GBA super card

[walter_J64bit]

I've got the GBA super card for my son but I cant seem to get to work anyone have used this thing and can you help out? Thanks!

[SS]

I have found the Supercard to be very hit-and-miss with GBA titles, heavily weighed on the "miss" side. It is terrible with Master System titles. Most of the NES games that I've tried have actually worked pretty good as long as you run one of the speed hacks with them. I haven't really tried many GBC games, so I can't help you on that front. What I've found that the Supercard is best for is B&W Gameboy titles. I don't recall having had any issues on that front, although I have read that games that require save-states might be problematic from time to time.

[walter_J64bit]

hmmm, I'll try out the B&W Gameboy titles to see if I can get to boot up.

[walter_J64bit]

OK, I've just tried a B&W Gameboy game, I can't get the cart to boot up, the DS light does go into gameboy mode but after that I get nothing.

[Reaperman]

IIRC there is software used to patch roms, fill the supercard, and create the file structure it's looking for. That device is also pretty picky about SD format and capacity. You're not trying to use a card over 2gb, I trust. Anyway, I'm sure the software is still available somewhere over at gbatemp, though I have no idea how well it works with modern OSes. The supercard is in no way plug-and-play, and even back in the day a solid bit of fiddling was needed. That's why you'll see things like 'sd compatibility lists' with lots of frowny faces on it.

 

Usage hassles like that, as well as general game compatibility pushed me on to the M3 and ezf IV devices pretty quickly. They had patcher software as well, but it was quite a bit more optional--only adding features like cheating, real time save, and real time clock. Supercard required that kind of software to do basic things like boot and save.

 

As ever, you get what you pay for, and supercard is very, very (very) cheap.

Edited August 9, 2015 by Reaperman

[walter_J64bit]

OK, my SD card just killed over maybe this why I'm not getting any where, time to get a new 2GB SD card. @ Reaperman I was thinking the same thing with the OSes. when I get the new card I'll try it out in XP. :thumbsup:

[Austin]

What exactly is the Super Card? This is the first time I have heard of it.

[Reaperman]

What exactly is the Super Card? This is the first time I have heard of it.

 

It's a mid-2000's game boy advance "backup" cart that takes modified ROM files loaded on an SD card (or mini-sd depending on model) and loads them on-demand into onboard RAM for playing. It's primary benefit is that it's very inexpensive compared to the other sd-based gba solutions, and holds far more games than the earlier purely-flash-based gba options. Criticisms of it revolve around its many compatibility and usability issues. The theory BITD was that Supercard's RAM wasn't able to match the performance of original ROMs. Also only SRAM save is supported by the device, so the many games using Flash or EEPROM saves must be hacked to work.

The Supercard is the only bulk-storage GBA flash cart still readily available to my knowledge. I guess its competition (m3 and ezfIV) cost too much to make, which is a shame because they worked better. Hopefully somebody like krikzz will help out with this issue someday.

Edited August 10, 2015 by Reaperman

[Austin]

The Supercard is the only bulk-storage GBA flash cart still readily available to my knowledge. I guess its competition (m3 and ezfIV) cost too much to make, which is a shame because they worked better. Hopefully somebody like krikzz will help out with this issue someday.

 

I have an EZ Flash IV but it was cumbersome to get working and compatibility seems to be hit or miss. I hope Krikzz is able to get around to making a GBA Everdrive. I'll be happy to part with the EZ Flash IV to buy one of those.