# Flash2Advance and GB Bridge combo



## DigitalDeviant (May 5, 2012)

Hi as shown above I have the Flash2Advance and GB Bridge. Does anyone know the easiest way to set it up?


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## raulpica (May 5, 2012)

A... GB... bridge.

LUCKY YOU 

If may I ask, where have you scored such a rare item?


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## DigitalDeviant (May 5, 2012)

raulpica said:


> A... GB... bridge.
> 
> LUCKY YOU
> 
> If may I ask, where have you scored such a rare item?



GBATEMP! (why did I scream that out?)

its been dormant for months now, I haven't tried it out and now I'm itchin' to do so.
Its been my dream to play GB/GBC roms on the original hardware, especially on my 
"Backlit" DMG gameboys and Gameboy Lights...


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## DigitalDeviant (May 5, 2012)

I also have this but don't know how to work it!


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## raulpica (May 5, 2012)

DigitalDeviant said:


> its been dormant for months now, I haven't tried it out and now I'm itchin' to do so.
> Its been my dream to play GB/GBC roms on the original hardware, especially on my
> "Backlit" DMG gameboys and Gameboy Lights...


I want to do the exact same thing, but I'm sure I won't be as lucky as you to score such a rare sight  I'll probably end up getting one of those cheap USB GB cartridge (no multisave support... BOO!) 

I've always wanted to see how a GB Bridge worked, so if you actually get it to work, post lots o' pics


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## DigitalDeviant (May 5, 2012)

raulpica said:


> DigitalDeviant said:
> 
> 
> > its been dormant for months now, I haven't tried it out and now I'm itchin' to do so.
> ...



sure I will! My friend Schlupi knows a lot about these things, I'll try contacting him...

Oh I'll pay someone adept at fixing hardware a fair price if they can get this thing to work...


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## Coto (May 5, 2012)




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## DigitalDeviant (May 5, 2012)




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## Deleted-236924 (May 5, 2012)

DigitalDeviant said:


> I also have this but don't know how to work it!
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler



Sounds like just the right thing for @[member='emigre']

I jelly about the Flash Advance + GB Bridge.
Though there pretty much only one game I'd put on it, so it'd most probably be cheaper to buy a retail cartridge.


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## raulpica (May 5, 2012)

@[member='DigitalDeviant']

The NGP flashcard is a parallel linker, you just need to get the software for it


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## 431unknown (May 5, 2012)

I have the exact same F2A and the GB Bridge but need help setting them up also. Any links to software for the Flash2Advance cart would be nice too.


Edit:  I also have a GBA Movie player that came with the bundle. Dise it just play movies or are there other uses for it?


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## legendofphil (May 5, 2012)

IIRC just putting the Gameboy roms onto the F2A cart using the F2A software should work.
It's been a while since I've used mine.


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## dickfour (May 5, 2012)

I have the drivers, software, and the boot loader for GB GBC. It was  a bitch to find the right boot loader. I have the correct files burnt to a disc so I'll share them. I got mine off ebay a few years back with 3 f2a cards for $60. I loaded mine with all the supper rare awesome gb games like trip world peetan and avenging spirit


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## dickfour (May 5, 2012)

legendofphil said:


> IIRC just putting the Gameboy roms onto the F2A cart using the F2A software should work.
> It's been a while since I've used mine.


that's not going to most versions of the software don't work with gb roms then you have to have the right boot loader


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## thaddius (May 5, 2012)

I have a Pocket Linker for Neo Geo Pocket/Color. Love that thing. If you need the software, I can upload it to filetrip.

You need to use it with a computer that has Windows XP as newer windows don't support parallel ports. And no, you can't just get one of those parallel to USB things.

You need to have a driver installed in your computer called 'giveio.sys'. Then you can just run the program and it'll work. I can provide that for you as well, if you need it.


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## dickfour (May 5, 2012)

http://www.mediafire...3s6c86hxlk0vxma

Here are the files that work with the GB bridge. If someone would be nice enough to put these on file trip that would be great. Two things, The drivers might mess with your com ports and make it difficult to use other linkers. I have an old laptop that I picked up for free that I use with the F2A. The other thing is some GB and GBC games don't work like Shante, others have graphic glitches. I have 51 GB and GBC games on mine I weeded out incompatable roms over time. Also if you need some instruction just ask. It's a bit of a pain in the ass to figure out.


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## thaddius (May 5, 2012)

Your GB Bridge files have been uploaded to filetrip. I'll be adding the Flash Linker files sometime today, just for kicks.


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## dickfour (May 6, 2012)

One thing I noticed about the F2A GB bridge and some of the GB multi 101 game carts is that the GB games have messed up color palettes when played on a SP or GBC. I'm thinking that the GB bios is only interpreting color for one game.


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## dickfour (May 6, 2012)

thaddius said:


> Your GB Bridge files have been uploaded to filetrip. I'll be adding the Flash Linker files sometime today, just for kicks.


Good idea, some of this stuff is getting impossible to find


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## alphamule (May 6, 2012)

*looks at N64 and GB adapters*
Oh, you bas***d!  And I mean that in the good way.  I'm more than a little jealous of that bad-ass classic gear!  

Congratuations and good luck with fixing the N64 cart.


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## thaddius (May 6, 2012)

dickfour said:


> One thing I noticed about the F2A GB bridge and some of the GB multi 101 game carts is that the GB games have messed up color palettes when played on a SP or GBC. I'm thinking that the GB bios is only interpreting color for one game.


That happens with my Bung GBC flash cart sometimes. One game that has always given me grief is Megaman IV for GB. The colours are often reversed. I don't really know why it happens, but I'm sure that how_do_i_do_that could explain it.


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## thaddius (May 6, 2012)

thaddius said:


> I'll be adding the Flash Linker files sometime today, just for kicks.


And so I have! Here it is.


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## raulpica (May 6, 2012)

thaddius said:


> dickfour said:
> 
> 
> > One thing I noticed about the F2A GB bridge and some of the GB multi 101 game carts is that the GB games have messed up color palettes when played on a SP or GBC. I'm thinking that the GB bios is only interpreting color for one game.
> ...


Probably the flashcart software messes with some header stuff? I know for certain that the GBC bios assigns the built-in colour palettes for GB reading the game header.


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## DigitalDeviant (May 7, 2012)

Wow I checked this thread just now and see how helpful my fellow tempers have been! Thanks to dickfour and thaddius for sharing their linker/flash cart software on filetrip. I will check them out on an XP machine as soon as I can and post my results right here.


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## Another World (Jun 5, 2012)

i pulled this link out of my favorites archive. does it help you at all? it has some info on what files you need, etc. 

http://home.comcast.net/~gbatools/GBBridge.html

-another world


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## Smiths (Jun 5, 2012)

http://home.comcast.net/~gbatools/

Believe PogoShell was supported on F2a. I had FAPro.  Still love that my old link and homepage for programs is valid.

I shall one-up Another world for posting my documentation! And just post it ALL HERE!



Spoiler



Terminology:
Padded Pogo : the results of testing show that a Pogoshell ROM needs to be padded to the nearest 32kb in order to function with the GB Bridge; this term refers to a Pogoshell ROM that has been padded
GBC games : The total size of all the GBC games you wish to flash
Compilation : The combination of a Padded Pogo and GBC games
loader : GBC2GBA.GB, the preboot file Visoly distributed with Flash Advance Writer 3.2
Here we go:
First off, using Pogoshell & GBBridge on cards lower than 256mb is far more simple than on a 256mb card
*64 mbit card : seems to be not possible due to loader's expected location & PogoShell's handling of these smaller cards
*128 mbit card : Compilation must be less than or equal to 16,744,448 bytes
On a 256mb card, there are two possible methods for using Pogoshell & GBBridge:
1) Compilation is less than or equal to 16,744,448 bytes
2) Compilation is greater than 16,777,216 bytes and Padded Pogo is less than or equal to 16,744,448 bytes
Explanation:
The 256mb card is seen as two 128mb cards. Therefore, if Compilation goes over 128mbit, it must be split between the two "cards".
This is accomplished by placing the loader in the final 32kb of the first 128mbit (beginning at 0xff8000), and having GBC games begin at the beginning of the second 128mbit.
Therefore, if your Padded Pogo is greater than 16,744,448 bytes, there is no room for the loader before moving the GBC games to the second 128mbit section, and therefore is not possible to flash.
Alternate Loader Possibilities
It is possible, since all combinations use a loader placed in the final 32kb of the first 128mbit of space.
Compiling On Your Own:
An automated tool would have to do the following:
1) Create a Pogoshell ROM (e.g. - create.bat)
2) Pad the Pogoshell ROM to the nearest 32kb
3) Compile all wanted GBC roms into one file
4) Check what the size of Step 2 + Step 3 is
5) Follow the above-mentioned procedure for determining how to pad before loader is placed
6a) If Compilation is greater than 16,777,216 bytes, pad the Pogoshell ROM to 16,744,448, and add the loader and GBC games . 
6b) If Compilation is less than or equal to 16,744,448 bytes, combine Step 2 + Step 3 and add loader to final 32kb of file
7) Flash the resulting combined file using whatever program you wish
Please note that this description only created a fully usable Compilation that can be created and flashed by means other than Flash Advance Writer.  This procedure does not alter how saves are handled, but can possibly be used during the compiling to sort the GBC roms in such a way that they will utilize the 64kb of save bank 1 in the most effective manner.
I hope this did not go over everyone's head, but like i said at the beginning, I believe this is the most detailed report of exactly how the GBBridge functions in relation to a flash cartridge.


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## kuwanger (Jun 5, 2012)

Ah, good old Pogoshell and the GB Bridge.  There's actually something called Pogobridge, released by Newbie that was an interesting take on the idea of merging Pogoshell and GB Bridge in a less-hacky way.  Much, much later, I ended up merging the functionality into my fork of Pogoshell v2.0b3.  I tried to make the process as pain-free as possible, although I'll admit that my documentation is probably lacking since there's a lot to it all. :/  Also, I made a hack of GBC2GBA, the GBC loader used with the GB Bridge, to have more color control as well as tweak the above mentioned glitchy colors (it happens with SML too, IIRC); I have no idea on the cause, btw.  I also really considered trying to import the whole GBC bios palette loading thing into GBC2GBA (as the GB Bridge appears to the GBC/GBA as a GBC and hence the GBC bios can't load a game's palette), but that's a good bit of hassle I haven't gotten around to doing. 

In any case, if you are interested in going that route and have problems with the otherwise rather bare details, please let me know.


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## eastbayarb (Jul 22, 2012)

kuwanger said:


> Ah, good old Pogoshell and the GB Bridge.  There's actually something called Pogobridge, released by Newbie that was an interesting take on the idea of merging Pogoshell and GB Bridge in a less-hacky way.  Much, much later, I ended up merging the functionality into my fork of Pogoshell v2.0b3.  I tried to make the process as pain-free as possible, although I'll admit that my documentation is probably lacking since there's a lot to it all. :/  Also, I made a hack of GBC2GBA, the GBC loader used with the GB Bridge, to have more color control as well as tweak the above mentioned glitchy colors (it happens with SML too, IIRC); I have no idea on the cause, btw.  I also really considered trying to import the whole GBC bios palette loading thing into GBC2GBA (as the GB Bridge appears to the GBC/GBA as a GBC and hence the GBC bios can't load a game's palette), but that's a good bit of hassle I haven't gotten around to doing.
> 
> In any case, if you are interested in going that route and have problems with the otherwise rather bare details, please let me know.




I am so happy someone is talking about this kind of thing in 2012! I have a GB Bridge and three 256mb carts. I was wondering, how many games that use SRAM can you save on one cart at a time?


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## Arm73 (Jul 22, 2012)

I also have a GB bridge and a F2A pro 256mb. The flashcart itslef doesn't hold saves anymore, that's why I stopped using that to play GBA games  back in the day in favor of an M3 perfect mini SD. But it still works for gb games, as most games didn't save at all but used passwords.
But GB mono games look wrong for me as well. So I just put GB colors games on it.
But I'd like to give it another shot and try it again.
By the way, I also have a USB linker, which should be easier to handle then the paraller port one, I'll see what I'll find out. Once I really wanted to play GB games on my GBA SP2........


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## eastbayarb (Jul 22, 2012)

Arm73 said:


> I also have a GB bridge and a F2A pro 256mb. The flashcart itslef doesn't hold saves anymore, that's why I stopped using that to play GBA games  back in the day in favor of an M3 perfect mini SD. But it still works for gb games, as most games didn't save at all but used passwords.
> But GB mono games look wrong for me as well. So I just put GB colors games on it.
> But I'd like to give it another shot and try it again.
> By the way, I also have a USB linker, which should be easier to handle then the paraller port one, I'll see what I'll find out. Once I really wanted to play GB games on my GBA SP2........



Kuwanger,

I would like to try out that pogoshell of yours. I really like how DoctorGB carts (I have three 64mb carts)can make use of a loader called DGBmax, which gives you a lot of different color pallates to choose from for GB Mono games. Perhaps you can look into something like this for the GB Bridge?


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## Another World (Jul 22, 2012)

you could try installing the xp drivers and see if you can get one of the software writers to recognize it. i've had good luck with win7 backwards compatibility.

these links might help:
http://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/flashcart-files/download-f2a-usb-linker-xp-driver-setup-f447.html
http://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/flashcart-files/download-flash2advance-usb-writer-11-f3746.html
http://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/flashcart-files/download-flash2advance-usb-driver-f3747.html

-another world


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## kuwanger (Jul 23, 2012)

@[member='eastbayarb']:

Under [Unofficial] Pogoshell - Gameboy Bridge Support:


> Finally, you're going to have to make some consideration about the Gameboy [Color] games saves. The Gameboy Bridge allocates for the first 8 games 8KB each for saves (ie up to 64KB total). If a game actually requires 32KB of saves, you'll need to put 3 games (ie 24KB) of space between it and the next games that saves. To faciliate this, makefs.py will sort how games are added based on their filename. So, you can manually sort games to your liking by renaming them appropriate (eg "largesave.gbx" can become "00 largesave.gbx", "nosave1.gbx" can become "01 nosave1.gbx", etc). Unless you're trying to use a game with a large save, have a lot of (ie over 8) Gameboy [Color] games you want to use with the Gameboy Bridge, or just want to keep the order static in case you add games later, all of this is probably a non-issue for you.


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## eastbayarb (Jul 28, 2012)

Someone that has an f2a/gb bridge working needs to post a youtube vid of the process. It sounds confusing...I decided to start using my Fujitsu Stylistic C-500 LT old school tablet again (dual booting Windows
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





 98 and 2000


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## DigitalDeviant (Jul 28, 2012)

Another World said:


> you could try installing the xp drivers and see if you can get one of the software writers to recognize it. i've had good luck with win7 backwards compatibility.
> 
> these links might help:
> http://filetrip.net/...setup-f447.html
> ...



Perhaps I'm misreading this but are you saying it may be possible to run the gb-bridge/f2a on Windows 7?


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## eastbayarb (Jul 28, 2012)

I read about win7 possibilities, but to avoid any troubles, I just started using my Fujitsu Stylistic C-500 LT tablet again, running 98/2000. It isn't worth the headache to use old school game copier stuff on anything after XP.


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## eastbayarb (Aug 4, 2012)

I finally got pogoshell to work and write games onto my 256mb f2a cart using my game wallet. Now I can create a 128mb file, but I cannot seem to make a 256mb file that works with the gb bridge. Pogoshell's readme file suggests some things on this issue, but has anyone been able to fill up a 256mb f2a cart for use with the gb bridge?


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## machinoman (Sep 27, 2018)

eastbayarb said:


> Someone that has an f2a/gb bridge working needs to post a youtube vid of the process. It sounds confusing...I decided to start using my Fujitsu Stylistic C-500 LT old school tablet again (dual booting Windows
> 
> 
> 
> ...


super necro bump!!!!!!!

I got a GB Bridge finally!!! Playing around with it right now. Its relatively easy to set up even without a linker, provided you have a 256Mb F2A flashcart, a DS R4 card (or something like the same), a DS compatible with GBA cards, and a GB Bridge.

The steps I took -

1. On any platform that supports Python 2, install Python 2.
2. Download this file. It is kuwanger's Pogoshell fork mentioned above, but with the necessary GB Bridge settings he mentions on his site already made.
3. Extract the zip file to a folder and put any GB or GBC files you like into its root/Games directory. Change the extension of each game to *.gbx*, but leave gbc2gba.gb as it is.
4. Navigate to the folder you unzipped in in step 3 in a terminal window. Type _*makefs.py -b pogo_visoly_xg1.gba root toFlash.bin*_. This generates a file named toFlash.bin in that folder.
5. Follow Chrushev's guide from step 7 forward.


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## XC-3730C (Sep 27, 2018)

Damn, now I gotta dig mine out from the grave in my garage! I have 3 or 4 or those 256gb F2A carts!


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## machinoman (Sep 27, 2018)

XC-3730C said:


> Damn, now I gotta dig mine out from the grave in my garage! I have 3 or 4 or those 256gb F2A carts!


You have a GB Bridge? Bridge Nation!!


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## xs4all (Sep 27, 2018)

machinoman said:


> super necro bump!!!!!!!
> 
> I got a GB Bridge finally!!! Playing around with it right now. Its relatively easy to set up even without a linker, provided you have a 256Mb F2A flashcart, a DS R4 card (or something like the same), a DS compatible with GBA cards, and a GB Bridge.
> 
> ...



This device brings back memories, I still have the GB Bridge and the 256M F2A cart and the old school parallel Linker device, your steps will come in handy if I want to update my games.
I preloaded the 256M cart ages when I was still rocking WinXP, nothing better than using this on the original GB, GB Pocket and GB Color which I still have and funny enough my worm light that connects to the EXT port still works!


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## XC-3730C (Sep 27, 2018)

Do saves work for Gameboy/Gameboy Cor games with this method?

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk


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## machinoman (Sep 28, 2018)

XC-3730C said:


> Do saves work for Gameboy/Gameboy Cor games with this method?
> 
> Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk


It does but based on the size of the save file for some games you might have to do a hack where you put no-save dummy games after a game. It is explained in the GB Bridge section of this page. I have tested and saved successfully with Pokemon Crystal. It also depends on if your F2A card's battery is still good.


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