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Kirdevoir

Member

Registered: 2023-12-12

Posts: 2

Question about how to dump a GB and GBA physical cartridge

Hello, thank you in advance, and sorry for my bad English. I have questions about GBA and GBC bootlegs cartridges. I wrote a post in http://bootleg.games/ but it seems to be a bit inactive, so I am looking for some help. If you can check it, it may be appreciated. Link here: http://bootleg.games/BGC_Forum/index.ph … 9.msg22808

I want to dump the rom from physical GBA and GBC cartridge, but my programs only dumps the menus.

Sorry if this post is not appropriate.

Best regards!  :)

Dwedit

Administrator

From: Chicago

Registered: 2004-12-12

Posts: 1,018

Website

Re: Question about how to dump a GB and GBA physical cartridge

For the GBA cartridge, it might be dumping the whole thing properly (as long as it's 32MB or smaller), but emulators may not support the bank switching method used by the flash cartridge, so you'll only see the menu working.

As far as I know, only one emulator ever supported flash cartridge features, and that was a custom build of VisualBoyAdvance SDL that was built to support the features of the Flash2Advance cartridge.  This multicart is probably not using the same flash cartridge type.

In order to figure out the bankswitching method, you'd need to use a GBA debugger, and see what sequence of writes it performs in the ROM area to select a different bank.

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As for the GBC cartridge, no idea.  Might need to figure out what mapper it is using, and send the proper bankswitching commands to the mapper.

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"We are merely sprites that dance at the beck and call of our button pressing overlord."

Kirdevoir

Member

Registered: 2023-12-12

Posts: 2

Re: Question about how to dump a GB and GBA physical cartridge

For the GBA cartridge, it might be dumping the whole thing properly (as long as it's 32MB or smaller), but emulators may not support the bank switching method used by the flash cartridge, so you'll only see the menu working.

As far as I know, only one emulator ever supported flash cartridge features, and that was a custom build of VisualBoyAdvance SDL that was built to support the features of the Flash2Advance cartridge.  This multicart is probably not using the same flash cartridge type.

In order to figure out the bankswitching method, you'd need to use a GBA debugger, and see what sequence of writes it performs in the ROM area to select a different bank.

--

As for the GBC cartridge, no idea.  Might need to figure out what mapper it is using, and send the proper bankswitching commands to the mapper.

Thank you, I will check it if I can emulate those roms propperly.

Regards! :)