Hacking Best Flash Card For Original Game Boy Advance Machine

[clay.r.08]

I should of named this thread
Best Flash Card For Game Boy Advance Machine

Hey whats up guys

I already got my dsi and ds working good with the M3i zero

Im not intrested in buying a iplayer for the ds to play Game Boy Advance

I want to buy a Game Boy advance

And I want to buy a flash card that will make my Game Boy Advance play Game Boy Advance Roms from it

I have tried to read up a little about it, and I saw the m3 perfect sold as a bundle for over $40, and am still not sure if this can only be used with a ds/dsi
or if the m3 perfect is also made to be stuck in a Game Boy advance also

I have heard of the easy flash 4, the m3 perfect and im not sure if they can be stuck inside of a Game Boy Advance or a DS or both

And I read someone saying do not buy a EasyFlash because they have little or no Game Boy Advance support

 

[how_do_i_do_that]

Same answer as this one:
http://gbatemp.net/t207078-looking-for-gba-flashcard-only


If you need to see what it looks like, you can read this one, has pictures:
http://gbatemp.net/t184628-i-gots-a-gbm-d

 

[clay.r.08]

yea i already found and read both of those threads

but still find controversery about the Easy Flash IV

i just found a link to Gba machine flash cards and

Do they make any for flash cards for Game Boy Advance that use sd cards

 

[Krestent]

Do they make any for flash cards for Game Boy Advance that use sd cards

I don't think so. But the EZ-Flash IV DOES play GBA Games; in fact, it has the best compatibility for them.

 

[clay.r.08]

this looks like it is for a game boy advance

XXXrealhotstuff.com/ezflash-size-p-294.html

EZFlash IV GBA size
[ez4_phat] $35.00

Click to enlarge

EZ-FLASH 4 EZCart (GBA Size) features:
256Mb PSRAM (32 Mbytes)
384Mb NorFLASH (48Mbytes)
32Mb Loader (4 Mbytes)
8Mb saver SRAM (1Mbyte)
Supports 512Mb - 8Gb (G Bits)

Simple cart for all your NDS and GBA needs.

Works with miniSD. Supports both NDS (passcard required) and GBA ROMs. Works with slot1 flashcards and provide great GBA games support.

Includes:
1 x EZ4 EZCart



Posts merged

and it takes sd cards

 

[KidIce]

EZFlash 3 is the best GBA cart ever, IMO.

An EZFlash 4 is little more than an EZFlash 3 w/ the NAND replaced by the mini/microSD. It lacks an RTC, does not have RTS and does not require or come w/ a linker... Beyond that it is functionally the same card. I've never encountered a commercial GBA ROM I couldn't play on an EZ4... Obviously games like Boktai (sun sensor) and Pokemon (RTC) need patching, but they can still be played. It's not much of a DS cart these days (what slot 2 cart is), but superior GBA carts are pretty much impossible to find for purchase.

If there is some game you are worried about, I can dust off the old EZ4 and test it for you. Of course, my current collection is pretty much only US titles. I don't use the EZ4 much any more, my slot 2 is almost always either filled w/ my 3-in-1 or my EZ3.

 

[clay.r.08]

i bought this game boy sp
XXX.cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220597891042&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

and i bought this e-z iv ez cart
XXX.lightinthebox.com/EZ-Flash-IV-Mini-EZ-Cart-Slot-2-SD-Multimedia-Flash-Cart-for-GBA-SP-NDS_p82071.html

i have a sd card mini adapter so looks like i will finally use it

only up to 2gb

is there any way to use a larger sd card for playing GBA roms on a GBA

that would be awesome if we could use a 32gb

 

[how_do_i_do_that]

GBA tech ended long before SDHC showed up, you can't magically get something if the hardware never had it.

 

[defor]

I was in the very same situation last year when I bought my Gameboy Micro. I was looking for a decent flash cart. Following sums up what I learnt from those days:

* Best GBA flash cards are from GBA "golden" era (e.g. EFA linker, EZ-Flash 3, ...). Those have real-time-save, real-time-clock and a large NAND/NOR ram and perfect compatibility. However, they were rather expensive and required a special linker hw (connected to PC via parallel or USB port) and sw. Nowadays, it's nearly impossible to find them. They are not sold as new (because their production ended a long time ago) and if someone owns one he will not sell. Because they are very old now there is a big chance they will have battery drained if someone sells them. So better ask seller first or be prepared to change battery yourself.

* "Newer" GBA cards which are (sparsely) available are: EZ-Flash IV, Supercard and M3 Perfect. M3 perfect was produced in three variants according to a memory card type it used (Compact-flash, SD, MiniSD). I recommend you a gba card which uses MiniSD since other ones stick out of GBA/GBM. Unfortunately, according to my research, M3 Perfect is now virtually unavailable from any web-shop what practically casts it to the same group of those from "golden" era

EZ-Flash IV has almost perfect compatibility but has no real-time-save and real-time-clock. It has two types of internal memory - 16MB SDRAM and 32MB NOR. Latter holds data even after turning system off and allows you to launch a game pretty quickly what is handy for a game you want to play regularly. The dark side is that there is a limited number of overwrites you can do with this memory (thousands?)

Supercard has compatibility issues caused by slower memory it uses. Some games can be patched to fight this problem, some others cannot

Personally, I wouldn't buy this card but rather tried to find some EZ-Flash IV, M3 Perfect or some old "golden era" card.

M3 Perfect has almost perfect compatibily, real-time-save, real-time-clock. Doesn't need rom patching (if you don't want rts) - rom files can be directly copied to SD card. It has one 32MB SDRAM -- every rom is first loaded into this memory from SD card on launch (similar to Supercard or EZ-Flash IV when using its 16MB SDRAM). I think it's the best of these three cards. The problem is that it is almost unavailable now. On some sites, you can come upon M3 Perfect Lite version (uses MicroSD) but I am not sure it is really compatible with GBA. Someone says you can place its guts into large GBA size plastic cartridge and it will work connected to GBA (same as Perfect MiniSD). However I can't imagine how MicroSD card can be easily removed then.

Resume: I think the best solution is to buy a new EZ-Flash IV. "Golden" era cards are hard to find (and may have drained batteries or totally damaged because of their age), Supercard has own issues and M3 Perfect is hard to buy now

Some more info: http://www.pocketheaven.com/ph/wiki/Category:GBA_Flash_Cards