Hacking EZ Flash IV 2.0 Kernel Release - No more patching

THYPLEX

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GBA patching works by searching the entire game for SRAM, EEPROM or Flash. Following that there are some numbers to tell the sub type and then you patch from there using premade patches to turn the game into an SRAM saving game. There is no indication in the header of what save type nor where the information on it is is found, and as far as I am aware there are no tricks like you have for finding the binary and it is basically completely random where it appears in the ROM. Not hard to do on a PC but on a 16MHz ARM7 with less than 300KB of RAM it is a bigger ask, especially if you have to also scan through the bus or something. To that end the two main ways of doing it in hardware (like those seen on the DS with the expansion packs, the DS is more powerful than the GBA but not amazingly so) are you scan the ROM once and when it is found you note the offset location of the save data for future use, or you make your own database of every game, and you possibly also have a manual setting mode to force it.

Equally as far as I am aware the everdrive actually emulates the save types in hardware rather than patching them to be SRAM like every other GBA cart out there.

As far as making saves then it should do it but if you want to make your own that might be an idea for a while -- editing files on a SD card is fairly easy but creating new ones can be slightly tricky and has tripped up many homebrew coders over the years, including the EZTeam.


I was mainly being cute and was curious as to how large such a database would be. They have kicked things to external files before though, and it already uses a variation on GBFS if memory serves so it would not be too hard to do that rather than having to recompile every time for an incbin type method.
Likewise the images are compressed if memory serves, I certainly recall pulling a version of GBAcrusher ( http://members.iinet.net.au/~freeaxs/gbacomp/ )from various skin making tools when I have needed it for a ROM hack or something.

On Mario we tested things once and saving happened fine, however for whatever reason they only wrote the save back to the cart when the games used 8:3 naming.
ChuChu rocket is pretty much the only test I can really think of -- for some reason some save patching tends to make it boot to a ! on the screen, run it without save patching and it boots and plays just fine but saving can be tricky. I don't know what causes this but I suspect there is a line saying Flash or something somewhere else in the ROM and that confuses some of them.


Not sure about Italian vendors these days, https://www.gbarl.it/ might have some more info there. Europe in general is not so hot for them right now, and the usual standby for me of http://www.shop01media.com/en/EZ-Flash appears to be out of stock right now. Don't buy the EZ4 lite compact model as it is not for GBA games.
Cheapest is likely to be somewhere in Hong Kong, however that usually comes with the shipping being up there in the weeks.

The EZTeam have made EZ4s somewhat recently, I don't know when the most recent batch was made but 2015 they brought out the GBA size microSD model ( http://gbatemp.net/threads/new-ez4-sdhc-in-house-at-gbatemp.381182/ ) and apparently there was a new run of the 3 in 1 flash carts in 2016. Speaking of the 3 in 1 then they are for the DS and DS lite so if you have one of those and a DS flash cart you can get a 3 in 1 and use the DS cart manage it, it is not much cheaper than an EZ4 and I really do like having a standalone cart but if money is an issue for you then you can do that too.

The everdrive is the current king of the hill for GBA flash carts, however if you ask the question "Can I play near every GBA game just fine/as it would be originally on a GBA without too many hassles with the EZ4?" then the answer is yes, yes you can, hundreds before you have. I previously linked my list of trouble games and workarounds for them in the thread but have it again
http://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995
So the compatibility of everdrive GBA is near perfect , better even than the EZ FLASH 4?
 

Bart Lemming

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There is a vendor up on ebay in the UK selling the latest EZ Flash; they are called Levitech-Retail, and are selling m for about 24 euroes.
I bought mine there a few months back.

That's a really good price. I think I'll pick a couple up on payday just to try out this new kernel. I'm intrigued to see if my patience can handle the extended ROM load times... :)
 

Mansize

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I wonder if it is anything like loading/flashing/patching a ROM through GBAExploader to the EZFlash 3-in-1? Those loading times are more than acceptable to me if I don't have to go through the hassle of patching the ROMs. Will try out later this week.
 

FAST6191

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So the compatibility of everdrive GBA is near perfect , better even than the EZ FLASH 4?
It has a real time clock built into the cart, the EZTeam dropped theirs after the EZ3 as so few games made use of it. You can still patch the clock so it advances during play time, just not during power off like the original game, it mostly only troubles the growing berries mechanic in pokemon ruby, sapphire and emerald). The everdrive may also have some patches built in for the classic nes and dragon ball z games (few games on the GBA have anything like anti piracy, those are two, both also solved or with superior methods if you want them) but I am not sure offhand.

Basically every GBA flash cart that is not a supercard can play every game that will fit on the cart. It is not like the NES or SNES where you have mappers, special chips and what have you that causes all sorts of fun and games, and before everdrive came along where people were using carts based on designs from the 90s and such. Some carts may see you have to patch any extras a ROM might use manually, some may do it automatically, in most cases manual is better to have as a choice at least for the later fan made patches are usually more refined or customisable than the earlier Scene ones that were made to get it working and get it out of the door.
 
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Since I've already inserted all the interesting games to my EZ4, I probably have no use for this. I didn't even update to 1.78 because I already had all the roms in two ok-sized folders.

...I'm still going to backup the kernel, just in case I need to update later. Missing reset patch is a slight minus for me.
 

Mansize

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Haven't actually considered the Everdrive yet, because it is so expensive.. yes, the built-in clock is a big pre, but I don't think the Everdrive has the gyroscopic hardware for Wario Ware: Twisted (arguably one of the best GBA games), Yoshi's Universal Gravitation, Kirby Tilt n Tumble; nor photometric hardware for the Boktai games.
 
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pasc

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WHAAAAAT tripp is this ?

A GBA Flashcard getting an update in 2017 ? Uff.

*needs to regather his breath*

... ok. I'm over it now.
 

Mansize

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WHAAAAAT tripp is this ?

A GBA Flashcard getting an update in 2017 ? Uff.

*needs to regather his breath*

... ok. I'm over it now.

The GBA is getting so old... it slowly drifted into the vintage zone without me noticing. Vinyl, floppydisks, dinosaurs, cassette tapes, tribal tattoos, GBA AGS 101s, GBA flashcards, GBA AGS 101s with flashcards and tribal tattoos.... sigh good times.
 

pelago

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I like the idea of drag and dropping clean ROMs, but not the longer loading times. Could the EZ4 not patch the game the first time its loaded, then write the patched version to the card, so it loads quickly next time?
 

Localhorst86

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Is the update only for the MicroSD versions of EZ IV Flash Cards?
I have the old MiniSD version and the updates seems to be ignored. I boot
straight into the menu.

You need to hold R on boot to flash the ezfla_up.bin. You should see a black screen with a yellow bar and an progress indicator.
 

Riptide

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Comparison of PSRAM loading times:

Code:
           1.78:            2.00:
32Mbit     16 seconds       28 seconds
64Mbit     25 seconds       57 seconds
128Mbit    52 seconds      115 seconds

As you can see, 2.00 is considerably slower in PSRAM Loading than 1.78

Damn thats a significant bump, I'll probably stay on 1.78 then, ty good sir for the testing.
This is really a feature for new customers who are debating between this and the Everdrive, not old ones who have already gone through and patched their libraries.
 

Localhorst86

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Damn thats a significant bump, I'll probably stay on 1.78 then, ty good sir for the testing.
This is really a feature for new customers who are debating between this and the Everdrive, not old ones who have already gone through and patched their libraries.
Yeah, me too. I am going to stay on/revert to 1.78 since my library is already patched anyways.

I appreciate the effort from the EZFlash team, but since my prepatched library won't benefit from 2.00 the update would only cause slower loading for me.

Gesendet von meinem UMI_SUPER mit Tapatalk
 

CaptainSodaPop

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I like the idea of drag and dropping clean ROMs, but not the longer loading times. Could the EZ4 not patch the game the first time its loaded, then write the patched version to the card, so it loads quickly next time?

I think this built in update patcher only patches games that are not already patched. Not everytime you select the game to play. At least from what I can see because my THPS2 rom was already prepatched with Lunar IPS and the save didn't end up corrupted (after I booted the game up) like it would if I patched it through EZ Client software.

THPS2 and NES Classic games were one of these roms that required IPS patch applied through Lunar to make save function work properly.

Loading was always a bit long on EZF4, but waiting 3̶0̶ (115 :P ) secs max for a game to load doesn't present that much big problem from my perspective since you can have the whole GBA library on one cartridge. And if you're really playing one game so frequently and getting annoyed by load times you can always install it to NOR from which it loads pretty much instantly.

@Plstic Phantasy Star Collection boots normally for me. And it did on 1.78 as well. I didn't test saving though.

EDIT: Thank you @Localhorst86 for this benchmark. I corrected myself now, but you guys get the point. :) Not a big deal for me since I can just drag n drop my roms now and not worry about is my rom patched or not. I am really lazy for that. Btw. my 64Mbit rom (THPS2 again) took 51 seconds to load. It may be less because it was patched already, is it? The only real thing i'm not liking as I've said is that there is no soft reset patch. That could make me roll back to 1.78 more than loading time issues. :/ It's not healthy for GBA to turn on/off that many times if you're playing a lot. :(
 
Last edited by CaptainSodaPop,

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