SuperCard problems-new user/owner

DomaGB · February 08, 2009, 06:10:59 PM

Hello,

I recently bought a new Micro SD Super Card for my GBA SP. Since I have 2 sons, this card is used on 3 GBA SP's.

Everything was running fine, after 2 days. I spent one nite setting it up and it was well. When my son went to use it in the morning it loaded up in some other unknown language. He said he got it back in English by scrolling thru the menu and/or turning it off.

I tested it, it was in English in 1 GBA SP and jibberish in another. I went out of the house came back later and both GBA's loaded it in gibberish. So I took everything off the SD formatted it and reset the firmware. Now none of the GameBoys recognize the SuperCard Cart at all.

On another forum someone asked if other game cartridges booted up in foreign languages.

Interestingly upon further investigation, some of the normal carts games were playing in Japanese or Chinese, in both GBA's. Somehow the SuperCard must have changed the Gameboys into another language!

I found a fix for the language problem, you hold down "L" whicle the Game boots up to choose language. I don't know if this is a permanet setting change tho. I do not know how to change the language or firmware of the GBA. I did try to format my SD, and change the firmware in the Supercard. And now it does not recognize it as stated.

And once its fixed how do I determine which program caused the problem? So I don't repeat it?

I redownloaded the latest firmware and put it on the formated SD and the GBA still won't recognize the Supercard.

anton · February 09, 2009, 01:11:09 AM

I am pretty baffled by the problem you describe there. I've never come across it, and I wonder if the GBA ever had firmware that had any substantial effect in terms of using supercards. I know I own a normal GBA and it's one from Japan (I still have the box and manual), but I never had a problem with my English Supercard SD. I think perhaps you may have installed the wrong Supercard firmware (language-wise) and maybe it's causing all that problem. I don't know. Sorry.

DomaGB · February 09, 2009, 01:49:48 AM

It originally worked, in English. then it didn't.

But that problem is moot, now it doesn't work at all.

The GBA will not recognize it after reformatting the Micro SD and putting in new firmware.

I wondered if the format was wrong. Maybe the computer didn't format it properly? So I downloaded a program to format SD chips, particularly good for 4 gig chips so a person can use them. Interestingly I didn't know that, next time I will buy a 4gb SD. Anyways I realized that wasn't true because I was able to run it with the new firmware program. Somehow running that firmware program over the top of it stopped it from working.

How do I get it to work again?

dantheman · February 10, 2009, 02:35:25 PM

Don't buy a 4 GB card. It will more than likely be in SDHC format, which slot-2 Supercards don't support.

If you're not getting to the Supercard menu at all, then it is definitely a hardware problem between the Supercard and the GBA slot. The fact that it happened when you did the firmware update is probably just a coincidence.

As I said on GBAtemp though, this is extremely strange, especially given that the GBA does not have a firmware or any language settings at all. There's no possible way for the Supercard to have made your original GBA cartridges change language, yet that's apparently what happened. This whole situation is screwed up to the point that I don't know if any of us can diagnose the problem.

socket · February 10, 2009, 09:13:42 PM

From what i understand SOME of the 2gb cards are SDHC, too... but I may be remembering wrong. Make sure it's NOT SDHC.

DomaGB · February 11, 2009, 03:13:27 PM

Well this thing has a warranty, so I guess I will ship it back and hope they will replace it.

In my search for answers I ran across a thread in some forum somewhere that gave a link to make 4 gb SD's compatible, is this not true?

I should stay away from such?

I do not know what SDHC is. Or how to check it. I also read on the FAQ page at the SuperCard forum we should use remove hardware safely with our SD cards from the computer. I have not done this. Is that important?

Also once I get a new SuperCard, do I dare put in the same files and folders, or is there gonna be a langauage problem again? By the way someone else had the same language problem as me:

http://forum.supercard.cn/viewthread.php?tid=4121&extra=page%3D1

While I posted on that thread someone else started it with the same problem I had.

Lastly after 2 months of research, and having a hard time getting it. I decided to get the SuperCard for the GBA SP. It seemed like the most bang for the least money. Is there anything better at about the same cost? I bought the Mini SD SuperCard at DealExtreme:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2734

They dropped the price since I bought it! I was thinking of buying 2 more, 1 for each of my sons. as I was happy how they were working and what they could do before this one went bad.

I do not have access to a DS, and want to stay with GBA SP's.

anton · February 11, 2009, 10:01:35 PM

SDHC are high capacity SD cards and they are normally more than 2 GB sd cards though I can't say for sure that all 2 GB sd cards are non SDHC.

I think if you're going to buy another flash cart, I'm thinking there are better options for GBA compatibility than a Supercard, but that's judging from what I remember here in this forums.

Remove hardware safely on SD cards is just the ultra safe way to make sure Windows does not damage the data on your SD card. I think this has little bearing on your Supercard though. Generally, pulling out the SD card ought to be fine.

I am still under the impression some screwed up firmware upgrade happened, so be sure to test your games with the card and not upgrade the firmware. Before you upgrade, check to make sure your firmware is compatible with the Supercard you bought.

DomaGB · February 11, 2009, 11:52:05 PM

I think it came with 1.79 firmware, and upgraded to english version 1.85. I did find a 1.80 version on the internet elsewhere but never tried it. As stated before, everything was running smoothly with the 1.85 upgrade and then the language problem happened. I redid the same firmware and then the card was no longer recognized. But perhaps the card was defective and was on the fritz and just went out coincidentaly.

anton · February 12, 2009, 03:01:32 AM

As far as I know, most of the supercard firmware updates have been specifically for DS games, so you are not likely to find any new game compatibility updates for GBA games. I could be wrong, but I think it's kind of pointless to upgrade for GBA titles (I think the newer firmware upgrades may infact break some GBA compatibility).

DomaGB · February 12, 2009, 05:59:38 AM

ah...good point. After everything was set, I was gonna ask if I should upgrade any of the emulators. I read you can't upgrade the firmware ones, so you just run newer ones on the SD.

Is there any reason to do this?

I play alot of NES, as well as original GB and GBC games, and only a few GBA games.

Oh, I am interested in Homebrew GB games of any type (GB, GBC, GBA...)

dantheman · February 12, 2009, 06:19:58 PM

The built-in emulators cannot be upgraded by yourself, and they're outdated. It would be best to create *.gba compilations with the games inside them.

DomaGB · February 12, 2009, 08:34:32 PM

Not sure what you mean by "create *.gba compilations with the games inside them" Do you mean get new emulators and put them on the SD?

dantheman · February 15, 2009, 02:14:47 PM

No, that's not what I mean. Most of these emulators are meant to be run with your games packaged directly into the *.gba file. I'm not sure exactly how the Supercard managed to separate it to let you browse for regular *.nes/*.gb games etc.

To use the newer versions of the emulators, you'll need to download both the emulator core and the builder application. This varies depending on the emulator, but for instances with PocketNES you'll want to get the latest pocketnes.gba file and the PocketNES Menu Maker program. Use the Menu Maker tool to insert your *.nes games into the output *.gba file (make sure you don't save it as pocketnes.gba or you'll overwrite the emulator core). For Goomba Color, get goomba.gba and the Goomba Frontend program (should come in the download) and use that. For all of these, remember that the max size of your output *.gba file is going to be 32 MB. If you need more than that, you'll have to make multiple compilations.

You'll also probably have to run the compilations through the Supercard patcher for them to work.