Homebrew TempGBA not working :(

[Xarsah16]

I've come across a pretty irritating problem. I have an 8gb microsd card within my Supercard DSTwo and it's got about 4gb of content on the card. There's about 22 games within the ROM folder on the card. My American 3DS is running the latest firmware 5.1.0-11U.

Every time I try to load a game from TempGBA, I always get a blue top screen Guru Meditation error

Guru Meditation

Native code exit limit reached (256)
at addresses 08000000 .. 08001BF4

The game has encountered a recoverable error. It has not crashed, but due to this, it soon may.

By accidentally pressing the R button when I picked up my 3DS, the top screen is still showing the error (address changed to 08001BF4 .. 08001FF4) but the bottom screen has a red Guru meditation error. Click the spoiler for a picture of the error code. I'm not typing all those digits in.

Spoiler

I've already overwritten and reinstalled the emulator, and the emulator crashes with games as small as just over 4mb.

What else can I try to get this working?

 

[Deleted member 319809]

So, TempGBA loads properly and all, but as soon as you want to load a game, it basically executes corrupt code. Normal operation would not crash before the first frame even appears on-screen.

Either:
a) your 8 GB microSD card is a fake and it only really stores 1 GB (or even less!) of data;
b) your microSD card is not formatted properly with the Panasonic SD Formatter with the size adjustment option on, which many DSTwo applications require.

For 'a', did you buy your microSD card from an eBay seller? If so, you may have been hit with 'flash fraud'. To determine quickly whether this is the case, get a program called 'h2testw' and see if it reports that the real write area is less than 8 GB.

For 'b', but only if your card has an 8 GB real write area, see /NDS/Flashcarts/Supercard/The SuperCard DSTWO Beginner's Guide: How to Setup the DSTWO, in the "formatting your card" section.

 

[Xarsah16]

a) I bought this 8GB MicroSD card (Class 6 printed on it) from DealExtreme a long time ago (like 2-3 years ago) and it has a silver sticker on the back with 09-4.5.6 JONY written on it, and chinese symbols in the background on the sticker. Unbranded as far as I can tell. From this listing but it is slightly different than the picture, see below - http://dx.com/p/oem-sdhc-class-4-microsd-tf-flash-memory-card-8gb-19040

Looks like this:

Spoiler

It's held up remarkably well.

b) I formatted the card beforehand using the official SD Formatter for Mac from this site: https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_3/eula_mac. I created a backup (before installing TempGBA) and then did a complete format using the Overwrite Format option, erasing all the data on the card. I re-added all of my files and then installed TempGBA. I had read the How To guide yesterday, and I'm familiar with everything it said and thought I did everything (minus the Panasonic detail.) There was no option to adjust for size, and I've never had an issue until now, so I thought the program I was using worked for me.

I'll reformat the entire card again and post the results.

 

[Deleted member 319809]

b) I formatted the card beforehand using the official SD Formatter for Mac from this site: https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_3/eula_mac. I created a backup (before installing TempGBA) and then did a complete format using the Overwrite Format option, erasing all the data on the card. I re-added all of my files and then installed TempGBA. I had read the How To guide yesterday, and I'm familiar with everything it said and thought I did everything (minus the Panasonic detail.) There was no option to adjust for size, and I've never had an issue until now, so I thought the program I was using worked for me.

I'll reformat the entire card again and post the results.

Should be the very same formatter, except with a Mac interface. However, if you don't see a "Size Adjustment" option because they dumbed it down too much for Mac users, then that's what's wrong. You'd need a Windows computer to format it with that option set.

 

[Xarsah16]

Is this it in my version?

Logical Address Adjustment

Yes - This option is for interoperability with specific devices
No

OK Cancel

 

[Deleted member 319809]

Is this it in my version?

Yes. It would just move the start of the filesystem to 1 megabyte later. You'll lose a megabyte of capacity but should gain the compatibility for TempGBA.

 

[Xarsah16]

Thanks, I'm in the process of re-adding everything back on the card after formatting it with that enabled. I've got about 7 minutes or less until I can test it, so I'll try it out again when the files are done transferring.

 

[Xarsah16]

Still crashing on load I'm going to re-format everything, re-download the emulator, and then re-install the emulator with the fresh copy. I'll let you know how that works.

 

[Deleted member 319809]

Still crashing on load I'm going to re-format everything, re-download the emulator, and then re-install the emulator with the fresh copy. I'll let you know how that works.

Compare version 1.43 from yesterday with 1.42. Maybe 1.43 is the problem, and 1.42 works. I'd like to know about that, if that's the case.

And for the love of your microSD card's erase cycles (and thus lifetime), don't just put everything on the card again - put just the Supercard EOS, TempGBA and one or two games on it first, and when it works, put the rest on.

 

[Xarsah16]

Got it working so far! Pokemon Emerald, Sims Bustin Out and Sonic Advance were the 3 roms I selected, because I knew that Emerald should work with the .txt file, but I still needed to see it for myself. Sims and Pokemon were fine - but I'd like to test Fire Red and a few other things.

Sonic Advance - on the other hand... lol.

The emulator loaded this -

One poster said it was anti piracy... hmm? Is Sonic Advance known to have compatibility issues? Have I missed a list of compatible games?

EDIT: Loaded the rest of the games into the folder, set everything back up, and thanks for your help! Everything seems to be working smoothly... except Sonic Advance, rofl.

 

[Rydian]

When you see the rectangles, hit A+B+START+SELECT.

 

[Xarsah16]

Soft reset? It worked, but how?

I think I'm also confused now as to why the rectangles appeared in the first place... I meant to post that it wasn't my ROM because the game worked great on my PSP, and now this clearly proves that XD

 

[Rydian]

I'm not entirely sure either. Perhaps some memory gets initialized after it's meant to be read, so upon first read it fails, but when you soft-reset the RAM stays initialized like it was before and so the check succeeds.

Something to do with how emulators tend to forget to initialize RAM a certain way as if it was the real hardware.

 

[Xarsah16]

I'm not entirely sure either. Perhaps some memory gets initialized after it's meant to be read, so upon first read it fails, but when you soft-reset the RAM stays initialized like it was before and so the check succeeds.

Something to do with how emulators tend to forget to initialize RAM a certain way as if it was the real hardware.

Ah, okay! That would make sense, clearly didn't think about that. Sonic Advance games are running great now, except for the occasional freeze. Is this a known issue? Or would it have something to do with the contacts in my system? I'm not thinking it's that though, because when I hold down the power button, the cart is able to be reopened without reseating it from the 3DS menu and then it works fine again, until the emulator freezes.

I did notice that my 3 Classic NES series ROMs weren't working. Pacman, Donkey Kong, and Metroid.

I was reading this compatibility list http://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/TempGBA_Compatibility that seems to cover the beta version, and it notes that Classic Zelda II wasn't working at all. I'm wondering if this is related. However, there was actually an error that showed up according to the Wiki when the ROM was started - and in my case, when I start the Pacman, Donkey Kong, or Metroid ROMs, all I get is a black screen. No error. It's different. The emulator doesn't freeze though. No error, and the GUI on the lower screen is still operational, and I can switch into a different game. I wonder why this happens.

It's not too big a deal, because I could just use NESDS if I felt like it, but I'm still curious.

 

[Deleted member 319809]

See the opening post of the TempGBA thread (in my signature) for all the compatibility questions you may have.