EZ4 loader 1.76 released, some bug fixes.

[physicallyinsane]

If you are familiar with GBFS and can manually convert the images you can insert new ones into the skin, the older skin building methods usually amounted to "copy these BMPs into the GBA directory of this program and press build".

L and A is the button combo to tell the EZ4 to launch the GBA ROM with a hard reset, the older modulo RESET loader that everybody suggested for previous models did a hard reset by default. You don't even need to hold L the entire time, just hold it and then press a, once the percentage bar starts going up you are good.



I hadn't seen the navigation and save speeds but games seemed about the same for me, I will have to time a few things.

As for Carbon I will have to figure out a way to build skins with my current setup. Personally as long as I can read the text I do not really care what the skins look like but I tend not to care about the appearance of irrelevant things to what I am doing.

Thanks for the info c: Know of any guides to manually changing skins?

 

[Trayton60]

You need to use the skin builder tool to do that. It requires a lot of Bit map image converting and resizing. Very hard to make. The skin making program wont even run on most systems as it is for windows xp. It's really hard to do.

 

[FAST6191]

Thanks for the info c: Know of any guides to manually changing skins?

You need to use the skin builder tool to do that. It requires a lot of Bit map image converting and resizing. Very hard to make. The skin making program wont even run on most systems as it is for windows xp. It's really hard to do.

It is not as much Windows XP and whatever flavour of visual basic runtimes the skinning tools want, though I guess that could be annoying in 2015, but the new loaders not using a DS skin and all the older programs seem to error out with that setup. It is all still the same underlying theory, save for the DS stuff not being there, but the legacy tools will not work. Equally the various mods, fixes and python skinning tools from modulo, Kuwanger and co were more version specific hacks; prior to the last 2013 run it had been years since the last loader update (late 2006 for the previous official and mid 2007 for the modulo hacked loaders -- http://ezflash.sosuke.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=793 , the EZ4 itself kept being updated until April 2009) so that made sense really.

I forget which way around it went for the DS loader and GBA loader section. I believe it used the GBFS (gameboy file system, a popular homebrew file system for the GBA http://pineight.com/gba/#gbfs ) format to store things, equally it wanted the pictures in a custom/hardware close format for the GBA side of things so they needed to be converted to 16 bit BMP (easier said than done with a lot of image editing programs as it is not a very common format). Most things I have done with it have been more for extracting skins from old loaders than manually building new ones so I will have to read up before I go too much further. As it is BMP for the GBA side of things and thus should be the same size regardless of the input image then you should be able to copy things around/over older parts, on the other hand I vaguely recall some compression from the EZ3 skin days (the EZ4 GBA loader was very much based upon the EZ3 loader, hence the clock for the RTC it does not have).

 

[codezer0]

Nice that there is a firmware update... but will this allow resetting back to the loader again?

That said, when is the EZ client going to be updated? It keeps showing up as suspect to some antivirus apps, and further, its ability to batch convert is utterly broken, still.

 

[migles]

Nice that there is a firmware update... but will this allow resetting back to the loader again?

That said, when is the EZ client going to be updated? It keeps showing up as suspect to some antivirus apps, and further, its ability to batch convert is utterly broken, still.

reset to loader works fine here, except with 32mb roms (maybe because they have to use the whole memory, or i just didnt patched them propertly
but it works on other roms!

as for the client, yeah it could be better, i would ask to ez iv to open source the client so people can make a better one but meh...

 

[codezer0]

Are you sure? I make a point to apply the save and reset patches, but it never works on any ROMS. it hasn't worked since 1.72.

 

[physicallyinsane]

It is not as much Windows XP and whatever flavour of visual basic runtimes the skinning tools want, though I guess that could be annoying in 2015, but the new loaders not using a DS skin and all the older programs seem to error out with that setup. It is all still the same underlying theory, save for the DS stuff not being there, but the legacy tools will not work. Equally the various mods, fixes and python skinning tools from modulo, Kuwanger and co were more version specific hacks; prior to the last 2013 run it had been years since the last loader update (late 2006 for the previous official and mid 2007 for the modulo hacked loaders -- http://ezflash.sosuke.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=793 , the EZ4 itself kept being updated until April 2009) so that made sense really.

I forget which way around it went for the DS loader and GBA loader section. I believe it used the GBFS (gameboy file system, a popular homebrew file system for the GBA http://pineight.com/gba/#gbfs ) format to store things, equally it wanted the pictures in a custom/hardware close format for the GBA side of things so they needed to be converted to 16 bit BMP (easier said than done with a lot of image editing programs as it is not a very common format). Most things I have done with it have been more for extracting skins from old loaders than manually building new ones so I will have to read up before I go too much further. As it is BMP for the GBA side of things and thus should be the same size regardless of the input image then you should be able to copy things around/over older parts, on the other hand I vaguely recall some compression from the EZ3 skin days (the EZ4 GBA loader was very much based upon the EZ3 loader, hence the clock for the RTC it does not have).

Thanks FAST you've been a real help One last question: I noticed sending a patch game into the sd card places both the rom and .sav file in the SAVER folder. Is there any way to allocate them to separate folders so that the saves still work. I tried doing it manually but roms can't seem to read the .savs when they're in another folder.

 

[FAST6191]

Saves need to be the in saver folder. ROM cans be anywhere.
Have you got the saver folder selected in EZ4client? They should not copy there otherwise.

 

[physicallyinsane]

Saves need to be the in saver folder. ROM cans be anywhere.
Have you got the saver folder selected in EZ4client? They should not copy there otherwise.

Yeah, I took the saves out of the SAVER file and left the roms in. Just switched it around is all Another weird thing is that sending multiple roms at once didn't go so well and certain roms I sent showed as only ".gba" and ".sav" in the folder; I had to type in the titles manually for them to show up on the cart. The reset combination didn't work either despite the fact that I checked it before sending any roms.

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah the EZTeam never updated the game list. Grab romname.lst from the language directory of http://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/flashcart-files/download-ez4-client-2009-04-03-f31119.html and overwrite your one with it. I never got around to adding some do the redumps and v1.1s, and more importantly never got around to putting the mario games as 8:3 names but it should have basically all the commercial games, some choice homebrew games and some leaked betas/unreleased games too.

 

[codezer0]

Okay, I'm going to be as plain as I can.

I still have my EZ4 here. I have the miniSD one, now updated to this new 1.76 firmware.

Trying to use the newest build of the EZ4Client from Team EZ, with the romname.lst that FAST provided just now (thanks for that).

However, every time that I try to upload a bunch at a time, it always gives me some kind of error I don't understand. And then when I check the rom directory, the patched file appears to be in the microSD I am trying to prep for the duty. But, upon checking it seems the matching named file in the saver directory is 0KB and won't proceed any further. Further still, even when I do make a point to keep the "reset" patch checked, none of the ROMs ever return to the loader screen for saving or any of the sort.

So IS there a version of EZclient that works? because my end goal is that now that I found this 16GB microSD and with the updated firmware, I am trying to set up so that I can have a complete ROM archive on the EZ4... but currently, I can't seem to get this to work at all. I could really appreciate some help.

 

[Donel]

codezer0:

http://www.ezflash.cn/zip/EZ4_20070521.zip

This one works fine. The newest version can't make the soft reset function work for me either. Use the romlist you got from FAST6191.


Still, I can't make soft reset work in the following games:

- Drill Dozer
- Final Fantasy IV Advance
- Final Fantasy V Advance
- Final Fantasy VI Advance
- Mother 3
- Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - Red Rescue Team
- Super Mario Advance 3 - Yoshi's Island

 

[draxoon]

I've been toying with the new loader and my old EZ4 to find out what saver improvements have been done in this version.
At first, patched my dump of SMA2 (USA) with GBATA, trimmed it down to 25 mbit (to avoid loading % issues), gave it a rather long name "Super Mario Advance 2 - Super Mario World (USA, Australia)", and then copied it along with blank save.
Suprisingly the game saves fine so far, no issues at all. Is it just me, or problem with long file names has finally been solved?

 

[migles]

Are you sure? I make a point to apply the save and reset patches, but it never works on any ROMS. it hasn't worked since 1.72.

it works on 1.76. if you read my previous comments you will see i demonstrated great surprise that the back to loader works
i wouldn't say it works, if was not sure >:C

as for your next question about 0kb saves
format the card with sd formatter (overwrite complete)
and upload them 1 at a time, with the save and thing checked...
also make sure the key combination is ok, i leaved as standarn, cuz i was scared to break something xD

i remember i had a similar problem when i turned off the the console while saving (when you boot the card), it started to corrupt the save folder..., i had to format the card, and load another game to fix it...

i didn't use the romlist thing, everything so far is working for me without it :/
the only thing it doesn't work but i can see a reason why, is 32mb games don't get back to loader (but maybe i forgot to check the reset thing

 

[migles]

codezer0:

http://www.ezflash.cn/zip/EZ4_20070521.zip

This one works fine. The newest version can't make the soft reset function work for me either. Use the romlist you got from FAST6191.


Still, I can't make soft reset work in the following games:

- Final Fantasy I & II - Dawn of Souls
- Final Fantasy IV Advance
- Final Fantasy V Advance
- Final Fantasy VI Advance
- Mother 3
- Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - Red Rescue Team
- Super Mario Advance 3 - Yoshi's Island

mother 3 and pokemon mistery dungeon are 32mb game, i guess since they require all the memory, the card can't make them back to menu...
i heard some people telling yoshis island is kinda problematic... for instance you need to press L+A to boot it up using an hard reset
personally i never tried to play yoshis island...
however i had tried boot some games with L+A it does a hard reset (gba logo appears again) and the back to loader combianation still works :/
are others also 32MB games?

 

[Donel]

Yes, I know about the L+A boot. Ninja Five-0 requires L+A, but the soft reset works anyway.

The only 32 MB games are the ones you quoted, Mother 3 and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon.

The Final Fantasy series is known for not being compatible with EZ-Flash IV Client's soft reset method.

 

[kuwanger]

Yea, I don't even begin to remember the long list of games that aren't soft reset key compatible. However, there's sleephack as a possible work around. But you'll want to actually test that it works without crashing the game. Meanwhile, since holding R on reload of the loader seems to unconditionally flash the loader on the newer models...

 

[Donel]

I've tried the sleephack method, but as you said, it kept erasing the loader, so I gave up.

My soft reset combination is L+Start+Select. Difficult to hit by accident in basically any game.

 

[xy1154]

1.72 works fine for me.

I guess the upgrade isn't necessary for old EZ4 models.

 

[codezer0]

So 1.76 at least fixes the file name problems with the mario advance games?