Read and Write roms to a GBA Flash cart's Mini SD card with an R4 and a DS Lite

Shahaan

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I got one and I never knew it would use some archaic form of Mini SD I can't find adapters for, so I have no way to really use it write now so is there some sort of DS Homebrew that would let me access the Mini SD in the cart and write roms on it from there to use on my GBA?
 

Apache Thunder

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What flashcard is it specifically? I made a modified build of GodMode9i that treats slot2 similar to DSi SD so I can transfer files to/from a MaxMediaDock that has a 4GB micro drive as for some reason the MMD's slot2 device's USB fails to mount it on the PC. So I've been using this to transfer files to the slot2 device's storage.

I can try integrating the DLDI code for your slot2 device into the code and have it call that instead of the MMD's DLDI code. Should allow you do what I've been doing.
 

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What flashcard is it specificallyI I made a modified build of GodMode9i that treats slot2 similar to DSi SD so I can transfer files to/from a MaxMediaDock that has a 4GB micro drive as for some reason the MMD's slot2 device's USB fails to mount it on the PC. So I've been using this to transfer files to the slot2 device's storage.

I can try integrating the DLDI code for your slot2 device into the code and have it call that instead of the MMD's DLDI code. Should allow you do what I've been doing.
It's a Super Card SD, one of the Mini variety
 
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I see. I'll try and put that card's code in to GM9i and have it init that for slot2. :D

The MiniSD probably uses the same driver as the SuperCard SD. So will attempt to use that.

It's a Super Card SD, one of the Mini variety


Ok try this. DLDI patch for your slot1 card. Then run from your slot1 flashcart...If it works you should see a slot2 mount point along side fat. fat mount point will be your slot1 card's filesystem. Slot2 would be your SC MiniSD's system. You can copy/paste files and such to from the different file systems like you would a normal build of GodMode9i.
 

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Shahaan

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I see. I'll try and put that card's code in to GM9i and have it init that for slot2. :D

The MiniSD probably uses the same driver as the SuperCard SD. So will attempt to use that.




Ok try this. DLDI patch for your slot1 card. Then run from your slot1 flashcart...If it works you should see a slot2 mount point along side fat. fat mount point will be your slot1 card's filesystem. Slot2 would be your SC MiniSD's system. You can copy/paste files and such to from the different file systems like you would a normal build of GodMode9i.
I've tried using it, I'm not familiar with using GM9i but I did try it and it's acting as usual, I get these results, slot 2 will be recognized as a GBA cart only when I take it out and reinsert it while GM9i is running because it does double as an NDS flash cart. The contents display the flash of the cart and not the Mini SD

I'm pending a screen replacement so I can't see the options too well, but if I press R+B I think I'm taken to a menu where I can flash the cart if it's in the GBA state.
 

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Apache Thunder

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Sounds like DLDI init failed on the MiniSD then. Reinserting slot2 card at that point just has GM9i treat it as a game card for rom dumping it. Can't help much beyond that then. MiniSD card might have corrupt or unsupported file system which would then require you mount on PC in some manner to fix. :(
 
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Sounds like DLDI init failed on the MiniSD then. Reinserting slot2 card at that point just has GM9i treat it as a game card for rom dumping it. Can't help much beyond that then. MiniSD card might have corrupt or unsupported file system which would then require you mount on PC in some manner to fix. :(
Thanks for trying, I believe these cards use the FAT file system
the actual cart does work and has DS games preloaded onto it via the Mini SD

It would seem that GM9i doesn't actually detect the cart without reinserting it
 

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Oh wait. there is existing SC mode switch code in GM9i. I may need to disable it so it will try and mount it (or I may need to run that mode switch code first)

EDIT: Ok I see whats happening. It's trying to do a ram drive mount since some versions of SuperCard can act as a ram expansion. I'll need to disable this.

Was it showing a ram drive capacity beyond 4MB? If so it ended up mounting slot2 as ramddrive which will break DLDI mounting it.
 

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Oh wait. there is existing SC mode switch code in GM9i. I may need to disable it so it will try and mount it (or I may need to run that mode switch code first)

EDIT: Ok I see whats happening. It's trying to do a ram drive mount since some versions of SuperCard can act as a ram expansion. I'll need to disable this.

Was it showing a ram drive capacity beyond 4MB? If so it ended up mounting slot2 as ramddrive which will break DLDI mounting it.
It mounts at 31mb
 

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Yeah it mounted it as ram drive which breaks DLDI mount point for it.

Try this build. I disabled most of the ram drive mounting for regularDS mode. If this works then I'll add a check for sdMounted (which will return true for regulardDS mode if a slot2 DLDI init succeeded) so this can be avoided for this card in the future.

Ram drive if it appears at all in this build for you should now only report 4MB or less in capacity as then it should only be using DS ram as ram drive instead. I didn't run into this issue for my MaxMediaDock because that slot2 device does not have any ram so the ram drive checks would fail causing it to do DS ram as ram drive mount instead. So I was lucky and avoided this issue you ran into.
 

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Yeah it mounted it as ram drive which breaks DLDI mount point for it.

Try this build. I disabled most of the ram drive mounting for regularDS mode. If this works then I'll add a check for sdMounted (which will return true for regulardDS mode if a slot2 DLDI init succeeded) so this can be avoided for this card in the future.

Ram drive if it appears at all in this build for you should now only report 4MB or less in capacity as then it should only be using DS ram as ram drive instead. I didn't run into this issue for my MaxMediaDock because that slot2 device does not have any ram so the ram drive checks would fail causing it to do DS ram as ram drive mount instead. So I was lucky and avoided this issue you ran into.
It seems to not report anything at all on first load now like it was before as ram until I reinsert the cartridge, to which it's a GBA one like before by then
 

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Ok try this one. If it fails then the DLDI driver code I used is not in a working state or isn't the correct one for your perticular SuperCard....

In which case could work with your card's DLDI driver mounted from an external file instead. I did get this to work for my MMD at one point but it's unreliable as it will crash on exception screen with certain slot1 cards so I abandoned that idea. It probably will end up doing that for you so I won't waste the time on it.

EDIT: Actually, allowing ramddrive mount to occur might be why the mounting of external DLDI file for slot2 didn't work initially. I may reattempt this in a bit.
 

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Shahaan

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Ok try this one. If it fails then the DLDI driver code I used is not in a working state or isn't the correct one for your perticular SuperCard....

In which case could work with your card's DLDI driver mounted from an external file instead. I did get this to work for my MMD at one point but it's unreliable as it will crash on exception screen with certain slot1 cards so I abandoned that idea. It probably will end up doing that for you so I won't waste the time on it.
The 31mb ram drive is back, but the behavior is about the same as it was 2 versions ago
 
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I'll try and get mounting of slot2.dldi file working again and have you try that. Should be done in about 20 minutes as I got some other things I need to do first. I think ram drive mount was why I would sometimes get exception crash when I initially attempted that. :P
Post automatically merged:

Ok here it is. Put the DLDI file for your slot2 device in your slot1's gm9i folder as follows:

[MicroSD]:\gm9i\slot2.dldi
(MIcroSD = driver letter for MicroSD card of your slot1 flashcart)

This should allow any slot2 DLDI via external DLDI file stored on slot1's filesystem in gm9i folder. Just use the one that goes to your SuperCard MiniSD and hopefully it will work then. I've disabled ram drive mounting if slot2 DLDI mount succeeds. If you see a ramdrive then that means dldi init failed for slot2.

As for the exception I was getting with this mount method. That turned out to be caused by the nitrofs drive mount it tries to do on startup. I disable that if slot2 was mounted for sdMount and that resolves that issue. Seems to work fine from both the slot-1 flashcarts I tested it on. There's a huge if/else tree for detecting where to mount GM9i's NitroFS from so for now I won't attempt to fix that. :P
 

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Shahaan

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I'll try and get mounting of slot2.dldi file working again and have you try that. Should be done in about 20 minutes as I got some other things I need to do first. I think ram drive mount was why I would sometimes get exception crash when I initially attempted that. :P
Post automatically merged:

Ok here it is. Put the DLDI file for your slot2 device in your slot1's gm9i folder as follows:

[MicroSD]:\gm9i\slot2.dldi
(MIcroSD = driver letter for MicroSD card of your slot1 flashcart)

This should allow any slot2 DLDI via external DLDI file stored on slot1's filesystem in gm9i folder. Just use the one that goes to your SuperCard MiniSD and hopefully it will work then. I've disabled ram drive mounting if slot2 DLDI mount succeeds. If you see a ramdrive then that means dldi init failed for slot2.

As for the exception I was getting with this mount method. That turned out to be caused by the nitrofs drive mount it tries to do on startup. I disable that if slot2 was mounted for sdMount and that resolves that issue. Seems to work fine from both the slot-1 flashcarts I tested it on. There's a huge if/else tree for detecting where to mount GM9i's NitroFS from so for now I won't attempt to fix that. :P
Is there any dldi I should use? I tried a few and one resulted in the normal 31mb ram drive mount, the others have it stuck on Mounting when I boot gm9i

Edit: Even tried the rumble one which listed that it could work on the mini SD variety, seems to make it stuck on the mount
 

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