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: yojimbo5 on January 17, 2006, 11:59:35 AM
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Ok. Ive read many posts in the past few days trying to figure out how to work this thing out. I have a pretty good knowledge of gba flashing however im relatively new to the nds scene.
Heres where im standing now:
My DS is a silver FW1.
I have a MK3 256M (alone, no kit).
I have a SanDisk SD 512megs.
I have an old gba 256M flash cart (original visoly cart plugged into the lpt port LOL).
I have installed Neo Max.
I have ndstool'ed my roms for a better reliability.
Now here's what i think i need to do:
- Format SD card in fat32.
-Copy my roms onto the SD via my SD card reader.
- Plug in a DS cart to MK3.
- Plug in SD card into MK3.
- Plug in MK3 into DS.
- Boot the menu (latest 0.5)*
- Pick and Load a rom into the 256M internal MK3 memory for stability and speed. (Y key if im not mistakin)
* Note that im not exaclty sure on how to load the menu. You see from what i read, usually the menu is flashed onto the gba cart. However i didnt buy the kit, only the MK3. So heres my question, is it possible, with a MK3, to boot the menu without a gba cart inserted ? If yes, where do i put the menu ? And how ?
Please redirect me in the right track if my procedure is flawed. I havent received my MK3 yet so im trying to figure out where im heading before i receive it.
Keep up the good work Neo Team.
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Hi,
I did purchase an MK3 by itself(no neoflash cart), and in order to boot it , I have to burn on my old F2A flashcart(same as you !) the neoflash menu.
Note that version 5 is an NDS version, and it doesn't work with my cart, therefore instead, I use menu 0.4 (.gba version).
If you burn that on your cart, and burn some unpached roms on your SD card, and you do everything else you mentioned in your post(plus you didn't mention but I assume you stick an original DS game in the larger slot of the MK3 as well), you should be able to make it work.
One thing though, you should stick with F2A USB writer application, don't waste your time because neo applications are ment for Neoflash carts alone.
If you burn the menu 0.4.gba version on your flashcart with it's own software, and make sure that that is the only file on the cart, you should be able to boot your MK3.
Also to boot a game you need to press A, even though not every game is gonna run from SD this is the best choice.
If you really like a game and it's not working if loaded from SD, then burn it on your MK3 internal flash memory and boot it from there, however you will need more time and you'll be able to use olny one game at the time.
Note that up to the most recent version of menu(o.5) it's not possible to boot the application directly from the MK3, you still need a GBA flashcart.
If you still have questions let me know.
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yeah, that's the procedure to follow... In the FAQ section, cory is starting a menu loading procedure for non neo/xg carts, which he'll expand as he gets more info.
Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is you might always need that flashcart to boot, even when the menu eventually gets stored in the 16M reserved for it on the mk 2/3.
BruceG
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q_armando: just take the 0.5.nds and rename it to 0.5.gba and it should work fine.
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Thanks, I've done that already, but from some obsure reasons it doesn't work.
I really suspect it's my flashcart's fault.
I did try any combination while renaming the menu: .gba, .ds.gba, .nds.gba; I even tried to prepend a DS small loader to the file but it didn't work.
Anyway I will get a new cart in a couple of days and I will be able to do more experimentations.
By the way, thanks for the link ;)
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Ok thank you all for the fast replies.
Im not exactly sure what you mean by "make sure that that is the only file on the cart" but my first guess is that you mean to flash the menu without that multirom menu. Therefore a single file in gba mode.
I do however have one more question, which flash software do you recommand, on my side i use this one: Visoly Flash Advanced Xtreme ...
I just hope my flash cart is supported or something ... i do boot up gba roms on my DS thru this cart so my first guess is that it will work.
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Oh my bad ... im using LittleWriter after all ... i hope this works.
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ITS WORKING ! Sweet jebus ! Thanks all for the help.
For now i flash my roms directly on the MK3 and to me, eventhough it take a while to do that, after all it works great.
I just need to figure out how to save properly and dont screw up my game progress.