Hacking getting EFA linker to work

[Melter]

Hello, I got an EFA Linker 512mb, I cannot get it to work, windows 7 will not recognize, and if I point windows to install drivers from the EFA Driver folder it says it cannot find drivers. I tried to use drivers from 1.0, 2.8, 2.6, and the longcart, none of them work!

 

[jamesaa]

I vaguely remember having problems with my EFA linker, turns out it wasn't compatible with nvidia chipsets (which my motherboard used at the time), they only way around it that i knew of was to use a different computer.

I can't guarantee that's the cause of your problem, but it might be worth looking into.

 

[Melter]

My motherboard's southbridge is intel (ICH10R)

 

[jamesaa]

Not sure then, i haven't' used my efa linker for a couple of years now. Might dig it out and see if i can get it working on my win7 machine.

 

[GreatCrippler]

Most likely will not work on Windows 7. I have an XP machine I use specifically for the older flashcarts.

 

[jamesaa]

Well got mine working.

Tested on a 32bit Win7 netbook (my 64bit machine is nvidia chipset, sigh...)

I used longcart drivers found here: http://totalgba.com/download.php
They're found under "Extreme Flash Advance LC (EFA LC)"

Windows couldn't auto install drivers (obviously), so go into device manager, right click the unknown device and choose update drivers, then choose the folder you extracted the drivers into.

 

[Melter]

Well got mine working.

Tested on a 32bit Win7 netbook (my 64bit machine is nvidia chipset, sigh...)

I used longcart drivers found here: http://totalgba.com/download.php
They're found under "Extreme Flash Advance LC (EFA LC)"

Windows couldn't auto install drivers (obviously), so go into device manager, right click the unknown device and choose update drivers, then choose the folder you extracted the drivers into.

that link does not work...

 

[jamesaa]

lol, i just used the link 20 minutes ago

Seems i can still access it when clicking the link in my history, but not on my post :\

Nevermind, try the direct links:
http://totalgba.com/download/EFALE-Client.rar
http://totalgba.com/download/EFALE-Driver.rar

If you can't access those let me know and mirror them somewhere

 

[Melter]

pointed windows to the driver folder, says Windows could not find driver software for your device.

 

[jamesaa]

Have to say i'm stuck then, only other thing i can think of (in case your on 64bit) is using libusb, but i'm not confident enough to guide you through it as i've only used libusb once - and i'm not sure whether i can test on my 64bit machine due to the nvidia issue.

I'll have a play around, but i honestly cannot think of any other fixes - hopefully someone else will drop in with a bit more knowledge than I.

 

[Melter]

Have to say i'm stuck then, only other thing i can think of (in case your on 64bit) is using libusb, but i'm not confident enough to guide you through it as i've only used libusb once - and i'm not sure whether i can test on my 64bit machine due to the nvidia issue.

I'll have a play around, but i honestly cannot think of any other fixes - hopefully someone else will drop in with a bit more knowledge than I.

I am on 64 bit, but I don't want to set up libusb again, it cause my PC to blue screen when shutting down. Ill try to install this on another PC that is runnning x86.

Also, I'm fairly sure this is not the longcart edition, but instead the original EFA Linker with the RTC.

 

[jamesaa]

Let me know how you get on, i just gave libusb a try on my 64bit machine and it didn't work anyway, the efa client couldn't find my cart.

EDIT: And in other news, all the boxes in my cupboard just fell out, must of become unstable when i was looking for the cart, lol.

 

[Melter]

ok, the longcart drivers on 32 bit win7 still did not work, but the EFA 2.62 drivers did. I now see a green LED on the cart, but the EFA Client sees that the cart has only 256mb of space, instead of 512 which it should have, how do I fix this?

If I click format cart it the client freezes, but I am able to sync the RTC with my computer's time.

 

[jamesaa]

Good to see you're getting somewhere at least

One issue with the 256Mb being reported is leaving your cart connected to the GBA when connecting by USB, there are other causes such as using the wrong client iirc.

 

[Melter]

where can I download other versions of the client?

EDIT: Nvm, tried a bunch of versions: 1.8, 2.1, 2.2, and 2.83, none of them could get it to work. I don't know what to do...

 

[jamesaa]

The latest client is 2.83:
http://totalgba.com/download/efa2.83-DS.rar

All it added was DS support, but might be worth a shot, i'm sure others have had this issue (card being detected as 256mb) but can't find the info regarding it




(simple solution to all this is just get an EZ Flash IV, that's what put my EFA linker and elink out of use - but not the most practical of solutions)


EDIT:

This thread seems to describe all your problems, but the main solution revolves around the fact it's a simple cart (no RTC) but as your sure yours is RTC enabled i'm not sure what else it could be.

 

[Melter]

mine definatly has the RTC... on top of that the longcart driver did not work, and now the longcart client simply crashes on startup now that I have installed the EFA driver.

 

[jamesaa]

I've just gone through 10+ threads on GBAtemp, and various results from google and the only references regarding the 256mb error are from the cartridge still being in the GBA, and issues using newer clients with the longcart version.

I'm going through that thread i linked you to again, but other than what i've already suggested and that thread I am completely out of ideas. (it would probably help if i had an RTC card but i don't

)

I must be missing something

 

[Melter]

I'm out of ideas, anyone else had this problem before?

 

[how_do_i_do_that]

ALL GBA flashcarts that use drivers REQUIRE XP SP2 or lower, no exceptions.

All drivers are XP 32bit, they don't run windows 7 period. XP SP3 changed how drivers work and load. x64 systems NEVER EVER load x32 drivers.

you can use a VM to manage your GBA flashcart on a x64 windows system. If you got x32 version of windows 7, same thing, your still going to need to use a VM.

All previous post here are obsolete. Use the 3rd link in my sig.