"The 1M sub-circuit board is not installed."

Now, I know from the title the first thing that would probably pop into your mind is something along the lines of "This guy has posted in the wrong forum!" or "Easy Answer! He just needs to change his file save type to Flash 128Kb!!!" but if only my problem was that simple....

For starters, let me say that I am a novice who has been lurking around these forums for about a week or two and I've recently decided to make an account so that I could access some of the wonderful hacks made by the wonderful people of this community. The first thing that caught my eye was Pokemon Sienna, a hack which has won its fair share of glory with its grand total of seven Hack of the Year awards.

Being the resourceful man that I am, I dug up the old Pokemon Fire Red ROM from underneath my plethora of junk on my desktop and quickly downloaded Lunar IPS. Using Lunar IPS, I patched the IPS file downloaded from the Pokemon Sienna page onto the Fire Red ROM. And boom, I start up the game via Visual Boy Advance and with a bit of research, I configured the settings correctly to have the game run smoothly.

However, there was a problem. Pokemon, I felt, is suppose to be played on a hand held device. I've played Fire Red, Leaf Green, Crystal, and Emerald all on my Android with the help of the spiffy application called Gameboid. (Because when you built yourself a sexy gaming rig, why not use it on things that push it to its full potential and play smaller games on small devices?) Gameboid, when using the Flash 128KB save file type setting, still produces the "The 1M sub-circuit board is not installed." error and does not let me save. So being able to play this game on my Android is a big deciding factor in whether I play it or not. And I really want to play it. T_T

And with my very limited knowledge about ROMs and how they work, I'm at a loss on how to troubleshoot this problem. The interwebs have given me vague and often times contradictory information. I've browsed through the Help and Beginners sections of these forums, a few random threads on ngemu.com, and been scouring all over the belly of the underworld where those hackers, pirates, and other unsavory characters like me reside yet to no avail. The information on Gameboid is very limited. The only thing I've uncovered regarding this error is that it has something to do with the save file being, for a lack of more informed answer, "not Flash 128KB".

So now I pose a few questions in order for me to better troubleshoot this hack in regards to the Gameboid emulator.

1). The Pokemon Sienna thread specified the code base as "FireRed [BPRE]". Mayhaps I was supposed to have patched to a specific version of Fire Red? What exactly does "[BPRE]" signify?

2a). When using VBA, why exactly does Flash 128KB file save type fix the error and any other save file type to cause it? How does the error, seemingly to be about a hardware issue that the emulator is not properly emulating, relate to the save file at all?

2b). Could I manually create a working save file from VBA, move it to my Android device, and the open the save from there? Since the save file would be properly formatted, would Gameboid not simply use the same format found the the file that it opened? (Like you open up a .txt with Microsoft Word, it won't save it as a Word document unless you specify it to? Okay, bad example but I hope you get my meaning.)

3). In a standard Game Boy Advance, what exactly is the 1M sub-circuit board? What does it do? Why is it there?

4). Could the BIOS file I use in conjunction with the Android application, Gameboid, be causing this? Using that BIOS, I've played regular Pokemon games on my Android. Are all BIOS files the same? Should I try other BIOS files? (I assume that they are since they are simply the BIOS of the Game Boy Advance and I wouldn't expect them to differ.)

5). Are there any resources that could give me a crash course in the conceptual and technical side of emulation, ROMs, and the Game Boy Advance in general?

Thanks for reading through my long rambling post.

-Regards,
Dapeebb

tl;dr - Answer Questions 1-5. If those are still too long, then I've lost all faith in humanity.

PS: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! :D

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Update 1/1/11

-Reinstalled Gameboid. Redownloaded every copy of Fire Red and the patch server times to ensure there was no error in the download.
-Attempted both patching with .IPS and .APS on the USA, Eur, and Jap versions of Fire Red to check for errors in the patching process.
Eur and Jap versions didn't patch properly.
USA version patched. Same problem as before. For some reason .ASP patched produced a save file even though I could not save in game. I was unable to load from the save file. The same file was 128KB in size.
-Downloaded obtained several copies of gba_bios.bin from several different sources to check for errors in different possible bios types. Tested each gba_bios.bin file with both .IPS and .APS patched USA Fire Red ROM.
-"The 1M sub-circuit board is not installed." Error persisted.
-Attempted to use a different hack with the Pokemon Emerald base, Pokemon Flora Sky to check is Gameboid was capable of running patched ROMs at all. Pokemon Flora Sky runs with no errors on Gameboid. Saving system is intact.

So this leads me to conclude that the problem is not in the patching process, bios, or the download and that I did not mess anything up.

This leaves three options:
A). There is a problem in the emulator itself.
B). The hack was developed with VBA in mind and is incompatible with my preferred emulator.
C). There may be a problem with hacks using Pokemon Fire Red code base.

Things done:
-I've contacted the creator of Gameboid and he is currently working with me in solving the problem.


Things to do:
-Continue testing hacks on Gameboid emulator with a focus on testing hacks with a Fire Red code base.
-Contact the creator or Pokemon Sienna.

My best answer would be to start a game on VBA and copy the .sav file over to your phone. With that save file, the problem may fix itself. But I doubt there is something with the ROM that stops it from working in any other emulator.

Sorry for the slow reply.

Kepov said:

Some of you may notice the ''The 1M sub-circuit board is not installed'' message after the "Press Start" screen. This message also shows up after beating the Elite Four. DO NOT use save states to solve this problem because they will be useless after the game restarts. To fix this problem all you will have to do is follow the steps for using the vba-over.ini file in the first post. The down side is that you will have to delete you old save (or at least back it up for now) in order for the fix to work. Sorry but there is no other way that I have yet found that will allow you to play the game properly without problems using your existing save. I know you worked hard to get where you are and I really am sorry but in order for the game to save properly the fix must be appied to a fresh save file.

Click to expand...

I understood that the 1M sub-circuit board error will appear after the E4 and that save states will not work as a long term solution for this problem. Knowing such, I've not started the game past choosing my starter and only even going that far as a method of attempting to force Gameboid to generate a .sav file.

I also don't think you are understanding my problem. Pokemon Sienna works flawlessly on VBA. It does not on Gameboid, an Android emulator. The vba-over.ini is most likely a settings file for the VBA emulator. I doubt it would work for the Gameboid emulator. I will however take a look into the Gameboid emulator itself and attempt to isolate the settings file and make manual adjustments myself.

This may prove difficult since the data is saved in application format on the Android Operating System and Android applications are compressed in the form of a .apk file. Applications are Android are slightly different from applications on a computer.

Darthatron said:

My best answer would be to start a game on VBA and copy the .sav file over to your phone. With that save file, the problem may fix itself. But I doubt there is something with the ROM that stops it from working in any other emulator.

Sorry for the slow reply.

Click to expand...

Most likely there isn't anything wrong with the ROM, I agree. The problem probably lies in the emulator itself and the process that it uses to create .sav files.

Update 1/2/11

-Attempted this. Gameboid would not read the .sav file. Resulted in a new game dispite the .sav file having the exact same file name and being in the same folder as the ROM.
-Replaced ROM on phone with ROM on Android to ensure that they were the same exact ROM file. Still unable to load .sav
-Probably may lie in the .sav file itself. Possible file pathing error?

Things done:
-I've contacted the creator of Gameboid and he is currently working with me in solving the problem. He has agreed that it is most likely a problem with the emulator however a fix may not come in a timely fashion. Which leaves me to continue working on this issue.


Things to do:
-Continue testing hacks on Gameboid emulator with a focus on testing hacks with a Fire Red code base.
-Contact the creator or Pokemon Sienna. (Since the problem most likely doesn't lie within the ROM.)
-Dig up the settings file in the emulator on my Android since the phone will only connect the SD cards and disallows access to any of the application files. >.>
-Investigate the .sav file in hopes of finding out why Gameboid won't load it.

I think you should fix the problem in VBA, then either transfer the save or the fixed game over to your phone. My phone can't run these so I don't know.

Hey, I'm using a rooted HTC hero running Cynagen mod (not that it matters) anyway I'm having the same problem I also tryed tiger gba but I got the same error. Since I have root access ill try editing the .apk and see what I get ill post my progress.

I think you should use vba + vba-over

Hey i use gameboid to play my pokemon hack games n i can save.

The only game i cant play its pokemon light platinum and shiny gold x have a error whenever i press the start buttom the emulator crashes!.

So yea if u have played pokemon light platinum with gameboid let me know cuz i really want to.play it.

By the way i have the HTC EVO n the gameboid app runs perfect...

I have a problem with the Shiny Gold BX5. The same ''The 1M sub-circuit board is not installed''. I searched for a patch but there isn't any. D':

Well, this thread isn't quite a month old yet, so I hope I'm not bumping it or anything...

I have the gpSPhone GBA emulator for my iPod Touch 2G. The clean Leaf Green ROM and the Flora Sky Emerald hack work flawlessly, but the Pokémon Sienna Version patch for Fire Red doesn't work. If only the emu had a save states option... Or maybe if the hack was LeafGreen-based instead of FireRed...

Um Guys, Im 100% certain that the problem exists on the base rom (did you even test the rom before patching it?). I downloaded and patched every advanced gen game at least once and the only one that gave me that error was fire red (patched or not patched). So I found another fire red rom from another site and it worked, as simple as that... but maby one was v1.0 and the other was v1.1 I never checked, maby v1.1 was made more difficult for emulators to run (like black and white were). As for it working on VisualBoy and not on Gameboid, perhaps VisualBoy is more compatible with different roms? double check your settings on Gamboid thats all I can say.

You have to rename or edit the name of the rom with dang I forgot the name but is somewhere in pokemon platinum thread .. I got able to played pokemon platinum with gameboid on my HTC evo.

Well, I have one thing I've tried that may answer some questions.

Okay, so you know how in Pokemon editing-related applications, the ini file says something about Fire Red being BPRE? Well I took this deeply and opened up Pokemon Sienna in Hex Workshop v6. Where, normally, "POKEMON FIREBRPE01" is located, I saw "POKEMON SIENNA:):)". So since I couldn't open Pokemon Sienna in YAPE (don't ask why), I changed it back to "POKEMON FIREBPRE01", and it worked.

HOWEVER, I still can't save on gpSPhone (same situation as your Gameboid) without using save states (.svs files.)

Just thought I'd try to help. :)

Yeah, I know your problem mate, I've been searching for a solution for Pokemon Rijon Adventures, but without any succes.. But then again, even if I edit some settings, Rijon Adventures won't work on VBA

And I wanna play Rijon Adventures on my Android too, using Gameboid. Many people recommend the v1.0 rom of firered but that doesn't work either.. I'm gonna look for gameshark codes for FireRed and try them on Rijon Adventures (they should work for Sienna as well, they're both based on firered) and I will search for a code that works as a kind of fix for the 1m sub circuit board.. I found a patch file somewhere on pokecommunity for firered, it worked for a while and I could save in RijonAdventures (and got rid of the 1m sub message!) but if I wanted to enter a house or something similar my gameboid shuts itself off.. So that wasn't working either. But if you want to give it a try just google; 1m sub circuit board firered and there should be a patch for it

I don't know if this might help, but how about trying to enable the real time clock in VBA and then try the rom, that might work...

You have to rename or edit the name of the rom with dang I forgot the name but is somewhere in pokemon platinum threa.

Yeah, I tried to enable the real time clock which also didn't work, but thanks anyway!
But I will continue to search for a solution for the hacks on android

Oh and caaraa, could you please post the link to that thread?

Hello.


Btw, I'm having trouble with loading pokemon shiny gold by zel.

Firstly, I was trying to save but it says something about ' error, exchange back up memory' but soon, I realized ppl already had answer to it so I changed it to flash 128k save type and it saving was working BUT when I tried loading the game, it would not show me an option to load my saved game T.T

Also, when I try loading, it says something like 1M circuit board isn't installed...so I was wondering if you could help me.

B/c of this, after I beat the elite4, I can't go to the next area. Please help, I'd greatly appreciate the help!

Once you have changed to the flash 128k setting, you need to actually delete all save files for that rom or you'll keep getting that error.


If anyone is trying to play these on GPSP on PSP, take a look at the gameconfig.txt file in the root of he GPSP folder, it should explain what needs to be done. just enter he name of the rom and duplicate he settings from the stock pokemon games.

shyea. never knew what that error meant untill now