EXEQ Gamebox BIOS dump for possible emulation purposes?

OmDRetro · May 7, 2024

Alright. So, we all know in this forum that anything copyrighted such as BIOS, ROMs, miscellaneous software, etc... Is a huge NO-NO.

HOWEVER, no one said anything about the legality of dumping a not completely accurate GBA clone's BIOS.

Since the K1 GBA SP / EXEQ Gamebox SP has a few quirks that actually differs from the OG GBA, can this be distributed freely?

I.E. - Cannot enter download mode to load games via GBA link cable(Single-Pak multiplayer doesn't work when this clone is the client)

Here are the hash-sums of the EXEQ Gamebox BIOS( 16 bytes like the the GBA Bios ):

SHA-256: CE374F5CE982EF4EA89663CCFEC4242DE1B08C89B00065B55E3BC004D7966536
SHA-1: DCA614D5AB7AB238043F8097C88944FA48381C71
MD-5: 4A5104483421090BB253038C434DA5A6
CRC-32: AC16D18D

cearp · May 7, 2024

It still belongs to a company right, but:
Would that company (who owns K1 / exeq) get angry at gbatemp if it was hosted here - I doubt it.
Different to, would Nintendo get angry at gbatemp if a rom was uploaded here - yes of course.

So I think your fine but then again, who am I to decide?

BETA215 · May 7, 2024

Just make an announcement on Twitter whenever you wanna publish it, and link the announcement in a post.

OmDRetro · May 7, 2024

I think we found a very USEFUL loophole here

. I've already dumped the GBA bios from my DS PHAT and compared it to the hash-sums online and it matches. I also tried loading the EXEQ Gamebox bios via mGBA, but it can't seem to run it since there are "integrity checks(?)" and an exception is thrown:

"Invalid logo, skipping BIOS"

Post automatically merged: May 7, 2024

BETA215 said:
Just make an announcement on Twitter whenever you wanna publish it, and link the announcement in a post.

I don't think that's necessary(?). Already updated the OP with the clone's BIOS dump.

BETA215 · May 7, 2024

It seems to work on NanoBoyAdvance, the most accurate GBA emulator out there. It just goes to a white screen for a short while, and then boots the game.

OmDRetro · May 7, 2024

BETA215 said:
It seems to work on NanoBoyAdvance, the most accurate GBA emulator out there. It just goes to a white screen for a short while, and then boots the game.

Seems it has the same wait time as my Gamebox minus the EXEQ logo(Appears invisible on the emulator). Was able to check using NanoBoyAdvance.

Thanks a bunch for the suggestion and for confirming that it works! Now we have an alternative BIOS for GBA emulation

cearp · May 7, 2024

As you're interested in the bios - could take a look at a decompilation: https://github.com/Gericom/gba_bios

EXEQ Gamebox BIOS dump for possible emulation purposes?

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