#3232 - SNES-lover - Thu Feb 20, 2003 7:28 pm
I recieved my Flash Advance Xtreme USB Linker with 128MB cart from Lan-Kwei for little more than a month ago.
From the start, everything was fine, I could test my home-made game, play my whole NES-collection, play all the mods and s3ms I wanted...
But now, it seems to have screwed up.
If I try to burn a ROM that uses PocketNES or Pogoshell, it won't run at all(the "Nintendo" doesn't show up when I start it up). Playing my own home-grown game alone, as well as Zelda: Four Swords works just fine.
What to to?
_________________
In a realm beyond sight,
the sky shines gold, not blue.
There, the Triforce might
make mortal dreams come true.
#3233 - Lord Graga - Thu Feb 20, 2003 7:48 pm
Off topic:
Wierd, since all the evile rom sites has been closed by ISDA then I think the evile rom peoples has started to overrun this forum! noo!
This is a completly legal forum, no piracy talk, please.
If you are a rom user then leave OR:
- don't say anything about what games that works
- don't say things like "my whole NES library", it sounds illegal :/
Ok, back to the topic:
Have you tried to run the Pogoshell program with "-old"?
#3234 - tepples - Thu Feb 20, 2003 8:09 pm
If a GBA program works on VisualBoyAdvance but does not display the Nintendo logo when run from a flash cartridge, try these two fixes:
1. use a GBAFix type program to write a non-corrupt header to the program
2. clean the cart's connector
If PogoShell specifically doesn't work, try erasing the cart's SRAM.
The only thing vaguely piratical that I see about SNES-lover's comment is the mention of Zelda III. Otherwise, an "NES-collection" could consist of programs dumped from SNES-lover's own cartridges along with freely redistributable programs from Memblers's NES site.
_________________
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-- Who?
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-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#3307 - SNES-lover - Sat Feb 22, 2003 4:05 pm
I just realized that all ROMs under 64M works fine, but as soon as it goes over that limit, it won't work...
This makes some trouble for me, as I think Pogoshell is the neatest thing ever... Or almost, at least...
What could be the reason?
And yes, I do own "The Four Swords". Dumped and patched it myself...
_________________
In a realm beyond sight,
the sky shines gold, not blue.
There, the Triforce might
make mortal dreams come true.
#3310 - ampz - Sat Feb 22, 2003 5:33 pm
patched?
#3368 - CoolMan - Sun Feb 23, 2003 6:27 pm
Four swords has some kind of odd copy protection in software, which keeps it from functioning off of flash. (I know, because I too dumped it from my own official copy to test out the multi-player mode.) (I did not succeed in testing out this multi-player mode before my parents bought all of my siblings copies for christmas, because I did not know of the existence of a patch.)
_________________
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--CoolMan
#3541 - phonymike - Wed Feb 26, 2003 11:40 pm
Zelda uses eeprom for save (I think). A type off eeprom that my card (turbo 256meg) doesn't support. I dumped it off my cart so I could play four swords with my cousin, and it didn't run. I'm pretty sure it just tries to detect the eeprom and if it doesn't detect it won't run. Flash patches didn't work, but I got a patch of the net that has an intro that makes the game playable on hardware.
The eeprom thing works by DMA'ing the save data bit by bit I think into the mapped area 0xD000000. I haven't actually done it so I could be wrong. But the patch just modifies it so it stores byte by byte into save ram and thus allows it to work. The actual save data from an original game is kinda backwards due to the weird save method, but a patched game comes out fine like
eeprom data: "LDZELIA TNKTHO PAE "
saveram: "ZELDA LINK TO THE PA"
Sorry if this is "grey area" information, I just want to copy the save off an original cart, possibly modify it (yeah I know there are checksums), then write back to cart to play four swords with several people.
**forgot to add :)
I noticed some commercial games won't play on flash cards, not because of the save hardware, but I think because of the rom's location on the flash.
Let's say you put one game on the card, so it's at the very beginning of the cart. Let's call this location FLASH_MEM (I can't think of a better way to describe it.) The game is at the very beginning, so the gameboy sees it as 0x8000000. Let's say you have another game at location FLASH_MEM + 0x1000000 (64Mb later). You then use the boot menu to select that game, which sets the registers of the card to make the gameboy think that area FLASH_MEM + 0x1000000 is actually 0x8000000.
Well the problem is if you have a couple odd sized games before a commercial game. Let's say you have a couple games and the total size is 0x38000. Then you have a commercial game after that. So the begins at FLASH_MEM + 0x38000. I think you'd then have a problem, because it doesn't begin on a nice even boundary like 0x8000000 (32Mb).
So if a game is stored on the flash card at
FLASH_MEM + 0
FLASH_MEM + 0x800000
FLASH_MEM + 0x1000000
FLASH_MEM + 0x1800000 etc
you probably won't have any odd problems like crashing or weird stuff, but if the game is at say
FLASH_MEM + 0x18000
FLASH_MEM + 0x268000
then you might have problems (I noticed this with several games). Visoly software automatically writes games directly after their boot menu, usually 32KB later (0x8000). So if you put some demos before a game, then the game may crash. I use little writer to put games on even boundaries (evenly distributed through the cart)
Sorry I type a lot, did any of that make sense?? ;)
#3598 - SNES-lover - Fri Feb 28, 2003 9:06 pm
What I was really WONDERING was why my 128M cart has turned into a 64M one...
Should I send it back to Lan-Kwei?
_________________
In a realm beyond sight,
the sky shines gold, not blue.
There, the Triforce might
make mortal dreams come true.
#3606 - phonymike - Sat Mar 01, 2003 2:43 am
If the nintendo logo isn't appearing, it's because the rom does not contain it. Looking at the flash advance software, I can't find an option to repair the header. So for pocketnes and pogoshell it's technically illegal to include the logo in their rom, so you gotta add it. Go to the tools section and get a program to repair the header. Without the header the game will not play on hardware.
Your card is 128mbit. Zelda is 64mbit, so if you upload that twice to the card, it'll be 128mbit, but also the menu that's added first is 0.25mbit which puts you over the limit. Try putting a smaller game such as several demos and zelda, or maybe fzero and zelda (any game that's 4mbit or less.)
#3607 - tepples - Sat Mar 01, 2003 4:59 am
| phonymike wrote: |
| So for pocketnes and pogoshell it's technically illegal to include the logo in their rom |
That's not what the Sega v. Accolade opinion says. Didn't we have this discussion before, both on this board and in the Yahoo! group?
| Quote: |
| Your card is 128mbit. Zelda is 64mbit |
The Super NES version of A Link to the Past was only 8 Mbit. I wonder why Nintendo couldn't fit Four Swords into anything smaller than 56 Mbit.
| Quote: |
| so if you upload that twice to the card, it'll be 128mbit, but also the menu that's added first is 0.25mbit which puts you over the limit. Try putting a smaller game such as several demos and zelda, or maybe fzero and zelda (any game that's 4mbit or less.) |
Or any program that takes up 63.75 Mbit or less of a 64 Mbit cart. For instance, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon is only 52 Mbit because everything from offset 6757388 to the end of the cartridge is constant 0x00 bytes. Metroid Fusion is only 61 Mbit. However, a few programs seem to have data at the end just to defeat the "ROM shrinker" programs that delete this blank space.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.