Hacking Booting EZ Flash IV through AKAIO

Geren

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First of all, I don't want to boot gba games through AKAIO using a EZF IV.

What I'm referring to is about booting the slot-2 cart through akaio. When I have the cart in the slot 2 of my ds, akaio says there's no device detected. I tried to find homebrew solutions (gbaswitch and BootGBA) but they only boot the gba screen without the nintendo logo (meaning that yet again, the cart is not detected).

I know there's a simple solution: using the ds firmware menu, selecting to boot either my acekard or my ez flash iv, so this is not a "desperate"situation, but I really found this as a weird problem. Does anyone knows why is it not possible to boot this flashcard from another flashcard?
 

FAST6191

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The acekard is not as bad as some but we really do not recommend booting your EZ4 through a DS slot device unless that device is acting as a passme- it has a nasty habit of corrupting them for some reason.

If you feel like having flashme on your DS you can force a boot to a given slot if you want (DS mode on the EZ4 launches GBA games just as well and writes the saves back faster to boot).

gbaswitch is more about the DS mode to GBA mode as far as I recall (there was a time when GBA mode was called for but that was mainly a workaround for a bug).
 

RodrigoDavy

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I tried to find homebrew solutions (gbaswitch and BootGBA) but they only boot the gba screen without the nintendo logo (meaning that yet again, the cart is not detected).

Are you sure your EZF iv is working? Try taking off your acekard and turn on your Nintendo DS, this should boot your ezf iv automatically.
 

The Real Jdbye

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First of all, I don't want to boot gba games through AKAIO using a EZF IV.

What I'm referring to is about booting the slot-2 cart through akaio. When I have the cart in the slot 2 of my ds, akaio says there's no device detected. I tried to find homebrew solutions (gbaswitch and BootGBA) but they only boot the gba screen without the nintendo logo (meaning that yet again, the cart is not detected).

I know there's a simple solution: using the ds firmware menu, selecting to boot either my acekard or my ez flash iv, so this is not a "desperate"situation, but I really found this as a weird problem. Does anyone knows why is it not possible to boot this flashcard from another flashcard?
It should be detected, it sounds like your EZ4 is not working correctly or is corrupted somehow. I'm not sure what could cause it to work from the DS firmware but not from the AK2 though. Even if it didn't work from the AK2 it should at least work from homebrew. The fact that you can boot the DS into GBA mode and the cart is still not detected certainly makes it sound like there's something wrong with your EZ4. Try reinstalling/upgrading the firmware to make sure that's not the issue. You can also use the AK2 as a Passme if that works, as the EZ4 will launch GBA games from the DS-mode GUI as well (which honestly is much better than the GBA-mode one)

The acekard is not as bad as some but we really do not recommend booting your EZ4 through a DS slot device unless that device is acting as a passme- it has a nasty habit of corrupting them for some reason.

If you feel like having flashme on your DS you can force a boot to a given slot if you want (DS mode on the EZ4 launches GBA games just as well and writes the saves back faster to boot).

gbaswitch is more about the DS mode to GBA mode as far as I recall (there was a time when GBA mode was called for but that was mainly a workaround for a bug).
I've never heard this before. I don't understand how that could corrupt anything. I used my slot-1 cart to boot to the slot-2 for a long time because i had Flashme installed and it would automatically start the slot-1 cart so it was inconvenient to boot it from the DS firmware since I had to eject the flashcart. Are there any specific flashcarts this happens with, and which part gets corrupted, the firmware? (I had an old ExtremeFlashAdvance II at the time and it's not as advanced as newer flashcarts so maybe it wasn't susceptible to corruption)
 

FAST6191

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It is usually when people use things like Gbaldr to try to use the PSRAM from the DS slot cart- it seems to end up overwriting enough of the boot code that restoring it is hard ( http://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/flashcart-files/download-ez4-os-tools-10-f27302.html is the only thing we have and it only works sometimes). I agree it should do nothing bad and maybe not run at worst but bricking happens, I have things that I suspect that cause it (the EZ3 and so logically the EZ4 do some serious memory shuffling to operate) but that is the subject for a different thread. Passme/nopass type stuff should be fine and I have not heard of anything bad happening there.

I have seen it enough times that I felt the need to stick a warning up on the forums
http://ezflash.sosuke.com/viewforum.php?f=12

Oh yeah and on the subject of flashme- I still have the old version installed that autoboots GBA slot stuff but select forces the other one and holding a,b,x and y forces the other. Granted it is probably not that relevant now for you but seen as we have now loaded up the topic with choice search terms....
 

Geren

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Thanks everyone for the responses! I finally got some time to test the multiple sugestions!

we really do not recommend booting your EZ4 through a DS slot device unless that device is acting as a passme- it has a nasty habit of corrupting them for some reason.(...) gbaswitch is more about the DS mode to GBA mode as far as I recall (there was a time when GBA mode was called for but that was mainly a workaround for a bug).

Yeah, I did some research and found multiple threads about dead ez4 because people wanted to play gba games through gba exploader and stuff like that. About gbaswitch, that's precisely what I wanted to do: switch to gba mode from acekard, and that's why I find this as a problem, 'cause the ds firmware menu can detect and boot ez4, but akaio and homebrew cant'.

Are you sure your EZF iv is working? Try taking off your acekard and turn on your Nintendo DS, this should boot your ezf iv automatically.

When I power on my ds and the only device inserted is the ez4, it takes me to the ds firmware menu where I have to click on "Start GBA game" to boot the flashcard.

It should be detected, it sounds like your EZ4 is not working correctly or is corrupted somehow. I'm not sure what could cause it to work from the DS firmware but not from the AK2 though. Even if it didn't work from the AK2 it should at least work from homebrew. The fact that you can boot the DS into GBA mode and the cart is still not detected certainly makes it sound like there's something wrong with your EZ4. Try reinstalling/upgrading the firmware to make sure that's not the issue. You can also use the AK2 as a Passme if that works, as the EZ4 will launch GBA games from the DS-mode GUI as well (which honestly is much better than the GBA-mode one)

It seems like your right, something is wrong here. I've already tried to reinstall the firmware, and I have also tried to use the "L+A" method to boot the ez4 with a passme acekard. Thing is, none of these things worked: upgrading/using different skins/firmwares doesn't change anything and using the acekard as a passme just takes to double white screens. Actually, I've never used the DS-mode gui, maybe's there lies my issue, I can't use that feature.

It is usually when people use things like Gbaldr to try to use the PSRAM from the DS slot cart- it seems to end up overwriting enough of the boot code that restoring it is hard ( http://filetrip.net/...-10-f27302.html is the only thing we have and it only works sometimes). I agree it should do nothing bad and maybe not run at worst but bricking happens, I have things that I suspect that cause it (the EZ3 and so logically the EZ4 do some serious memory shuffling to operate) but that is the subject for a different thread. Passme/nopass type stuff should be fine and I have not heard of anything bad happening there.

Yeah, seeing as this is a relatively old device, I gathered enough information to not complicate things (as I said, I only want to switch to gba mode, not mess with the nor/psram). Anyways, it seems like I can only use the gba mode loader, so maybe there lies the issue. I'm not exactly sure about how to boot the ds mode but from what I have read and tried, it hasn't worked.
 

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