EZ-Flash IV GBA version

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

I'm going to venture a guess that this is going towards some type of elaborate "prank" related to putting a rom hack with some kind of hilarious modifications into a genuine GBA cart.

How close am I?

[HappehLemons]

Ok...gonna try to dive in....again. :P

Are you talking about THIS slot 2 cart for DS Lite?:



Or this GBA flash card:



As you can see, the EZ Flash IV in the 2nd picture has an inset slot on the side for a mini-SD card, and would require room for the miniSD card on a different cart if you wanted to take the circuit board out and put it in a different cart. It also does NOT boot directly to the game...ever. It boots to a bizarre Chinese and symbol laden main menu and you kind of have to figure out how to get it going from there...

I still don't understand why you'd WANT to do that though....the cart casing it comes in fits fine in any GBA....

If you're trying to get the one in the FIRST picture into a GBA....I have no idea. I don't even know if that one would work in a GBA....

Yeh, I was talking about the 2nd one. So it doesn't boot right to the game? Do you (or anyone) know of one that does perhaps?

I'm going to venture a guess that this is going towards some type of elaborate "prank" related to putting a rom hack with some kind of hilarious modifications into a genuine GBA cart.

How close am I?

Look at the OP

But what I'm trying to do is make my own little homebaked translated Mother 3 cart. I've been talking to uncle tusk and trying to get a box design together that fits the unofficial handbooks as well, and picked up a Mother 3 cart so I can swap a flashcart with the translated rom onto it inside its body. I like my games complete

[MarioMania]

Do you need the Easyflash to play GBA Rom's on the DS??

I have a R4 & the 8 MB Expansion Pack for Slot 2..But it only works for the DS Browser..I wanted it work for GBA ROM's

[Jorpho]

I'm reasonably sure that if you were to take an EZFlash 3-in-1 and use a DS to load a GBA game into its NOR RAM, then it would boot straight into the GBA game if you used it in a GBA. I've never tried this personally, though.

I have a R4 & the 8 MB Expansion Pack for Slot 2..But it only works for the DS Browser..I wanted it work for GBA ROM's

Dude, if you bought a RAM expansion, then that is indeed good for pretty much nothing else but the DS Browser. It has absolutely nothing to do with GBA ROMs.

Most importantly it has enough ram to handle games that use a lot of memory, mode 7 type scaling, etc. with no slow-down.

That's the biggest problem I found with the GBA flash carts, to reduce cost most of the manufacturers at the time would use substandard levels/types of of on-board ram. They work fine for the less memory intensive games, but drop something like Mario Kart on there and you'll find that the software just chugs.

I do believe you are gravely mistaken. I can believe some flash carts might use substandard RAM that might be unusually slow, but "not enough RAM" doesn't make any kind of sense.

It boots to a bizarre Chinese and symbol laden main menu and you kind of have to figure out how to get it going from there...

It could be clearer, I'll agree, but "bizarre Chinese and symbol laden" hardly seems quite right.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

I do believe you are gravely mistaken. I can believe some flash carts might use substandard RAM that might be unusually slow, but "not enough RAM" doesn't make any kind of sense.

Okay. Substandard it is then.

Whatever the proper explanation is for what would cause a GBA flash cart to not be able to run a game at full speed - that's what a ton of the early flash carts had going on.

Though, the way I described it seems to make sense to me, even if I'm totally wrong - were there no variations of expanded RAM in later GBA games that early flash carts might not have had available rendering the games impossible to run on those carts?

I mean, here's some stats on the EZ Flash IV that seem to make note of different types of on-board RAM and compare a lot of have and have nots on other versions of the EZ Flash series ... if you could break it down in laymans terms I'd love to hear it.

Basic hardware layout for the EZ4 range:

Loader space (4Mbytes)

NOR section: 256Mbit in size (384Mbit on EZ4 Deluxe, not present on the compact): used mainly for GBA roms bigger than 16mbytes/128mbits on the EZ4 and EZ4 lite or for roms you want loaded quickly. Recently the GBAlink feature (where DS roms read data off of a GBA cart and if it is the correct cart features are unlocked) was added to the EZ4 range, the NOR memory is used to contain the required ROM image.

PSRAM bank: used for GBA games 16mbytes or smaller on the EZ4 and EZ4lite, not present on the compact version and 32 megabytes in size on the deluxe (meaning GBA roms or homebrew can be bigger befor having to be loaded on the NOR (GBA roms have a maximimum size of 32Megabytes). Can also be used as extra ram for homebrew or a loading point for DS homebrew.

Mini/micro SD slot, where your data is stored and in the case of DS games is executed from.

8Mbit SRAM (used for storing save games until next boot (whereupon they are written to the memory card) and for passme2 support)

[Jorpho]

I mean, here's some stats on the EZ Flash IV that seem to make note of different types of on-board RAM and compare a lot of have and have nots on other versions of the EZ Flash series ... if you could break it down in laymans terms I'd love to hear it.

Basic hardware layout for the EZ4 range:

Loader space (4Mbytes)

NOR section: 256Mbit in size (384Mbit on EZ4 Deluxe, not present on the compact): used mainly for GBA roms bigger than 16mbytes/128mbits on the EZ4 and EZ4 lite or for roms you want loaded quickly. Recently the GBAlink feature (where DS roms read data off of a GBA cart and if it is the correct cart features are unlocked) was added to the EZ4 range, the NOR memory is used to contain the required ROM image.

PSRAM bank: used for GBA games 16mbytes or smaller on the EZ4 and EZ4lite, not present on the compact version and 32 megabytes in size on the deluxe (meaning GBA roms or homebrew can be bigger befor having to be loaded on the NOR (GBA roms have a maximimum size of 32Megabytes). Can also be used as extra ram for homebrew or a loading point for DS homebrew.

Mini/micro SD slot, where your data is stored and in the case of DS games is executed from.

8Mbit SRAM (used for storing save games until next boot (whereupon they are written to the memory card) and for passme2 support)

It's pretty much like it says. Before it can be used, a GBA ROM on an SD card has to be loaded into either NOR RAM or PS RAM. Loading a game into PS RAM is very quick, but the PS RAM loses all stored data when the GBA is turned off. Loading a game into NOR RAM can literally take several minutes, but stays loaded in NOR RAM when the GBA is switched off. Some GBA ROMs (including Mother 3) are too large to be loaded into the limited about of PS RAM and have to be loaded into NOR RAM.

I'm not sure if either the NOR RAM or PS RAM in the EZFlash IV can be accessed more quickly, but I think if there's any kind of difference that it is so small as to not be worth noting. As I said, if early flash carts had slowdown problem, it was probably due to the quality of the RAM rather than it being NOR RAM or PS RAM.

The "Loader space (4Mbytes)" is simply the relatively tiny amount of space taken up by the loader program, which you use to select a GBA ROM on the SD card and load it into RAM.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

It's pretty much like it says. Before it can be used, a GBA ROM on an SD card has to be loaded into either NOR RAM or PS RAM. Loading a game into PS RAM is very quick, but the PS RAM loses all stored data when the GBA is turned off. Loading a game into NOR RAM can literally take several minutes, but stays loaded in NOR RAM when the GBA is switched off. Some GBA ROMs (including Mother 3) are too large to be loaded into the limited about of PS RAM and have to be loaded into NOR RAM.

I'm not sure if either the NOR RAM or PS RAM in the EZFlash IV can be accessed more quickly, but I think if there's any kind of difference that it is so small as to not be worth noting. As I said, if early flash carts had slowdown problem, it was probably due to the quality of the RAM rather than it being NOR RAM or PS RAM.

The "Loader space (4Mbytes)" is simply the relatively tiny amount of space taken up by the loader program, which you use to select a GBA ROM on the SD card and load it into RAM.

Gotcha.

So the instances of chugging software is just based on the substandard hardware used in the flash carts, not available memory?

[Jorpho]

So the instances of chugging software is just based on the substandard hardware used in the flash carts, not available memory?

To be honest, I had not heard of problems with chugging software on the GBA until I saw this thread. (There was a problem with software running slowly on DS flashcarts for a while - namely, apparently there was a bad batch of Taiwanese Kingston SD cards - but those operate very differently from GBA flashcarts.)

But I can't see how available RAM would be a problem. Either a ROM can be loaded entirely into a the RAM on a flashcart, or it can't. Even if there was a cartridge that had extra system-accessible RAM, the program on that cartridge would probably crash spectacularly on a flash cart lacking that RAM instead of slowing down.

In fact, I've never really heard of cartridges for any system containing extra RAM, aside from the DS browser expansion. The blurb about how the PS RAM "can also be used as extra ram for homebrew" suggests that it might have specialized applications.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

To be honest, I had not heard of problems with chugging software on the GBA until I saw this thread. (There was a problem with software running slowly on DS flashcarts for a while - namely, apparently there was a bad batch of Taiwanese Kingston SD cards - but those operate very differently from GBA flashcarts.)

Whether or not you were aware of it, make no mistake, older, cheaper GBA flash carts do not run graphically intensive/complex games at full speed.

The EZ Flash IV card is one of the only ones I've owned that will run practically every game at full speed.

[Greg2600]

I still have no clue what this thread is about.

[Tanooki]

Dude stop spamming that all over. Is that your shop? Be honest. If it is or not that price is too much for that thing. You can buy one off people now and again on NintendoAge for a good little bit less.

[DeputyMoniker]

Dude stop spamming that all over. Is that your shop? Be honest. If it is or not that price is too much for that thing. You can buy one off people now and again on NintendoAge for a good little bit less.

I take it you've been searching the forum for "EZ Flash IV"
This is a 3 year old thread. lol.

[Leo_A]

I believe that the offending spam was deleted which is why it appears as if he bumped a long dead thread.

[DeputyMoniker]

I believe that the offending spam was deleted which is why it appears as if he bumped a long dead thread.

Ah. Okay. My bad.

[Tanooki]

Some spamming slime with an ecrater (if not there, like it) shop spammed the board a dozen times in various threads trying to get suckers to buy an ezflash iv without even the courtesy of a memory card with it for $75. It just so happens I popped off on this thread since it was years old because it was a dick move. He got banned and his posts erased for it by I think papastu.