Bung GB X-Changer/Mr.Flash - Part 1 (First Impressions & Dumping Carts)
(Re-creation of the GB X-Changer logo)
Introduction
It's been a while since I last wrote a blog entry about what I've been up to, and I have kept this particular one on hold for a reason because it's very special to me as someone who loves retro gaming and collecting and tinkering with tech from the past. Let me tell a story on how I got here in the first place. Last month, I've been doing late-night eBay scrolling just to find what good deals they have, and as I was looking through Game Boy stuff, I stumbled upon a job lot for an untested GB X-Changer V2 and the Visoly FlashAdvance Turbo writer with the 64Mbit flashcart—all of which was sold for 30 bucks. After making my purchase and waiting for a couple of days to arrive, they finally came in a box well packaged with bubble wrap. I won't be talking about the FlashAdvance today, as this entry revolves around the GB X-Changer.The GB X-Changer was one of Bung Enterprises' most popular products for dumping Game Boy cartridges. It would also allow you to write ROMs to flashcarts (also sold by Bung under the "Doctor GB Card" name); however, 3rd-party software can add the ability to write to other carts, and it was brought to my attention that carts such as the GB Smart can be flashed using "ucon64". It was this product and many others like the Game Doctor on the SNES that raised Nintendo's alarm bells to sue Bung for selling backup devices until their short-lived venture as First Union to sell leftover stock of their devices under different names, and like the GB X-Changer, it was renamed to "Mr. Flash." Nobody knows where Bung is; some have rumored that they had worked on the SuperCard, but all roads lead to nowhere as there's no solid evidence to prove that they were. SuperCard was based out of China, whilst Bung Enterprises is a Hong Kong company.
First Impressions
After examining the writer itself, the back was missing two screws; another two were intact, but it looked like somebody opened it up prior to me, as one screw was stripped. A small chunk of plastic from the cartridge slot broke off right near pin 32, so somebody had forced the cartridge in to where it snapped off the corner, but other than this, the cartridge slot had no damage to the contacts.
The casing sports a translucent purple look that is very reminiscent of the iMac G3 and other electronics from the 2000s. The rear end of the device has a parallel port (the standard DB25 on PCs at the time) and next to it has a DC jack for power; alternatively, it can be powered by AA batteries, which on their own aren't reliable, as they tend to leak if you forget to remove them. Why the device needs power from either one of those is because the standard Game Boy cartridge requires +5 volts to operate; the seller did not provide a power supply with my unit, but as with many of these backup devices dating to the Super Nintendo/SFC, they always use a DC power supply with 9 volts, 1A (outer negative, center positive)—I did check the continuity prior to plugging it in, and I can definitely confirm that it needs it.
Dumping Games
For this demonstration on dumping games with the GB X-Changer, I have attached it to the parallel port of my machine via an extension cable and the power is turned on. I will be using a Compaq Armada running Windows 98 Second Edition for this purpose as it was released around the same timeframe and the best version to use old devices like these; later versions, such as Windows XP, requires a 3rd-party kernel-level access driver because Microsoft blocked accessing legacy parallel-based devices by constantly timing it out, hence 98SE will be used for this exact purpose. The game that will be used is "Pokemon de PanePon" (the Japanese version of "Pokemon Puzzle Challenge").
Opening the "GameBoX Exchange" tool, it has found our GB X-Changer at port address 0x378 without problems; the green indicator tells us that it has no connection problems and that we are ready to go. In the "Info View" window in the bottom-right, our cartridge that we inserted is recognized as "POKEPON" (Pokemon de PanePon) followed by our cartridge configuration consisting of a ROM, MBC5 memory bank controller, RAM, and battery—a standard configuration for GBC games with battery backup. For the ROM size, it is measured in "megabits" instead of "megabytes." Don't get confused if this is your first time knowing about megabits; here is a basic calculation chart for what you should know: 8 Mbit = 1 MB, 16 Mbit = 2 MB, 32 Mbit = 4 MB, and vice versa.
After clicking "Backup Card" it asks me for a name for what the ROM is going to be called. For this I will choose the same name as to what "GameBoX Exchange" shows followed by a file extension of (.GBC) since this is a Game Boy Color game. You do not want to mix this with original Game Boy games since you can mistake this for being compatible, until you put it on a flashcart only to find out that it doesn't work.
Testing the ROM
One minute and a half later, once the ROM has been dumped, I can load it into an emulator and.. VOILA! (it works-no problems there)
After transferring the ROM to my main computer and pasted the generated SHA-1 checksum that it has created from the ROM into No-Intro, it confirms to me that this is a valid good dump of the game. So it seems that the GB X-Changer does what it says it can do: create perfect dumps of games which is a bonus.
