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[RustAngel]

Hey there all, I'm a n00b here...I'm considering buying some kind of flash cart and a GBASP, and am at the stage where I decide which one to go for. The Supercard seems like the best one to me, and my question goes thusly:

Has anyone tried to use this stuff on a Mac? Specifically, a G4 running OSX 10.3.X. I know the software is obviously written for Windows, and so that won't work as is, but I was wondering if I could run it in WinXP under Virtual PC...just to convert the games/movies etc...then write them to the CF card from OSX (or VPC, for that matter)...I know it sounds like it should work, but I just wanted to see if anyone actually definitely knows for sure or not.

Failing this, if anyone can recommend a flash cart that will work under OSX? I know I read somewhere that the EZFA cart will work under VPC...is the Supercard a lot better than the EZFA?

Thanks for your help, sorry to be a newbie...reminds me of when I first started hacking xboxes!! :lol:

Cheerz

RustAngel

[NT]

I don't think anyone here uses a Supercard with their Mac, but I can say that the Supercard is likely to have the best compatibility of all flash cards when using something like Virtual PC.  The reason for this is that the Supercard software doesn't have to communicate with any hardware at all unlike other conventional flash linkers.  I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to convert ROMs by running the Supercard software in Windows on Virtual PC and then write the converted files to your CF card with Mac OS.  Just make sure your CF card is formatted with FAT.

I don't know which other flash linkers may work with Mac OS.  Here's a quick comparison between the Supercard and your average GBA flash cart:

Supercard:
1.  Inexpensive
2.  Large storage with compact flash media
3.  Movie playback
4.  Compatibility issues with many games (check our master compatibility list for details)
5.  Realtime saving

Average GBA flash cart:
1.  Expensive
2.  Small storage sizes
3.  Current carts have excellent game compatibility

[RustAngel]

Thanks for the reply man, I reckon I'll give it a shot. Once I get it all ordered n stuff, I'll post a full writeup on how/if I get it to work, just so it can be a reference to others  

RustAngel

[bjurta]

Hi!

I am also a mac user and when asking the nice people at shop.01media.com (sorry 'bout the plug but they were sooo nice :-) ) what flash kit they recommended for use on Mac OS X (possibly with Virtual PC), they said I would have best chance with the Supercard. I ordered one, received it within days and it works great! I'm using the SC software for patching roms with VirtualPC+Windows XP and then copy the roms to the CF directly in the Finder. No problems at all!  

You might want to do some fiddling around with 'rm' in the Terminal after copying to CF though, since Mac OS X has the bad habit of sprinkling the CF file system with "dot-files" (.DS_Store, resource forks and similar). They don't cause any problems for the SC, but are a bit irritating. I am working on a script to clean up the CF which maybe could be added to the software archive on this site once I've finished it (?).

I have no experience with other flash kits whatsoever, but I can definitely recommend the Supercard for mac users. It's a really great card!

Good luck!

[RustAngel]

Sweet! Thanks heaps for taking the time to write that, I was pretty sure it'd work but it's nice to have a definite yes Now all I gotta do is buy one...

Thanks for the help!

RustAngel

[CodFather]

Wondering if there was any futher Mac/Supercard progress from anyone.

Has anyone been brave enough to try port the Supercard Patching software to OSX?

I try formatting my SD card to FAT16 using OSX Disc Utility then copy over pre-patched GBA roms (patched on Windows machine) via the Finder. Sadly when I started the GBA it appeared that the SuperCard was empty.

[ratx]

To do a "port" you need source code really, someone could reverse engineer the patching process completely but thats a lot of work and there are likely to be changes to this process over time....

[markus]

If they wrote the patching program in Java, like Azureus, then making a port should be lot easier.

But I doubt that would happen, until then I will just turn to my old celeron to patch the files.

[SAV2880]

Yeah, realistically your best bet is to use some type of PC Emulator, which would only need to be Windows 9x compatible (QEmu, Virtual PC) with your Mac to convert the files, and that's it. I doubt ROMMAN will ever write the software for other platforms.

QEMU would be especially good *if* you have a Intel PC and can use Universal Binaries.