Hacking TempGBA: NDSGBA revival

[mikeyisdead]

Oriental Blue Translation
tested and
There were no problem
i haven't see any white screen / endless loop
im using tempgba 1.45
sorry if i don't make any sense since english wasn't my first language

 

[qweesy777]

So as of right now what would you say is a better bios the open source one or the Stock nintendo?

 

[Haloman800]

Thanks for your work on this epic emulator!

 

[nl255]

Silly question, but would this work on just any flashcard? Or at the very least on a 3DS? I figured the extra power of the 3DS might help.

No, TempGBA isn't really for the DS at all. The DSTwo is actually two devices in one, a DS flash cart and it's own system with it's own separate CPU and RAM similar in power to a Dingoo A320. TempGBA actually runs on the DSTwo, the DS is merely used for the display and controls.

 

[Aeter]

Were any changes made to the GUI?
Because the LEDS2-Orange skin (one in my signature) won't work anymore and it did with the 1.44 version.

 

[The Catboy]

I have to say, amazing work! I actually started using my Supercard DSTwo again just because of this emulator!

 

[codezer0]

Reporting in.

1.45 and Nintendo GBA BIOS = Doom II (GBA) doesn't work. I know DS2x86 would be a better alternative if I really cared to set it up, but I already had the rom there, and it did work previously, though the last time I seriously played it was around build 1.40...

 

[Aeter]

Were any changes made to the GUI?
Because the LEDS2-Orange skin (one in my signature) won't work anymore and it did with the 1.44 version.

I reinstalled it and it worked again, so I guess I installed it wrong and forgot to delete something.

I did notice weird speed-ups during battles in Fire Emblem, while playing at frameskip 1. Framerate would suddenly boost to 120 and higher even.
Also it seems presetting the frameskip value doesn't work, since when the game starts it shifts automatically.
It does work when setting it when the game is playing.

I also got a guru meditation error, but that was in the cheats section. So pay no mind to that.

 

[somechris]

I wish cheats worked.

 

[vinci89]

I heard about this awesome emulator from a friend, i even played pokemon emerald and FFVI flawlessly on his 3ds. I want to pick up a dstwo for my own 3ds but
How come its listed in the compatibility that emerald and ff works at 30fps?! Is that right? I did not check it but it felt real smooth like that on a GBA hardware- 60fps....

 

[Buttz]

Hey there, fellas. I just got my DSTWO in the mail yesterday, and I've managed to set it up quite nicely with almost no problems. The only one I've run into so far has to do with TempGBA. I'll start by saying that I followed the "install" instructions as closely as I could. I downloaded the file from the link at the beginning of this thread (the one right after "Get The Plugin") and placed the "TEMPGBA" folder inside the root directory of the mSD card, and placed the "tempgba" .bmp, .ini, and .plg files inside the "_dstwoplug" folder.

My problem is this: When I start the DS with the DSTWO inserted and I attempt to boot the TempGBA program from the DSTWO menu, both DS screens turn white (the bottom one seems to have a few pixels that flash for just a second before becoming a solid white). Now, this is the same thing that happens when I boot up CATSFC from the DSTWO menu, but after a few seconds the SNES emulator gets to its start page and works just fine. I've waited for upwards of ~3 minutes for TempGBA to get itself going, but I can't imagine it should take that long to boot up.


Does anyone have any suggestions to fix this? I'd really appreciate some help.

 

[Deleted member 319809]

Hey there, fellas. I just got my DSTWO in the mail yesterday, and I've managed to set it up quite nicely with almost no problems. The only one I've run into so far has to do with TempGBA. I'll start by saying that I followed the "install" instructions as closely as I could. I downloaded the file from the link at the beginning of this thread (the one right after "Get The Plugin") and placed the "TEMPGBA" folder inside the root directory of the mSD card, and placed the "tempgba" .bmp, .ini, and .plg files inside the "_dstwoplug" folder.

My problem is this: When I start the DS with the DSTWO inserted and I attempt to boot the TempGBA program from the DSTWO menu, both DS screens turn white (the bottom one seems to have a few pixels that flash for just a second before becoming a solid white). Now, this is the same thing that happens when I boot up CATSFC from the DSTWO menu, but after a few seconds the SNES emulator gets to its start page and works just fine. I've waited for upwards of ~3 minutes for TempGBA to get itself going, but I can't imagine it should take that long to boot up.


Does anyone have any suggestions to fix this? I'd really appreciate some help.

TempGBA and CATSFC require that you format your microSD card with the Panasonic SD formatter with the size adjustment option set to ON. Other DSTwo applications are more lenient for reads, but they're also lenient for writes: they may corrupt files on your card, giving them odd names and data. TempGBA and CATSFC are much more restrictive about the filesystems they accept, but shouldn't corrupt data.

On the DSTwo, there is not really a kernel to manage files for applications; rather, the applications run as the kernel. They can do whatever they want, and don't always do the right thing.

For even more information, see the Beginner's Guide to Setting Up Your DSTwo sticky in this subforum.

 

[Buttz]

format your microSD card with the Panasonic SD formatter with the size adjustment option set to ON.

That was actually the first thing I did after connecting the mSD card to my computer.

For even more information, see the Beginner's Guide to Setting Up Your DSTwo sticky in this subforum.

That post is directly responsible for my DSTWO working at all, and it was the first place I turned to when setting it up. I'm curious if you mentioned the thread for the purposes of formatting the mSD card, in which case it's been taken care of. If you suggested it for another reason, would you mind being a bit more specific about where in the thread I should look? Would that be a better place to ask for help on the subject? I've scoured it more than once, but all I can see to find regarding TEMPGBA are links to download it, or something mentioning what features are possible with it.

I read somewhere that I'd need to find my own GBA BIOS file, but then the webpage I downloaded TEMPGBA from said it contained "an open-source replacement for the GBA BIOS made from VBA-M's BIOS emulation code." and goes on to say that extracting the files would replace Nintendo's BIOS with Normmatt's BIOS.


I'm really trying my best here, but I feel like I'm in over my head.

[edit] Also, thank you for the reply. I appreciate the help.

 

[Deleted member 319809]

That was actually the first thing I did after connecting the mSD card to my computer.

Hmm. Ok. Mind showing me a screenshot of a folder explorer showing the root of your microSD, and one of the TEMPGBA directory inside?

That post is directly responsible for my DSTWO working at all, and it was the first place I turned to when setting it up. I'm curious if you mentioned the thread for the purposes of formatting the mSD card, in which case it's been taken care of. If you suggested it for another reason, would you mind being a bit more specific about where in the thread I should look? Would that be a better place to ask for help on the subject? I've scoured it more than once, but all I can see to find regarding TEMPGBA are links to download it, or something mentioning what features are possible with it.

I did direct you there for the purpose of setting up and formatting the card, yes.

An alternate possibility is that, like my own Supercard does now, it starts to lose contact with the microSD as soon as it boots, or randomly thereafter. Another symptom would be, for example, your DS games starting to freeze while you're playing them. Does this occur too, or just TempGBA and CATSFC?

I read somewhere that I'd need to find my own GBA BIOS file, but then the webpage I downloaded TEMPGBA from said it contained "an open-source replacement for the GBA BIOS made from VBA-M's BIOS emulation code." and goes on to say that extracting the files would replace Nintendo's BIOS with Normmatt's BIOS.


I'm really trying my best here, but I feel like I'm in over my head.

[edit] Also, thank you for the reply. I appreciate the help.

That's a changelog, a note for users of the previous version (1.44). If upgrading from the previous version, in which you required the Nintendo BIOS to even start the program, extracting the recent (1.45) archive directly would overwrite your Nintendo BIOS. If you have nothing to start with, then extract the recent (1.45) release archive and it will have the BIOS derived from VBA-M... and you can find the real Nintendo BIOS to overwrite it with, at /TEMPGBA/gba_bios.bin on your card, but you don't have to.

 

[Buttz]

Mind showing me a screenshot of a folder explorer showing the root of your microSD, and one of the TEMPGBA directory inside?

I'd be glad to, if it might give some insight into the problem. Here you go, mate.

An alternate possibility is that, like my own Supercard does now, it starts to lose contact with the microSD as soon as it boots, or randomly thereafter. Another symptom would be, for example, your DS games starting to freeze while you're playing them. Does this occur too, or just TempGBA and CATSFC?

I honestly can't say whether or not that's a problem. By the time I got the DSTWO set up yesterday I was exhausted and I only spent a few minutes playing DS games. During those few minutes, the DS .roms worked just fine, though. Since I woke up this morning, I haven't used the card for anything other than troubleshooting, trying to get TempGBA working. Also, I think you may have misread my original post; CATSFC seems to be working just fine after the initial few seconds of white screens. I admit, I spent even less time trying that out than I did with DS .roms, but the SNES emulator does boot and load roms seemingly without a problem.

 

[Deleted member 319809]

I'd be glad to, if it might give some insight into the problem. Here you go, mate.

All looks in order.

I honestly can't say whether or not that's a problem. By the time I got the DSTWO set up yesterday I was exhausted and I only spent a few minutes playing DS games. During those few minutes, the DS .roms worked just fine, though. Since I woke up this morning, I haven't used the card for anything other than troubleshooting, trying to get TempGBA working. Also, I think you may have misread my original post; CATSFC seems to be working just fine after the initial few seconds of white screens. I admit, I spent even less time trying that out than I did with DS .roms, but the SNES emulator does boot and load roms seemingly without a problem.

You never know. There was a post recently in the Supercard forum about someone getting TempGBA to run for 3 to 15 seconds, after which a Guru Meditation screen appeared. An "Unknown instruction exception" had occurred. The CPU was outright bad, refusing to execute a correct instruction.

Try running something in CATSFC (whoops, I did misread your initial post!) for a few minutes or an hour just to be sure -- one of my favourites being Super Mario World of course -- to see if the CPU runs things correctly.

I sometimes make modifications to my setup that end up being required for things to work, but I package the old files. This has happened a few times with hilarious results (click here and show the spoiler for a hilarious bug caused by my packaging of the wrong font file) So, when I get one of those "it doesn't work" bug reports, I re-extract the latest release archive over my current one and test. I renamed the TEMPGBA folder on my card to ABGPMET and extracted the plugin into _dstwoplug and the TEMPGBA folder into the root. For me, the release archive works.

Do you have a 64 GiB card and somehow CATSFC ended up in the first 32 GiB of the 64, but not TempGBA? Or, perhaps, you got a card that pretends to be multiple gigabytes, but is really 1 gigabyte or even less (http://fightflashfraud.wordpress.com/), and stored enough files to make you think it was at least half-decent?

 

[Buttz]

Try running something in CATSFC (whoops, I did misread your initial post!) for a few minutes or an hour just to be sure

I'll do that, and I'll report back with the results.

Do you have a 64 GiB card and somehow CATSFC ended up in the first 32 GiB of the 64, but not TempGBA?

No, it's a 32 GiB SanDisk that I bought off Amazon. Here's a link to the listing.

Or, perhaps, you got a card that pretends to be multiple gigabytes, but is really 1 gigabyte or even less (http://fightflashfraud.wordpress.com/), and stored enough files to make you think it was at least half-decent?

I suppose that's entirely possible since I bought it from Amazon and I have no way of knowing there they got it from. I've got enough DS .roms on the card to theoretically prove it's got more than a gigabyte of space, although I haven't tested each .rom to see if it actually there. I'll do that before/after testing CATSFC and include that in the results.


Thanks again for the help, mate. It's much appreciated.

 

[Deleted member 319809]

[...]
I suppose that's entirely possible since I bought it from Amazon and I have no way of knowing there they got it from. I've got enough DS .roms on the card to theoretically prove it's got more than a gigabyte of space, although I haven't tested each .rom to see if it actually there. I'll do that before/after testing CATSFC and include that in the results.


Thanks again for the help, mate. It's much appreciated.

Look again at the Fight Flash Fraud site, they link to a testing tool called h2testw. It's a pretty standard test nowadays. Just move your files off the card and let the program write the entire card.

The product description page does look good, though 23.99 USD for a 32 GiB UHS Speed Class 1 card (which can write fast enough for HD content) is a bit sketchy... [Edit: The next post says it's not so sketchy] Do report back

 

[user64]

The product description page does look good, though 23.99 USD for a 32 GiB UHS Speed Class 1 card (which can write fast enough for HD content) is a bit sketchy... Do report back

That's a pretty standard price where I live. Source: http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=11_1216_175_177&item_id=058666

 

[Deleted member 319809]

That's a pretty standard price where I live. Source: http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=11_1216_175_177&item_id=058666

I shall take that back, then. Thanks for the tip.