I know you hate it, but I need help

[ThaSwapMeetPimp]

Look I bought my Max Media Dock before I knew about these forums. I saw it and was like "Epic I can watch Trailer Park Boys on my DS". Little did I know that I could emulate everything on it, and mine does work for everything (at least that I want it to emulate), except of course, .gba homebrew.

I was reading through one of these forum sites and there were two things mentioned that could help me with my problem:
1) A program that converts .gba to .nds
and
2)a way was mentioned to recode it manually

I cannot find the thread that mentioned the program, though I do recall it saying that a guide was stickied to the forum that would say where to get it, if someone knows where this guide or FAQ is, then it would be greatly appreciated if they could redirect me to it. If not, could someone point me to where I can learn how to manually recode .gba to .nds? This may be a tall order but I am willing to take any real advice one can give. Thanks

[DanTheManMS]

There is no way to have GBA support on the MMD. The thread you were talking about was most likely discussing how to convert between ".ds.gba" and ".nds" files, both of which are DS binaries with different extensions. The .ds.gba files have an extra header attached to the front so that GBA flash carts will accept them. Removing that header turns it into a .nds file.

However, this does not help with .gba files that are actually GBA binaries. The explanation for why GBA files are unplayable on the MMD is kinda complicated, but I'll try to explain it in simple terms. Basically, the GBA requires lightning-fast responses that CF/SD cannot provide. The Supercard and M3 get around this by copying GBA binaries to fast RAM before executing. The MMD has no such RAM, so GBA files cannot run because they'd freeze from lack of information.

The slightly more technical explanation:

The GBA is made a different way than the DS. The DS has 4 MB of RAM, so it streams content from the DS game cartridge to the RAM and executes the code from there. The GBA however only has 256 KB of RAM, not nearly enough to do things that way. Instead, code is executed directly from the cartridge itself. Because of this, the cartridge needs to be able to respond to a request for information very very quickly. This is why GBA flash cartridges were so expensive - they used expensive NOR flash, which was very slow to write to but very quick to read from. CF and SD are NAND-based flash media as opposed to NOR-based and are therefore quick to write to but relatively slow to read from, so you cannot execute GBA binaries directly from a CF/SD card.

Sorry to dash your dreams like that.

The only way for you to run GBA binaries on your DS would be a GBA emulator for the DS, which nobody has written or even started working on as far as I know.

[ThaSwapMeetPimp]

THanks and don't worry you didn't dash my dreams, I was cruising the MaxConsole forum and some guy named Bonic said he was tired of people asking so he was going to start on an emu....However this does not mean he is going to accomplish it, but its good to have dreams.....You got to have a dream, if you dont have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true? lol From a Dizzee Rascal song.....But anyways, hopefully this bonic guy will actually do so, if not I guess I will just have to get a different card next time I get some cash...Thanx for the help....

[eomund]

I actually like the MMD. It's a little better for movies than the Supercard, and it works better with the SCUMM App. too. The supercard is definately more compatable with homebrew programs for it (that's why I have both now) the the MMD is a solid device.

You might know this already but just incase you didn't audio and video playback is smoother and less 'poppy' if you use the Moonshell App.

[ThaSwapMeetPimp]

Yeah I also like Moonshell because you can skip through stuff.....I like the MMD I just wish it had the .gba support, sucks that it don't.

[peacekeeper_99]

hey do ya'll know how to make a game n music slot 1 cart play ds games

[DanTheManMS]

You download the homebrew DS games, ensure that they don't require filesystem support, and put them on the card and launch them, praying that they load. The games that came on the Games N Music CD should work fine.

Unless of course you're talking about commercial games, in which case you go out to the store and buy them.