Hacking Is my F2Advance dead?

[Adent]

I haven't had a GBA in a long time but I still had my F2A cart. I got a GBA micro today and I put the cart in and nothing came up. Is my cart dead? I was thinking maybe the battery was dead but would that affect it loading up? It seems like they soldered in the battery so can't even swap in a new one easily. What do you guys think? Should it at least boot up? Maybe I left it blank the last time I used it.

 

[DanTheManMS]

What do you mean when you say "nothing comes up"? Does it show the Game Boy logo? Does "Nintendo" appear beneath it? If both are yes, can you get into the main F2A menu?

You could try dumping the contents of the cart and viewing the result in a hex editor to see what it contains.

 

[Adent]

I finally got a GBA SP that I can connect to my usb linker. All that comes up is the Gameboy logo no nintendo logo under it. I didn't remember about the holding buttons thing. I'm going go look that up.

 

[Another World]

which flash2advance do you have? what o/s are you using? from what i recall the writer never worked past XP, and XP required a different build.

USB driver: http://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/flashcart-files/download-flash2advance-usb-driver-f3747.html
v1.1 writer (works on 95-xp): http://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/flashcart-files/download-flash2advance-usb-writer-11-f3746.html

if you have a slot-1 card handy, you can try using smith's tool. it was reported in another thread to work with the f2a (usb, not the ultra). https://code.google.com/p/fas1/

if you see a corrupted logo, that might mean that your card isn't making good contact. it could also mean that the loader is corrupted, from what i can recall about the f2a, if you have more than 1 rom flashed then the loader would be the first thing to boot. so try smiths tool from a slot 1 and flash over just 1 rom.

-another world

 

[Adent]

which flash2advance do you have? what o/s are you using? from what i recall the writer never worked past XP, and XP required a different build.


if you have a slot-1 card handy, you can try using smith's tool. it was reported in another thread to work with the f2a (usb, not the ultra). https://code.google.com/p/fas1/

if you see a corrupted logo, that might mean that your card isn't making good contact. it could also mean that the loader is corrupted, from what i can recall about the f2a, if you have more than 1 rom flashed then the loader would be the first thing to boot. so try smiths tool from a slot 1 and flash over just 1 rom.

-another world

Thanks for all the good info. This is what I have. I have F2A 256M Flash card and usb linker. I have a computer with windows 7 that I'm installing Oracle Virtual Box on. I also have a DSi with AK2i.

So this might work even though it says it doesn't work with F2A? https://code.google.com/p/fas1/

Okay so I can theoretically install these two on the Virtual Box of XP if I follow this guide right?

USB driver: http://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/flashcart-files/download-flash2advance-usb-driver-f3747.html
v1.1 writer (works on 95-xp): http://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/flashcart-files/download-flash2advance-usb-writer-11-f3746.html

 

[Another World]

yes, it was reported a few days ago that his flashing utility will work with the original f2a usb linker.

-another world

 

[Adent]

Thanks for all the help. Got it working. I had to erase the card first and then it recognized it. Even the battery still works! Now I just have to figure out how to make it work with the GBbridge.

 

[Another World]

how did you erase it? did you get it recognized by the writer or did you use smiths slot-1 flashing tool?

-another world

 

[Adent]

No I didn't use the Smiths Slot-1 flashing tool. My sister gave me her old xp laptop. Funnily enough it already had F2APower Writer on it. I think that was on there from the last time I used the cart. Anyways the the linker worked but it said the cart was not recognized but it did give an option to erase. Once it was erased the cart was recognized as 256M and I was able to write a game to it. The game saved properly so the battery still works even after all these years. What is the latest version of pogoshell?

 

[Another World]

i think kuwanger wrote some updates to pogoshell that would be considered "newer" than the previous official build.

http://www.kuwanger.net/gba/pogoshell/

-another world