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Issue with NeoLinkMasta detecting Cart
#1
So I got my Flash Masta about a week ago. I have been having a good time with it, flashed a few games, played a few homebrew titles. One thing I noticed is that the flashing software seemed to be crashing at 99% when loading most homebrew rom files. They show as unknown when launching the software again after flashing, however they play on the NGPC.

So the flasher software is crashing, no biggie I thought. Well after flashing another homebrew title, I ran into an issue. I can see the device plugged into the computer, I can play the titles flashed to the cart, but I cannot get the software to detect the cart to reflash. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver through zadiag, different cables, different USB ports, and attempted to communicate with the cart using the mac version of the software. I am a bit stumped.

I have attached the output from from USBDeview if it is helpful.


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#2
(10-20-2016, 06:59 AM)zandengoff Wrote: So I got my Flash Masta about a week ago. I have been having a good time with it, flashed a few games, played a few homebrew titles. One thing I noticed is that the flashing software seemed to be crashing at 99% when loading most homebrew rom files. They show as unknown when launching the software again after flashing, however they play on the NGPC.

So the flasher software is crashing, no biggie I thought. Well after flashing another homebrew title, I ran into an issue. I can see the device plugged into the computer, I can play the titles flashed to the cart, but I cannot get the software to detect the cart to reflash. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver through zadiag, different cables, different USB ports, and attempted to communicate with the cart using the mac version of the software. I am a bit stumped.

I have attached the output from from USBDeview if it is helpful.

I haven't seen this happen before. Somehow you got the microcontroller (that handles all the USB communication) to reset back into DFU (device firmware update) mode.

It's pretty simple to fix (assuming that's all that happened). I'll have to email you a few files, but it should be straightforward. Since you're using Zadig, I assume you're on Windows (even though you also mentioned Mac).

I'll email you direct.

EDIT: By the way, thank you for posting the screenshot. The info in there is what clued me in on the problem.
Card Fighters' Clash 2 English Translation ( http://cfc2english.blogspot.com/ )
Neo Geo Pocket Flash Cart and Linker Project ( http://www.flashmasta.com/ )
Avatar art thanks to Trev-Mun ( http://trevmun.deviantart.com/ )
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#3
(10-20-2016, 07:06 AM)Flavor Wrote:
(10-20-2016, 06:59 AM)zandengoff Wrote: So I got my Flash Masta about a week ago. I have been having a good time with it, flashed a few games, played a few homebrew titles. One thing I noticed is that the flashing software seemed to be crashing at 99% when loading most homebrew rom files. They show as unknown when launching the software again after flashing, however they play on the NGPC.

So the flasher software is crashing, no biggie I thought. Well after flashing another homebrew title, I ran into an issue. I can see the device plugged into the computer, I can play the titles flashed to the cart, but I cannot get the software to detect the cart to reflash. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver through zadiag, different cables, different USB ports, and attempted to communicate with the cart using the mac version of the software. I am a bit stumped.

I have attached the output from from USBDeview if it is helpful.

I haven't seen this happen before. Somehow you got the microcontroller (that handles all the USB communication) to reset back into DFU (device firmware update) mode.

It's pretty simple to fix (assuming that's all that happened). I'll have to email you a few files, but it should be straightforward. Since you're using Zadig, I assume you're on Windows (even though you also mentioned Mac).

I'll email you direct.

EDIT: By the way, thank you for posting the screenshot. The info in there is what clued me in on the problem.

Windows 10, but also have Ubuntu and Mac. The app I used was USBDeview from nirsoft. http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html Very good app to see what USB devices are mounting and what drivers they are using.

Any idea why the flash application is crashing when writing homebrew roms? It hasn't happened on any commercial rom yet, just homebrew. I am concerned this will happen again. That and I bought the Flash Masta for coding a bit myself.
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#4
(10-20-2016, 08:29 AM)zandengoff Wrote: Windows 10, but also have Ubuntu and Mac. The app I used was USBDeview from nirsoft. http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html Very good app to see what USB devices are mounting and what drivers they are using.

Any idea why the flash application is crashing when writing homebrew roms? It hasn't happened on any commercial rom yet, just homebrew. I am concerned this will happen again. That and I bought the Flash Masta for coding a bit myself.

No, but let's get you back up and running first. Then we can try to debug the original problem.

I emailed you with some software to fix your cartridge.

Once you get it back working, please reply to the email and send me one or more ROM files that exhibit the problem.
Card Fighters' Clash 2 English Translation ( http://cfc2english.blogspot.com/ )
Neo Geo Pocket Flash Cart and Linker Project ( http://www.flashmasta.com/ )
Avatar art thanks to Trev-Mun ( http://trevmun.deviantart.com/ )
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#5
(10-20-2016, 08:45 AM)Flavor Wrote:
(10-20-2016, 08:29 AM)zandengoff Wrote: Windows 10, but also have Ubuntu and Mac. The app I used was USBDeview from nirsoft. http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html Very good app to see what USB devices are mounting and what drivers they are using.

Any idea why the flash application is crashing when writing homebrew roms? It hasn't happened on any commercial rom yet, just homebrew. I am concerned this will happen again. That and I bought the Flash Masta for coding a bit myself.

No, but let's get you back up and running first. Then we can try to debug the original problem.

I emailed you with some software to fix your cartridge.

Once you get it back working, please reply to the email and send me one or more ROM files that exhibit the problem.

Back up and running. Oddly enough I had to flash on a Mac as the windows batch was not picking up the cart in DFU mode. I emailed you two example NGPC files that are causing the crashing symptom. Both flash and crash, but play fine on the NGPC afterwards. They show as 'Unknown' on the Game Installed title. I don't know if it matters, but I am flashing to the 2nd slot on the testing I just did.
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#6
As a bit of added info, the application has a database of known ROMs. On NGPC, the ROM itself should have a "name" field. I'll look at the ones you sent to see what might be the problem, but I might not get to that until tomorrow or the next day.
Card Fighters' Clash 2 English Translation ( http://cfc2english.blogspot.com/ )
Neo Geo Pocket Flash Cart and Linker Project ( http://www.flashmasta.com/ )
Avatar art thanks to Trev-Mun ( http://trevmun.deviantart.com/ )
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#7
(10-20-2016, 09:26 AM)Flavor Wrote: As a bit of added info, the application has a database of known ROMs. On NGPC, the ROM itself should have a "name" field. I'll look at the ones you sent to see what might be the problem, but I might not get to that until tomorrow or the next day.

No biggy, thanks for looking into it. Honestly I was concerned that I screwed my cart up somehow with the app crashing.
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#8
Okay, I got the files and fixed them. I'll add the reply here, too, in case anyone else has the same issue.

When a cartridge is dumped, its full contents are dumped to a ROM file. ROM chips are always powers of 2 size. When a game maker (especially a home-brew game maker) makes a file, they don’t always intend to place them onto a cartridge, so this isn’t much of a concern. When placing them on a cart, the software assumes that a ROM is properly sized, so these files should be padded (by adding bytes of 0xFF to the end of the file) to the next power of 2 size. In this case, they both needed to be padded up to address 0x1FFFFF (AKA 0x200000 bytes large = 2097152 bytes = 2megabytes = 16megabits).

As a bit of additional info, I'll talk about the built-in database a bit. Each of these games show up as "Unknown" because they do not match anything in the ROM database. However, each of them has an internal NAME field inside their cartridge/ROM data. This does show up if you choose a slot. Basically, the application is telling you that it doesn't know what game is there, but it will still report the name it looked up (which may or may not be valid, because it can't verify anything).
Card Fighters' Clash 2 English Translation ( http://cfc2english.blogspot.com/ )
Neo Geo Pocket Flash Cart and Linker Project ( http://www.flashmasta.com/ )
Avatar art thanks to Trev-Mun ( http://trevmun.deviantart.com/ )
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#9
Thanks for your assist. I have been enjoying my Flash Masta since we worked out the firmware issue. Great little device that makes the NGPC that much more enjoyable.
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