Homebrew SCFW: Custom Firmware & Kernel for Supercard

[Xyvir]

You need a DS flashcart. Then you can run a flashing tool from it that overwrites the supercard with working firmware. It's older than the one that's being sold nowadays but you can update it with ofw.frm through scfw kernel.

I bricked my supercard too so I had to buy DS and a DS flashcart but it worked

Can you provide more details on how to do this?

What homebrew do you need on the slot-1 card to flash the supercard SD?

 

[Gamemaster2022]

I have a question. I own a GBA SP and my brother regular GBA. We both own a supercard. The problem is that supercard on my bro's GBA is acting like crazy, games have graphical glitches or even won't load. The SC Normal save menu appears completely glitched and can't be used (saves must be managed manually). Same happens even with the custom firmware which worked quite fine yesterday (other than the glitches) but today all of the folders appear glitchy with random names. On a DS or my SP I can see them with no problems. No, it's not the SD card, we tried more of them, even SDHC on scfw. The problem persists. What's weird though is that if I put the cartridge in my SP, no issues at all. The exact opposite happens when I put my working supercard in my bro's GBA and the same (maybe even worse) problems appear.

So what can I do about this problem? It's kinda annoying and I wonder if anyone have ever seen this issue because I can't find much info about it

Thanks

 

[Peeteris]

I have a question. I own a GBA SP and my brother regular GBA. We both own a supercard. The problem is that supercard on my bro's GBA is acting like crazy, games have graphical glitches or even won't load. The SC Normal save menu appears completely glitched and can't be used (saves must be managed manually). Same happens even with the custom firmware which worked quite fine yesterday (other than the glitches) but today all of the folders appear glitchy with random names. On a DS or my SP I can see them with no problems. No, it's not the SD card, we tried more of them, even SDHC on scfw. The problem persists. What's weird though is that if I put the cartridge in my SP, no issues at all. The exact opposite happens when I put my working supercard in my bro's GBA and the same (maybe even worse) problems appear.

So what can I do about this problem? It's kinda annoying and I wonder if anyone have ever seen this issue because I can't find much info about it

Thanks

I have the same problem - supercard works on SP, DS, but not in original GBA. On GBA games ofter crash and have visual glitches. Contacts are super clean, visual glitches and crashes happen at the exact same times, places in games.

 

[Gamemaster2022]

I have the same problem - supercard works on SP, DS, but not in original GBA. On GBA games ofter crash and have visual glitches. Contacts are super clean, visual glitches and crashes happen at the exact same times, places in games.

I don't understand why this happens though. At first I thought it might be caused by the IPS mod not giving enough power to the catridge. Wrong, happens even on the original screen. I'm starting to think it's caused by the revision of the GBA's motherboard because I've seen videos on youtube or simple photos of the original GBA running the supercard just fine. As far as I know, the RAM chip has been exchanged several times during the production. It might be caused by this. Or it's the supercard with the different, new chip.

 

[jejer]

Report the same problem on original GBA with IPS mod. Can not get any unpatched rom to work, most failed to boot, some stuck or glitch after a few scenes. Ofw works fine with patched rom.

 

[Gamemaster2022]

Report the same problem on original GBA with IPS mod. Can not get any unpatched rom to work, most failed to boot, some stuck or glitch after a few scenes. Ofw works fine with patched rom.

Upatched ROMs on stock firmware don't work on either GBA and SP. What I'm interested in, does the saving menu work for you? (L + R + SELECT + A). It appears glitched on my bro's original GBA

 

[Janni9009]

I have a question. I own a GBA SP and my brother regular GBA. We both own a supercard. The problem is that supercard on my bro's GBA is acting like crazy, games have graphical glitches or even won't load. The SC Normal save menu appears completely glitched and can't be used (saves must be managed manually). Same happens even with the custom firmware which worked quite fine yesterday (other than the glitches) but today all of the folders appear glitchy with random names. On a DS or my SP I can see them with no problems. No, it's not the SD card, we tried more of them, even SDHC on scfw. The problem persists. What's weird though is that if I put the cartridge in my SP, no issues at all. The exact opposite happens when I put my working supercard in my bro's GBA and the same (maybe even worse) problems appear.

So what can I do about this problem? It's kinda annoying and I wonder if anyone have ever seen this issue because I can't find much info about it

Thanks

Forcibly push the cart to the left in the slot, even if it doesn't feel like it's moving. (left from the cart-label facing you, so on AGB it's the right with the screen facing you). Lots of these older carts tend to have some weird pin alignment issue with some consoles.

 

[Gamemaster2022]

Forcibly push the cart to the left in the slot, even if it doesn't feel like it's moving. (left from the cart-label facing you, so on AGB it's the right with the screen facing you). Lots of these older carts tend to have some weird pin alignment issue with some consoles.

That's not the case here. I tried what you say with both of our supercards and no success

 

[jejer]

Upatched ROMs on stock firmware don't work on either GBA and SP. What I'm interested in, does the saving menu work for you? (L + R + SELECT + A). It appears glitched on my bro's original GBA

Saving menu doesn't work with patcher 2.71, the saving screen stuck without progress. I have to use patcher 2.70/2.69 to make in-game saving menu work. - on stock fw

All patched games stuck white screen booting via SCFW.（disabled on the fly patch）

I have ordered a ndsl to compare in next few days.

 

[Sakitoshi]

i have multiple gbas and tested all of them with stock fw, scfw and superfw.
gba sp ags001: works as intended with all firmwares.
gba sp ags101: works as intended with all firmwares.
regular gba w/ita lcd mod: stock firmware works fine, scfw and superfw don't.
regular gba w/ips lcd mod: stock firmware works fine, scfw and superfw don't.
gb micro silver: works as intended with all firmwares.
gb micro black: works as intended with all firmwares.

to narrow down the issue i tried an already patched rom on scfw and disabled the firmware patching but no dice, still doesn't work on regular gba.
some roms get to the title screen or the splash screens and then crash. to me it seems that on regular gba the rom gets corrupted when reading it from the sd card or while writing to the cart ram.

 

[Janni9009]

Yeah there's funky stuff going on with modded AGBs for sure, just nuked my FAT carrying my cart over from my SP to my IPS/Lithium AGB (save in write queue, froze, then after a restart finished but obliterated all filenames).
Reformatted the card, put back my test titles... aaand all the filenames appear every-boot-randomly corrupted?
Switching over to my AfterBurner with stock batteries... same thing?! (this mod doesn't cause the usual power fluctuations, at least nowhere near as extreme as IPS/ITA+LiPo)
Back to my EUR AGS-001, all appears perfectly fine. USA AGS-001 is also fine (yes, there's a difference if you ever used old Flash2Advance carts and the LPT linker)... weird.
Going back to 0.4.5 (pre-EWRAM-OC)... OH! IT WORKS!

TL;DR: EWRAM Overclock seems broken on AGB.

 

[JulienM]

Hello,

I downloaded the latest version of the scfw and copied it at the root of my sd card (screen_1). When I launch, it's stuck on this blue screen (screen_2) and nothing happens.

Anything I am doing wrong?

Thanks

 

[Gamemaster2022]

Saving menu doesn't work with patcher 2.71, the saving screen stuck without progress. I have to use patcher 2.70/2.69 to make in-game saving menu work. - on stock fw

All patched games stuck white screen booting via SCFW.（disabled on the fly patch）

I have ordered a ndsl to compare in next few days.

Do you possibly have a link to patcher 2.69?

 

[jejer]

Do you possibly have a link to patcher 2.69?

2.70 works well: http://down.supercard.sc/download/setupsdV270.zip

 

[Gamemaster2022]

2.70 works well: http://down.supercard.sc/download/setupsdV270.zip

Thanks. I even managed to get the 2.69 modifying the link. Still, save menu is glitched on my bro's GBA and previous glitches are still present

 

[jejer]

Yeah there's funky stuff going on with modded AGBs for sure, just nuked my FAT carrying my cart over from my SP to my IPS/Lithium AGB (save in write queue, froze, then after a restart finished but obliterated all filenames).
Reformatted the card, put back my test titles... aaand all the filenames appear every-boot-randomly corrupted?
Switching over to my AfterBurner with stock batteries... same thing?! (this mod doesn't cause the usual power fluctuations, at least nowhere near as extreme as IPS/ITA+LiPo)
Back to my EUR AGS-001, all appears perfectly fine. USA AGS-001 is also fine (yes, there's a difference if you ever used old Flash2Advance carts and the LPT linker)... weird.
Going back to 0.4.5 (pre-EWRAM-OC)... OH! IT WORKS!

TL;DR: EWRAM Overclock seems broken on AGB.

Thank you. But 0.4.5 still doesn't work for me.

 

[jejer]

Confirmed same SuperCard+tf works on NDSL, but not works for original GBA with IPS mod.

 

[Andreol263]

Hello, how can i do the L + R + A + Select combo on SCFW? i usually did it on Supercard after every savepoint in game

 

[Gamemaster2022]

Hello, how can i do the L + R + A + Select combo on SCFW? i usually did it on Supercard after every savepoint in game

There's no need to do that anymore as each time you turn off and restart your GBA SP/DS the SRAM is saved on your SD card thanks to the autosave feature. And what's nice is that your save will be there waiting for it to be saved even for days as long as your battery in your supercard is still alive. I however recommend turning this feature off if you are using the original GBA as sometimes the ROM doesn't load correctly and on restart it immediately overwrites your save with the corruped one making it unusuable (You can do this by pressing B on the main screen). In that case just press A + B + START + SELECT when you want to quit playing, go to the folder where your .sav file is present, click on it and press R button to save it to SD card

 

[Andreol263]

hmm, i'm using a IPS modded GBA SP, so its better to turn this off?