. I looked up the chips they used, and couldn't find a suitable seller on the net. I'm sure other chips which are readilly available could be used instead.
if you're gonna buy the flash card, it'll come with some way to hook it up to a computer and flash it, either using a gba or its own cradle.
#93803 - smoothingeye - Fri Jul 21, 2006 10:48 am
Now i understand how i can build a glashc ard . But i need to udnerstand the whole booting process for NDS and GBA . How it load the program i wrote in the flash card? Whats the sram is use for and and how the ROM part is access .
I have some experience in build CF controllers using a Microntroller and SD ones are tricky bnut not impossible . I guess the chip need to understand how to communicate witht ge GBA . So where do i find resource on how the GBA actually boot up and load the the program in the Flash card . Thanks
seewan
#93818 - tepples - Fri Jul 21, 2006 1:50 pm
So you wanna build your own SuperCard
GBA boot process (.gba): The GBA first validates the 192-byte header, then jumps to 0x08000000.
Nintendo DS boot process (ds.gba): See PassMe manual.
ROM: Mapped into 0x08000000 through 0x09FFFFFF.
SRAM: Up to 64 KB (more if bankswitching is used as in Pok?mon) of non-volatile memory, which can be actual SRAM or flash memory.
You'll have to have at least some flash memory on your card to boot the GBA and copy your boot loader to GBA EWRAM.
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#94133 - smoothingeye - Sun Jul 23, 2006 7:05 am
" The GBA first validates the 192-byte header" ? can u explain about this header or where i can get more info
#94178 - tepples - Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:16 pm
As with most everything else on the GBA, your first reference is Martin Korth's GBATEK. You can skip straight to the GBA cartridge section.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.