Neo TeAm Forum

NEO Team's Projects for the GBA/NDS/NDS lite => NEO Flash and Magic Key 1/2/3 help, FAQ/guides and discussion => Topic started by: bet0n on January 12, 2006, 06:59:35 PM

Title: How much internal FLASH has the MK3 - confused...
Post by: bet0n on January 12, 2006, 06:59:35 PM: I'm having the "64M + 32M ZIP"-labelled mk3. Well, I started wondering what the "M" stands for. At first I thought its for megaBIT, but then it would mean 8megabytes of flash. And I can flawlessly flash 16 and 32 megabytes sized roms into the internal memory. On the other hand, flashing 64 megabytes rom ALWAYS fails (I'm using menu 0.4). Any clues? Is this "64M" 64megabytes? Anybody succeeded with flashing 64megabyte rom?
Title: Re: How much internal FLASH has the MK3 - confused...
Post by: q_armando on January 13, 2006, 02:09:17 AM: I have a 256Mb+64Mb.
It should stand for megabits, and this is the common way to measure the size speacking of flashcarts.
1 bit is the eighth part of a byte, therefore in order to calculate the size in megabytes rather then megabits you should divide 256Mb by 8, which is equal to 32 megabytes.
In fact, 32 megabytes is the largest file I can burn on my flash cart,while yours should be an 8 megabytes rom.
However, when I try to burn a 64 megabytes rom on my MK3, the process stops and freezes at about 65~80%, which is odd because if my cart's maximum storage is 32 MB it should stop at exactly 50%.
Maybe the real size of the memory is sligtly bigger then the specs or somehow the application uses also part of the Zip memory when writing a game that excedes the internal size.
Maybe that's why you are able to burn bigger games on your MK, it could be an error within neo boot menu that accidentaly writes over the ZIP memory, but expect it to be removed with future versions...
Title: Re: How much internal FLASH has the MK3 - confused...
Post by: bet0n on January 13, 2006, 04:23:12 AM: 1) there was one mistake, I meant I can burn 16megabyte rom in the internal memory (not 32), but that's still more than the 64megabit (which stands for 8megabytes). and those 16megabyte roms burn 100% OK. however - 32megabyte fail (always at 50%, which would suggest I've got 128mbit internal mem), but what is strange, 64megabyte fail at different points (which is betweet 25 and 30%, i wonder about this 30%...)
Title: Re: How much internal FLASH has the MK3 - confused...
Post by: bruceg on January 13, 2006, 07:22:47 AM: See the faq.. You have 128M flash +32M zip. It's mislabled. You can internally flash a game up to 16 Megabytes, 32 Megabytes will fail.

BruceG
Title: Re: How much internal FLASH has the MK3 - confused...
Post by: Spider on January 13, 2006, 02:48:34 PM: I can flash Mario Kart to my 64M MK3 and that is 32MB large.
Title: Re: How much internal FLASH has the MK3 - confused...
Post by: bruceg on January 13, 2006, 04:16:45 PM: 32 MB roms like Star Wars only get to 58% on my mk3. According to cory1492, the mk3 included in neo-max package is indeed 128 mb, so beats me if/how you are able to flash anything larger than 16 MegaBytes internally

BruceG
Title: Re: How much internal FLASH has the MK3 - confused...
Post by: Spider on January 14, 2006, 02:34:27 AM: When I think about it I can't flash 32MB games. But 16MB games like Trauma Center works fine so I guess that the 64M MagicKey is wrong labeled.
Title: Re: How much internal FLASH has the MK3 - confused...
Post by: cory1492 on January 14, 2006, 06:45:13 AM: It is indeed a 128Mbit flash... I think they initially intended to only use 64Mbit of the chip, but the coders have let us use what is available instead :)
Title: Re: How much internal FLASH has the MK3 - confused...
Post by: bet0n on January 14, 2006, 07:18:52 AM: Once again I must notice that I've made a mistake, I dind't succeed in burning 32megabyte rom, but 16megabyte burn fine. Which means -> it's 128mbit.