ROM Hack Opera: game linkage?

Veho · Jan 9, 2007

The title more or less says it all. Why can't the Opera browser use the "game linkage" function of GBA supporting flashcards? The "GBA game" in this case would be the RAM expansion pack, while the "DS game" would be the Opera browser.

I assume this has been tried. Can I get a technical explanation on why it doesn't work?

chalupa · Jan 9, 2007

well because the ram slot doesn't rely have any info just.... well... RAM! or so I'm told.

Veho · Jan 10, 2007

Well... if you use the game linkage function, then the card doesn't use that part of RAM to run the DS game, but keeps it reserved instead...

I don't know the size of the RAM cartrige. I'll assume it's 16 MB. So if you made an empty GBA ROM, disguised it to look like it's 16 MB big, and link it with Opera, the flashcard would reserve the lower 16 MB of RAM for the GBA ROM, run the Opera ROM from the upper range of the flashcard's RAM (or directly from the memory card, or somewhere else, wherever it runs the linked DS ROMs from), and so the Opera could use the empty 16 megs as the RAM cartrige...

Why doesn't it work?

lurker · Jan 10, 2007

Probably because the read addresses are different - a GBA link logically shouldn't work anyway, because to my understanding it just tells the DS game that the cart is there and possibly lets it read the save. There's a version of the rom dump that will work without the official ram cart, providing you run it with a slot-1 card and have an SC/M3 in slot-2. There's a news article about it on this website.

Veho · Jan 10, 2007

I've seen it. I just wanted a technical explanation. I believe the game linkage function is read-only, and the Opera browser would have to write as well, quite often.

Mithrandir · Jan 30, 2007

Now that I think about it, it should work. Have you tried it?
If it doesn't work, I can only guess of the reason, but I think it's because when you load a ROM to the M3, the M3 Game Manager has to path it to make it load the code from the RAM in the SLOT-2 instead of SLOT-1. This patch probably relies in the ROM having been compiled using the Nintendo SDK. When you use the Opera patch, maybe it changes some of the signatures the SDK left (or something like that), so the M3 patch fails to properly patch the ROM.
Of course this is just a guess, but if that is the case then it wouldn't be too hard for someone who knows what he's doing to "manualy" patch the ROM instead of using the M3 Game Manager.

phoood · Jan 30, 2007

Who was it.. TriForce? I forgot, but you'd have to ask them.
I'm also guessing that the ram pack isn't your average cart.

Mithrandir · Jan 30, 2007

Of course the ram pack isn't a normal cart, but it doesn't matter, since TriForce already cracked Opera so you wouldn't need the ram pack. The problem is that you still need to run it from SLOT-1...

Flavor · Jan 30, 2007

QUOTE(phoood @ Jan 29 2007 said:
Who was it.. TriForce?Â I forgot, but you'd have to ask them.

I've been wondering about this for a while. Can anyone tell me how to contact TriForce? I have 2 older GBA flash carts, and I think it'd be nice to be able to use them as an Opera RAM pack (if possible). I assume that it would be similar to the M3/SC hack.

Mithrandir · Jan 30, 2007

I just read the thread again, and I think I misunderstood what he was asking. I thought he wanted to get the TriForce patch to work only using SLOT-2, but now I think he meant to only use the game linkage.
Of course I don't think the game linkage would work alone. The ram pack and the M3 ram are too different. What I'm saying is that using game linkage AND the TriForce patch, you might be able to run Opera from SLOT-2.