GB to NES ROM converter [Archive] - Zophar's Message Domain

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Madeye

12-30-2004, 03:42 PM

Is there such a thing as this? I've found something that will convert NES ROMs to GBC format, but I want to know if there's a program that converts the other way? Thanks

Disch

12-30-2004, 05:18 PM

> I've found something that will convert NES ROMs to GBC format,

I doubt that. Perhaps you found that NES emulator for the GBC (which only "works" for a handful of mapper 0 ROMs and is slow beyond any use even when it "works")

There's no such thing as a ROM converter. The NES and GBC are completely different systems. They both use a different assembly language... have different sound systems, slightly different graphics formats, different resolutions, etc. The only way to really convert a ROM would be to pretty much re-write it by hand... there's no way a program is going to be able to do it.

Perhaps you might a GB emu for the NES.... but even if something like that exists... it won't have any practical use.

Madeye

12-30-2004, 06:02 PM

Oh well. I thought both machines used similar chipsets, and I thought the lower resolution of the GB would work well in NES.
I bought one of those movie player cards for the GBA, it has inbuilt support for pocketnes but no other emulators, not until a future firmware update comes out anyway. Guess I'll have to wait until then.
Thanks

Madeye

12-30-2004, 08:20 PM

I found this on a GBA site: * GBA Movie Player is not a GBA or DS Backup device. The latest bios update to the device makes it possible to play NES roms from Compact Flash cards and we ave figured out a way to lunch emulated GB roms but the main purpose of the Movie Player is to play Video and Audio.

They weren't kind enough to tell us how though, at least I can't find anything on their site or otherwise.
Does anyone here have one of these movie player cards? Do you know how to make GB games work on it?
Thanks

Madeye

12-30-2004, 10:25 PM

The people at gameboy-advance.net have told me how to do it. You combine a small (<128KB) GB ROM with Goomba and rename the output file "pocketnes.gba". Good on them :)

Is anyone else interested in this device? It doesn't work like a GBA Flash Cart system, but it's good for playing movies and music (despite the speaker), reading txt documents, and playing old games. You're limited by the GBA's RAM so you can only run small games

The 9th Sage

12-31-2004, 04:03 AM

> The people at gameboy-advance.net have told me how to do it.

ah, heh...to explain what the Movie Player is doing, it's using the GBA's "Multi-Boot" function...basically this function allows the GBA to run small games and programs out of the memory of the system. The limit for the file is 256k, and actually that trick you would (it sounds to me) work for any MB compatible file...that includes several Public Domain games, and Goomba, PocketNES....that SMS emulator too maybe? Not sure if it supports multi-boot or not.

The only trick is you can't save your game...although, in theory, you could change the PocketNES you have on your movieplayer to a version made by Dwedit I believe that would save to the SRAM of a GBA cart inserted into the unit (I'd think you could swamp the movie player for the GBA cart with no problems once PocketNES is booted up, the MB mode shouldn't care if there is a cart in there or not).

You'd lose the save for that GBA game, but you could then save games using savestates, or play battery backed games like Zelda and actually save your progress.

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Madeye

12-31-2004, 03:14 PM

Don't know if it really is multiboot, it's more of a shell with icons for movie, music, text, pictures and pocket nes. Unfortunately it doesn't work with all the emulators on the GBA - the way they have it set is having a list of nes ROMs appear when you click on the emulator icon - you can replace pocketnes with a combined emulator and rom but i'll still give you the list of nes games, and i think this is what crashed most of the emulators - Goomba seems to be the only one that'll ignore the NES ROM list and not try to load that too.
I don't fancy trying to hotplug the cart - in a few months they may release new firmware that'll enable other emulators to work and allow the GBA to write save files to CF, preferably save states.

Compared to true GBA Flash Cards this isn't that great, but for Â£15 and the cheap price of CF cards I think it's great

Madeye

01-01-2005, 01:57 AM

do you like pie pie?

The 9th Sage

01-02-2005, 01:54 AM

> Don't know if it really is multiboot, it's more of a shell
> with icons for movie, music, text, pictures and pocket nes.
> Unfortunately it doesn't work with all the emulators on the
> GBA - the way they have it set is having a list of nes ROMs
> appear when you click on the emulator icon

Well, you're limited as to how large the NES ROM can be right? You have to stay under 256k (that's including the emulator) right? Then it has to be multi-boot...they wouldn't have to limit the filesize of the NES ROMs otherwise. You see...PogoShell (which is a shell for GBA, like you're talking about, you can have a list of NES ROMs if you want and then execute them) works in a similar way, except that after loading the MB PocketNES into RAM it then just reads the NES game off of the cartrdige. I'm not sure why they couldn't do that, perhaps it's the speed of the CF? Although, they work great for my MP3s in my GBA MP3 Player (heh, a GBA cart with a CF input on it, imported it...it's not the same as what you have) so maybe that's not the issue...

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Glargel blarg rargle! (Go to my weblog!)</a>Edited by The 9th Sage on 01/01/05 09:01 PM.

Madeye

01-02-2005, 05:01 PM

I think it's because of the way CF works. Either the device or GBA can't treat the compact flash card as virtual RAM or EPROM device or that CF is too slow to behave in this way - it would probably be like using a Harddrive swapfile instead of true RAM, but slightly faster. If they have a deal with the makers of PocketNES going on maybe they'll make an alternate version that will use intelligent caching with the CF card. It's only in the recent builds that they've included pocknetnesso there might be a chance yet.
MP3s like you said do work OK, but I suppose it's the GBA's RAM is being as a buffer, continuous reading and dumping. If it is like this then disk based system emulators might work, but then RAM would be limited even further for the system's own BIOS.
There is another device though that has an inbuilt 32MB or RAM, could have been 32Mb though, probably the latter. This one could use larger ROMs and even run a SNES emulator, which I can't see how it would work. This one costs about Â£50-Â£60 though, but for Â£10 more I could have bough a cheap GBA Flash Card and linker combo.
I'm happy enough with it though, if they ever make a firmware update that'll make savestates and allow SMS and other 8bit era games emulation I'll be set :) It's a "good and cool device" they say on the player's box lol
I've just bought myself a 512MB CF card and a third party stereo output adaptor so I'm very happy indeed. I

Madeye

01-02-2005, 06:03 PM

Is yours the Supercard device, 9th Sage? I think I might buy this one.

The 9th Sage

01-03-2005, 05:47 AM

> Is yours the Supercard device, 9th Sage? I think I might buy
> this one.

Hm, my MP3 Player? No, it's the GBA MP3 Recorder...you can find it on Lik-Sang. And my flash cart is an old style Visoly cart, but I plan to get a larger X-ROM cart eventually...preferably when they start selling the 1 Gigabit cart again. I could fit a whole episode of StarGate on it (using the GBA Meteo codec) and still have more than enough space for games and NES ROMs. :-D

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Glargel blarg rargle! (Go to my weblog!)</a>Edited by The 9th Sage on 01/03/05 12:52 AM.

Madeye

01-03-2005, 08:34 PM

Dwedit from the various GBA emulation forums has made a hacked version of PocketNES which makes use of the other RAM banks and compressed NES files so the GBA Movie Player can load 256k ROMS - only the 128k PRG & 128K CHR types though.His hacked version can store battery save files on GBA cards that have SRAM type 112 (or something), which F-Zero uses. You can store 4 different sets of NES SRAM data on a GBA cart. I don't think the version that came with my Movie Player had the options for saving either SRAM or states, and I can't be arsed to check right now. I'm 'appy.

The 9th Sage

01-04-2005, 02:48 AM

> Dwedit from the various GBA emulation forums has made a
> hacked version of PocketNES .His hacked version can store battery save files on
> GBA cards that have SRAM type 112 (or something), which
> F-Zero uses.

That's what I was talking about, heh...he's done great things, like his PocketNES version with autospeedhack finding, and what not. <img src=smilies/magbiggrin.gif>
*edit*
Oh, and more games than just F-Zero use SRAM...I remember seeing a list of games using SRAM, or games using Flash, etc, but don't know where I saw it...I'd find something like that useful especially if they had the cart size of the ROMs as well...I have FF 1 and 2 for GBA but my ROM dumping software can't autodetect the ROM size, and I'm not sure how big to tell it the cart is.
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Madeye

01-04-2005, 11:23 AM

I think every one of my GBA games has battery save of some sort, apart from Iridian 3D, then again I don't know. F-Zero was the only one that seems to allow PocketNES to write to it though.
This could be the site you meant, dunno if this page has the info you need - the main page had a bit more indepth info about save types, CRCs and sizes or new releases. I've no idea how to use markup on here so:
http://releases.pocketheaven.com/?system=gba&section=release_list

The 9th Sage

01-05-2005, 04:46 AM

> I think every one of my GBA games has battery save of some
> sort, apart from Iridian 3D, then again I don't know. F-Zero
> was the only one that seems to allow PocketNES to write to
> it though.

Ah no, what I meant is a lot of games use SRAM for saving, others use flashram....flash is slower, but it can handle larger saves than SRAM usually can (though someone correct me if I'm misremembering). PocketNES is compatible with SRAM only, therefore to use the save cannibalism hack you'd need a cart using SRAM to save with.

And thanks for the link...didn't occur to me to check PocketHeaven, I feel like an idiot. <img src=smilies/magbiggrin.gif>

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Glargel blarg rargle! (Go to my weblog!)</a>Edited by The 9th Sage on 01/04/05 11:53 PM.

Madeye

01-05-2005, 10:50 AM

Oh, I see. So do most GBA games use flash, or are there specific types of SRAM? I have 9 GBA games, I have no idea what kind of save system they all use - none of them worked (that i wanted to try - ain't no way I'm saving over WarioWare) except for F-Zero.

The 9th Sage

01-05-2005, 11:33 PM

> Oh, I see. So do most GBA games use flash, or are there
> specific types of SRAM? I have 9 GBA games, I have no idea
> what kind of save system they all use - none of them worked
> (that i wanted to try - ain't no way I'm saving over
> WarioWare) except for F-Zero.

Well, I'm not sure how common one is over the other....ironically I do know for a fact that Wario Ware does use SRAM. <img src=smilies/laff.gif>

In my experience, only the games I want to port saves back and forth from my flashcart use Flash. Damn them and their flashyness! >_<

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Madeye

01-05-2005, 11:39 PM

I love Wario Ware. It's the perfect game for sitting on the toilet trying to avoid maths revision. I got my 512MB CF card today too and I'm nowhere near filling it.
Any idea how long CF cards last? I won't need to delete or add much to it for a while really, but if broadband ever reaches my area I may end up adding and removing a lot movie files.

The 9th Sage

01-05-2005, 11:43 PM

> I love Wario Ware. It's the perfect game for sitting on the
> toilet trying to avoid maths revision. I got my 512MB CF
> card today too and I'm nowhere near filling it.
> Any idea how long CF cards last?

Not sure, but I don't think I've heard of one wearing out.

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