Hardware Seriously no cheap GBA flashcarts?

Kows

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Can anyone tell me what a good cheap gba flashcart? I don't know if these exist or not, googling stuff like this just gave me a bunch of wikipedia pages and youtube videos.

I know ez-flash is probably my best option, but I could get a whole new 2ds with that money.
I just want to be able to play gba, gbc and gb games on my gameboy advance for cheap.

be what you want cause a pirate lives free :0
 

Localhorst86

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the ezflash iv can be regularly found at around 30$. There will be an everdrive GBA soon but it will be a lot more expensive and also bigger than a regular GBA cart.

supercard minis can be found cheap (Usually less than 20 bucks), but they are horrible because they suffer from slowdowns.

If you're interested in a clone console, i would recommend the revo k101+.

it's about the price of a 2ds, but it's a GBA hardware clone with a really great backlit screen and also a flashcard called k-card that only works on the revo, though.
 
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dpad_5678

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Supercard SD mini is a great card for the price. My only complaint is that whenever you remove the miniSD or the miniSD adapter you have to blow on the contacts of it. Don't know why but it just doesn't read correctly (happens about 50% of the time when you remove the card). Not much of a problem as the card lose connect while your playing the game.

It has built in NES/GBC/GB emulators (it doesn't support link cable for GBC/GB Games). Emulation us great and I barely get any lag.

Also, I get no lag while playing GBA games.

Solid cart for $15
 

Localhorst86

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But I already have a gameboy advance D:
Then

Supercard Mini
EZflash IV Micro
And the upcoming everdrive Gba (to be released June 24th)

Will be your only commonly available choices, ordered from cheapest to most expensive. I would recommend the EZflash since it has a few advantages over the Supercard, but if it's cheap you're after and don't mind the occasional slowdown, get the Supercard.

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FAST6191

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You could probably find a firecard for around the same money or less than the supercard. Most will be 128Mbit (16 megabytes for those not familiar with megabit), and a select few will be 256Mbit (32 megabytes, other than the shrek videos GBA games topped out at 256Mbit though most were 128Mbit or below). Equally many will be parallel or want to be installed on XP.
However as they are not a supercard or a supercard clone then they will not have the slowdown and compatibility issues that plague GBA supercards. I would take a firecard before I took a supercard. I occasionally stumble across old GBA neoflash carts as well (basically rebadged XG2 GBA flash carts) but it has been a while since someone linked up one of those.

Anyway cheap compared to what? Historical prices for GBA flash carts were far higher for far smaller storage ( http://web.archive.org/web/20061025191744/http://www.jandaman.com/games.mvc?c=GBADEVKIT http://web.archive.org/web/20040612195638/http://www.rbenda.de/ http://web.archive.org/web/20040510...o.uk/prodtype.asp?PT_ID=72&strPageHistory=cat http://web.archive.org/web/20050914154444/http://www.linker4u.com/pp/default.asp ). If you mean like the $5 R4s that the DS eventually saw (at least before Wood came along and caused it to be a viable cart again) then why would it be valid to compare them?
 

cvskid

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You have to pay for quality when it comes to flash carts. Hard to put both "good" and "cheap" in the same sentence reguarding that. Usually it's one or the other.
 

FAST6191

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the others are so high because of Everdrive's Monopoly and the demand is lower
Though demand and quality monopoly (there are plenty of GB/GBC, SNES, NES, N64 and whatever flash carts, however they are all pretty poor compared to everdrive's offerings) are a thing I would also look at the hardware required -- you are basically obliged to stick a NOR or PSRAM chip in a GBA flash cart to have the ROMs work (Supercard cheaped out here and paid the price by having lousy compatibility, need for extensive patching, slowdowns...), the N64 had a bunch of CIC chips you get to emulate (requires a more potent programmable chip), the SNES had a whole bunch of extra chips and fun and games, the NES has its mappers and the list would go on for a while -- most older consoles lent on the carts themselves to increase functionality or storage beyond the baseline.

The only thing simpler than the average DS flash cart would be the CR memory adapter things seen in the PSP world to turn microSD into things that appear to be sony cards -- they have active components but not many.
 
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hii915

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Though demand and quality monopoly (there are plenty of GB/GBC, SNES, NES, N64 and whatever flash carts, however they are all pretty poor compared to everdrive's offerings) are a thing I would also look at the hardware required -- you are basically obliged to stick a NOR or PSRAM chip in a GBA flash cart to have the ROMs work (Supercard cheaped out here and paid the price by having lousy compatibility, need for extensive patching, slowdowns...), the N64 had a bunch of CIC chips you get to emulate (requires a more potent programmable chip), the SNES had a whole bunch of extra chips and fun and games, the NES has its mappers and the list would go on for a while -- most older consoles lent on the carts themselves to increase functionality or storage beyond the baseline.

The only thing simpler than the average DS flash cart would be the CR memory adapter things seen in the PSP world to turn microSD into things that appear to be sony cards -- they have active components but not many.
you have a great point.
 

codezer0

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Can anyone tell me what a good cheap gba flashcart? I don't know if these exist or not, googling stuff like this just gave me a bunch of wikipedia pages and youtube videos.

I know ez-flash is probably my best option, but I could get a whole new 2ds with that money.
I just want to be able to play gba, gbc and gb games on my gameboy advance for cheap.

be what you want cause a pirate lives free :0
The Nintendo DS was the first handheld console where many features like the RTC were internalized and the need for a save battery were finally obsolete, so it allowed it to be possible to make very inexpensive flash carts - at least, until the DS(i) and #DS era started with more aggressive flashcart blocking in firmware.

The GBA carts still needed to be done with SRAM and then flushed to storage like an SD card simply because that's what the hardware would understand to work with; same with the need for an internal RTC support, or simply patching the need for it out of the ROMs, or IPS patching for games like Boktai or WarioWare Twisted.

Annoyingly I've seen EZ IV start frequently starting from $60 USD for the new microSD model. It's still better than trying to buy some of the legit games for it nowadays thanks to ebay scalpers. The era of the M3 Perfect being around has come and gone bye bye; good luck even seeing one available for less than $200, if it stil works.
 
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