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Flashing Flash Cartridges

Friends, AliExpress now has:

Cool metal labels for Game Boy Advance consoles.

Cool eXtremeRate cases for GBA SP.

Friends, help me buy (if you have) various old stuff: Help me buy.

Dear friends, before you start the process of flashing a cartridge (or device), please read this text carefully.

Before starting any work on flashing cartridges (devices), charge the device to 100%, and do not remove the device from the charger or the cartridge from the device during the flashing process!
Do not turn off the console during the flashing process! Under no circumstances!
When flashing a cartridge with a new firmware, there is a real possibility that you may irreversibly damage it.

I have a GBA Movie Player cartridge in my collection.

M3 Movie Player

And after flashing, it stopped working.

Fortunately, I found a program online (on Nintendo DS) that re-flashed the cartridge and completely restored it. But the first few minutes after the cartridge stopped working were unforgettable, realizing that I might have broken it.

Once again, before you start flashing, you must understand that you are doing this AT YOUR OWN RISK!

What to Do?

Of course, there are cartridges whose manufacturers claim they are protected from damage during upgrades. For example, the manufacturer of Ez Flash Omega writes: "System on chip level recovery mode, prevent upgrade dead." But most cartridges do not have such a protection system (especially older cartridges)!

If you want to flash an OLD cartridge (whose production and support have been discontinued), think about the following:

1. You need to immediately find a way to restore it (before flashing, not after, when you're panicking and searching for a solution).

For example, to restore GBA Movie Player, Supercard CF, and Supercard SD, there is a program GBA Movie Player flasher v1.4 by Rafael Vuijk (DarkFader). The program itself is called flashmp.nds.

To restore FlashAdvancePRO, there is a program called FAS1Flasher.nds. It writes the Pogoshell firmware to the cartridge, making it functional again.

And so on.

2. If you haven't found such a restoration tool, consider whether the risk is worth it.

3. As an option, buy a spare cartridge (if you can find one) and flash it, so you can discard it later without worry.

Good luck, friends! And remember! The feeling of ruining a cartridge is priceless, but for everything else, there's MasterCard and eBay.