CLEANING A CARD WITH UNKNOWN PROGRAMMING
You only have two options if you don't know what script is on the
card and both of them, from what I've read, may loop your card.
Option 1 - Carefully attempt to clean the card in expert mode in
BasicH2.9 following these steps exactly.
First off, before you do anything, although I've yet to see
anyone else say this in an FAQ or message, I *strongly* advise that
you shut down all possible programs running in the background on
your computer which are not absolutely necessary to keep the machine
up. In other words, disable/suspend things like task schedulers,
virus scanners, screen savers and POWER MANAGEMENT settings. Some
might say this is overly cautious but I've been working in the
Windows environment since Gates first released it and I have the
utmost respect/disdain for the instabilities that have been present
in *every* version since day one...
In BasicH 2.9 select "expert" mode by clicking on the
"normal" button/square at the bottom of the screen.
Click on the icon that looks like an open door. This will
*hopefully* open the E3 hole. If it does, proceed onward. If you get
a message that the E3 hole cannot be opened, you're probably going
to have to send the card out to be cleaned. However... as you are in
a last-ditch effort situation, you might try cleaning the card using
Viyada1.6 at this point as some claim that it does a more
"aggressive" job of cleaning.
If the E3 hole opened, click on the magnifying glass icon to the
immediate left of the ambulance icon. This will hopefully read your
card's contents into memory.
Click on "File" and then click on "Save Eprom
File" to save a copy of your original card image in case you
need to restore your card to its original condition in the future.
Give the file a unique name you will remember and save it in a safe
location other than the folder/directory you have BasicH installed
in to prevent accidentally overwriting the file later!
Look to the right of the ambulance icon and you'll see a small
pointer pointing down. Click on it and a drop down menu will allow
you to select the update you want to clean the card's EPROM contents
in memory to. Select 29 updates.
Once the EPROM has been cleaned look at the smaller "File
Differences" window on the right side of the screen. Don't
worry if the window appears to be sheared off on its right side
because all that means is that you are operating at a higher video
resolution than the program was designed for. If you see any text
inside the "File Differences" window (will look like hex
addresses) then repeat the EPROM clean process exactly as you just
did as many times as you need to in order to get a "File
Differences" window that is completely empty. Usually, you will
have to repeat the cleaning process twice to get an empty window.
Click on the lightning bolt icon to write the clean EPROM image
in memory to the card.
Close the E3 hole by clicking the closed door icon at the top of
the screen. <--- CRITICAL STEP!
If this worked, you can now use WinExplorer to apply whatever
freeware script you prefer onto the card.
Option 2 - Try and run the uninstall routine for every script you
can find. You might just get lucky and hit the right script and the
person who programmed your card used the default backdoor key. You
can find just about all the publicly available scripts at http://www.superunlooper.com
or http://dss.homepage.com/files.html
or http://www.dr7.com/
or http://interesting-devices.com/
or http://wildfyre.cjb.net/
or http://pressman.tsx.org
or http://www.redrival.com/toxic/d_s_s/.
Note that some scripts have a separate remove/uninstall script while
others have install/remove options built into the same script. I'd
consider this a last ditch effort before sending a card with an
unknown script off to the cleaners.
CLONING VIA PROGRAMMER
INSTRUCTION SET #1
IF YOU'RE USING A LEGIT SUBBED H-CARD TO CLONE FROM
Note: these instructions assume your sub card does not have any
hacks applied. If it does, you must remove all hacks first.
Fire up BasicH2.9 and click on the magnifying glass icon to read
the legit subbed card's EPROM into memory.
Remove legit H card and place it in a SAFE PLACE out of
reach to ensure that you do not accidentally do anything further to
it!
Now that your legit card is safely removed from the programmer,
click on "File" and then on "Save Eprom File"
and save the legit H cards EPROM file as holy_grail.bin in any
directory/folder you wish *except* the same directory as the one
BasicH is installed in.
Exit BasicH.
Fire up Winexplorer4.4 and put your hacked H card in the
programmer.
Remove whatever script you now have on the card and exit
WinExplorer,
Fire up BasicH2.9 and select "expert" mode by clicking
on the "normal" button/square at the bottom of the screen.
Click on the icon that looks like an open door. This will open
the E3 hole.
Click on the magnifying glass icon to the immediate left of the
ambulance icon. This will read your card's contents into memory.
Select "File" and then select "Save Eprom
File" to save your card's original bin file in case you need to
restore your card to it's original state at some future date. Give
this bin file a unique name like "myvirgin.bin" and save
it to a location *other* than the folder/directory where you have
BasicH installed.
Look to the right of the ambulance icon and you'll see a small
pointer pointing down. Click on it and a drop down menu will allow
you to select the update you want to clean the card's EPROM contents
in memory to. Select 29 updates.
Once the EPROM has been cleaned look at the smaller "File
Differences" window on the right side of the screen. Don't
worry if the window appears to be sheared off on its right side
because all that means is that you are operating at a higher video
resolution than the program was designed for. If you see any text
inside the "File Differences" window (will look like hex
addresses) then repeat the EPROM clean process exactly as you just
did as many times as you need to in order to get a "File
Differences" window that is completely empty. Usually, you will
have to repeat the cleaning process twice to get an empty window.
Click on the lightning bolt icon to write the clean EPROM image
in memory to the card.
Click on "File" and then on "Open Eprom File"
and load the "holy_grail.bin" file you saved from your
legit subbed H card.
Again, select the small pointer to the right of the ambulance
icon, click on it and select 29 updates to clean the EPROM image in
memory.
Check the "File Differences" window on the right side
of the screen. If you see any text inside the "File
Differences" window repeat the EPROM clean process exactly as
you just did as many times as you need to in order to get a
"File Differences" window that is completely empty. As
before, you will usually have to repeat the cleaning process twice
to get an empty window.
Click on the lightning bolt icon to write the clean EPROM image
in memory to the card.
Close the E3 hole by clicking the closed door icon at the top of
the screen. <--- CRITICAL STEP!
You can now use WinExplorer to apply whatever freeware script you
prefer onto the card.
INSTRUCTION SET #2
IF YOU'RE USING A SUBBED BIN FILE TO CLONE FROM
Fire up Winexplorer4.4 and put your hacked H card in the programmer.
Remove whatever script you now have on the card and exit
WinExplorer,
Fire up BasicH2.9 and select "expert" mode by clicking
on the "normal" button/square at the bottom of the screen.
Click on the icon that looks like an open door. This will open
the E3 hole.
Click on the magnifying glass icon to the immediate left of the
ambulance icon. This will read your card's contents into memory.
Select "File" and then select "Save Eprom
File" to save your card's original bin file in case you need to
restore your card to it's original state at some future date. Give
this bin file a unique name like "myvirgin.bin" and save
it to a location *other* than the folder/directory where you have
BasicH installed.
Look to the right of the ambulance icon and you'll see a small
pointer pointing down. Click on it and a drop down menu will allow
you to select the update you want to clean the card's EPROM contents
in memory to. Select 29 updates.
Once the EPROM has been cleaned look at the smaller "File
Differences" window on the right side of the screen. Don't
worry if the window appears to be sheared off on its right side
because all that means is that you are operating at a higher video
resolution than the program was designed for. If you see any text
inside the "File Differences" window (will look like hex
addresses) then repeat the EPROM clean process exactly as you just
did as many times as you need to in order to get a "File
Differences" window that is completely empty. Usually, you will
have to repeat the cleaning process twice to get an empty window.
Click on the lightning bolt icon to write the clean EPROM image
in memory to the card.
Click on "File" and then on "Open Eprom File"
and load the subbed bin file you plan to use.
Again, select the small pointer to the right of the ambulance
icon, click on it and select 29 updates to clean the EPROM image in
memory.
Check the "File Differences" window on the right side
of the screen. If you see any text inside the "File
Differences" window repeat the EPROM clean process exactly as
you just did as many times as you need to in order to get a
"File Differences" window that is completely empty. As
before, you will usually have to repeat the cleaning process twice
to get an empty window.
Click on the lightning bolt icon to write the clean EPROM image
in memory to the card.
Close the E3 hole by clicking the closed door icon at the top of the
screen. <--- CRITICAL STEP!
You can now use WinExplorer to apply whatever freeware script you
prefer onto the card.
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