SuperFW: a custom firmware for Supercard

  • Thread starter Thread starter davidgf
  • Start date Start date
  • Views Views 182,155
  • Replies Replies 875
  • Likes Likes 46
David please add minimal softreset patch, without fancy ui, if that can minimize the payload size. Just button combo to activate, thanks 😃
Post automatically merged:

Hey there!
Yeah fair enough. However there's like 60 ROMs (out of 3000) that are 32MiB. And only a third or so (perhaps 15) use SRAM as saving method. That's mainly the reason I havent added this feature.
If you are interested in some particular game, it might be better to investigate if there's some "unused" space in the ROM where SuperFW IGM can be loaded (some other 32MiB games have big holes and work fine with the IGM, but sometimes these holes are not obvious to find).
I only tried yugioh world Championship 2006 and goodboy galaxy. Maybe there is padding in the ROM. I will check it later. Thanks
 
Last edited by Acrobatic-Donkey-653,
Ok found the issue with SMS advance! Seems it does tweak the WAITCNT register (which other emus and most homebrew don't do). I uploaded a patched version of the emu in the OP. I will change the docs to point to this new binary.
Perhaps adding DrSMS support would be a good idea too.
Enjoy!
WORKS! Thanks!
 
Hey there!

It seems the issue is with the RTC patches. Just select Disabled in the Emulated RTC, when launching the ROM. With the patches enabled it does indeed flash the screen to white and restart the ROM, whereas with it disabled works fine.
No idea whether that makes the ROM fail at a later stage. Havent tested with real HW (i dont have my GBA here nor my Wireless adapter).

To be honest I never tested the RTC patches with any other game than pokemon Ruby/Shapire, so no idea if it breaks other games. I might try debug a bit more later, see if it's some simple bug on my end :)
Hey,

It worked right away when I disabled the RTC emulation!
Thank you for your replies and your effort!
Looking forward to seeing more of your work!

Cheers!
 
I bought new supercard last month ,I have it with superfw.now it work great there is some slowdown in some games like lunar legend,tekken advance, metroid zero mission ,mario party advance work fine but when start mini games black screen and glich sound . GTA works fine just disable IGM. Metroid fusion black screen when enable IGM if u disable it game won't save aftet load game message appeare currepted save and strat from the beginning
 
Last edited by sam2895,
Ok found the issue with SMS advance! Seems it does tweak the WAITCNT register (which other emus and most homebrew don't do). I uploaded a patched version of the emu in the OP. I will change the docs to point to this new binary.
Perhaps adding DrSMS support would be a good idea too.
Enjoy!
Hi @davidgf ! This is great news! Thanks a lot!
I did notice something though, game gear games' colors are all strange, or is it just me?
 
Last edited by Sasiccia84,
I ran davidgf's kernel by renaming the "firmware" file to kernel.gba and placed it inside the scfw folder(thus replacing the SCFW kernel).

It's practically a frankenstein-ish combination of metroid-maniac's firmware/loader & davidgf's kernel :lol:

View attachment 435178
@OmDRetro @metroid maniac @davidgf Hi! I tried to do the same but I got an error:

Kernel too large to load! Critical failure.

This is a very good idea and could maybe make the best firmware available? Are you maybe planning of implementing the extended emulation/homebrew capabilities of SCFW into SuperFW or the graphical interface/ingame menus/saving features of SuperFW into SCFW?

Thanks a lot for your amazing work!
 
FYI: Changing capacitors on original GBA still doesn't fix issues with SuperCard.
Seems like incompatibility between the two that no firmware update will fix.
 
SuperFW already has support for emulators, see https://superfw.davidgf.net/docs/usermanual/emulators/
For homebrew try the PatchEngine and/or the online patcher (see the docs for more details).
Cheers
@davidgf SCFW can do Game Gear without colors glitch, DrSMS for FM audio, Colecovision, Wonderswan, PC Engine, and can play music through Music Player Advance, I didn't manage to get them to run these on Superfw, is there a way to add compatibility? Thanks!
 
Last edited by Sasiccia84,
Hey there!

It's been exactly a year since my first post, time to make the project officially open source!
Find the new v0.15 release here:

https://github.com/davidgfnet/superfw/releases/tag/v0.15

Has support for DrSMS emulator and minor changes. I might add some more emulators, but other than that it's ready.
Support for SC lite will come in the next days once I get the carts in the mail :)

Enjoy!
 
I recently got my hands on a SuperCard. A purple one with a 2GB microSD. I have an AGB-001 that I did an IPS screen replacement and shell swap on, otherwise it's stock.

My main goal is getting videos I converted with Meteo to run on the GBA. I'm using Meteo 1.3.1 and gbafix.exe.
But I'd also like games like Apotris and a few others to run.

When I'm using the stock firmware and the SuperCard V2.71 windows programm to patch the ROMs they load and run without any issues. I can play Apotris and watch all Meteo videos at full speed and without glitches.

But I would prefer to use SuperFW because it's way cleaner and can display more than ASCII in filenames.

However, it just wont work. I've tried SuperFW by running the .gba file and also by flashing it and rebooting into the firmware.
I've tried manual patching using the web tool and various combinations of settings with the auto patcher including no patching.

The Meteo roms will just show a white or black screen and Apotris will be riddled with audio and visual glitches and freeze randomly.

Any idea? Am I stuck with the stock firmware?
 
Hey there!

No way to choose DrSms vs smsadvance. DrSMS has priority over SMSAdvance though. And yes, SMS advance also features graphic quirks for me, not sure why.

About homebrew such as Apotris. Sometimes the right way to boot them is tricky, I will try to reach out to them, but I don't really see how to patch the game. However I see that booting it with PatchEngine and using the "BIOS boot" mode (do not use Skip BIOS) works on my AGB-001. Not sure why it works on the official FW... Does it work on SCFW?

Cheers
 
I recently got my hands on a SuperCard. A purple one with a 2GB microSD. I have an AGB-001 that I did an IPS screen replacement and shell swap on, otherwise it's stock.

My main goal is getting videos I converted with Meteo to run on the GBA. I'm using Meteo 1.3.1 and gbafix.exe.
But I'd also like games like Apotris and a few others to run.

When I'm using the stock firmware and the SuperCard V2.71 windows programm to patch the ROMs they load and run without any issues. I can play Apotris and watch all Meteo videos at full speed and without glitches.

But I would prefer to use SuperFW because it's way cleaner and can display more than ASCII in filenames.

However, it just wont work. I've tried SuperFW by running the .gba file and also by flashing it and rebooting into the firmware.
I've tried manual patching using the web tool and various combinations of settings with the auto patcher including no patching.

The Meteo roms will just show a white or black screen and Apotris will be riddled with audio and visual glitches and freeze randomly.

Any idea? Am I stuck with the stock firmware?
@trashbytes Apotris runs fine, my settings:

Savegame options:

Save mode: SRAM
Savegame load: Load
Savegame save: On reboot

Patching options:

Patching: Patch engine
In-game menu: Disabled

Then run patch engine manually by pressing a on Patchengine - Run
Once the patching has been completed

press a on Load GBA game ROM

For meteo videos, I've noticed that patching them with SuperCard V.2.71 on your pc, then running them and saying no to any proposed patching, then running works fine.

Enjoy!
Post automatically merged:

Hey there!

No way to choose DrSms vs smsadvance. DrSMS has priority over SMSAdvance though. And yes, SMS advance also features graphic quirks for me, not sure why.

About homebrew such as Apotris. Sometimes the right way to boot them is tricky, I will try to reach out to them, but I don't really see how to patch the game. However I see that booting it with PatchEngine and using the "BIOS boot" mode (do not use Skip BIOS) works on my AGB-001. Not sure why it works on the official FW... Does it work on SCFW?

Cheers
@davidgf, are you considering adding a way to switch between DrSMS and SMSAdvance? That would be quite beneficial! Thanks a lot!
 
Last edited by Sasiccia84,
@trashbytes Apotris runs fine, my settings:

Savegame options:

Save mode: SRAM
Savegame load: Load
Savegame save: On reboot

Patching options:

Patching: Patch engine
In-game menu: Disabled

Then run patch engine manually by pressing a on Patchengine - Run
Once the patching has been completed

press a on Load GBA game ROM

For meteo videos, I've noticed that patching them with SuperCard V.2.71 on your pc, then running them and saying no to any proposed patching, then running works fine.

Enjoy!
Post automatically merged:


@davidgf, are you considering adding a way to switch between DrSMS and SMSAdvance? That would be quite beneficial! Thanks a lot!
Can you check metroid fusion save plz because after change to another game I lost my save progress and it starts from beginning
 

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum