Hacking Hardware GBA Action Replay/ Gameshark - Any way to reflash a bricked device?

[sashaJay]

Upon booting up an old Game Boy Advanced action replay the words are garbled and jumbled, a random string of letters and numbers spans the where the menu items are.

The weird thing is, booting into the L + R + START + SELECT screen gives a fully functional USB Mode, but when attempting to connect it to GBX on an original XP machine, it says USB ERROR.

Attempting to connect it to USB with the garbled menu doesn’t do anything as well, GBX fails to communicate with the device so I’m wondering if I can reflash the 3.3 Action Replay firmware onto the device itself

I’m thinking it has to work, right? Being able to add codes to the device means that it’s got a writable chip on there…. Right? I really hope I’m right.

You can barely find ANY information about this stuff online, and it’s hilarious, but frustrating, to watch AI hallucinate about these machines because there’s so little information they just straight up lie about the devices. Luckily I have multiple working devices but I really would like to get this broken one working again.

 

[master801]

You'd need a dump of a known working one, a programmer for the EEPROM (these are pretty expensive), then skills to remove the chip from the cartridge and put it back in (they can sometimes be soldered on and not be a socket.)

 

[sashaJay]

You'd need a dump of a known working one, a programmer for the EEPROM (these are pretty expensive), then skills to remove the chip from the cartridge and put it back in (they can sometimes be soldered on and not be a socket.)

IDK. People on a discord seem to think that it’ll work. I’ll have to check

 

[naed06]

This was how I fixed my N64 cheats cart, double stacking and flashing it with another cheat cart

Theoretically it'd work but I've never seen it done on this device

 

[cearp]

Isn't there a possibility that the flash chip is bad, and that a reflash won't help?
Good luck though, cool if you can just reflash using the gbxcart

 

[sashaJay]

Isn't there a possibility that the flash chip is bad, and that a reflash won't help?
Good luck though, cool if you can just reflash using the gbxcart

Very well could be a possibility. You’d think it wouldn’t boot at all then though in most cases right? They’re notorious for becoming corrupt and I just hope it’s a classic GBA AR brick scenario. Funny little devices.

I also found a Reddit post where someone discussed flashing the English version of the firmware onto a Japanese action replay and how they were successful in doing so. https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/s/rbVbX9T1pd

^^ Googling normal AR stuff died NOT turn up this thread. I was googling some very not-often-used keywords for this to pop up but it gave me more hope too.

At the very least it would be nice to flash my 11 New In Box Japanese GBA AR’s with English. Either way some flash attempts will be happening soon when i get all my stuff in the mail and I will post about it here. I’m tired of not much information coming up on Google about these little devices and hope to add some clarity for the happy few who will attempt this in the future too.

 

[naed06]

I also read somewhere that reflashing the codes list sometimes fixes such issues (can't remember where I read that though)

Apparently if the code list becomes corrupted it can cause such issues

Will be interesting to see if you manage a fix on this

 

[AXIS1613]

Very well could be a possibility. You’d think it wouldn’t boot at all then though in most cases right? They’re notorious for becoming corrupt and I just hope it’s a classic GBA AR brick scenario. Funny little devices.

I also found a Reddit post where someone discussed flashing the English version of the firmware onto a Japanese action replay and how they were successful in doing so. https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/s/rbVbX9T1pd

^^ Googling normal AR stuff died NOT turn up this thread. I was googling some very not-often-used keywords for this to pop up but it gave me more hope too.

At the very least it would be nice to flash my 11 New In Box Japanese GBA AR’s with English. Either way some flash attempts will be happening soon when i get all my stuff in the mail and I will post about it here. I’m tired of not much information coming up on Google about these little devices and hope to add some clarity for the happy few who will attempt this in the future too.

Hopefully you had luck with this. I know I'm going to have to do something of this sort on mine. Please let us know if you catch a break!

 

[sashaJay]

Hopefully you had luck with this. I know I'm going to have to do something of this sort on mine. Please let us know if you catch a break!

Which action replay do you have? Transparent, Black, Black DUO, or silver?