Hacking GBA F2ADVANCE on Windows 8!

[Rytoast]

First of all, sorry I'm posting this in the DS section, but I couldn't find the GBA Forum (lol).

I had a little adventure with an old F2 Advance flashcart recently, and I thought I'd share it with you all.

I bought a 3DS XL about two weeks ago, and my fiancee, seeing it, reminisced on her lost fuchsia-pink GBA, and how she had so much fun playing Super Mario World. Jumping on the chance of seeing my soon-to-be-wife become a gamer, I immediately ordered the same GBA off of Ebay (refurbished for ~$30, new was around $350, HA!), found my old F2 Advance (with the cord), replaced it's internal battery, and plugged it in. It still worked! But windows 8 recognized the system as a "Fingerprint reader device", and the 5 year old 32-bit drivers were unrecognizable in my Windows 8 64-bit Environment.

So I downloaded VMWare Player (free), installed a virtual 32-bit Windows XP, installed the F2Advance drivers, plugged the GBA in, and voila! The F2Advance GUI worked flawlessly, and my fiancee could play Super Mario World.

Thought I'd share this

 

[Arm73]

Very interesting, I own a F2A 256Mb myself with a USB linker but I never bothered to get it to work on Windows 8 since I also have an M3 Perfect mini SD and that one works still fine, if not you could always drag and drop files from the SD card.
But yeah, if I ever find myself in your position, I'll definitely keep this thread in mind.
Cheers

 

[DinohScene]

I did the same on Win7.

However me Flash2Advance was.. how can I say it..
Pretty dead.
It didn't save anymore and it constantly corrupted the NOR.

 

[nukeboy95]

BTW the gba section is here
http://gbatemp.net/categories/nintendo-gba-discussions.32/

 

[Rytoast]

Did you change the battery? mine was not saving at first, too.

 

[Rytoast]

Doh! Thank you, nukeboy95.

 

[Rytoast]

Okay, I reposted in the correct GBA Forum. My bad.

 

[DinohScene]

Yep, replaced the battery and it still corrupted.
Just threw it away (which I shouldn't have done in the first place >_>)

But no worries.
I still got other GBA flashkits.