I Bought a New or Like New Smart Com Personal Data Assistant Cartridge for GB... How do I get it to Play in my GBA SP?

[ItsProbablyNOTMe]

The manual is in another language and also though, the screen had some grey dashes and red squares that loaded on the first time after like 2 minutes and the second time I inserted the cartridge, the screen loaded to the brand/software screen and stayed at that screen for like 2-5 minutes but doesn't proceed

I really want to make this cartridge work. Can I dump it and make a rom of it?

I'd rather it just function by just using the cartridge I bought

 

[FAST6191]

Such things have been dumped before (tap in organizer to a search in http://www.advanscene.com/html/index.php to see listings).
They should work on the GBA SP though. Flash carts and emulators can have a hard time running them, as might various dumper-emulator devices, as they tend to have more specialist internal hardware that needs emulating like some of the more exotic games on any given system which means effort on the part of the device maker or emulator authors (for a boring and useless personal organizer that even at the time $10 down your local supermarket checkout would have got a better device). Some other third party quasi hardware things might have been the wrong shape (see some of the TV decoders and cheat devices that wrap around) but I am not aware of it being the case here.
It not working here speaks more to dirty pins (either on the cart or in the GBA, assuming the GBA works with others then back to cartridge), maybe a leaky battery (these would have had one to keep date, whether a simply dead battery is the case I don't know and second boot after waiting a while might have charged enough capacitors to do something) and possibly pins on chips inside the cart (many normal GB/GBC cartridges see certain pins be put under strain and now however many decades on this is they have failed, touch with a soldering iron bringing then back. Don't know what the chip arrangement in this looks like but possible enough).

 

[ItsProbablyNOTMe]

Such things have been dumped before (tap in organizer to a search in http://www.advanscene.com/html/index.php to see listings).
They should work on the GBA SP though. Flash carts and emulators can have a hard time running them, as might various dumper-emulator devices, as they tend to have more specialist internal hardware that needs emulating like some of the more exotic games on any given system which means effort on the part of the device maker or emulator authors (for a boring and useless personal organizer that even at the time $10 down your local supermarket checkout would have got a better device). Some other third party quasi hardware things might have been the wrong shape (see some of the TV decoders and cheat devices that wrap around) but I am not aware of it being the case here.
It not working here speaks more to dirty pins (either on the cart or in the GBA, assuming the GBA works with others then back to cartridge), maybe a leaky battery (these would have had one to keep date, whether a simply dead battery is the case I don't know and second boot after waiting a while might have charged enough capacitors to do something) and possibly pins on chips inside the cart (many normal GB/GBC cartridges see certain pins be put under strain and now however many decades on this is they have failed, touch with a soldering iron bringing then back. Don't know what the chip arrangement in this looks like but possible enough).

I am wanting to know, how do I play the physical cartridge of this game in my gba sp?

If it isn't going to work, what are the simplest and cheapest steps to dumping this so I can play it in/on my GBA SP?

My GBA sp I bought used and is a metallic charcoal color

 

[FAST6191]

You play it by putting it in and turning the power on. It should be a normal cart, no finger wizardry or special incantations needed.

That it is not working now speaks to some form of hardware trouble, which you will probably want to fix before dumping.
As well as more exotic forms of damage (we have seen things go for a swim in salt water, be left in a damp shed and more besides) the three usual suspects were mentioned above and all could lead to the symptoms you describe.
Cleaning pins is easy enough and that it worked differently on second insertion means even if this was not the usual failure such things see then more likely to be this. Contact cleaner (don't use automotive cleaner, get an electronics one), pencil eraser (go with the pins rather than across them), tile cleaner pen (find a fibreglass one which is what more expensive electronics options will use) or something that works to make metal shiny but will leave the other things alone (if you have some fine sandpaper then be very careful but it too will get it done)... many options for this.
Bad battery has two elements. 1 if the device is not designed to work without it (oh no can't find date and time, better crash) and 2 if the battery leaked and messed up some traces inside the device (not so common with things of this vintage as much as 5 years earlier but could be the case).
Bad chip joints is commonly seen in commercial games*. It is in some ways a design failure of the board itself (if you put force on a joint made of solder, and GBC boards you can see in the video below are designed such that the force experienced might well be as large as it can be, then it will experience something called creep over a longer time period even if it is not enough to snap outright). I don't know what this board will look like inside as it is likely quite custom but at the same time it was a cheap device (remember seeing them in high street game shops in the 90s for £20 or so when games were £10 to £15 more) made by whatever electronics company was willing to risk a call from Nintendo's lawyers so I doubt quality was their primary concern and the same failure modes will be in play in this as well.

*choice video

Unlike a lot of electronics fixing then this will not see you have to know much of anything other than how to heat the joint up and maybe apply a tiny bit more solder, which is realistically anybody that can solder.

After that, or maybe showing us a decent picture of both sides of the PCB, then we can look for more interesting failure options like broken traces and burned out components.

Dumping it is possible, various devices and methods exist for this but if it is a GBA game most would probably just find a DS or DS lite and a DS flash cart to dump it with DS homebrew. I doubt it is anything exotic to dump like some multicarts and very rare examples in commercial games.
If it is a GB/GBC game (search says GBA most likely for the names you gave) then that is a bit harder as GB/GBC dumpers are similarly rare these days. Don't know what we have on the commercial side of things other than https://bennvenn.myshopify.com/products/usb-gb-c-cart-dumper-the-joey-jr
Playing it, as mentioned, is harder as not many flash carts bothered to support it and even then it might be some extra hardware above and beyond what is seen in other devices -- the GB, GBC and GBA did not feature an internal clock so any available in games (and such a thing would be a requirement for a personal organiser) were extra hardware in the cartridge itself.

 

[ItsProbablyNOTMe]

You play it by putting it in and turning the power on. It should be a normal cart, no finger wizardry or special incantations needed.

That it is not working now speaks to some form of hardware trouble, which you will probably want to fix before dumping.
As well as more exotic forms of damage (we have seen things go for a swim in salt water, be left in a damp shed and more besides) the three usual suspects were mentioned above and all could lead to the symptoms you describe.
Cleaning pins is easy enough and that it worked differently on second insertion means even if this was not the usual failure such things see then more likely to be this. Contact cleaner (don't use automotive cleaner, get an electronics one), pencil eraser (go with the pins rather than across them), tile cleaner pen (find a fibreglass one which is what more expensive electronics options will use) or something that works to make metal shiny but will leave the other things alone (if you have some fine sandpaper then be very careful but it too will get it done)... many options for this.
Bad battery has two elements. 1 if the device is not designed to work without it (oh no can't find date and time, better crash) and 2 if the battery leaked and messed up some traces inside the device (not so common with things of this vintage as much as 5 years earlier but could be the case).
Bad chip joints is commonly seen in commercial games*. It is in some ways a design failure of the board itself (if you put force on a joint made of solder, and GBC boards you can see in the video below are designed such that the force experienced might well be as large as it can be, then it will experience something called creep over a longer time period even if it is not enough to snap outright). I don't know what this board will look like inside as it is likely quite custom but at the same time it was a cheap device (remember seeing them in high street game shops in the 90s for £20 or so when games were £10 to £15 more) made by whatever electronics company was willing to risk a call from Nintendo's lawyers so I doubt quality was their primary concern and the same failure modes will be in play in this as well.

*choice video

Unlike a lot of electronics fixing then this will not see you have to know much of anything other than how to heat the joint up and maybe apply a tiny bit more solder, which is realistically anybody that can solder.

After that, or maybe showing us a decent picture of both sides of the PCB, then we can look for more interesting failure options like broken traces and burned out components.

Dumping it is possible, various devices and methods exist for this but if it is a GBA game most would probably just find a DS or DS lite and a DS flash cart to dump it with DS homebrew. I doubt it is anything exotic to dump like some multicarts and very rare examples in commercial games.
If it is a GB/GBC game (search says GBA most likely for the names you gave) then that is a bit harder as GB/GBC dumpers are similarly rare these days. Don't know what we have on the commercial side of things other than https://bennvenn.myshopify.com/products/usb-gb-c-cart-dumper-the-joey-jr
Playing it, as mentioned, is harder as not many flash carts bothered to support it and even then it might be some extra hardware above and beyond what is seen in other devices -- the GB, GBC and GBA did not feature an internal clock so any available in games (and such a thing would be a requirement for a personal organiser) were extra hardware in the cartridge itself.

Some information exists that I can see online about that this cartridge is not compatible with GBA SP. It wasn't $10 and when I search about the item, the item doesn't appear for sale many times and I don't find much information about the item online.

If it's true that GBA sp is not compatible with this cartridge and that only GB (possibly GBC was mentioned) can play this cartridge, what can I do to play the cartridge in my GBA sp?

I can't do things such as soldering... I am a disabled person and I just want to insert the cartridge and play the game?

 

[FAST6191]

I was around for the release of the SP and then the DS (also micro in the middle there). Much was made of trying all manner of exotic devices, games, flash carts and the like. They were sold in normal shops as well so someone would have tried one to note it as not working. They were never popular though and not really as interesting as say the gameboy sewing machine ( https://hackaday.com/2020/03/11/there-really-was-a-sewing-machine-controlled-by-a-game-boy/ ) so I doubt much has been written on them in general or years since.

The only things not to work on anything with a GBA slot that I am aware of are those that are custom moulded to fit into one slot or another and wrap around it, and one exception for a megaman game on the DS that was troubled by a very obscure bug (there was a page on Nintendo's website for that one). It is not impossible that this is similarly afflicted by an obscure hardware fault but it would be a very surprising development.

GB/GBC was dropped for the DS if it is a GBC mode game but similarly it should work if it is GBA.

There are some exotic coding methods that make some GB/GBC games not display properly on the GBA but that is more of a display issue than what you describe which is way more clearly corruption because of dirty pins, broken contacts or creep/dry joints on the ROM chip.

As far as soldering if you can't or won't do it yourself then this is nothing too exotic at all. Find someone that can solder and it should only take a few minutes -- reflowing is about as basic as it gets and does not need them to measure anything or understand anything of the operation of the device in question.

 

[AmandaRose]

Yep there is pretty much nothing you can do to get it to work on a GBA. So why doesn't it work you ask. Well to avoid getting sued by Nintendo, datel added their own bootcode to the cartridge, Which worked fine in fooling the original GB.

GBA (SP) looks for the official GB boot code to be on every GB cart, and if it's not present then it simply refuses to boot the cart. This is why the unlicensed Wisdom Tree games and many other unlicensed games won't run on a GBA either.

Datel have talked about this in detail in the past especially in some Retro game magazines.

 

[FAST6191]

I thought this was the GBA one. Missed that one entirely then.

If this is the case then only way it is going to happen is to bypass the GBA BIOS to handle it (not been done as far as I am aware, not even theoretically discussed and more of a high end emulator thing -- most recently you might have seen something for the analogue pocket and needing BIOS files with some of the homebrew recreations lacking such checks), have some kind of soft reset launcher for it that boots and then jumps to that (not seen one of those for the GBC, they do exist for other devices though, don't know if you could fake it with a cart switcher), dump it and find a flash cart to work with it (either by fixing it or it soft booting it) or possibly some kind of high end glitching like was done to grab various hidden things over the years ( https://hackaday.com/2009/09/18/super-game-boy-boot-rom-dumped/ ) and if you are not inclined to do a simple solder reflow that is not happening either.