(long post about how I finally got my transferer working – main moral: dont format the cart after unsuccessfull write, but try to overwrite - it worked for me. If it doesnt – try different PC – it will in the end. Power adaptors dont matter much in my experience).
So for a long time (2 months or more) nothing would make my EMS GB Transferer work. I tried many power adapters etc nothing would work - it always would write ok but then fail to verify. On my other computer (thinkpad t42 notebook) it wont write at all (no connection to the transferer at all).
So today I tried making a dos boot cd rom and trying to write the cart from Dos with EMSTool v1.3 – it didnt work on neither on my computers (says Gb cart not present). I tried different things and port settings in bios – no way.
So I went to my neighbour and tried it at his computer (also with windows XP). First I boot into dos and try EMSTool again – the same error, no detection of the cart. As last resort I tried to run the regular XP version of GBSWPRE.EXE on my friends PC – it started to write but then the progress bar stopped (as many have reported, but I never had it happen on my PC) – it was fixed by halfway removing (only tiny bit) the cartridge from the transferer and sticking it back (as some have reported before). It would start but then stop again, so I had to half-remove-put-back a few times and at last it finished writing and started verifying with a verify error of course. So as suggested by others i took the cart out put it in my gameboy, turned it on (lsdj didnt work) and then put it back in transferer and WITHOUT FORMATTING THE CART started to write again. This time it was written and verified OK without any additional cart removing or anything – it just did what its supposed to do! I put the cartridge in gameboy and booted LSDJ but the first Song screen was not empty – it was different numbers in all columns (most of them had 38 in them) and other garbage so i tried different things and ended up with fully resetting LSDJ (Go to project screen, press SELECT+A with cursor over «load/save», answer “YES”) after which everything was cleared and after turning the gamboy on again I had clean new working LSDJ. HURRAY!
SO. My suggestion for others to get transferer working after trying many things:
- DOS is not worth trying – didnt work on 3 different PCs.
- try different computers – one will work
- the technology is have it finish writing first time, if it stops halfway remove the cart and put it back so it resumes, have it write until finished and do the verify error thing. Then put it in gameboy, turn it on, wait, turn off, put it back in transferer again. And now most important advice. The GBSWPRE.EXE will tell you there is LSDJ on the cart. I would usually format the cart and try writing again - without success. DO NOT FORMAT (!) the cart, start writing over it. It will work. If it doesnt try different win xp pc.
- for info my power adapter with which it worked is rateted at 9v 1.2A.
- if after booting LSDJ for the first time you have funny stuff in it
(i believe its left over from the first failed writing attempt) do a full reset and it will be all ok!
THE END
4.6.2006 – After reading this article, I let the program run the transfer 25+ times (each time getting the error message), on the 26th time it worked !