# New EZ4 SDHC in house at GBAtemp



## FAST6191 (Feb 10, 2015)

​
The EZFlash Team sent GBAtemp a sample of their new GBA cart size, microSD(HC) using EZ4 to test. This is the first GBA sized EZ4 model to use microSD size memory rather than the now hard to come by miniSD. Out of the box it supported a FAT32 formatted 8 gigabyte micro SDHC card, though now all models of EZ4 should support SDHC.

Full review coming up but we took some some photos in the meantime, including some shots comparing the new model to the original launch model of EZ4. You can see them in the FileTrip gallery

Update.
First impressions and chip listings now available.


----------



## DjoeN (Feb 10, 2015)

This is great 
- Time to ditch my windows xp i kept only for flashing my old gba cartridge.
On the other hand, i bought most games i really wanted second hand (yes there cheap now if you do look around)
Still it's great to see EZFlash still thinking on all those GBA fans out there


----------



## link491 (Feb 10, 2015)

If these are going to become readily available again, I'm gonna need to get my hand on a bunch of them. Such a useful little cart...


----------



## Vanth88 (Feb 10, 2015)

Hopefully the compatibility is the same if not better than before. Did they say how much it'll cost? I tried looking around a little but I didn't see anything.


----------



## Harsky (Feb 10, 2015)

I've still got my original EZ4 which I've had for probably 9 years now. I am still wondering if there's any demand for a microSD SDHC version considering that you can fit all the must play games on a 2GB mini SD and have tons of room to spare. But I guess it is true that mini SDs are not as common as micro SDs nowadays.

I really hope for the following:

Real drag and drop play
Bigger NOR size
Faster loading times (because it gets tedious waiting for the save to write for the last game you play)


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 10, 2015)

First impressions.
New case design (ish), held together with snap tabs and a self tapping screw. The case is thinner than the original but by no means bad quality.

Has the new kernel on it and thus does not have a DS mode (flashme DS force booting DS mode on the GBA slot whitescreened)

Memory is the standard 16 megabytes of PSRAM and 32 megabytes of NOR (I tested Mother 3 and it fit as you can see in the gallery image of it)
I can not rule out being sent a nicely selected one (it did come with a small game on the NOR, presumably as a test) but let us not be too cynical.

PCB soldering quality is far better than previous images of the new EZ4. Outside edges are a bit rough but nothing to write home about.
Battery is a new size for the EZ4 (possibly explaining the modified front case) in being a CR2025 (previously it was a VL2020 for the originals and supposedly a non rechargeable 2020 for the later models)
SDHC slot is a side facing sprung loaded one, slightly fiddly to get to.

You have some PCB shots in the gallery for fans of numbers then on the back side there is
Right hand chip
M6MGT321S4TP
BG0 044B20P
http://www.digchip.com/datasheets/parts/datasheet/192/M6MGT321S4TP-pdf.php might be a datasheet. Looks like the standard NOR-SRAM combo they have used for years (though previous models might have been M6MGT321S8TP)

Left hand chip
Spansion 71WS512ND0BFWEP
844PP004 H
MALAYSIA 
Copyright 05 Spansion
Possibly something http://www.spansion.com/Products/Memory/Parallel-Flash/Pages/Spansion WS.aspx
Seems popular among China/HK chip suppliers, http://www.datasheetarchive.com/dl/Datasheets-IS68/DSAH00171355.pdf would appear to be a datasheet.

The battery is right across the top side chip and I am not up for desoldering it for this. At first glance/comparing traces to my launch EZ4 it is a pretty similar chip, if it is was then http://uk.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Altera-Corporation/EPM240T100C5N/?qs=jblrfmjbeiHmgaW5DQXOiw== is the chip in question (an altera EPM240T100C5N CPLD). If mouser are still willing to sell me one (though with a decent lead time) then it is still possible that it or a pin compatible descendant are being used.


----------



## aofelix (Feb 10, 2015)

nOOOOOOO i just bought an EZ Flash IV fuck this!


----------



## rainparadesamurai (Feb 10, 2015)

if the removable memory type is the only thing that's changed then I'll just wait till Krikzz releases the everdrive gba to get a gba flashcart.


----------



## porkiewpyne (Feb 10, 2015)

Looks pretty nice. Might actually get one of these.


----------



## WiiUBricker (Feb 10, 2015)

Hmm.... perhaps the EZ Flash team heard about rumors of an Everdrive GBA and decided to produce this new EZ4 as a competing product.


----------



## narutopet112 (Feb 10, 2015)

aofelix said:


> nOOOOOOO i just bought an EZ Flash IV fuck this!


same here and it only gives cannot find loader error


----------



## BestR4i3DS.com (Feb 10, 2015)

Fast News!
Our New EZ-Flash IV microsd New stocks just arrived too,
Just took the pictures several hours ago:





More pictures here:
http://www.bestr4i3ds.com/ez4-ezflash-iv-ezflash-4-sltt2-gba-card-for-gba-nds-ndsl-p-101.html


----------



## 3DSXLGamer (Feb 10, 2015)

If only realhotstuff was still in business, then I would've bought it.


----------



## xy1154 (Feb 10, 2015)

Bought my EZ4 last year. Wonder what's the difference beside SDHC and a redesigned case.


----------



## FR0ZN (Feb 10, 2015)

Man they could have moved the SD slot out of the front while they were at it ... and what about a RTC?
Even with this, there is still a "perfect" GBA Flashcart MIA.


----------



## The Real Jdbye (Feb 10, 2015)

Sweet.
Great to see they still support old consoles.
MicroSD may be a small change, but it makes a big difference, what with how unreliable some of the adapters can be.


----------



## kuwanger (Feb 10, 2015)

Funny, I too recently bought (another) EZ Flash IV. The new kernel is rather nice, with much faster saving (for me from ~26 seconds down to ~3 seconds*), and it seems to have fixed several of the graphical glitches. I hope this means they'll work just that small bit more on themeing for the new EZ IV model and perhaps make the hard reset the default (as I've still yet to track down where the code for the soft/hard reset is).

FAST6191: Any chance you could pass upon that request to make hard reset the default? And, again, a request for the kernel source to be open?  As it stands, I'm rather happy at just how much effort they put into it. Though this new model tends to explain the recent update.

* I had some trouble with my minisd adapater and reformed my 4GB card using SDFormatter, so it's possible a part of that is just better alignment or switching to a faster microsd card.

PS - A very nasty bug in their new boot loader.  If you hold down R to update the ezfla_up.bin, it doesn't actually check that there's an ezfla_up.bin on the SD card.  It'll just merrily erase the current loader, which can make it unbootable until you copy over the ezfla_up.bin and reinstall it. :~(  I wonder if there's a way to fix that.


----------



## lolboy (Feb 10, 2015)

I have EZ IV, it has No RTS 



BestR4i3DS.com said:


> Fast News!
> Our New EZ-Flash IV microsd New stocks just arrived too,
> Just took the pictures several hours ago:
> 
> ...


----------



## Disco (Feb 10, 2015)

Hmmm.... I already have EZ3in1 which I use in my DSL with Ak2i (Akaio), and good old M3 Perfect which uses standard size SD card and it works awesome...but I am considering to buy one of these


----------



## Haloman800 (Feb 10, 2015)

How big is the entire library of GBA games? Could you fit the whole thing on an 8GB microSD card?


----------



## Minox (Feb 10, 2015)

Haloman800 said:


> How big is the entire library of GBA games? Could you fit the whole thing on an 8GB microSD card?


A heavily compressed No-Intro set is about 6.5~7GB, so you'd most likely be unable to fit it all in an 8GB microSD.


----------



## gudenau (Feb 10, 2015)

EDIT:
I just want a card with 32MB of RAM, I do not need anything else.


----------



## Joe88 (Feb 10, 2015)

xy1154 said:


> Bought my EZ4 last year. Wonder what's the difference beside SDHC and a redesigned case.


 
Theres no other differences, the old model can be flashed with 1.75 to enable sdhc
So its just the case and a microsd slot


----------



## Harsky (Feb 10, 2015)

So basically this is the old EZflash but with Micro SD support and a new black case?


----------



## KidIce (Feb 10, 2015)

Harsky said:


> So basically this is the old EZflash but with Micro SD support and a new black case?


Functionally, yes. The new battery and hardware differences mean nothing to the end user and do not change the EZ4's feature set in anyway.


----------



## razielleonhart (Feb 10, 2015)

my money just take it


----------



## Crisp Cookie (Feb 10, 2015)

Was looking for something like this.
Maybe my first.


----------



## raulpica (Feb 10, 2015)

Minox said:


> A heavily compressed No-Intro set is about 6.5~7GB, so you'd most likely be unable to fit it all in an 8GB microSD.


I suppose you could fit it in a 32GB card then?

Anyway, going to get one, this is amazing! 
(unless Krikzz comes out with an RTC clock on the Everdrive GBA)


----------



## xwatchmanx (Feb 10, 2015)

WiiUBricker said:


> Hmm.... perhaps the EZ Flash team heard about rumors of an Everdrive GBA and decided to produce this new EZ4 as a competing product.


 
That's what I'm thinking. Personally, I'll stick with my MiniSD model. Though I might consider an everdrive GBA when it comes out. Hopefully it won't use a battery-backed save...


----------



## tbb043 (Feb 10, 2015)

Minox said:


> A heavily compressed No-Intro set is about 6.5~7GB, so you'd most likely be unable to fit it all in an 8GB microSD.



Is that across all regions, though? There's no reason to put all of those on,  stick to your region plus whatever imports you'll actually play and it should be plenty of space, right? (And there's probably plenty of in region stuff worth leaving off. Mary Kate & Ashley? Yeah, really need that)


----------



## Minox (Feb 10, 2015)

tbb043 said:


> Is that across all regions, though? There's no reason to put all of those on,  stick to your region plus whatever imports you'll actually play and it should be plenty of space, right? (And there's probably plenty of in region stuff worth leaving off. Mary Kate & Ashley? Yeah, really need that)


That's with similar games being compressed together in order to save storage space. Uncompressed it's about 24GB, but like you said you only need one version of a game so removing all the duplicates probably brings it down lower than that.


----------



## Riff89 (Feb 10, 2015)

I have the old white one with the mini sd slot. good thing I chose an adapter instead of an actual mini sd card. those things get stuck in there pretty good.


----------



## Magnus87 (Feb 10, 2015)

Im waiting Everdrive GBA


----------



## migles (Feb 10, 2015)

i wonder what i will do now whit this ez iv that i have with NOR not being able to write the full 32MB :/

the new ez iv looks awesome... but its a shame i can't spend 40 bucks again for the same card...


----------



## KidIce (Feb 10, 2015)

While I'm all for resurrecting the EZ4 carts I'd really like to see the Deluxe back in production but in a GBA sized case... Or better yet w/ swappable cases: a DS Lite sized and GBA sized.

If my Lite Deluxe were to die I don't think I could go back to having to burn 256Mb games to NOR.


----------



## luney (Feb 10, 2015)

I just picked up an Everdrive GB and I absolutely love the thing. I didn't know we were waiting on one for GBA though. Yeah I will definitely get the Everdrive. Still might want one of these too. I wish I were still on EZTeams mailing list. Would be interesting to see how the two compare.


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 11, 2015)

kuwanger said:


> FAST6191: Any chance you could pass upon that request to make hard reset the default? And, again, a request for the kernel source to be open?  As it stands, I'm rather happy at just how much effort they put into it. Though this new model tends to explain the recent update.
> 
> PS - A very nasty bug in their new boot loader.  If you hold down R to update the ezfla_up.bin, it doesn't actually check that there's an ezfla_up.bin on the SD card.  It'll just merrily erase the current loader, which can make it unbootable until you copy over the ezfla_up.bin and reinstall it. :~(  I wonder if there's a way to fix that.



Odd, I once had to edit the name/header to match to flash an alt loader (I wanted ezf3me to load automatically to boot the NOR).

Anyway I do not speak to the EZTeam that much these days but I will pass it along when I do speak to them next. It sounded like they have some people and are potentially interested in polishing the loader up a bit, the big push/first goal presumably being the new chip(s) and SDHC support though.

I am not sure if they will open source it. The talk was for the EZ5 to be open sourced now it is not doing a lot, the EZ4 is current again so perhaps not. On the other hand I shall remind them why their 3 in 1 was the expansion pack of choice, how the ak2i rose up on the back of AKAIO, the whole DLDI thing and why things that did not manage to get the devs of pogoshell onboard faced some issues during the GBA era.



KidIce said:


> While I'm all for resurrecting the EZ4 carts I'd really like to see the Deluxe back in production but in a GBA sized case... Or better yet w/ swappable cases: a DS Lite sized and GBA sized.
> 
> If my Lite Deluxe were to die I don't think I could go back to having to burn 256Mb games to NOR.



Yeah I am not sure why they went for this model. I know some of the chip sizes kind of stalled for a hot moment but oh well.
Hopefully my stockpile of two lite deluxes keeps me going for some time to come (a shop was selling them off once for less than 20 Euros a piece, guess they did not know what they had).




Anyway I am not sure what to do for a review for this -- it is an EZ4, the features compared to some of the stuff from the height of the GBA scene are not really there (late GBA era saw ROM compression, good cheats, something approaching savestates, sleep, soft reset and a bit more). However it does run most games out there, if not then chances are it is sorted with links to http://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995 and none will have slowdown that was not present in the original game.
Despite all that it is still about the only standalone GBA flash cart that you will probably be able to find today, the main exceptions being the supercard (slowdowns, low compatibility and not much fun to use) and I occasionally stumble across a firecard (usually the 16 megabyte version). Krikzz may come out with an everdrive at some point but at the same time it is not like this will stop running basically every GBA game.

I might do a combined review and usage guide, such a thing has been on the cards for quite a while actually.


----------



## donkeymilk (Feb 11, 2015)

3DSXLGamer said:


> If only realhotstuff was still in business, then I would've bought it.



FFS... Your post just broke the news to me. 

And there was a great void in the force....


----------



## AceWarhead (Feb 11, 2015)

Any news of sites stocking these yet? Or is it still in testing phase?


----------



## KidIce (Feb 11, 2015)

FAST6191 said:


> Yeah I am not sure why they went for this model. I know some of the chip sizes kind of stalled for a hot moment but oh well.
> Hopefully my stockpile of two lite deluxes keeps me going for some time to come (a shop was selling them off once for less than 20 Euros a piece, guess they did not know what they had).


 
My sour grapes about your good fortune border on hatred. Don't ever talk to me again. :-) J/K, that's a damn nice score.



FAST6191 said:


> Anyway I am not sure what to do for a review for this -- it is an EZ4, the features compared to some of the stuff from the height of the GBA scene are not really there (late GBA era saw ROM compression, good cheats, something approaching savestates, sleep, soft reset and a bit more). However it does run most games out there, if not then chances are it is sorted with links to http://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995 and none will have slowdown that was not present in the original game.
> Despite all that it is still about the only standalone GBA flash cart that you will probably be able to find today, the main exceptions being the supercard (slowdowns, low compatibility and not much fun to use) and I occasionally stumble across a firecard (usually the 16 megabyte version). Krikzz may come out with an everdrive at some point but at the same time it is not like this will stop running basically every GBA game.
> 
> I might do a combined review and usage guide, such a thing has been on the cards for quite a while actually.


 
I'd try to keep from comparing it to the "golden age" carts, personally. While I am quite aware of the awesomeness that was, I think most people that are looking for a GBA cart now are not. The other reason is that you can't really get those carts anymore, so comparing it to competition that for all intents and purposes no longer exists is really not a valid basis for assessment of feature set or quality... It's also a big tease and nose thumbing to people who don't own those golden age carts. You don't want to be a smug l33t bastard do you? :-D

The lack of RTC is worth mention for the Poke-Fans, but not a good reason to downgrade your score, for example. The other features of the EZ3 that were stripped for the EZ4, I wouldn't even bring up nor, again, adjust the score based on their being missing. Ammend it later if/when Krikzz's solution offers some competition. That's how I'd do it anyway.

BTW, do you happen to know the price these are supposed to sell at?


----------



## Lou-GBA (Feb 11, 2015)

Glad to see now it supports more than 2GB microSD-SDHC memories.

For 29,95eur I'm ordering one here which comes with a free additional battery


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 11, 2015)

KidIce said:


> My sour grapes about your good fortune border on hatred. Don't ever talk to me again. :-) J/K, that's a damn nice score.
> 
> I'd try to keep from comparing it to the "golden age" carts, personally. While I am quite aware of the awesomeness that was, I think most people that are looking for a GBA now cart are not. The other reason is that you can't really get those carts anymore, so comparing it to competition that for all intents and purposes no longer exists is really not a valid basis for assessment of feature set or quality... It's also a big tease and nose thumbing to people who don't own those golden age carts. You don't want to be a smug l33t bastard do you? :-D
> 
> ...



Given the golden age of flash carts would probably want me to have a serial or parallel port, have my bank manager consider asking for ownership of my firstborn, keep running windows XP or earlier, fiddle with drivers, have 4 different versions of a flashing client, possibly need a GBA to flash with, spend my life hoping that I do not get sector 0 failure for the NOR or general NAND failure (compared to saying oh dear and buying another $10 microSD)... I will call it fair trade if I lack client/cart driven cheats (gabsharky was never bad once it got going and GBAATM is better than it was), compression (because a few gigs of SD memory does not exactly break the bank) and RTC for those 3 games that really want it as a gimmick of sorts.


The only shops I have seen them in thus far have been in this topic (I have not looked) and price wise it seems to be in line with what EZ4s have been going for this last year or so, so mid $40 or equivalents in other currencies. More than such things were going for in late 2011/early 2012 when nobody wanted one and enough that those brought up on the DS flash cart world will tell me it is a crazy high price, "especially for a retro console".


----------



## SushiKing (Feb 11, 2015)

Will this work for the NDS?


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 11, 2015)

Yeah it will happily boot up in GBA mode on a DS -- no GBA flash cart/piece of third party hardware was ever blocked by anything that officially runs GBA carts, save perhaps those things that could not physically fit like the TV decoder thing.

The original EZ4 loaders had a feature where you could boot into DS mode or GBA mode if your DS had flashme or a passme/nopass in there. Older GBA flash carts meant you had to choose whether you wanted GBA or DS and if you had DS (which was the only way to run DS games and homebrew) then you could not boot it on a GBA until you removed the loader and wrote the GBA one back.
The SDHC update the other week removed the DS side of things so if you try to boot into DS mode/as DS code then it just whitescreens. This means it is not going to be easy to run a copy of the DS game and save dumping tools on one (not that the DLDI patch likely supports SDHC) which is annoying as that probably is the best way to dump DS games outside of having actual dumping hardware.


----------



## cracker (Feb 11, 2015)

iCEQB said:


> Man they could have moved the SD slot out of the front while they were at it ... and what about a RTC?
> Even with this, there is still a "perfect" GBA Flashcart MIA.



By perfect do you mean with RTC and playing unpatched games? Or do you mean 100% compatibility? That would be unrealistic because AFAIK only 2 games use a light sensor and 3 or so use a tilt sensor. It would be nice to see an affordable and stable cart with RTC that patched during runtime but that seems to be too much to ask for. Even the EDGBA isn't expected to have an RTC and they are a top notch line of carts.


----------



## Jayro (Feb 11, 2015)

And yet there's STILL only a 32MB NOR and STILL no RTC... Card slot size and new case/sticker aren't enough for me to wanna buy it. :/


----------



## cracker (Feb 11, 2015)

What title uses more than 32M? The only one I ever encountered was Shaman King with the scene trainer.


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 11, 2015)

cracker said:


> What title uses more than 32M? The only one I ever encountered was Shaman King with the scene trainer.


Though the commercial 256 releases are not so great in number there are increasing numbers of ROM hacks, especially for pokemon which probably also explains the desire for RTC, that go above 16 (it is free space and trivial to add/work with after all).

I think technically that Shrek video was also bankswitched and there is some homebrew, mostly pogoshell.


----------



## The_Hulkster (Feb 11, 2015)

This is going to sound very uneducated to most here but could someone explain to me what RTC would add to the games?
It sounds to me like you can play the games just fine but some things don't work..?

And could someone also tell me which games don't work due to the size limit?


----------



## KidIce (Feb 11, 2015)

FAST6191 said:


> Given the golden age of flash carts would probably want me to have a serial or parallel port, have my bank manager consider asking for ownership of my firstborn, keep running windows XP or earlier, fiddle with drivers, have 4 different versions of a flashing client, possibly need a GBA to flash with, spend my life hoping that I do not get sector 0 failure for the NOR or general NAND failure (compared to saying oh dear and buying another $10 microSD)... I will call it fair trade if I lack client/cart driven cheats (gabsharky was never bad once it got going and GBAATM is better than it was), compression (because a few gigs of SD memory does not exactly break the bank) and RTC for those 3 games that really want it as a gimmick of sorts.
> 
> 
> The only shops I have seen them in thus far have been in this topic (I have not looked) and price wise it seems to be in line with what EZ4s have been going for this last year or so, so mid $40 or equivalents in other currencies. More than such things were going for in late 2011/early 2012 when nobody wanted one and enough that those brought up on the DS flash cart world will tell me it is a crazy high price, "especially for a retro console".


 
It's not so difficult as that, at least not w/ the EZ2 & EZ3. Their linkers are USB and it doesn't take much to set up a virtual machine w/ XP to use the clients. They work just dandy from my Windows 7 rig that way... But I wouldn't sell them for even your first born. :-D

Compression is somewhat pointless these days on a GBA cart w/ replaceable storage, as you say. An 8GB mSD would hold everything in the entire GBA library that was worth playing and is so cheap that they come as prizes in boxes of Cracker Jacks.

--

I see, I was hoping they might have given you an MSRP or such when they sent the sample out... I'm perfectly capable of looking at the shops. :-)



cracker said:


> What title uses more than 32M? The only one I ever encountered was Shaman King with the scene trainer.


 
Mostly the "video" carts, but of the ones worth playing there are the Sting games (Riviera & Yygdra Union) and Mother that come to mind. There aren't very many, true, but there are some worth while, IMO.


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 11, 2015)

Oh yeah I still have my EZ2 and it is not going to be pried out of my hands with ease. Though I still have a few XP machines around for old embedded hardware and legacy software so that is not so bad there either.



The_Hulkster said:


> This is going to sound very uneducated to most here but could someone explain to me what RTC would add to the games?
> It sounds to me like you can play the games just fine but some things don't work..?
> 
> And could someone also tell me which games don't work due to the size limit?




The size limit is likely two different things

1) GBA games need fast memory to work, standard NAND memory (like what is seen in SD cards, CF cards, XD cards....) is not fast enough for it. Two common and relatively cheap (though still not cheap, hence the expense of GBA carts compared to what DS carts ended up at) are NOR and PSRAM. NOR is slow to write and a has a whole bunch of quirks but is permanent, PSRAM is like most RAM and only lasts as long as there is power.
Early GBA flash carts kept trying to add more and more NOR, later designs on GBA flash carts often has NOR still but also had a NAND section and wrote that to the fast PSRAM before launching the game.

Without something like bankswitching (commonly seen in older consoles -- if you have seen talk of things like NES mappers and gameboy MBCs aka memory bank controllers then those would be good examples) the maximum size of GBA games was 256Mbit or 32 megabytes. However the vast majority of GBA games were 16 megabytes (128Mbit) or under. Of those games that are over 16 megabytes then most are not really worth playing, are possibly Japanese manga tie in games, are the GBA videos or are 2 in 1 collections of puzzle games and whatnot (just get the original games and boot those instead).
As the space is very easy to access then some hackers took to using it rather than wedge it in with the existing code, or because they actually needed it -- it is free space and comes with no real downsides other than this.

The standard/original EZ4 and original EZ4 lite came with 256MBit of NOR and 128Mbit of PSRAM. Many other GBA flash carts, including the EZ4 lite deluxe, opted instead to have 256Mbit of RAM.

http://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995 has a list of all the 256Mbit titles. In my experience people care about Yggdra Union, Mother 3, Riviera, Kingdom Hearts - Chain of Memories, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - Red Rescue Team, some yugioh games, maybe that Bleach game and the European version of Fire Emblem - Sacred Stones (the NA version is 128Mbit but is only in English, the European version is English, French, Spanish, German and Italian aka a mutli5 game)..
Frankly I can live without all of those (Yggdra Union and Riveria are theoretically games I should like but in practice do not, I might have to compare them with Monster Hunter some time) save for Kouchu Ouja - Mushi King (a fighting beetles game) though PMD and Mother 3 are not bad and justifiably have their fans.

The working 256 stuff people refer to seems to be some of the later EZ4 batches have 256Mbit chips but when flash memory does not work so well it tends to drop sectors, for most this is not so bad but Mother 3 was 256Mbit before it was translated and trying to find space for that script was a serious problem for the hackers (I doubt there will ever be another case of that for the GBA). To that end the final version uses every single byte and can not be trimmed. Most 256Mbit titles can be trimmed quite happily or be otherwise cut down when needed. This then led to a spate of people being unable to flash and play Mother 3 with their shiny new flash carts (and to rub salt in the wound it would then freeze as it ran out of space, or when it says 255Mbit written), also why I tested it for the initial photos/first impressions. In graphics card and CPU reviews where they test overclocking there have been cases of vendors having the review samples be able to be overclocked far more than the average one might (the term being known as "binned higher") so when the review says "we were able to overclock it 70%" all the kids see that and rush out to buy them when in practice their gains will be far more modest and the graphics card/CPU vendor laughs all the way to the bank. I can not rule out that happening here but my sample works.

As mentioned NOR is slow to write to (it takes several minutes to do a whole game) so if you do have multiple games above 128 Mbit, and also as mentioned a few hacks have gone down that path so it is more likely than it was when the EZ4 was first designed, then you face having to erase and write to the NOR if you want to switch up games every hour or two.

RTC = real time clock.
The GBA does not come with a clock onboard (the DS and most newer devices do, being GBA code though you can not access the DS clock if you have it in one) so the games that wanted some kind of functionality like that had to include it on the cart itself. http://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm#gbacartioportgpio has more on the technical side of things if you wanted that.
In the end it was a small handful of games that used a real time clock. The pokemon games named for gems (in English that would be Ruby Sapphire and later Emerald) are among that number though. Others include Boktai/Solar Boy Django and Rockman 4.5 (an as yet untranslated spinoff of the battle network series). So not bad games just when it comes to having the clock hardware onboard and also having to power it (clocks tend to need power to run) then you get to 
Other than rockman all the games have patches to fake the clock. For pokemon the time just counts up as you are playing the game so you get day/night cycles, the main issue is utterly minor in that berries (a kind of minor boost in the game) take 24 real hours to grow. 24 real hours is plant after work/school and come back the next day, 24 hours of playtime to match that is not quite the same. I believe some patches accelerate time and there are always cheats but some seem to crave accuracy, at least until they get used to having emulator speed up and want to replicate that in hardware (multiple times I have been asked to do that now).

No flash cart that has proper RTC support has been available since M3 stopped making theirs (the EZ2 and EZ3 models of GBA flash cart, the EZ4 being an almost direct descendant of the EZ3, both have RTC). RTC and a 256Mbit RAM section is what people seem to be hoping Krikzz adds to the Everdrive GBA they kind of teased a few months ago, possibly also for them to pull off the not inconsiderable feat* of patchless/drag and drop GBA flash carts. I do not hold RTC is worth adding to GBA carts but fans of pokemon** are among the more spend happy so it is not completely pointless to consider.

*the save patches are very simple but there is no easy/quick way for the 16Mhz ARM processor on the GBA with less than 512K of memory play with to detect what it needs, your multiple GHz PC with hundreds of megs of free RAM is far less troubled, hence PC patching being the norm. We had the discussion in depth, and some of the possible workarounds, on the later patches of http://gbatemp.net/threads/everdrive-gba.372028/ though.

**pokemon making life difficult, just one reason why those that do forums for flash carts/emulators and related things dread it.


----------



## cracker (Feb 11, 2015)

They might have to just spring for a Dingoo A380 or similar for games >32M. Doesn't seem to have an RTC though so no help for pokefans.


----------



## KidIce (Feb 11, 2015)

Hey Fast6191... I just saw this while looking around for shops stocking the mSD EZ4.

According to 3DSKarten.com the specs are those of the Deluxe. Is that correct? Are there maybe two versions? Are they just naff?


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 11, 2015)

Mine only has 128 PSRAM and 256 NOR, or if it does not then it is software locked.

The numbers on the chip ( http://www.datasheetarchive.com/dl/Datasheets-IS68/DSAH00171355.pdf , S71WS512ND0 being the model, 71WS512ND0BFWEP being the numbers on the chip) would seem to indicate a 512 NOR, which would also be in line with what we saw on the 3 in 1 and 3 in 1 + after the 256 sized supply dried up. I would have thought they would have made use of the extra though, especially as they seemingly still have the code for the lite deluxe in that kernel line.


----------



## KidIce (Feb 11, 2015)

FAST6191 said:


> Mine only has 128 PSRAM and 256 NOR, or if it does not then it is software locked.
> 
> The numbers on the chip ( http://www.datasheetarchive.com/dl/Datasheets-IS68/DSAH00171355.pdf , S71WS512ND0 being the model, 71WS512ND0BFWEP being the numbers on the chip) would seem to indicate a 512 NOR, which would also be in line with what we saw on the 3 in 1 and 3 in 1 + after the 256 sized supply dried up. I would have thought they would have made use of the extra though, especially as they seemingly still have the code for the lite deluxe in that kernel line.


 
And 128Mb of PSRAM... Phooey.

And here is another shop claiming Deluxe specs. I have no doubt that you are correct, but I'm curious as to what is up. Something certainly needs fixed. I know I'd be pretty pissed if I ordered based off those specs and got one w/ your spec. Also if the review unit does not carry the final spec for some reason, they should let you know so the review can reflect that. I'd be ordering one right now if I knew the final spec was that being advertised by those vendors.


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 11, 2015)

I can't remember which vendor it was but one of the big US flash cart sellers had the deluxe specs up for years when they were selling the miniSD version. That looks like the same ordering and use of words.

With Mother 3 on the NOR I can not even write another 78K game and if I try to launch roms greater than 16 megs I get a warning that the PSRAM is not enough. It might be a software thing as even 512 of NOR would be a nice perk.


----------



## cracker (Feb 11, 2015)

FAST6191 said:


> Mine only has 128 PSRAM and 256 NOR, or if it does not then it is software locked.
> 
> The numbers on the chip ( http://www.datasheetarchive.com/dl/Datasheets-IS68/DSAH00171355.pdf , S71WS512ND0 being the model, 71WS512ND0BFWEP being the numbers on the chip) would seem to indicate a 512 NOR, which would also be in line with what we saw on the 3 in 1 and 3 in 1 + after the 256 sized supply dried up. I would have thought they would have made use of the extra though, especially as they seemingly still have the code for the lite deluxe in that kernel line.



Perhaps a hack is in order?


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 11, 2015)

That would be a nice hack.

Oh and I just installed http://filetrip.net/gba-downloads/c...shiv-1-75-with-clearlooks-v5-1-75-f33030.html (v5 clearlooks SHDC) on this model and it seems to work fine in case anybody was wondering. Never sure why people care so much about the skin, even if you do have to look at it during the writes to RAM, but some people probably wish to know.


----------



## Technicmaster0 (Feb 12, 2015)

KidIce said:


> And here is another shop claiming Deluxe specs. I have no doubt that you are correct, but I'm curious as to what is up. Something certainly needs fixed. I know I'd be pretty pissed if I ordered based off those specs and got one w/ your spec. Also if the review unit does not carry the final spec for some reason, they should let you know so the review can reflect that. I'd be ordering one right now if I knew the final spec was that being advertised by those vendors.


They probably copied it somewhere wrong.


----------



## Acidflare (Feb 12, 2015)

FAST6191 said:


> The EZFlash Team sent GBAtemp a sample of their new GBA cart size, microSD(HC) using EZ4 to test. This is the first GBA sized EZ4 model to use microSD size memory rather than the now hard to come by miniSD. Out of the box it supported a FAT32 formatted 8 gigabyte micro SDHC card, though now all models of EZ4 should support SDHC.
> 
> Full review coming up but we took some some photos in the meantime, including some shots comparing the new model to the original launch model of EZ4. You can see them in the FileTrip gallery
> 
> ...


 
Any Idea where I can find one of these new models everywhere i've looked only has the MiniSD model


----------



## KidIce (Feb 12, 2015)

http://www.3dsgamerworld.com/ez4-ezflash-iv-ezflash-4-sltt2-gba-card-for-gba-nds-ndsl-p-27.html

From the front page of ShopTemp.


----------



## cracker (Feb 12, 2015)

> You should use a regular miniSD card, SDHC cards are not compatible.



WTF? Must be remnants of the old EZ4 description.


----------



## Technicmaster0 (Feb 12, 2015)

Acidflare said:


> Any Idea where I can find one of these new models everywhere i've looked only has the MiniSD model


There have been serveral links to shops in this discussion. Please just re-read the first page.


----------



## Acidflare (Feb 12, 2015)

So the review is model black colored but all I see on re-seller pages is a blue cart not that it really matters a dark blue or black one will go good with a dark blue NDSL. i'm just confused as to what color the shell actually is now 



KidIce said:


> http://www.3dsgamerworld.com/ez4-ezflash-iv-ezflash-4-sltt2-gba-card-for-gba-nds-ndsl-p-27.html
> 
> From the front page of ShopTemp.


 
I don't usually go to shoptemp I bought an R4i Gold 3DS RTS card + Sandisk 16GB Micro SDHC combo and the microsd card was bad wouldn't allow any more files after filling up to just over 9GB out of 13GB which was odd enough to me for a 16GB card and the re-seller wouldn't respond to my e-mail's after them telling me to reformat the card, wouldn't offer me a refund or exchange the memory card, the R4i card works great however, and that was my first and only experience for shoptemp kind of reluctant to buy from the sites listed there


----------



## KidIce (Feb 12, 2015)

Acidflare said:


> I don't usually go to shoptemp I bought an R4i Gold 3DS RTS card + Sandisk 16GB Micro SDHC combo and the microsd card was bad wouldn't allow any more files after filling up to just over 9GB out of 13GB which was odd enough to me for a 16GB card and the re-seller wouldn't respond to my e-mail's after them telling me to reformat the card, wouldn't offer me a refund or exchange the memory card, the R4i card works great however, and that was my first and only experience for shoptemp kind of reluctant to buy from the sites listed there


Because you think all the vendors listed there will do that? o.O

It's not a list of vendors that GBATemp knows to be shady. There are good and bad vendors on Amazon, eBay and any other marketplace. But OK.


----------



## Acidflare (Feb 12, 2015)

KidIce said:


> Because you think all the vendors listed there will do that? o.O
> 
> It's not a list of vendors that GBATemp knows to be shady. There are good and bad vendors on Amazon, eBay and any other marketplace. But OK.


 
No I don't think all the vendors will do that. I do agree with you there are good and bad vendors on any marketplace, just having used a bad vendor on my first experience really throws me off it's just the kind of person I am


----------



## Lou-GBA (Feb 14, 2015)

Acidflare said:


> Any Idea where I can find one of these new models everywhere i've looked only has the MiniSD model


 

I think best price for microSD model is at chollomedia.es for 29.95eur, about 35usd after change.

They accept credit card payment and do worldwide shipping.


----------



## The_Hulkster (Feb 14, 2015)

Lou-GBA said:


> I think best price for microSD model is at chollomedia.es for 29.95eur, about 35usd after change.
> 
> They accept credit card payment and do worldwide shipping.


 
Too bad they won't ship until the 17th.
And then it will take 2 weeks within Europe and even longer outside of Europe.

Great price, bad shipping.


----------



## kiryu1 (Feb 17, 2015)

Good thing I didn't order EZflash IV last year, just pre-ordered the new cart..  Ordered from 3dsgamerworld.com are they good?  I see that they used singpost, but I see that the status of my order is..

"Information Received (This is not an acknowledgment of the physical receipt of the stated Registered Article)"

..for a week now.  Am I screwed or what..


----------



## Metoroid0 (Feb 17, 2015)

this is funny...i just bought an old model and now there is new one xD oh well, this one is also good


----------



## SomecallmeBerto (Feb 18, 2015)

Any idea when the review will be out?


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 18, 2015)

Afraid it is going to be one of those "when I get around to it" things as it will likely have to end up as a review and in depth guide to every quirk I know of.

Review wise there is not an awful lot to say though and I already have the pictures up for it.
It is an EZ4 as most would know it, just using microSD/microSDHC in a side loading spring slot. There is a new battery and the case is slightly thinner, neither detracts in any real way though (the battery is non rechargeable so you may have to replace it in a few years).
It does not have a DS loader and thus you can not use the DS ROM dumper, though some people were saying you might be able to crowbar it back in and I will have to test that.
All the games on http://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995 are still troubled the same and fixed the same (links should be there as well and nothing new has happened, save perhaps boktai but I linked the thread there anyway).
The loader defaults to soft reset so you probably want to learn the L and A combo to do a hard reset launch for those games that do not care for it. Likewise for cheats you are probably better of going with GBAATM and trainers.
You probably want to treat homebrew as you did for earlier EZ4 kernels. http://ezflash.sosuke.com/viewforum.php?f=12 covers that.
The EZ4client program is your typical bit of slightly wonky code you get with embedded devices like this, however if you speak to it nicely it will happily patch games all day long. You can probably even get it working with WINE but there are other SRAM patching options out there.
I am guessing as they moved to a nominally 512 Mbit NOR chip and soft locked it to 256 the every byte matters issue that troubled mother 3 on the last few batches should not apply any longer.
I have yet to test the pokemon pal park patch, as a ram expansion (be it patched opera browser or with DS homebrew) and as ever it is probably not going to do you much good if you want to link it up to gamecube games (it uses a certain type of SRAM where the two or three games that read the GBA game's save expect a certain type of flash or EEPROM).

It really is just an EZ4 with a microSD slot. It is basically the only standalone GBA flash cart worth considering unless you luck out and find a suitable old M3 that someone is selling or found at the back of a warehouse (unlikely), however that is OK as it is made well enough and plays basically every game without too much trauma. Everdrive did tease something but so far it was just a tease, equally I am not sure what they can do to take over like they had scope to do for all the other stuff they did. If it had appeared during the height of the GBA era then the removable memory would have been a treat but it would have otherwise been a solid, if unremarkable, flash cart.


----------



## SomecallmeBerto (Feb 18, 2015)

FAST6191 said:


> Afraid it is going to be one of those "when I get around to it" things as it will likely have to end up as a review and in depth guide to every quirk I know of.
> 
> Review wise there is not an awful lot to say though and I already have the pictures up for it.
> It is an EZ4 as most would know it, just using microSD/microSDHC in a side loading spring slot. There is a new battery and the case is slightly thinner, neither detracts in any real way though (the battery is non rechargeable so you may have to replace it in a few years).
> ...


 


I see I have hoping there were some improvements over the old version such as drag and drop support. Thank you for your time.


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 18, 2015)

Drag and drop is more of a hardware limitation -- there is no easy way to know on a GBA what your save type is (PC has the benefit of lots more memory and a far superior processor). There are some ways it could be worked around (savelist, user selection, waiting a minute or two to scan like some DS stuff) but PC patching program works and is easy enough so there was probably not a great need to go to that length.
I would like to see a properly thought through save emulation (as opposed to save patching like all known GBA flash carts employ) but for the most part other than DS games reading the GBA saves and gamecube games reading GBA saves (two very small lists of games on both counts), and possibly dodging the need for a SRAM battery, there is not a lot of reason to go down that path. I guess it would be possible to do drag and drag save patching but that really does seem like a lot of effort for no great gain (open rom(s), press send is hardly a difficult action).


----------



## SomecallmeBerto (Feb 18, 2015)

I see I was unaware of the more technical story behind it. For the price it seems to do what it sets out to do well. Originally I had issues with it because of the miniSD card adapter keep going bad on me corrupting all my games; however now that is uses micro sd cards I may have to go ahead and pick this up and give it another try.


----------



## Acidflare (Feb 18, 2015)

FAST6191 is it possible to use the palpark features with an EZ-Flash 3in1? I have a ruby save on the NOR i'm working on I just want to know if palpark is possible before I continue playing


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 18, 2015)

Yeah you can use a 3 in 1, most things stem from the patches originally made for it. You just need a way to patch the DS game to read from the flash cart's SRAM. If you need it for an original cart (perhaps to send on to the pokebank) then you will probably have to dump the save off that (there should be options nowadays), run it on a patched ROM, do your pal park stuff and then export back to the original cart.

http://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/rom-hacks/download-pokepatch-4-2-f27240.html is the patching program for the DS games.


----------



## Acidflare (Feb 18, 2015)

Okay sweet thank you, I was using GBAEXPloader before then I couldn't get ruby to boot so I tried the wood 1.64 kernel it works I just have to save twice. I tried palpark and my pokemone heartgold rom wouldn't pick up the ruby stored on the 3in1 NOR


----------



## apoptygma (Feb 20, 2015)

Got mine today, works great! Even tested a couple of NOR-reliant games like SSF2TR. Just need a nice 1.75 kernel skin and I'm happy. That black nintendo one would be awesome. I might get time to build it with the EZPDA_1.7.5 program I just need to figure out the menus because it's all in chinese...


----------



## SomecallmeBerto (Feb 20, 2015)

apoptygma said:


> Got mine today, works great! Even tested a couple of NOR-reliant games like SSF2TR. Just need a nice 1.75 kernel skin and I'm happy. That black nintendo one would be awesome. I might get time to build it with the EZPDA_1.7.5 program I just need to figure out the menus because it's all in chinese...


 

There SHOULD be an english version at least there was when I last used it a few years ago.


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 20, 2015)

From the initial menu
Down two times
A three times
Down once
A once
Press B enough times until you are back at the main menu.


----------



## lugia56 (Feb 22, 2015)

Just ordered one from aliexpress! A couple days ago I found an AGS-101 at a thrift shop for $40 and I had to get it. When it arrives I will post a review of it.


----------



## Riff89 (Feb 23, 2015)

For those who have had both this version and the old white cart sd version, is it worth it to buy this updated cart? Is there anything new besides color and sd card slot?


----------



## 160R (Feb 23, 2015)

kiryu1 said:


> Good thing I didn't order EZflash IV last year, just pre-ordered the new cart.. Ordered from 3dsgamerworld.com are they good? I see that they used singpost, but I see that the status of my order is..
> 
> "Information Received (This is not an acknowledgment of the physical receipt of the stated Registered Article)"
> 
> ..for a week now. Am I screwed or what..


 
Pre-order? You can really get it here and for a better price:



Lou-GBA said:


> I think best price for microSD model is at chollomedia.es for 29.95eur, about 35usd after change.
> 
> They accept credit card payment and do worldwide shipping.


----------



## kiryu1 (Feb 23, 2015)

160R said:


> Pre-order? You can really get it here and for a better price:


 


Too bad, I ordered already from 3dsgamerworld.com..  My shipping status is the same for almost 2 weeks now I checked.  Hope I wasn't scammed or sumthin..


----------



## lugia56 (Feb 24, 2015)

kiryu1 said:


> Too bad, I ordered already from 3dsgamerworld.com.. My shipping status is the same for almost 2 weeks now I checked. Hope I wasn't scammed or sumthin..


Seems hard to judge... http://www.scamadviser.com/check-website/3dsgamerworld.com


----------



## The_Hulkster (Mar 5, 2015)

I just received my new EZ-Flash IV from chollomedia.es.
While the cart runs fine, the shipping leaves a lot to be desired.

First of all, it takes ages for it to arrive.
The cart comes in a box, which is in a plain envelope-like package. No bubble wrap or anything.
The battery rattles around during shipping as it's loose in the box.

Also, the cart is very poorly made.
The back and front are not quite attached and tend to come apart quite easily.
This sometimes causes the micro SD card to wedge itself under the actual port, ending up in the shell of the cart, when inserting the SD card.
The SD card slot is rather hard to reach as well.

However, I can't blame chollomedia for the actual product.


----------



## FAST6191 (Mar 5, 2015)

I had some issues with the microSD but I would not have said the case is poorly made for the one I was sent. I found if you held it so your forefinger goes over the top you can then use your nail to remove and insert easily enough


----------



## kiryu1 (Mar 6, 2015)

this..



The_Hulkster said:


> I just received my new EZ-Flash IV from chollomedia.es.
> While the cart runs fine, the shipping leaves a lot to be desired.
> 
> First of all, it takes ages for it to arrive.
> ...


 

my package finally arrived and I could say that it is a minimalist's wet dream.. It was shipped in an enveloped, then inside the cart is encased in a gba protector case.. that's it..


Cart's plastic feels cheap.
Once I inserted an SD card, the cart almost split in half..
the micro SD slot is spring loaded but it's quite faulty..


Otherwise, it plays ROMS on a 32GB Kingston Class 10 Micro SD card, which is quite fine..


But for price tag of $40 is not worthy for the quality of the cart, it feels like it could break at anytime..

a 3/5 for me..


----------



## The_Hulkster (Mar 7, 2015)

FAST6191 said:


> I had some issues with the microSD but I would not have said the case is poorly made for the one I was sent. I found if you held it so your forefinger goes over the top you can then use your nail to remove and insert easily enough


 
Well, mine basically comes apart if you even look at it funny.
Might be a bad batch, but reading kiryu1's reply, I'm sure it's just the way they manufacture the carts.


----------



## shanefromoz (Mar 19, 2015)

I want to buy 3 of these with airmail shipping to Australia and wish to pay using paypal.
Who would be the best to order from?


----------



## Jayro (Mar 19, 2015)

Minox said:


> A heavily compressed No-Intro set is about 6.5~7GB, so you'd most likely be unable to fit it all in an 8GB microSD.


 
But several of those ROMs are European and Japanese duplicates that are exactly the same as the regular American releases, so I typically delete those, leaving only the ROMs I need. That should fit an 8GB one just fine, maybe even a 4GB one. Especially if you trim them all first.


----------

