Can you flash an Xplorer FX with a Game Shark Pro v3 rom and vice versa?

Post by **retro_samurai** » January 9th, 2023, 9:23 pm

Is it possible flash an Xplorer FX with a Game Shark Pro v3 rom and vice versa? Would that work?

The GS Pro v3 uses a physical button on it to bring the in-game menu, so if I use the Xplorer FX and flash it with the GS Pro v3 rom and it happens to work, how do I bring the in-game menu given that the Xplorer FX does not have the button on the cartridge?

I want to play mostly USA region games.

Is flashing these carts with each others roms a good idea at all? Does the Xplorer FX mostly contain European region codes?

Post by **nocash** » January 10th, 2023, 3:10 am

No, that won't work. Xplorer and GameShark (Datel) have completely different I/O maps.
And GameSharkProv3 sounds as if it's same as PAR3 (?), there isn't much known about PAR3, but it has yet different I/O map than normal Datel hardware.
http://problemkaputt.de/psxspx-cheat-devices.htm

If you want to reinstall a PAR3-type firmware then you'd need PAR3-compatible installer (eg. an PSX-EXE file that contains the ROM image & the installer code). It's probably easy if you know how to write to flash chips, but I doubt that anybody has ever made a tested/working PAR3 installer.

As far as I know, nobody even knows how the PCB and chipset looks like, least how to write to flash chips from yet unknown manufacturers. I don't know if that will help... but a PCB photo would be interesting to get an idea how that hardware works.

PS. Are there any ROM-images for GameSharkProv3 or PAR3 at all? I've never seen those in internet. If you have overwritten then only existing copy then you might have a problem ; )

Post by **Squaresoft74** » January 10th, 2023, 3:26 am

You can flash/restore AR/GS PRO devices using Unirom boot disc.
The following decrypted roms are part of the included Datel romset:

Code: Select all

Action Replay Pro (England) v3.2
Action Replay Pro (France) v3.0
Action Replay Pro (France) v3.2
Game Buster (Germany) v3.2
GameShark Pro (USA) v3.0
GameShark Pro (USA) v3.1
GameShark Pro (USA) v3.2
Pro Action Replay 3 (Japan) v3.2

Post by **retro_samurai** » January 10th, 2023, 11:29 am

nocash wrote: ↑January 10th, 2023, 3:10 am No, that won't work. Xplorer and GameShark (Datel) have completely different I/O maps...

Thank you for actually responding.

So yeah, no way to do what I wanted apparently.

I have to say I lot of stuff on this forum is over my head to be honest, as I am not a dev yet, would have to learn quite a lot of stuff before legitimately understanding a large amount of what is talked about around here.