LittleWriter
LittleWriter is a fairly easy program to use. But there still might be a few things that are unclear, or maybe there's some features that you don't even know about. Hopefully this guide will help.
The basic interface
I'll start by explaining the interface of LittleWriter. How to start the program correctly for flashing is explained in the Getting Started guide. If you are unsure of how to do this, check it out first.
In the ROM window you can see all the roms that are either already on the cart, or is ready for flashing. What's quite nice is that you see where on the cart the rom is located, and also how big the rom is compared to the other roms, and how much each one takes of the entire cart. This also allows the user to remove only some of the roms and then put other roms in their place... then to ONLY flash the new roms leaving the ones already on the cart untouched. All this is done automatically by the program. You just need to delete a game (hold over the game with your mouse and press delete) and then drag a new game into that spot. When you hit flash it will skip the roms that are already on the cart.
Ok, moving down to the box below it. This will show all actions that are done and also how many seconds it takes. For example when you add a game to the cart it will say so, and it will also tell you if the game was patched or not. When you flash, it will at all times show you the current game that is being written to the cart. And if something didn't work, it will be shown here.
Below that there are 4 buttons. These pretty much explains itself. Erase will delete all roms on the cart. Flash will flash your current build. Refresh will refresh the rom list and also refresh the connection to the GBA (if you for example started the program before you connected your GBA to the linker). Close will close the program. Below that is a little line which will just show some info of the rom you are currently holding your mouse over.
I didn't say anything about the buttons on the top: File, Tools, Card, Advanced. I'm going to go a bit deeper in on that. Lets start with the first one, File
Open and Save Compil can be useful if you're not done building your compilation or just haven't flashed it to your cart yet. It just means that you can save your project and open it up at a later time and continue where you left off.
Open and save Rom is the same as open and save compil, except that it saves individual roms instead of the whole build.
Close will shut down the program.
Next is tools. This is the more handy one. Before checking out all the fancy stuff in Options, I'll explain the other ones. Update roms list does just that. Refreshes the list of games on your cart. Remake roms list will change the position of all the roms and clear out spaces between them to get more space for bigger games. With View you can choose to zoom in on the list of roms. This can be helpful if you have a lot of small roms and they are so small that you can't see the name for example. On View type you can choose if you want Graph (like above by default) or a list of all roms.
Lets open up the Options window now.
The first tab... You don't need to change the port so better not mess with it. Default Rom Size can just be left like that too. Timeout might be useful to change for some users, but usually it should be fine like that.
These are the SRAM settings. You can choose whether or not you want LittleWriter to auto backup and restore your saves, where to save the backups and how many backups to keep from each game. First time it backups it will make 1, then the next time another, and so on for how many backups you want to keep. This way you can get back to your older saves even if you have backuped a more recent save, so it just means how many saves to keep for each game before overwriting the oldest.
This is where you can turn plugins (like auto-SRAM patch, auto-trim etc.) on or off. The BLUE light means OFF and the YELLOW means ON. It is recommended that you only use the build-in SRAM patching in LittleWriter. The other auto-plugins are not recommended as they do not work correctly for all games and can sometimes cause problems. So the best thing to do would be to use another program (like GBATA) to do the patching before adding the game in LittleWriter. Of course, this is up to you. It works in most games. Just keep this in mind if something doesn't work right. GBATA will always do the job correctly.
The Path tab can be used to make internal rom lists. Use the Browse button first and then click Add to add it to the list. The Make Quick Scan checkbox can be used to scan the folders more quickly, but country, title, backup and real length will not be read.
Here are some interface options in LittleWriter. Always on top means that the LittleWriter window should always be above other applications on your desktop (even if LittleWriter is not the currently active window). Check for Update on startup explains itself. However I wouldn't count on any updates anytime soon (if it all). The project seems quite dead, as sad as it may sound. Check rom list on startup will update the internal roms when the program starts. Message on end flash will show you a little message telling you that the flashing is complete and the number of seconds it took. In the language dropdown you can change the language of LittleWriter and the image path is the default path to look for rom images.
The customizable boot-loader is a nice feature in LittleWriter. You can change the boot-loader with colors, gradients and fonts. Play with the settings and use the preview button to test it. Here are some examples of what you can make:
And finally. This button will restore all you settings to default if you think you have screwed something up or something doesn't work right.
That's it for the options window.
Next we have the Card
The first 3 buttons here (Erase, Flash and Refresh) will do exactly the same as the buttons at the bottom. Format, naturally, does just that. Note that it is much faster than the format command in usbcable. Why is this? Well, it doesn't completely format it. Usbcable does a better job here. Normally it should be fine, but if you experience problems you should give usbcable a go. When using LittleWriter it doesn't format the SRAM either. You must use Format SRAM for that. Backup Save Games will backup all of your saves. By default, this is done automatically when you start the program, but you can do it here as well. Upload Save Games will send a .sav file to the SRAM on the cart.
The Advanced button is for powerusers only. Especially Adv Flash and Adv Backup. You can click them and see if you understand anything of what's being displayed. If you don't then there's no need for you to use it. Probably not for most people at all. But it lets you do stuff like selecting offsets for roms etc. Adv Sram Backup and Adv Sram Flash however, is similar to the way of backing up/restoring as you do with USBcable.exe and X-Rom Flasher/Frontend. It lets you choose the Bank and the size of the saves.