Linux
Flash2Advance - f2a Readme.txt
f2a 0.1
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Flash2Advance USB up-/download tool for Linux
This is a simple tool for up- and downloading data to/from a Flash2Advance
cart using the F2A USB linker.
WARNING: Using the F2A USB linker together with other EZUSB-based hardware
may damage your devices. This is _not_ a problem of this tool and may
happen with the original Win32 software as well. See the known problems
section for details.
Requirements:
- libusb, see http://libusb.sourceforge.net/
- The EZUSB2131 firmware upload driver has to be loaded, see
http://ezusb2131.sourceforge.net/
- usbdevfs has to be mounted: "mount -t usbdevfs none /proc/bus/usb"
- You have to have read/write access to /proc/ezusb and /proc/bus/usb, so
you most likely have to run f2a as root.
Run "f2a --help" for instructions on how to use the tool. Some examples:
"f2a rom.gba" uploads rom.gba to the F2A cart
"f2a gbaldr32.bin rom1.gba rom2.gba" uploads rom1.gba, rom2.gba and the
loader, padding each to a full 32 kB as required by the F2A carts
"f2a -rs 64 backup.gba" backs up a 64 MBit cart to backup.gba
"f2a -brs 128 backup.sav" backs up 128 kBit SRAM data to backup.sav
Known problems:
- I have no idea what to do with the status returned by CMD_GETINF and
thus no clue how to detect what type of cart is inserted. f2a has been
tested with a 256MBit F2A cart and probably works with F2A carts of
other sizes, too. Turbo carts _may_ work as well, but the padding for
multi-ROMs will most certainly be wrong.
- The F2A linker is built around the EZUSB microcontroller which has to be
fed with firmware before doing anything useful. Some genius did not change
the default vendor and product IDs of the F2A linker to anything unique
when designing it, so there's no way of telling if the device you plug in
is actually an F2A linker, some prototype USB device or even another
consumer device designed by an equally bright-minded person. f2a simply
uploads the F2A firmware to the first generic EZUSB device found, which
may or may not be an F2A linker. If it is not, doing so _may_ damage the
device by badly configuring the I/O ports of the EZUSB controller. There
is nothing I can do about that, and the same problem exists when using the
vendor-supplied Win32 drivers.
Legal stuff:
- The f2a source code and documentation is licensed under the terms of the
GNU Public License version 2. See the file "COPYING" for details,
especially the parts about the exclusion of any warranty.
- The firmware files f2afirm.hex and mb.bin distributed with this software
have been extracted from the original Win32 software as can be downloaded
from http://www.flash2advance.com/. I was unable to find any sort of
copyright statement.
Contact information:
If you wish to contribute code or can provide me with useful information
regarding the F2A linker and carts I'm lacking, please don't hesitate to
write to [email protected]. Don't expect a quick reply, though.
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