Hacking EZ-F 3in1 usage in 2019 : Is it worth raising the living dead? Rambling about Voodoo stuff

[Mamothstard]

Hi, while I'm waiting for my EZ Flash Omega I thought I could try to spark a discussion around the 3in1.
Do any of you see yourself still using it and why? Also if you're using it or did so, what is/was your setup?

My story is as follows:
I never got mine to work to its full potential. First the battery was dead on arrival (I ordered it in 2015 or so).
I did follow the instructions of how_do_I_do_that and learned I was using the EZ5C3 "plus" revision.
I eventually managed to make it work with GBAexploader on my DSTWO+ but I never could activated the rumble and memory expansion features.
I never understood why and finally abandoned the cart in a drawer for... sheesh 3 years now.

So what do you guys do with yours nowadays? Have moved on to something else or does it still has some use?

 

[DeadSkullzJr]

Hi, while I'm waiting for my EZ Flash Omega I thought I could try to spark a discussion around the 3in1.
Do any of you see yourself still using it and why? Also if you're using it or did so, what is/was your setup?

My story is as follows:
I never got mine to work to its full potential. First the battery was dead on arrival (I ordered it in 2015 or so).
I did follow the instructions of how_do_I_do_that and learned I was using the EZ5C3 "plus" revision.
I eventually managed to make it work with GBAexploader on my DSTWO+ but I never could activated the rumble and memory expansion features.
I never understood why and finally abandoned the cart in a drawer for... sheesh 3 years now.

So what do you guys do with yours nowadays? Have switched to something else altogether or does it still has some use?

EZ-Flash 3in1 is rendered obsolete these days against flashcarts like the EZ-Flash Omega which does everything the same but better. Not saying the 3in1 is junk hardware, it's not bad really, but it had issues in its time, not everything was compatible with it. The way I see it, if you have one, cool keep it as a backup, however you won't need it currently if you have an EZ-Flash Omega.

 

[Mamothstard]

EZ-Flash 3in1 is rendered obsolete these days against flashcarts like the EZ-Flash Omega which does everything the same but better.

I'm sorry but that's not true.
The 3in1 supports both rumble and memory expansion whereas the Omega does not.
Also, the Omega draws much more power than the the 3in1.

Surely the Omega is much more easy to use and versatile in terms of a GBA Flashcart but I miss the 3in1 versatility and support for homebrews.
Also it seems that some of the homebrews for the 3in1 are hard to find nowadays with many file hosting services, boards or personal website taken down.

 

[Ryccardo]

I bought mine in 2017 or so, never really used it as it came with a dead battery (but I put it inside a standard sized Mario Advance 4 card, adding in black marker "in 1" to the "Mario 3" logo), about a year ago I found a local source of CR1220s and bought two, didn't find the flashcard anymore, only 2 months ago I finally had both things on hand and now I'm enjoying it reasonably

I use Wood, though - and I certainly would be no fan of having to use external software to load roms on it...

If I had to buy a standalone GBA flashcard (as I considered while I thought I had lost the 3in1), it would be a Reform and not an Omega - not a fan of them going back to soldered batteries, especially when they're supposed to last less than a year

 

[Mamothstard]

If I had to buy a standalone GBA flashcard (as I considered while I thought I had lost the 3in1), it would be a Reform and not an Omega - not a fan of them going back to soldered batteries, especially when they're supposed to last less than a year

Yeah I get you. But the soldered battery is only used to keep track of the internal clock for the handful of games that support it(mostly Pokemon and Harvest Moon). The save itself goes straight to the micro SD card. I was a bit concerned at first but I actually really like the idea of just not needing a battery in 99.9% of my use cases. It sucks the battery is soldered, but that's really a minor issue IMO.

Quick question, what the Slot1 card + Wood do you use and does it supports SDHC?

 

[DeadSkullzJr]

I'm sorry but that's not true.
The 3in1 supports both rumble and memory expansion whereas the Omega does not.
Also, the Omega draws much more power than the the 3in1.

Surely the Omega is much more easy to use and versatile in terms of a GBA Flashcart but I miss the 3in1 versatility and support for homebrews.
Also it seems that some of the homebrews for the 3in1 are hard to find nowadays with many file hosting services, boards or personal website taken down.

Features we aren’t even talking about, people rarely use those anyways. 9/10 people are using the official Rumble Paks by Nintendo versus those with a 3in1. Two extra features doesn’t make it any less obsolete in its core usage, aka GBA games.

 

[Mamothstard]

aka GBA games

Oh yeah thanks for reminding me...

 

[FAST6191]

Two extra features doesn’t make it any less obsolete in its core usage, aka GBA games.

You say that but it is not exactly like finding an old school floppy disc based SNES copier or something, one that does not have a hope of doing the special chip games. Barring the usual suspects on https://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995 (several of which still pose some problem, or might benefit from some thought on all the other flash carts) the said games will happily play just as they would have on their original carts, if not better by virtue of the hacks and things you can do to them.

While I am equally not sold on the virtues/merits of RAM (whoo https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/3_in_1_Expansion_Pack_for_EZ-Flash_V#Third-Party ) and rumble (don't know if I can name a single compatible game off the top of my head) I am not going to dismiss it as a GBA running device.

 

[Mamothstard]

While I am equally not sold on the virtues/merits of RAM (whoo https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/3_in_1_Expansion_Pack_for_EZ-Flash_V#Third-Party )

Why? Is it that it's useless by design or rather because nobody bothered making compatible homebrew for the damn thing?

 

[FAST6191]

The list of homebrew is there on the link. You are free to figure out what you like about it.
The extra memory did allow some fairly impressive things to happen (quake 2 is no mean feat) but nothing of great note that I play to this day.

I am guessing that as using the extra memory would have meant eliminating potential users of your homebrew, all for not that much of a boost in resources or functionality (people weren't really running out of memory in DS code like they were on the GBA), then not many went in for it. Compared to say the dsserial stuff which gave some nice IO or the enhanced flash carts like the DSTwo which... low framerate PS1 emulation was the end result of that one.

 

[Mamothstard]

The list of homebrew is there on the link. You are free to figure out what you like about it.

I looked them up a couple of days ago. Some of the links (or files) aren't there anymore (like the NDS 3in1 backup tool, browser and rumble patch).
That's sad. Maybe we should scramble for some of them and reupload them somewhere "safe".

Yeah, I recently learned about the DSserial. Really impressive stuff. I can't track the original website/blog to learn a bit more about that, might not be up anymore.
It's really weird that in the age of Github so many cool hombrews have been lost to the wind and that many of them were closed source (like Rudolph's).

Also, off topic but I didn't know you could run PS1 on the DSTWO. I'll check that out, thx.

 

[FAST6191]

As far as copies of homebrew goes then between the news sites and their archives most things will still be there. Maybe not always the source as not everybody made snapshots all the time and between sourceforge going meh, it being added as a secondary download on gbadev or something, the end of google code and such then that might have got lost in the shuffle. That said if you think this was bad then don't go looking for the GBA stuff. Not to mention github was 2008 (and took a little while to get going even then), and by this point we had years of DS homebrew -- even the introduction of DLDI a few years in took some fancy searching to find code to bring things up to date.

Don't get a DSTwo with the expectation that PS1 games will be in your future. It came as part of the Dingux port which started out on the ISMM. At best you will have a low framerate simple puzzle game. It was more an example of the minor perks that a 3 in 1 would get you for most purposes vs what a fancy extra processor of some note would get you.

Backup tool wise Rudolph's tools should still be around. I would use just about any other method of dumping DS games though. https://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/applications/files-tools/ should also have the versions for the 3in1+

Browser patch wise I am not sure where we ended up with things there. I would not expect the browser to do much these days though -- it was barely any use when the browser originally dropped and then everybody discovered javascript.

 

[Ryccardo]

Quick question, what the Slot1 card + Wood do you use and does it supports SDHC?

Two of them actually, the previous model (green sticker) r4ids.cn and an original (non-SHDC) R4

Moonshell 2.10 (since some earlier version) supports the memory expansion - not sure for what, but loading photos seems faster
Rumble is for Pokemon Pinball in Lameboy, of course!
I do have a rom of the hack of Opera for the 3in1 but never tried it (don't really have the gear to conveniently run an unencrypted network, at this time) - but my website should load fine on it... should!

 

[LucasM3]

My 3in1 still work with its original battery. Eventually if the battery dies I will try and fix it. I don't really like get new things if the stuff I have still works fine.

 

[mudassirul]

I'm looking for a 3in1 solely for nds-gba connectivity