E-Reader emulation?

[avengah]

Any chance E-Reader emulation could be implemented in VBA? It would be nice to play the extra levels in Super Mario Advance 4, amongst other things!

Cheers,

Matt

[Regulus]

Didnt you contact the authors?? I though you said you did...anyways.....im sure they're thinking about it. That would be a nice feature.......but how would you make a ROM from a card???

[avengah]

Yeah, I did, but no harm in mentioning it on the forums. I take it you were in the chat room earlier?

[Genexi2]

> but how would you make a ROM from a card???

That's a good question, you'd have to like make your own custom e-reader or something, or emulate the data, like, I cant really tell if the cards actually contain the game data, or just hold little flags telling the game that the card is in, and to unlock the extra stuff.....

[Technetium]

IIRC, it stores the game data in memory, so you would need a special way like a custom e-Reader to rip a whole game. I say it would be pretty impossible right now until the ereader becomes more documented or something.

[Akotan]

Pocket.IGN.com has an article about the e-cards and Mario 3. The cards really have game data (they just doesn´t unlock levels in the cart...), upgrading the game... If there are roms with data from Gamecube games (Tingle Wind Waker kinda game/help, for example), why not e-card data? Hmmm... Now we need some tool to handle e-card data to upgrade the rom... Like an IPS tool...

[scottlc]

It uses a special optical lens manufactured by Olympus to read the cards.

[Quvack]

eCards have been dumped before, a number of the nes classics that nintendo released have been floating around for quite some time, as far as i know they are dumped after being loaded into ram using the e-Reader.

These are seperate 'programs' however, the mario eCards would be dependent on the mario game however, so I've no idea how attaching one to the other would happen.

[caitsith2]

I dumped the first 10 ereader saves that are available, all of them being the nes classics. There are 3 left remaining to be dumped. They are Ice Climber, Donkey Kong, and Clu Clu Land.

Rising Sun made 2 other dumps available, Air Hockey, and Kirby Puzzle, as well as ips patches to allow the ereader roms to work on flash carts. (without the scanner obviously).

Then, Tim Shuerewegen, who is researching how to make your own ereader games, has made 6 more available. http://users.skynet.be/firefly/gba/e-reader/ 1 Nes game, and 5 minigames that cannot normally be saved to the ereader.

All of the ereader saves are for the US ereader, except for Air hockey, which is for the Japanese ereader+.

There are very few people that have the tools for dumping the contents of the actual ereader cards, at this moment. dumping ereader saves is slightly easier to do.


For the technical people, The anatomy of a Dot code image, on previously mentioned site, gives excellent details on what the ereader optical scanner is seeing. The top/bottom yellow area, is the guide bar that goes all the way across the dot code. The Big dots in each of the corners, surround a single data block. The red vertical lines, Are the address columns, and the blue area is the data area. The data in that dot code is read from the blue areas left to right, top down. It is then 10-8 demodulated, to form the raw data. The raw data is then reed solomon decoded, to form the binary data, contained within the cards.

[FireFly]

I was going to release a modified version of VBA capable of "scanning" dotcodes to help developers with the development of custom dotcodes, but seeing how some people find joy in releasing commercial (and therefore possible illegal e-reader mini-games), made for a great deal possible by my hard work/research and tools, or supplying them to warez groups, I have decided NOT to release such a modified version of VBA in the near future. However, I will continue my e-reader work/research so that someday you (non-devrs) can enjoy free public-domain e-reader mini-games created by us (devrs) ... unless things keep getting worse (grrr) and I will be forced to discontinue my e-reader work/research :(

[caitsith2]

I was going to release a modified version of VBA capable of "scanning" dotcodes to help developers with the development of custom dotcodes, but seeing how some people find joy in releasing commercial (and therefore possible illegal e-reader mini-games), made for a great deal possible by my hard work/research and tools, or supplying them to warez groups, I have decided NOT to release such a modified version of VBA in the near future. However, I will continue my e-reader work/research so that someday you (non-devrs) can enjoy free public-domain e-reader mini-games created by us (devrs) ... unless things keep getting worse (grrr) and I will be forced to discontinue my e-reader work/research :(

We are pretty close to the point of being able to develop minigames. There are three possible ways that I know of, for storing code in an ereader save.

1. Nes mapper 0/1 format, (minus the iNES header). For this method, you have to know how to develop something for the NES system, since the e-reader does have an nes emulator. (13 commercial games, 10 of which are released, even before FireFly got involved. There is one save available, based off a Public Domain nes rom).
2. Z80 code, Most of the mini games are developed in this. The assemble to location, and maximum size is currently unknown, how the graphics/sounds are done, is unknown, and finally, what z80 variant used, is unknown. (16 commercial games released. It is unknown how "Rising sun" dumped Air hockey and Kirby Puzzle. All of the mario party e games except one, and the animal crossing character card was released by me. (you can proceed to kick my *ss if you wish), and 4 commercial games (including one mario party e game), and Animal crossing: jumpman mario was released by firefly.)
3. Arm/Thumb Code, Anything you can do on GBA hardware, can be done directly here. (the only thing that some people have a save of, is "Program Loader (c) Tim Schuerewegen", myself included.) Code is linked to 0x03000000, and can be 32K max.

I have no intentions of releasing any ereader raw/bin dumps, other than what is on my site at http://www.alpha-ii.com/caitsith2/ereader/tech.htm (SMB3 powerup cards, which only contain a byte or so of actual data, designed to unlock items that are already in the game. No level/demo cards are released, since the level data/demo data is not stored on the rom, but on the cards themselves).

A lot of what I found out in the tech docs listed in the above page, I did some of my own research on. FireFly already knows a bunch of this info, but I have never been given docs on it, just standard reversing of what is available.


Hopefully FireFly will release a tool to convert nes roms (mapper 0/1) to the format needed by the e-reader, so that some of us devrs can start some minigame construction.

[FireFly]

FireFly already knows a bunch of this info, but I have never been given docs on it, just standard reversing of what is available.

You can not give what you do not have. There are no docs, yet.

I have been working for several hours a day over the last 4 months (rough estimate) researching different aspects of the e-reader and writing the necessary tools, and then someone does "standard reversing of what is available" on some of these tools, which makes me feel angry and sad at the same time.

This was going to be a private project (others were/are free to join) with a public release once the goal was accomplished, being able to convert your own mini-games (PD) into printable dotcodes. Now some of the information is already out, and is being used by the wrong kind of people :(

[Ichinisan]

I dumped the first 10 ereader saves that are available, all of them being the nes classics. There are 3 left remaining to be dumped. They are Ice Climber, Donkey Kong, and Clu Clu Land.

Rising Sun made 2 other dumps available, Air Hockey, and Kirby Puzzle, as well as ips patches to allow the ereader roms to work on flash carts. (without the scanner obviously).

Then, Tim Shuerewegen, who is researching how to make your own ereader games, has made 6 more available. http://users.skynet.be/firefly/gba/e-reader/ 1 Nes game, and 5 minigames that cannot normally be saved to the ereader.

All of the ereader saves are for the US ereader, except for Air hockey, which is for the Japanese ereader+.

There are very few people that have the tools for dumping the contents of the actual ereader cards, at this moment. dumping ereader saves is slightly easier to do.


For the technical people, The anatomy of a Dot code image, on previously mentioned site, gives excellent details on what the ereader optical scanner is seeing. The top/bottom yellow area, is the guide bar that goes all the way across the dot code. The Big dots in each of the corners, surround a single data block. The red vertical lines, Are the address columns, and the blue area is the data area. The data in that dot code is read from the blue areas left to right, top down. It is then 10-8 demodulated, to form the raw data. The raw data is then reed solomon decoded, to form the binary data, contained within the cards.

Air Hockey was distributed as a freebie by the millions in the USA. It can be saved to the eReader also.

Also, I have some rare SMB3 cards that were from a special bundle. My cart was packed with 3 more cards than the standard SMA4 package (5 total). These cards are not part of the series packs. One of the additional cards is "Airship's Revenge"; a promotional level that was only in the first-shipment WalMart bundle.

[pokemanic120]

I am wondering if sav files of any of the Skyridge pokemon e-cards exist. I know that Expedition and Aquapolis exist... But Skyridge is a bit of a mystery.

It seems that Rising Sun may have made them, but I don't see where they'd be. Is there a way to contact him?

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

As far as I know (judgeing by it's changelog) no$gba is capable of using dotcodes and basically emulates an e-reader.

I know the discussion has veared off this path, but it seems to be part of what the TC wanted and I don't see anyone else giving this information after a quick scan.

[mudlord]

If you want, I can compile a version of VBA-M that supports e-Reader emulation. CaitSith2 made a VBA fork that seems to fully support e-Reader HW...;)

[Hiei-YYH]

just use codes to enable, no need for this... =/

[Squall-Leonhart]

mudlord, partial e-reader support already exists in any emulator using the latest VBA 1.8 source.

[mudlord]

But its not fully complete, thats the issue here.

[Dualscreenman]

Specifications (http://nocash.emubase.de/gbatek.htm#gbacartereader)

Documentation, if anyone wants it. If these specs were implemented properly, then VBA would probably have e-Reader support equivalent to that of No$gba.

[Squall-Leonhart]

But its not fully complete, thats the issue here.

i know :P i was just saying its got partial support.