Homebrew SCFW: Custom Firmware & Kernel for Supercard

Falsk23iTT · Mar 28, 2024

I fear I semi-bricked my DS Lite now.

I found my Supercard DS the other day but had no software or firmware of any kind left. So I googled, found this thread, installed the custom Firmware ... and now I am stuck in GBA land

No DS games will launch now, as this is GB only .. I didn't read or understand before flashing I guess.

I ran the firmware.frm in hopes I get my old supercard menu back which let me play DS games, but it did not change anything. If I start kernel.gba again my DS Lite just reboots and gets stuck on a white screen.

How can I get back to my normal supercard menu and back to being able to play DS games that are on my SD card in the supercard?

Many thanks in advance

metroid maniac · Mar 28, 2024

Falsk23iTT said:
I found my Supercard DS the other day but had no software or firmware of any kind left. So I googled, found this thread, installed the custom Firmware ... and now I am stuck in GBA land No DS games will launch now, as this is GB only .. I didn't read or understand before flashing I guess.

I ran the firmware.frm in hopes I get my old supercard menu back which let me play DS games, but it did not change anything. If I start kernel.gba again my DS Lite just reboots and gets stuck on a white screen.

I tried to be clear in the original post that this is project is still in an early phase, and that NDS mode is only a planned feature for now.

Falsk23iTT said:
How can I get back to my normal supercard menu and back to being able to play DS games that are on my SD card in the supercard?

You can revert to the official firmware by running the updater. It's a little hard to find these days, so I've attached it to this post. You need to rename sd_v185.bin to sd_v185.gba for SCFW to recognise it.

Falsk23iTT · Mar 28, 2024

Thank you so much for your help and the fast reply! It worked! I found the .bin file but didn't know that I could just rename and start it!

Of course I will still follow this thread and your project. Seems, this time, I was that one guy who just does things before reading AND understanding!

assassinz · Mar 29, 2024

xy1154 said:
View attachment 427384

No more wonky key combination to backup sram. Thanks for the excellent work!
Edit: Any chance for a version that works with Supercard CF variant?

Yes that would be nice to have a similar firmware update for the Supercard CF!

metroid maniac · Mar 31, 2024

@soukron , I have published a new release which adds a soft reset patch. There is also a setting to only autosave when using soft reset, rather than on every boot. Please let me know how you get on with this.

stl25 · Apr 1, 2024

@metroid maniac, Thank you for your great work on scfw. How are game patches applied by your firmware? I ask because I encountered compatibility issue with Metroid Zero Mission (which I have posted before in this thread). The same behavior was present in another project GBARunner3 by Gericom. The compatibility issue was overcome by use of a config file which contained addresses to be patched. I will attach it here. Not sure if it would be of use to help get it running on scfw.

coreflake · Apr 1, 2024

ak1nok said:
I've tried everything, doesn't want to work. After installing the firmware on the cartridge, the first boot allows you to start the game. But after rebooting the console, the firmware does not even start, only errors.
If you run the firmware from the original supercard menu, everything works perfectly. Checking the cartridge also does not show any errors.

I've had the same error.

Seems I ran into every hardware issue with this card before I got it to work

.

I had whitescreens sometimes after loading the kernel with the supercard firmare (original), this behavior was random
-> All the whitescreens seemed to be related to a bad SD card. Since how hard it is to find non-SDHC cards, I proceeded by flashing the firmware.

After flashing the firmware i ran into the same errors as you : SDRAM write failed ...
-> This seems all to be related with incorrect positioning of the card in the GBA. If I move my card a little upwards in the slot everything functions as it should.

I tried putting a piece of paper in the card to align it better, read some old topics but it's a bit unclear to me if it's the backside of the card that needs to be lifted or the front side.
It's a little bit better now, but still not perfect.
If anyone has some suggestions on how to improve this please tell me, all of this seems to be related to to bad design of the housing of the supercard.

Nothing like this has ever occured on the original Supcard firmware (it always loaded correctly) so maybe this kernel is more sensitive to SDRAM errors ?

TheBoomer54 · Apr 2, 2024

Could you add an option in the settings to hide the .sav files? It's kind of annoying to scroll through all of them to actually get to the roms.

metroid maniac · Apr 2, 2024

TheBoomer54 said:
Could you add an option in the settings to hide the .sav files? It's kind of annoying to scroll through all of them to actually get to the roms.

Use the L and R buttons to sort and filter the menu entries as you like. Enter and exit the settings menu to save your changes.

xy1154 · Apr 2, 2024

I've encountered some compatibility issues with the lastest firmware (v0.5.0) on my SC-MiniSD.
NFS Underground 2: glitched music playback (portions of the music starts or ends abruptly)
Kirby - Nightmare in the Dreamland: glitchy menu (showing only "P" instead of "Press Start"; game crashes upon exiting from the save menu)
Shining Soul II: blank screen after booting, not sure if it worked with the previous firmware
The aforementioned test was carried out on an European GBASP. Might have to test the card again on a Nintendo DS.

ak1nok · Apr 2, 2024

coreflake said:
I've had the same error.

Seems I ran into every hardware issue with this card before I got it to work .

I had whitescreens sometimes after loading the kernel with the supercard firmare (original), this behavior was random
-> All the whitescreens seemed to be related to a bad SD card. Since how hard it is to find non-SDHC cards, I proceeded by flashing the firmware.

After flashing the firmware i ran into the same errors as you : SDRAM write failed ...
-> This seems all to be related with incorrect positioning of the card in the GBA. If I move my card a little upwards in the slot everything functions as it should.

I tried putting a piece of paper in the card to align it better, read some old topics but it's a bit unclear to me if it's the backside of the card that needs to be lifted or the front side.
It's a little bit better now, but still not perfect.
If anyone has some suggestions on how to improve this please tell me, all of this seems to be related to to bad design of the housing of the supercard.

Nothing like this has ever occured on the original Supcard firmware (it always loaded correctly) so maybe this kernel is more sensitive to SDRAM errors ?

Interesting, thank you! I'll try to test it out. But it's still very strange, because if you don't flash the firmware to the cartridge, everything works perfectly. At least for me. I bought another cartridge and everything works fine with it. I'd like to understand what the problem is.

metroid maniac · Apr 2, 2024

xy1154 said:
I've encountered some compatibility issues with the lastest firmware (v0.5.0) on my SC-MiniSD.
NFS Underground 2: glitched music playback (portions of the music starts or ends abruptly)
Kirby - Nightmare in the Dreamland: glitchy menu (showing only "P" instead of "Press Start"; game crashes upon exiting from the save menu)
Shining Soul II: blank screen after booting, not sure if it worked with the previous firmware
The aforementioned test was carried out on an European GBASP. Might have to test the card again on a Nintendo DS.

Are any of these regressions from previous firmware versions?

coreflake · Apr 2, 2024

ak1nok said:
Interesting, thank you! I'll try to test it out. But it's still very strange, because if you don't flash the firmware to the cartridge, everything works perfectly. At least for me. I bought another cartridge and everything works fine with it. I'd like to understand what the problem is.

Yes, this was exactly the same scenario for me. Loading the kernel works 100% when loading from the original firmware.

When using the SCFW firmware the card need to be perfectly aligned or there are sdram errors.

Maybe the firmware is more strict in interpreting sdram errors compared to the original firmware?

I don’t have a good explanation for this behavior.

KWG-08C · Apr 2, 2024

I'm here again with some more things to report.
First of all, the roms I've found to work are the following:

The Legend Of Zelda The Minish Cap

Doom (not sure if the game is supposed to have any music on the intro/main screen since Doom 2 had music on it)

Doom 2 (It works fine and seemingly runs great, however, it doesn't save. I get no errors when I save in-game and I can even see the game "overwrite" the previous savefile but if I turn the system on and off then the savefile is gone)

Advance Wars (not sure if there are minor slowdowns at some point but other than that it works fine)

The ones that don't work are the following:

Digimon Battle Spirit 2 (it starts but stays on a white screen, same thing happened with Battle Spirit 1)

Advance Wars 2 (it plays the intro just fine but it crashes when the game's supposed to start after I press Start. I thought I moved the flashcart since it made an awful noise, like the one the system makes if you pull the cart out but it turns out it just crashed like that).

An interesting thing happened after I tested Advance Wars 2 however. For some reason all my savefiles from every other game were just gone. I thought it was because the cart wiped out all the savefiles if I pull the flashcart out (with the power off ofc) but upon further testing that doesn't seem to be the case? Any idea on why that happened? Or if those two incidents are even related at all?

I thought my cart battery was dry (btw, is it a CR 1616 like the ones present in some GBA carts or is it a different size?) but then I tried to save once again in a couple of games and so far they were able to save just fine.

xy1154 · Apr 3, 2024

metroid maniac said:
Are any of these regressions from previous firmware versions?

I installed the latest version available as of April 4th (v0.5.1) on the same SC-miniSD cartridge before reverting back to v0.4.5.
In my case, all of these are regressions from the previous release (v0.4.5), Reseating the cartridge didn't help. Here are some details for consideration:
1. The SC-miniSD in question comes with a MicroSD (TF) to miniSD adapter, which has always worked under both the stock firmware and v0.4.5 release
2. The MicroSD inside is a generic no name card (resembles a Kingston MicroSD card but without the logo) with 2 gigs of storage.

It has also occurred to me that I should try to, a) stick to a real miniSD card (1GB or 2GB model), or b) replace the no name MicroSD card for something more reputable.

TheBoomer54 · Apr 4, 2024

The custom kernel works perfectly on my ds lite, but when using the supercard in my gba all of the files and directories have corrupted names. Re-seating the cartridge sometimes gives different corrupted names, but I can't get any games to run. I'm only running the kernel without the custom firmware, if that affects anything.

Edit:
I have been able to get it to sometimes show the files and load a game, but there are always random corrupt directories, and sometimes going into a folder, backing out, and going back in some of the files have changed to a random name.

Edit 2:
Also, thought I should say that on the gba before launching the kernel.gba file, all the directories and files are correct in the stock firmware.

metroid maniac · Apr 4, 2024

TheBoomer54 said:
The custom kernel works perfectly on my ds lite, but when using the supercard in my gba all of the files and directories have corrupted names. Re-seating the cartridge sometimes gives different corrupted names, but I can't get any games to run. I'm only running the kernel without the custom firmware, if that affects anything.

Edit:
I have been able to get it to sometimes show the files and load a game, but there are always random corrupt directories, and sometimes going into a folder, backing out, and going back in some of the files have changed to a random name.

Edit 2:
Also, thought I should say that on the gba before launching the kernel.gba file, all the directories and files are correct in the stock firmware.

Does this happen on version 0.4.5?

TheBoomer54 · Apr 4, 2024

metroid maniac said:
Does this happen on version 0.4.5?

On 0.4.5, my games folder just doesn't show up and the stuff in the system volume information folder is just garbled mess.

KWG-08C · Apr 4, 2024

It's me again. I didn't realize there was a new version so I decided to update to the 0.5.1 release and at some point some games got their savefiles deleted. Specifically Zoids Legacy and Medabots Metabee version (didn't really bother to check other games after the incident with Advance Wars 2 so those were the only games I've been using with your custom kernel).

I think Metabee got corrupted because even when it doesn't have a savefile it says something like "saving will overwrite previous savefile". I thought this happened because I updated the kernel (I'm just running it inside the cart, didn't flash it into it) but then I realized Baldur's Gate was fine.

Did I do something wrong? I just don't understand what happened here or why.

metroid maniac · Apr 4, 2024

KWG-08C said:
It's me again. I didn't realize there was a new version so I decided to update to the 0.5.1 release and at some point some games got their savefiles deleted. Specifically Zoids Legacy and Medabots Metabee version (didn't really bother to check other games after the incident with Advance Wars 2 so those were the only games I've been using with your custom kernel).

I think Metabee got corrupted because even when it doesn't have a savefile it says something like "saving will overwrite previous savefile". I thought this happened because I updated the kernel (I'm just running it inside the cart, didn't flash it into it) but then I realized Baldur's Gate was fine.

Did I do something wrong? I just don't understand what happened here or why.

Have you been playing games using both the official firmware and SCFW?
It might be that the official kernel loaded a save file without SCFW knowing about it, causing the wrong save to be written later.

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