Table of Contents
NeoFlash
Neo Flash is the most amazing flash cartridge in terms of its impact on the gaming industry. After all, this cartridge was the first to allow the launch of pirated Nintendo DS games.
Yes, despite the fact that it looks like a Game Boy Advance flash cartridge (and it can run GBA games), its main purpose is to run Nintendo DS games using Magic Key 1.
Kit
This cartridge came in a very beautiful box.
The kit includes:
1. Neo Flash flash cartridge (512 or 1024 megabits);
2. NDS Magic Key – commercial version of PassMe (read more in the article: «PassMe»;
3. USB Slim Loader 3 reader;
4. USB extension cable;
5. Batteries (3 pcs. CR 1632);
6. CD with drivers.
Where to Buy?
Unfortunately, buying this cartridge is quite difficult.
The only listing available right now is in France and costs 450 euros.
Nintendo DS in Europe costs about 50 euros, so the net price of the cartridge is 400 euros!
Preparation
Regardless of whether you want to write Nintendo DS or Game Boy Advance games to this flash cartridge, you will need an old laptop or virtualization software and Windows XP 32bit.
I use virtualization software - Oracle VM VirtualBox.
It's free, you can download it from www.virtualbox.org.
After you download and install Windows XP 32bit, you can proceed with installing the software and writing games to the flash cartridge.
Neo Power Kit Program
Download the program:
Please note! The first step is to install the program, and only then connect the reader to the computer.
After installation, connect the reader. If you are using Oracle VM VirtualBox, then in the top menu you need to click "Devices", hover over the "USB" tab and select GENERAL USB FULL SPEED SLIM LOADER III.
After that, you will be prompted to install drivers for the device. They are located in the folder where the Neo Power Kit program was installed.
Select "No, not this time" and click "Next". Select "Install from a specific location" and click "Next". Select "Include the following location in the search", click "Browse" and select the folder with the drivers (in my case: C:\NEO Power Kit\USB_Driver\CD03 – Slim loader 3\) and click "Ok", then click "Next". The driver installation will begin. At the end, click "Finish". That's it, the preparatory stage is complete.
After installing the program, there will be 3 icons on the desktop:
GBA Mode – if you want to write Game Boy Advance games to the cartridge, you need to double-click this icon before launching the NEO Power Kit program.
NDS Mode - if you want to write Nintendo DS games to the cartridge, you need to double-click this icon before launching the NEO Power Kit program.
Please note, if the NEO Power Kit program is already running, you need to close it. These bat files change the program's configuration ini file. Specifically, the line with the menu loader address is changed. To be precise, to launch GBA games (if more than one is planned), you need to write a special loader (essentially, this is the cartridge's start menu, where all the games will be listed and you can choose which one to launch). In the case of NDS games, there should be no loader, and the configuration ini file is changed so that the loader is not written.
NEO Power Kit is a program for writing games to the cartridge.
Launch the NEO Power Kit program and you will see this menu:
Please note the numbers, I will refer to them later.
If the cartridge was not inserted into the USB Slim Loader 3 reader before launching the program and it says "Can’t find any cartridge" at the bottom, then you need to click the Start button (in the Refresh menu on the left).
The program can be roughly divided into 5 parts:
1. Menu;
2. Quick action buttons;
3. Menu, which essentially duplicates the top menu (except for one item);
4. Description of the data that is either already on the cartridge or will be written to it;
5. Status bar.
Since menu (1) essentially completely copies menu (3), I will use menu (3) for the description.
1. Cartridge tab:
The inscription "Disk (0,0) on NEO Writer 1" appears only if the cartridge is recognized. Nothing happens when clicked.
The Exit button closes the program.
2. Rom Operation tab:
Add – add a ROM image (in menu 4).
Remove – remove a ROM image.
Burn All – write the added ROM images to the flash cartridge.
The quick action buttons (menu 2) correspond to these three buttons (Add / Remove / Burn All).
Save Selected – download the selected (in menu 4) ROM image from the cartridge to the computer.
Save All – save all ROM images from the cartridge to the computer.
3. Saver Operation tab:
This tab is only available if English is selected. If you select any other language, it will disappear.
Save All – dump the SRAM memory of the flash cartridge. Please note, this is not a dump of a specific game, but a dump of the entire SRAM memory, so you cannot save a single game's save to the computer. Even the save format will not be sav (as usual), but nsf.
Restore All – restore the SRAM memory dump to the flash cartridge.
4. Options tab:
This is the only tab that differs in menu 1 and 3.
In the top menu (1), an additional tab appears:
Change View -> Old NEO Style – returns the cell size in menu 4 back to the original (if you changed it).
Show default toolbar – does nothing. Probably, the developer planned to add menu customization but did not have time to add this feature.
Setup – program settings. If you click this button, a tab with additional program options will open:
PlugIn Manage tab:
Type – drop-down menu:
Each submenu will open the same window where you can remove additional options from the program or add them back using the Add or Remove buttons.
The left window shows available options, and the right window shows already enabled ones.
Flash Manager tab:
One option is available: Official XG2Pro Slim Burner Flash. Since the NeoFlash flash cartridge is a copy of XG Flash2 PRO, this option enables the use of this cartridge in this program. Moreover, the developers of XG Flash2 PRO stopped supporting their program and directly said to use NEO Power Kit.
Accordingly, if you move this option to the left, support will be disabled.
File Type Support tab:
This tab has many options. But in fact, these are all emulators. That is, if you remove them, you will not be able to select a specific ROM image. For example, if you remove NEO Power Kit GB Rom Loader, you will not be able to select a file with the .GB extension (when you click the ADD button to add a game, you simply will not see the desired file, it will not be displayed). Accordingly, you will not be able to write it to the flash cartridge.
The most interesting thing here is that you can write a ROM image from Game Boy games, but for some reason, you cannot write from Game Boy Color games.
Two functions are worth noting separately:
NEO Power Kit Zip Rom Loader – NeoFlash supports zip archiving. For example, you can write a GBA ROM image of a game directly in an archive, which is very relevant since memory is limited.
NEO Power View 1.0 – allows you to write an image or text file to the flash cartridge.
Patch tab:
Perhaps the strangest tab. All 3 options are initially disabled. Moreover, they do not work even if you enable them. For example, Official NEO Power Kit 4Key Reset Patch, in theory, the ROM image of the game should be patched using the BOMA (Boot-o-Mat Advance) program, and the ability to exit the game to the NeoFlash menu should appear. In practice, whether the game is patched depends on anything but this option. The patch is sometimes applied to the ROM image, sometimes not. Moreover, if it is applied (you can see it, a black screen appears for a split second), the game will simply not start.
If you take the BOMA program itself, the game will be patched and will run on this flash cartridge, but you will not be able to exit the game to the menu.
What Official NEO Power Kit Patch and Official NEO Power Kit Special Patch do is unknown. They do not affect games or the program in any way.
Please note, after enabling any of these options, you need to restart the program. And in general, if you change any settings, it is better to restart the program.
Upd. Somehow, I managed to apply the 4 Key Reset patch, and the game even started. If you launch the game with the A button, the game will not start, but if you immediately reset it with the L + R + Select + Start buttons, it will start. But you still cannot exit the game. When you press the combination L + R + Select + Start, the game simply restarts, but it should exit to the menu.
Normal PlugIns tab:
Has one plugin – Official NEO Power Kit Refresh Tools. If you remove this option, the Refresh tab with the Start button will disappear from menus 1 and 3.
Let's move to the Color Config tab:
Here you can customize the color scheme of menu (3).
And the last tab, Misc:
BootLoader Path For NEO – this is the path to the loader intended for writing a large number of games, that is, the menu with the list of games that you see when you launch the flash cartridge on the console.
ROM Backup Directory – the address of the folder where ROM image backups from the flash cartridge will be saved.
Saver Backup Directory – the address of the folder where the SRAM memory image will be saved.
Show BootLoader – if checked, the neoboot.bin file will be displayed in menu (4) along with the games, and if unchecked, it will not.
Let's return to menu (3).
Refresh tab:
There is only one button here, Start. It updates the information about the flash cartridge and reads data from it. For example, if you first launched the program and then inserted the flash cartridge into the reader. It will only be recognized after you click this button.
Language tab:
Program language selection. I recommend leaving it in English because in other languages, the menu is cut down, and some options are missing.
Writer Version tab:
Depending on the reader, you need to select the appropriate drivers. 0412 and 0502 correspond to the USB Slim Loader 3 reader, 0506 corresponds to the USB Slim Loader 4 reader.
In Oracle VM VirtualBox, there is a device menu at the top, hover over the USB tab and look for our reader. The number in brackets is what you need to select.
As you can see, in my case, it says [0502], so I selected the second driver.
Help tab:
About NEO Power Kit – opens information about the program. You can check the program version.
Upgrade – does not work. Apparently, this button was supposed to upgrade the program, but over the years it stopped working.
Let's move to menu (4) and directly to writing games.
This menu has 7 columns:
State – there can be two values, C and D. C – the game is already written to the cartridge, D – you just added the game, and it is not yet written.
Rom Name – the name of the ROM image that will be displayed in the menu on the cartridge itself. If you click on the name, you can change it.
File path – displayed only for games that are not yet written. Accordingly, it shows the path to the ROM image.
File size – the size of the game.
Saver Type – the type of game save. You can change it manually. Often, the program itself recognizes the save type, but in the case of, for example, Russian ROM images, it may not cope, so you will need to set it manually.
Saver Size – the size of the save. All 3 save types (EEPROM, SRAM, FLASH) had chips of different sizes. Therefore, you need to set the correct value. Often recognized automatically.
4 Key Reset – you can choose from two values: enable and disable. If you enable the Official NEO Power Kit 4Key Reset Patch option in the Setup menu, the game will be patched. But, as I wrote above, it will not work. Therefore, we do not change anything.
How to Write Game Boy Advance Games to the Cartridge?
It's very simple.
Before launching the program, double-click the GBA Mode icon twice and only then launch the NEO Power Kit program.
Click the Add button. Select all the ROM images you need. They will appear on the right in the menu (4).
Click the Burn All button and wait. The status bar (5) will show the progress of writing the games to the cartridge.
How to Write Nintendo DS Games to the Cartridge?
Here, everything is not so simple. First, you need to prepare Nintendo DS ROM images of the games.
There are two programs:
GST Universal Patcher 3.1 (11th message from the top).
The main problem here is that my antivirus complains about the GST Universal Patcher 3.1 program, so I cannot post it here. But I will leave a link to where I downloaded it.
As for the NDS Patcher program, here is a direct link. The antivirus does not complain.
A bit of theory.
These programs patch Nintendo DS ROM images. In theory, both should do this in such a way that it is possible to save game progress on the GBA flash cartridge.
This is important because initially, the original Nintendo DS cartridge was used for saving. This means that you had to match the cartridge to the game you wanted to play. For example, if you had a cartridge with FLASH memory (e.g., a Pokemon cartridge), but you needed to play a game with EEPROM save type, your progress would not be saved.
In theory, the developers of both programs claim that they do exactly that, i.e., patch the game so that it saves to the GBA cartridge. In practice, the NDS Patcher v 0.1 program does this with about one percent of games, for example, NintenDogs. On the other hand, GST Universal Patcher 3.1 actually patches all games, but the antivirus complains about it.
I have a ROM image of the game Polarium with the file name: 0006 - Polarium (USA).nds. Copy it to the folder with your program.
To use these programs, simply drag the NDS file with the game directly onto the icon of either program. After copying, you will have the old file without modification and new modified files will be added.
If you drag it onto NDS Patcher, a new file will appear in this folder: 0006 - Polarium (USA).nds.gba.
This is the file you need to write to the flash cartridge.
If you drag it onto GST Universal Patcher 3.1, two files will appear in the program folder:
0006 - Polarium (USA)_NDS_SAVE-GST.nds – saves progress to the original Nintendo DS cartridge.
0006 - Polarium (USA)_GBA_SAVE-GST.nds – saves progress to the NeoFlash flash cartridge (in its SRAM memory).
Accordingly, you need to choose where you want to save your progress and drag the appropriate file to the flash cartridge.
Writing the NDS ROM image to the flash cartridge is done in the same way as writing the GBA ROM image. We talked about this above.
Using the Flash Cartridge
If you wrote a GBA game/games along with the Neoboot.bin loader, you will enter a menu with a list of games (even if only one game was written).
In this mode, you will only have one additional option – launching the game with the A or B button.
If you launch the game with the A button, it will load immediately without loading the console's BIOS.
If you launch the game with the B button, the console will start the game with a reboot, as if you launched an original cartridge.
You can also write a single game without the loader. To do this, you need to launch the program in NDS Mode. That is, before launching the NEO Power Kit program, double-click the NDS Mode icon twice.
When you launch the flash cartridge, you will immediately enter the game.
If you wrote an NDS game, you first need to insert the Nintendo DS Magic Key 1 into the console, and into this device – any original Nintendo DS cartridge. Insert the NeoFlash flash cartridge into the GBA slot. Only then start the console. You will immediately load into the game and can start playing.
Epilogue
This flash cartridge causes me cognitive dissonance. It does only one thing perfectly – it runs Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance games. But everything else is just a mess.
The software for this cartridge is terrible: it's buggy, constantly crashes, many functions simply do not work. The disk includes instructions for the cartridge. And it says that you need to add a game using the ADD button and write it using the BURN button. Nothing else is said there. Moreover, this instruction was written by some user on the NeoFlash forum. That is, the cartridge developers simply saved a page from the internet and wrote it to the disk.
But still, this is the first flash cartridge that could run Nintendo DS games. Therefore, it can be forgiven a lot, especially since it performs its main function perfectly.
