Multiboot

From PHWiki

Multiboot can refer to several different things.

General

In general usage multiboot can refer to cartridge that "multiboots" several different games.

Often refers to a pirate cart with a lot of games, usually labelled 42-in-1 and similar.

Many flash cards have a menu or loader that can be used to choose between different roms and this is sometimes also referred to as multibooting.

GBA

On GBA, MultiBoot is the name of a BIOS function that loads code over a link cable into the GBA RAM and running it from there. GBA games with single-pak multiplayer use this, and so does a special cable called "Xboo" does the same from a PC.

Typically the roms used are small "multiboot roms" that are 256 kilobytes or less (the GBA only has 256kB of RAM). These roms are often given the file extension .mb or .mb.gba to separate them from regular .gba rom files that run straight from the rom area. On Pogoshell special compressed .mbz files can be used. The GBA Movie Player can run multiboot roms with the .gba extension.

Certain GameCube games can send small "roms" to the GBA for playing or for interacting with the GameCube. Some of these roms have been dumped and released in the scene. They can be dumped with software that dumps the GBA RAM to the SRAM of a flash card. They can also be ripped straight out of a GameCube game image.

See also: List of GBA multiboot games

DS

On the DS multibooting is done over the wireless WiFi connection built into the DS by loading code into the DS RAM and running it from there.

This can be done from another DS or using special drivers to stream code from a PC, see WifiMe.

The DS has 4MB of RAM so there is much more room to play with, and on the DS code is normally loaded into RAM before executing so multibooting on the DS is much easier and has much more potential than on the GBA.