Hacking All the G6 features without the U-Disk Manager

[Sweater Fish Del]

I'm having a lot of trouble getting U-Disk Manager to work correctly. And to be honest even if I wasn't having trouble with it, it would be a horrible program. I'd way rather use drag & drop.

However, the soft reset feature and maybe also the DoFAT option (which I understand speeds up the load time, right?) would be nice features, so does anyone here know how to patch a ROM manually so that it will have these functions without having to be loaded through the U-Disk Manager? Is it just one of the IPS files in the IPS folder U-Disk Manager installed to? Or is it more complicated than that like it's something built into the EXE itself or something.


...word is bondage...

 

[outphase]

...word is bondage...

reminds me of Chasing Amy

anywho, there's no universal patch available for any card. Also, the patcher software allows the games to actually run (i'm sure you figured this). Several games have unique patching methods when firmwares/loaders come out.

 

[derderbste]

What exactly is your problem with the u-disk manager. i´ve never heard about problems with this prog.

 

[Hypnotoad]

What exactly is your problem with the u-disk manager. i´ve never heard about problems with this prog.

Agreed. I haven't had any problems with it either.

 

[Drucifer]

I haven't had any problems with the U-Disk Manager either. It is simple to use and works great.

The program is required to patch your games and it will also create the save files for your games.

 

[Sweater Fish Del]

The U-Disk Manager won't actually write to the cart for me. Everything seems to be going fine, but after the "Write OK!" window comes up nothing shows up on the Manager window indicating that anything wa written to the cart and there's nothing added to the NDS folder. I don't know what the problem is. It may be because I'm using Windows 98SE. I don't know. It's also just a very clunky program and I generally like to do things myself anyway. I come from the old school of back-up units like on the N64 when we had to do everything manually, so I'm more familiar with that anyway.

You can load games that were added via drag & drop just fine. They need to be named .NDS to show up in the main window, but need to have a loader appended like a .DS.GBA file, so you just have to append a loader, but keep the .NDS extension.

I could swear I read somewhere there's a universal patch applied to the ROMs that enables the software reset. If each game required a custom patch, no new games that get dumped or homebrews that come out would work until a new version of the Manager was released and the development team would have to write specific support for everything that comes out for the system, which just seems highly unlikely.

The files in the IPS folder are actually more likely crack patches for individual games that need to be cracked, though, with the files are named according to some CRC-64 checksum. So I still don't know where to find the patch(es) I'm looking for. Does anyone know what the Intro_P.bin file is?


...word is bondage....

 

[outphase]

The U-Disk Manager won't actually write to the cart for me. Everything seems to be going fine, but after the "Write OK!" window comes up nothing shows up on the Manager window indicating that anything wa written to the cart and there's nothing added to the NDS folder.

I already know your problem. You are attempting to write the .zip file (which sorta works), but your zip file has files other than your *.gba or *.nds file, such as .nfo or file_id.diz. You have to either extract your zip file then write the .nds file on its own or remove all files except the .nds from the zip.

 

[Sweater Fish Del]

I'm trying to write .NDS files directly, not zipped. Maybe I'll try a zipped ROM and see if that works.


...word is bondage...

 

[Zap]

Are you able to write ANYTHING at all via the U-Disk manager? I mean to ask if it is only .nds files that are giving you problem. Have you tried .gba files? Also, how many .nds files did you try?

I assume that when you launch U-Disk manager, you have selected the correct drive that represents your G6.

Maybe try to back up data on your G6 and then reformat it using FAT again just to make sure?

 

[tama_mog]

The U-Disk Manager won't actually write to the cart for me. Everything seems to be going fine, but after the "Write OK!" window comes up nothing shows up on the Manager window indicating that anything wa written to the cart and there's nothing added to the NDS folder.

I already know your problem. You are attempting to write the .zip file (which sorta works), but your zip file has files other than your *.gba or *.nds file, such as .nfo or file_id.diz. You have to either extract your zip file then write the .nds file on its own or remove all files except the .nds from the zip.

This is what I thought too reading his thread, if you write a zip file like this it will just jump to a write ok message without writing anything, immediately. You will know when it's writing because of the progress bars.....have you tried different roms? Make sure you have some clean roms to work with when doing this....or hell even make sure your g6 is detected in the first place, like you can format the drive fine and all before you use the u-disk manager.

 

[Lazycus]

The U-Disk Manager won't actually write to the cart for me.  Everything seems to be going fine, but after the "Write OK!" window comes up nothing shows up on the Manager window indicating that anything wa written to the cart and there's nothing added to the NDS folder.

I already know your problem. You are attempting to write the .zip file (which sorta works), but your zip file has files other than your *.gba or *.nds file, such as .nfo or file_id.diz. You have to either extract your zip file then write the .nds file on its own or remove all files except the .nds from the zip.

I have no problems writing .nds files from .zips that also contain other files (.nfo, .diz, etc.). Of course I get several progress bars as it unzips, patches, etc., then actually writes to the G6Lite.

 

[tama_mog]

The U-Disk Manager won't actually write to the cart for me. Everything seems to be going fine, but after the "Write OK!" window comes up nothing shows up on the Manager window indicating that anything wa written to the cart and there's nothing added to the NDS folder.

I already know your problem. You are attempting to write the .zip file (which sorta works), but your zip file has files other than your *.gba or *.nds file, such as .nfo or file_id.diz. You have to either extract your zip file then write the .nds file on its own or remove all files except the .nds from the zip.

I have no problems writing .nds files from .zips that also contain other files (.nfo, .diz, etc.). Of course I get several progress bars as it unzips, patches, etc., then actually writes to the G6Lite.

I can confirm outphase's claims on this, I always found that not being able to get write zip files containing more than the .nds files to be quite a pain in the @$$....it's something the u-disk manager should of addressed a long time ago.....so I'm not sure what you're doing that's magical....maybe you'd like to share with us how you got it to work that way?

 

[Sweater Fish Del]

Well, thanks for trying to help me out getting the U-Disk Manager to work, but so far none of the suggestions has worked. I'm still guessing that it's a Win98SE problem. 98SE has somewhat iffy USB support and while I can read and write to the G6 cart just fine through Explorer maybe the U-Disk Manager is trying to access it in a way that 98SE can't handle. Can anyone confirm that the U-Disk Manager works with 98SE?

In any case, it's not terribly important, since like I said I don't plan on using the U-Disk Manager anyway. I also just read on some other forums that the software reset function isn't all that great anyway. I assumed that it would take you instantly back to the menu, but what I read is that it actually gives you the DS health & safety warning, the passcard splashscreen and then loads the G6 Touchpod all just as if you'd reset the system with the power switch. If that's true, I'll just keep doing things the way I've been doing them and using the power switch to reset, it doesn't seem like it would be any easier to press L+R+A+B+X+Y...maybe even harder, in fact.

I'm still curious about the DoFAT thing, but ROMs load plenty fast enough for me as it is (especially since I'm mostly playing homebrew stuff anyway) and "DoFAT" doesn't sound like it would be something you get from a patch anyway.


...word is bondage...

 

[tama_mog]

this is another idea and perhaps a longshot.....what drive is 98se assigning your drive for the u-disk? If that drive letter was occupied by some kind of device prior to that, I can see a big problem in conflicts there and 98se may handle it funny.....I know that problem still exists in XP and 2k today with mapped network drives.

 

[Quay Cur]

I couldn't run the program at all. It would start up, ask where the G6 is, and when you tell it it would just stop and close. I'm doing this on a friend's PC (win XP) because I only have macs. I may try writing to the hard drive next time (i didn't know about that when i tried it). Maybe I'll have to mooch off of another friend

...

 

[outphase]

I also just read on some other forums that the software reset function isn't all that great anyway. I assumed that it would take you instantly back to the menu, but what I read is that it actually gives you the DS health & safety warning, the passcard splashscreen and then loads the G6 Touchpod all just as if you'd reset the system with the power switch.
Not true, it goes back to the G6 Touchpod menu, no health screen if using a passcard.

I'm still curious about the DoFAT thing, but ROMs load plenty fast enough for me as it is (especially since I'm mostly playing homebrew stuff anyway) and "DoFAT" doesn't sound like it would be something you get from a patch anyway.

DoFAT is targeted toward commercial roms as they are significantly bigger than any homebrew you might be using. In fact, you cannot run any commercial games beyond 32MB w/o DoFAT.

 

[doodad]

I'm having a lot of trouble getting U-Disk Manager to work correctly. And to be honest even if I wasn't having trouble with it, it would be a horrible program. I'd way rather use drag & drop.

Can you assign the U-Disk Manager to another drive? This way you could pre-patch all of your roms and drag & drop send them over to the G6.

 

[Sweater Fish Del]

No, telling U-Disk Manager to write to another drive (my hard drive) gives the exact same results as trying to write to the G6 cart. I guess that means it's not a USB problem.

I also tried tama-mog's suggestion of assigning a new drive letter to the G6 cart, but that didn't have any effect either.

I've now run into a couple ROMs that I can't get to load using drag & drop, so I'd kind of like to get this stupid U-Disk Manager working unless there's some other option for patching the ROMs.

I haven't mentioned yet that the first time I start up the U-Disk Manager, I get the message that "KERNEL32 has caused an invalid page fault in " and I assume that is the U-Disk Manager executable or one of its dependencies. I also just noticed that the GBA tab doesn't seem to be working at all. The all the buttons on the right hand side of the window, including "Write," are greyed out and at the bottom it says that I have 1720.00GBytes of total space on my G6 cart (I wish!).

I have tried re-installing the U-Disk Manager (multiple times) and I've also tried formating the G6 cart and even a low level reformat. No go. This is with v4.3a which is the only version I've tried since it was already out when I got my G6 Lite set. Maybe I'll try downgrading the Manager; will an earlier version of the U-Disk Manager work with the 4.3a firmware on the cart, or do I have to downgrade both?

Still no one with Win98SE here? I still guess that that's where the problem lies. I've got an extra hardrive with XP on it somewhere's around here, so I guess I'll have to pop that into my laptop whenever I want to write stuff that doens't work through drag & drop. The G6 Team say their product works with 98, but maybe they're liars.


...word is bondage...

 

[doodad]

Maybe I'll try downgrading the Manager; will an earlier version of the U-Disk Manager work with the 4.3a firmware on the cart, or do I have to downgrade both?
I'd try that as a last resort. Perhaps the one on the included CD. You should be fine running an earlier version with that firmware.
Sweater Fish DeluxeStill no one with Win98SE here?

I can't imagine many in the world are still using Windows 98.

 

[Battalia]

I'd say your problem is 98SE. Windows ME was the first version of windows that supported using any type of USB flash drive without a third party driver. Find an XP box and see if that fixes the problem.