Hardware GBA era flashcarts vs new flashcarts

[lazyguy]

I'm still using my m3 adapter and everything works as intended.
I'm just wondering for the people who's used to have gba flashcarts back in the day and have since updated to these 'new generation' of gba flashcarts, how is it?

The only thing i've seen improve is loading is instant now? and having microsd support is nice, but I don't really care.

 

[tech3475]

Considering my old NOR based cart, the mSD based ones are a MASSIVE improvement.

 

[FAST6191]

New ones are usually drag and drop (though the EZ4 got an update for that), might have better cheat and other such fun features, might support SDHC (though if you need more than 2 gigs of GBA ROMs for walking around...), might well load quickly (though it is not like most NAND-(PS)RAM approaches are unbearably slow).

For older consoles then yeah between special chips, extra features, general ancientness and all the rest... there is a reason Everdrive et al were able to clean up as well as they did.

For the GBA then there are not a lot of tricky aspects https://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995 and things were reasonably far advanced while things were current/still in shops.
To that end the modern stuff is good and I would not go out of my way to get an old cart today but if you found one in a box somewhere... can you with minimal fuss (as in if you can extract a ROM or save a document on a USB drive you have enough computer skills) play almost every game made at the same speed (or better) and save stuff and have some cheats, have some hacks and generally experience just about everything there was to offer with a more vintage cart? Yeah you can. Worst that might happen is you get to solder a new battery in as lifetimes for old batteries used for saves in these carts are seldom that much more than about 6 or 7 years, also in what might be a complete dealbreaker then for some games/setups you might be waiting 30 seconds between selecting the ROM in the menu and seeing the first title card .

 

[Ophidion]

I don't know much, but from personal experience. I found my old GBA XROM flash cart and I couldn't even access it or write to it on my laptop now. I don't mess with any hacks/saves/cheats so I just want my roms to run.

Luckily my wife had an OLD XP HP Laptop that I managed to get the flashing software loaded onto. It's just way too much of a hassle to do this going forward so I've already placed a preorder for a new Everdrive X5 mini. It's all about convenience!

 

[lostatsea]

Lol, funny that you say that. I've been replaying through the old Castlevania games and grabbed my gba sp with XROM in it. I forgot all over again how to program it in windows 10. Then I found a thread I myself, made here in 2016! Without an old Windows XP computer, you need to run vmware, for a virtual windows xp machine. Then everything works as intended. A lot of work to program old rom cartridges from 20 years ago, where the driver support hasn't been maintained for new computers. But I honestly rarely play with my gba sp these days so I don't plan on getting a new cartrdige. I did switch from an old ds rom cart which I lost the programmer to, to the r4 recently, and the convenience of a microsd cart can't be undersold. Flashing 5 or 6 games onto a cart vs dragging and dropping hundreds on a microsd is pretty nice.

 

[koffieleut]

The problem I have with dragging 100 games onto a cart is that I never finish a game.

When I'm using my old flash2advance with 4 games on it I'm dedicated to finish the 4 games before going into the hassle of installing VM with windows xp

 

[Localhorst86]

The problem I have with dragging 100 games onto a cart is that I never finish a game.

When I'm using my old flash2advance with 4 games on it I'm dedicated to finish the 4 games before going into the hassle of installing VM with windows xp

ah, yes. The agony of choice. Having a full romset on a flashcard, readily available to you sounds nice, but it's also overwhelming and discouraging. Still, I prefer the modern "drag and drop" solutions over my Flash2Advance card.

 

[Titney]

I'm still using my old G6 for GBA, tho I guess that's more a DS era cart than GBA really. It's got drag and drop over USB and everything. Only real downside is that scrolling the menu becomes very slow if you have a lot of games (like 20+). It's got 3 save states for each game which feels really deluxe even by current day standards.

 

[britain4]

I bought an EZ Flash III back in the day, still got/use it now and again. The drag n drop with the SD cards was such a huge leap forward from the old flasher software but it was really sweet back in the day using the flasher and dumping your own carts/saves with it.

BTW if anyone comes across this thread and is having trouble with an EZ3 I have copies of 2 tools they made called EZ3check.exe and EZ3recovery.exe (EZ3check and EZ3recovery) that can be used to format the cart if you have any issues with it. I don't know what the difference between them is but can't find them anywhere on the web any more and they saved my bacon once when the EZ manager software wouldn't format the cart properly so happy to share if anyone needs them.

 

[lazyguy]

I installed the M3 manager stuff on windows 10 and didn't have any issues with it. It says it 'burns' the game onto the minisd card (and patches it), but I'm pretty sure it's not doing anything other than copying the files onto the sd card. What I think it's doing that's useful is it's creating the save files in the right folder. (there's a limit of 100 saves per directory.
Anyways, I ended up revamping my gba collection. I have pretty much every gba game worth playing across 2 mini sd cards (6gb). And as any one that's like me, I haven't played it since (i finished 1 game on it).

I liked the process of setting up the 'ultimate' gba better than playing the gba games.

 

[FAST6191]

Psychologists tend to call that something like the paradox of choice or paralysis of choice (there is a nice TED talk somewhere, seems the cure is to consider something as something rather than reading into differences) but around here it tends to be called pirate syndrome.
Or if you prefer pick one at random and start playing. If you think "no I really mustn't" then delete it (at very best if it is a multiplayer/needed for a GC game then another folder) and start another.

" 2 mini sd cards (6gb)"
Odd. MiniSD tends to be capped at 2 gigs, and while the standard in an off book sense can go to 4 gigs then 4 gigs in SD format is rare as anything. 4 gig SDHC class miniSD sized card is then considered a mythical item for most intents and purposes.

As far as patching goes then prior to the EZ4's on cart patching (or later devices but earlier than the EZ4 firmware that added it) then to simplify operations GBA flash carts tended to patch the save to behave like SRAM of a certain type (rather than the various other types of SRAM, Flash or EEPROM, plus whatever tilt sensors, clocks and the like from the trouble games thread earlier). It is a simple enough patch (we have a discussion around here somewhere, Trolleydave did another) but not something that was too easy on a GBA itself (hard to scan up to 32 megs of GBA game on a 16MHz ARM7 with less than 300KB of memory)

 

[lazyguy]

" 2 mini sd cards (6gb)"
Odd. MiniSD tends to be capped at 2 gigs, and while the standard in an off book sense can go to 4 gigs then 4 gigs in SD format is rare as anything. 4 gig SD class miniSD sized card is then considered a mythical item for most intents and purposes.

I got my 4gb minisd off ebay for 5$ some time early last year. I just so happened to come across it at the time. And yeah, it was a rare find.

 

[slaphappygamer]

I bought an EZ Flash III back in the day, still got/use it now and again. The drag n drop with the SD cards was such a huge leap forward from the old flasher software but it was really sweet back in the day using the flasher and dumping your own carts/saves with it.

BTW if anyone comes across this thread and is having trouble with an EZ3 I have copies of 2 tools they made called EZ3check.exe and EZ3recovery.exe (EZ3check and EZ3recovery) that can be used to format the cart if you have any issues with it. I don't know what the difference between them is but can't find them anywhere on the web any more and they saved my bacon once when the EZ manager software wouldn't format the cart properly so happy to share if anyone needs them.

the hardware is awesome, but the software is some of the buggiest ive ever used. i was really hoping someone would use the sources to create newer, better manager for the ez3. i wish i could do it, but i cant build shit.

even at that, the drivers dont work on anything other than xp. still a great card, but it hasnt aged well.

 

[Deleted User]

I'm taking the chance since i don't think my question warrants its own thread: Is the Everdrive x5 Mini worth the extra money over the EZFlash Omega?

 

[Sterophonick]

I'm taking the chance since i don't think my question warrants its own thread: Is the Everdrive x5 Mini worth the extra money over the EZFlash Omega?

In short, not really.

The EZ-Flash Omega has an open source kernel meaning there are a few custom kernels out there to add more functionality. There's also things like an in-game menu, hotkeys, save states, cheats, all for a reasonable price. However the Definitive Edition is a bit more expensive, which may or may not be worth it depending on the person.

However the downside to the base Omega is the direct save to SD card feature. It has a poor implementation on the FPGA and can and has caused SD card corruption. The Definitive Edition remedies this and basically fixes every problem I had with the base cartridge.*

Base EZ-Flash Omega price: $59.99 MSRP
EZ-Flash Omega Definitive Edition price: $99.99 MSRP

*I received my EZ-Flash Omega definitive Edition for free.

 

[Jayro]

I'm still using my m3 adapter and everything works as intended.
I'm just wondering for the people who's used to have gba flashcarts back in the day and have since updated to these 'new generation' of gba flashcarts, how is it?

The only thing i've seen improve is loading is instant now? and having microsd support is nice, but I don't really care.

Using my EZ-FLASH 3 1Gb (32MB) "dev cart" was a fucking nightmare. You needed Windows XP for the driver support, and then to top it off the software was a buggy mess that RARELY worked. And the cart's write speed was abysmal. You also could only delete games off the cart in the reverse order you put them on. so if you wanted to delete game 2 of 5, you had to delete games 5, 4, and 3 first, in that order. The EZ-Flash 4 is a total blessing compared to the 3. Though the 3 had better quality plastic and a cool trnsparent orange shell, and the construction of it and the flasher were both top-notch in quality... Something the modern EZ-Flash carts lack.

 

[Nikokaro]

Hello everybody.
I take this opportunity to intrude into the conversation and give my humble opinion, if I may.
I see that no one has yet mentioned the very despised and underestimated, perhaps because very cheap and of low quality, Supercard MicroSD; I don't know whether to call it a new generation cart or not.
I feel like a spokesman for the many who possess it and are not ashamed of that.
I have owned it for over 2 years and I am fully satisfied with it; it has never given me problems. Apart from very rare games that do not start (eg srwog 1/2) and a few that slow down in some places (eg Mario Kart, GTAdvance 1/2/3), I have never had problems with SD card corruption when saving, either normal than RTS.
Even 32mb games (e.g. Urbz, Sims 2, Mother 3), or the more sophisticated and elaborate Fire Emblem Hacks, run smoothly, like a charm.
Certainly, given the quality of the components, it must be treated with great care and delicacy.
Despite the low cost it has, within everyone's reach, I consider it a little gem.
I also in two 2gb SD have collected the best (in my opinion) of GBA titles, even if I always use the same ones.
I hope I did not go off topic and that my english was understandable to most.
Now I have to go; the far more important matters of real life call me ...

 

[Deleted User]

Hello everybody.
I take this opportunity to intrude into the conversation and give my humble opinion, if I may.
I see that no one has yet mentioned the very despised and underestimated, perhaps because very cheap and of low quality, Supercard MicroSD; I don't know whether to call it a new generation cart or not.
I feel like a spokesman for the many who possess it and are not ashamed of that.
I have owned it for over 2 years and I am fully satisfied with it; it has never given me problems. Apart from very rare games that do not start (eg srwog 1/2) and a few that slow down in some places (eg Mario Kart, GTAdvance 1/2/3), I have never had problems with SD card corruption when saving, either normal than RTS.
Even 32mb games (e.g. Urbz, Sims 2, Mother 3), or the more sophisticated and elaborate Fire Emblem Hacks, run smoothly, like a charm.
Certainly, given the quality of the components, it must be treated with great care and delicacy.
Despite the low cost it has, within everyone's reach, I consider it a little gem.
I also in two 2gb SD have collected the best (in my opinion) of GBA titles, even if I always use the same ones.
I hope I did not go off topic and that my english was understandable to most.
Now I have to go; the far more important matters of real life call me ...

View attachment 251715

The purple one with a picture of boba fett? iirc it's fairly old and any pieces for sale are old stock

 

[Nikokaro]

The purple one with a picture of boba fett? iirc it's fairly old and any pieces for sale are old stock

Thanks for the information.
But I don't think they are that extremely old, as they contain a microSD.

 

[slaphappygamer]

Got EZODE it for $69.99

https://www.ebay.com/itm/EZ-FLASH-O...-/313383702883?_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49292