Hardware Rom Trimming on Linux

[DespizingU]

It's been quite a while since I've added any games to my M3. But because of the game of the week thing going on here, I'm going try out PoP: Sands Of Time. I think I remember trimming my GBA roms in the past, but I'm not sure.

So are there any games that don't work properly after they've been trimmed? Also, what's the best GBA Trimmer for Linux? I've been using Tiny Trimmer for DS games, but it doesn't work for GBA games. I remember that NDS Tokyo Trim works under Wine and also trims GBA, but I'm wondering if there's a native Linux GBA trimmer.

Also, does anyone here know if the G6 Game Manager works ok under Wine? I just installed the M3 Manager earlier and it appears to work perfectly under Wine.

Thanks for any help.

EDIT: Actually, M3 Manager under Wine isn't working correctly. Has anyone used this? Whenever I hit Write GBA, a window will come up with options(like patch with RTS and the like), but when the OK button on this window doesn't work. When I click on it it doesn't click.

Any help?

 

[FAST6191]

There were a handful of games that did not work after trimming that I can not seem to recall the name of- trimming on the GBA is a decidedly messy affair and the trimmer just looks for the last 00 or FF and lops off everything after that. 00 is also the thing used to end sections and the like for some games and they do not take well to it. In these cases I simply open the rom in a hex editor and add (replace) some junk in the 00/FF filled section and that sorts it.

As for WINE I have not used the M3 but try setting the patch destination to the "c:" drive and copying it out via more conventional linux filesystem stuff. I am not sure it will work but that is the usual problem with WINE and these programs (I am guessing the code is as messy as all the other GBA cart patching programs and things like screen refresh tied to things it does not need to be). I am not aware of any unix compatible GBA rom trimmers but I have not really troubled myself to look for them.

The G6 might be more troublesome as that probably involves drivers (I do not think appeared as mass storage) so it is VM or nothing there really. I have toyed with the idea of a XP live CD for flash cart tools but I would also face driver issues so I have stowed that idea.

 

[DespizingU]

Thanks FAST. I think I'll just skip on trimming GBA roms as I've read that the space you save is very minimal. It's not like with DS games. I did come across GBA Tool as I'm using it to remove intro's on GBA games, and that has a rom trimmer built in.

I actually did get the M3 manager working and it was an easy solution. The window where the OK button wouldn't "click", all I have to do is press Enter on the keyboard and it worked perfectly. So I've written a few games to my M3 already. Very nice.

I went ahead and installed the G6 manager, it installed fine and starts up fine, but there appeared to be some problems with it when I tried navigate through the windows. I haven't actually tried out writing any games to it yet though. I'll do that later on tonight when I have some more time. If I can't get an writing to work then it's not going to be a huge loss since I use my M3 more as I can put more games on it. But still...it would be nice if I can get the G6 software to work.

I'll post back with my findings on the G6 software.

Thanks again for the reply.

 

[DanTheManMS]

Honestly I've never heard of any issues with trimming GBA games. There were some issues with DS games using WiFi years ago, but smart trimmers then appeared that fixed those issues. Something about using some field in the header to read what the size of the rom was, instead of blindly trimming FF and 00 bytes from the end.

 

[DespizingU]

Thanks Dan. Then maybe I will give trimming them a shot.

Another question though, what's a good GBC emulator? I'm really only wanting to play Link's Awakening DX right now. And I'm wondering if I should just use the M3's built-in GBC emulation capability or go with a standalone app. If the M3 does a good job of emulating the game then I guess I would rather just use that as I haven't put any homebrew on my GBA in years, and I think I remember a bunch of patching or something like that was involved.

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah it was the case for the DS and I had not considered it for the GBA either until those couple of games did it too me. Certainly it is not frequent enough to avoid trimming GBA roms though.

GBC emulators assuming we are back on the GBA means Goomba color http://www.dwedit.org/dwedit_board/viewforum.php?id=5

"Built in" emulators are usually just wrappers for the emulators and they tended not to be a nice as the official stuff.

 

[DespizingU]

Thanks Fast. It's just been so long since I've done anything with the GBA that I'm a little rusty on it. I'll definitely use Goomba Color instead of the M3's emulator.

Thanks for the help.

EDIT: Damn, the last update for Goomba Color was back in 2008? Guess he's done all that they can with it.