ROM Hack GBA Roms on Hacked DSi

[Flosch]

Hey there, I searched a long time and couldn't really find my problem in the forum.

I have a DSi with HiyaCFW and Twilight Menu ++.
I would love to play GBA Roms of the games I already own aswell.
It says to put the GBA Bios (Bios.bin) into the root of my SD Card, however when I put a downloaded file
there, create in my roms folder a gba folder and put my rom there my Nintendo says this:

Does someone have an idea what I am doing wrong?

Thank you so much for your help
From a newbie Florian

 

[KleinesSinchen]

The message says exactly this: Bios not found.
You have to put the 16kb small bios file into the root of your SD – renamed as bios.bin – nothing more nothing less.

Omitting the other files and folders your SD should contain:

SD:
├─── roms
│.....├──gba
│.....|...└[gba rom files here]
|.....|
│.....├──nds
│.....|...└[ds rom files here]
|
├─── bios.bin

Naming rom sites is not allowed here - please remove it.

 

[Flosch]

I am sorry about the romsite. And where can I get this bios file? I couldn't find any other than the one I used.

Thanks for your reply!

 

[AkikoKumagara]

I am sorry about the romsite. And where can I get this bios file? I couldn't find any other than the one I used.

Thanks for your reply!

It's a copyrighted file, so downloading it is considered piracy and is not allowed to be linked as per forum rules. You'll find it somewhere.

 

[Alexander1970]

Hello.

Is your SD Card formatted with FAT32 ? (not extFat/FAT/FAT16/NTFS)
Please can you check this by the way ?

Thank you.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

Hello.

Is your SD Card formatted with FAT32 ? (not extFat/FAT/FAT16/NTFS)
Please can check this by the way ?

Thank you.

Good idea.

If you do have a file "bios.bin" in the root of the SD, GBARunner2 will start and try to boot GBA games - even if it is the wrong file. In this case it will just crash instead of booting the game. (At least it did so on the 2DS - can't hack my DSi until "Failzone" is released.)

Checking the SD is recommended:

1. Copy all your data from the SD to a computer. Reformat the SD to FAT32, 32kb cluster size, if bigger than 32GB and using Windows with guiformat.
2. Check your SD: Windows, Linux, OS X.
   • If you get any errors replace the SD.
   • If you get no errors copy your files back on and try again.

To check if a file you got somewhere is the Game Boy Advance bios: CRC32 hash 81977335

Don't know if this information is still correct: At some point I have read that GBARunner2 might corrupt the SD filesystem. Even if this outdated information: Backing up the files on your SD is always a good idea.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

Don't know if this information is still correct: At some point I have read that gbarunner might corrupt the SD filesystem. Even if this outdated information: Backing up the files on your SD is always a good idea.

I've fallen victim to this, and on a 128GB SD card, it was no fun. This is a reason I don't use GBARunner2. I haven't heard that this has been fixed, but I also might be out of the loop.

Edit: I do remember reading, however, that this can be mitigated by using a save file created by an emulator on a PC or some other source, since the problem is caused by save file creation, if I'm remembering correctly.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

I've fallen victim to this, and on a 128GB SD card, it was no fun. This is a reason I don't use GBARunner2. I haven't heard that this has been fixed, but I also might be out of the loop.

Edit: I do remember reading, however, that this can be mitigated by using a save file created by an emulator on a PC or some other source, since the problem is caused by save file creation, if I'm remembering correctly.

You seem to be right with that. The warning (big yellow box) is still there on the TWilight Menu++ Thread and it mentions the ".sav creation"

Anyway: @Flosch if you backup your files and/or use a secondary SD you can probably safely try out GBARunner2 once the correct bios file is found. Note that most ROMs still require SRAM patching for the save feature to work:
https://github.com/Gericom/GBARunner2/issues/40

 

[Flosch]

Ok thank you so much for all the support.

I did have my SD Card formatted to FAT16 and not FAT32.
Now that I did format it to FAT32 it says "TAFN3DS sd card áß áß áß...." when I start GBARunner2.

@KleinesSinchen

You said: "To check if a file you got somewhere is the Game Boy Advance bios: CRC32 hash 81977335"
How do I check that?

Thankss

 

[zfreeman]

You usually check something using a search engine. Emu of the paradise apparently didn't purge everything, funny enough.
http://bfy.tw/NHEM

Depending on your country's copyright laws, you could instead use the open-source gba_bios.bin.
https://gbatemp.net/download/normatts-open-source-gba-bios-compiled.35225/

 

[KleinesSinchen]

Ok thank you so much for all the support.

I did have my SD Card formatted to FAT16 and not FAT32.
Now that I did format it to FAT32 it says "TAFN3DS sd card áß áß áß...." when I start GBARunner2.

Sorry. I really should have checked this more before copying a template that I use in the 3DS section in case of SD problems. (Bad, lazy Sina; be more careful!)

If your SD was formatted with FAT16 it is a quite small one. In this case 32kb clusters are far too big and at least in an old issue 4kb clusters were mentioned. Don't know if this is still true, but it's worth a try (the manual of TWiLight Menu++ 8.0 mentions 32kb clusters as well for GBARunner2).

See also here.

Another idea is simply trying a different SD.

@KleinesSinchen

You said: "To check if a file you got somewhere is the Game Boy Advance bios: CRC32 hash 81977335"
How do I check that?

On Linux just open a terminal and type crc32 filename
It looks like Windows does not have a built-in tool for checking CRC32 (Huh??). You can easily add third party software ("HashTab") for that.

You usually check something using a search engine. […]
http://bfy.tw/NHEM

Wow, that's an interesting idea. Throwing lmgtfy containing a hash number at someone for verifying a file on their HDD. Though it is possible to find some downloads by using a hash in a search engine, this misses the point of checking if you got the correct file.

Depending on your country's copyright laws, you could instead use the open-source gba_bios.bin.
https://gbatemp.net/download/normatts-open-source-gba-bios-compiled.35225/

This did not work with GBARunner2. Trying to load a game results in a crash (black screen).
https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/GBARunner2

Do not use Normmatt's open-source GBA BIOS, as some patches are applied to the BIOS at hardcoded addresses.

 

[jamespoo]

Sorry. I really should have checked this more before copying a template that I use in the 3DS section in case of SD problems. (Bad, lazy Sina; be more careful!)

If your SD was formatted with FAT16 it is a quite small one. In this case 32kb clusters are far too big and at least in an old issue 4kb clusters were mentioned. Don't know if this is still true, but it's worth a try (the manual of TWiLight Menu++ 8.0 mentions 32kb clusters as well for GBARunner2).

See also here.

Another idea is simply trying a different SD.

On Linux just open a terminal and type crc32 filename
It looks like Windows does not have a built-in tool for checking CRC32 (Huh??). You can easily add third party software ("HashTab") for that.




Wow, that's an interesting idea. Throwing lmgtfy containing a hash number at someone for verifying a file on their HDD. Though it is possible to find some downloads by using a hash in a search engine, this misses the point of checking if you got the correct file.

This did not work with GBARunner2. Trying to load a game results in a crash (black screen).
https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/GBARunner2

thanks