EZ-Flash 4 Client (2007-05-22)

[Opium]

EZ-Flash 4 Client (2007-05-22)

Updated ROM compatibility

A new client for the EZ-Flash IV has been released. This update adds compatibility for Momotarou Dentetsu DS Tokyo and Japan, Code Lyoko, Custom Beat Battle and Touch the Dead.



It's nice to see the EZ Team still supporting their aging flash card. Many thanks to FAST6191 who put together a client pack with all the latest patches, GBA list and translations. Now you wont have to go far to satisfy your EZ4 gaming needs.



You can download the pack locally at GBAtemp.net thanks to our new downloads centre.

Download

 

[tjas]

Lesson for the supercard team; Support your flashcards!! your competition does it!!!

 

[shaunj66]

Lesson for the Neoflash team; Support your flashcards!! your competition does it!!!Â

Fixed!

 

[tjas]

Lesson for the Supercard and Neoflash teams; Support your flashcards!! your competition does it!!!Â

Fixed again!

 

[thegame07]

Impressive support. This shows the team really care about thier customers.

 

[Deleted User]

English Training still not fixed though...

 

[sidneyyoung]

It would be impressive if half their game fixes ever actually worked more than 50-75% of the time.... harvest moon anyone ?

I owned ez4 right from it's launch and find it's support a joke, it's ds compatabilty and speed is definately sub-par imo compared to my m3-lite and sc-lite+sc-CF.

p.s can't wait for the sc-slot2 2.60/1.8 upgrade coming this week.. real time cheats with no slowdows (r4?)+ the usual 100% ds compatability (only 'diddy kong racing eur version' and 'touch the dead' to fix)... awesome

are you watching r4/m3/ez devs ?

 

[OSW]

Hey guys, check these bits of news out too!

Ram support for opera and DSlinux!

http://www.ezflash.sosuke.com/viewtopic.php?t=5188
http://www.ezflash.sosuke.com/viewtopic.php?t=5139

 

[adgloride]

The patcher crashing when you try to change the reset keys hasn't been fixed. Great that the EZ Flash team are supporting the card though. I also have a supercard can't remember the last time the patcher has been updated. We get a few patch data files every so often to fix some of the games. I think its dead and burried now is the slot 2 for the supercard team.

 

[FAST6191]

@adgloride and whoever else you probably know already but the ez4para.ini file in the [main drive]:\windows\temp directory allows you to change keys. As for the actual bug the client is the same as the 10th of October release.

 

[adgloride]

@adgloride and whoever else you probably know already but the ez4para.ini file in the [main drive]:\windows\temp directory allows you to change keys. As for the actual bug the client is the same as the 10th of October release.

Thanks for the tip. I've heard you could do it this way before. No one explained were the actual file was that needed to be changed.

 

[larvi]

I haven't had any issues with the speed or compatibility of my EZ 4, actually I prefer it to my SuperCard. The saving time for games like pokemon is much faster on the EZ 4.

The only issue I have is that the client (and it's all versions, not just the new version) always corrupts my desktop graphics. After running the client, I have to reboot since al my folder icons in explorer and my quick launch icons on my task bar all get blanked out. It's probably a problem with my video driver (have a nvidia FX5200 with latest drivers), or due to the fact that I'm running Win98se, but it's the only app that causes that behaviour so it's kind of strange. Does anyone else have that problem?

 

[FAST6191]

"due to the fact that I'm running Win98se"

98 has always proven troublesome for EZFlash stuff, an upgrade to 2000 should fix it. Failing that try rolling back the drivers or messing with the options (oh and restarting explorer may save a reboot).

 

[larvi]

"due to the fact that I'm running Win98se"

98 has always proven troublesome for EZFlash stuff, an upgrade to 2000 should fix it. Failing that try rolling back the drivers or messing with the options (oh and restarting explorer may save a reboot).

Thanks, Fast. I dual boot this computer to XP and it does work under XP so it is definitely something with Win98 or the nvidia driver for 98. Personally I still do a lot of stuff in DOS and play a lot of older DOS games so I don't consider Win2K or XP an upgrade and still prefer using Win98 as my primary platform whenever possible. The older EZ2 client works fine in Win98, it's just the EZ4 that's given me problems. I've tried several versions of the Nvidia driverand played somwhat with the options. Not really sure what option needs tweaking, I used to have ATI cards and remembered they had a setting for bitmap caching (which I suspect is the problem), but don't see anything similar in the Nvidia control panel. I don't know how to restart explorer in Win98 short of ending the task and letting it restart, and the problem still persists when I do that. I've also tried changing the screen resolution and setting it back as that has worked in the past with other graphical corruption problems, but that doesn't work here. I would be really curious if anyone is running the client in Win98 to see if they have the same problem.

 

[FAST6191]

I still have a 98 machine or two around here somewhere, I will see about hooking it up and testing, I have an old s3 virge in it though so I do not know how much good it will be.

With regards to DOS I think soundblasters (or emulation thereof) were an issue last I checked but dosbox was able to run dune 2000 on my old laptop.

 

[larvi]

Thanks, that would be greatly appreciated if you get a chance to do that. If it works ok on your machine with the S3 card, I can be pretty sure it's a driver issue then. All you need to do is install and run the client exe as that's enough to cause the corruption on mine. No need to go through the trouble of patching and outputing a game or connecting a card reader.

Dosbox gets better and better with each release but it's still not perfect and takes a pretty big performance hit. I keep Win98 for the same reason I prefer to keep a GBA or two around and a real GBC flash card to run GBC games rather than to use Goomba or some other emulator. As for SB emulation, I still have a real SB16 as well as a Roland SCC-1 in this machine (It was trouble finding a decent P4 mobo with ISA slots but I'm running the Soyo 845PE ISA board.) It was fun getting XP working with them but I managed to do that as well when I dual boot. Still haven't found a C2D mobo with ISA but hoping someone makes one for diehards like me.

 

[sidneyyoung]

Most of the best fixes for ez4 have come from users and not the ez4 team.. mondulo,cory42 ect.. the ez team are inept (the gba soft/hard reset bug ?.. the ds mode NOR ram save file name error ? reset combo settings bug? ds reset to menu=unusable or joke, ect ect.. whole thing=what a joke, they can't even sort the gba side let alone the ds one... soft reset bug (huh?) c'mun for pity's sake ez4 devs)

and for the ez4 fanboys.. sc and m3 ds compatabilty is far far FAR FAAAAAAAAAAR FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR greater > than ez4 ds support (i mean some roms remain unfixed for ever ?? wtf is that about ? for ever ?) .... ez4 is not even in the same friggin league.


example... gba on the ez4 is very good...........BUT...........here's the catch 'roll eyes'... as long as you don't use the ez4 official releases and use the third party fixed firmwares/ mode changers..... i once spent a few weeks traversing and posting using translators on various chinese ez4 forums to hightlight these bugs to the ez4 team; it was obviously a complete waste of effort, as all the major (stupid, and easily fixed) bugs remain in their software. From bitter experience this will remain the way it is, and you can just lump it as far as ez are concerned.

A tip for ez dev team............. contact sc or m3 devs to get the ds compatabilty sorted.. ok your card is slow as it uses the first gen sd setup, but thats NO reason to have some games unplayable which obviously should run despite the lack of memory speed......some ds roms that do not suffer from a speed issue yet do not work at all/or properly on ez4... harvest moon, monster house, english training (just a couple off the top of my head, there are more I promise) run fine on virtually every flash cart ever made...SO SORT IT...STOP LEAVING ROMS UNFIXED (and even lying about fixes)...NO OTHER TEAM AFAIK DOES IT

can you imagine the ribbing the sc team would get if they were as inept as the ez4 team ??? the crux of the matter is ds support.. ...m3 and sc can get every game running.. so why not ez4 ??? a different rule perhaps if the dev team's name begins with 'e', that must mean they are good (huh?) ..wtfh is that about??????

"hey this game don't work on my ez4.. I have a good idea, lets pretend it doesn't work on all the other flash carts too!!!!"

 

[FAST6191]

You do not have to justify yourself to me larvi, if I could I would run old hardware/software but it seems I like video encoding and computer games.
My 98 machine seems to have been broken for parts so I will have to use another, if you could though try moving/deleting/obscuring the ssk files in the skin directory.

Also why the diatribe sidneyyoung, fanboys of consoles are less than fun but fanyboys of flashcarts really should not be.

 

[OSW]

chill out sidneyyoung.

I understand where you are coming from, but you aren't entirely justified in all your claims.
Sure, they rarely fix them, but most of the bugs in the loader are minor and have little inconvenience on the user.
Only a couple of DS games don't work, and with that non are especially popular. It ceratinly achieves very similar compatability to SC, G6 etc on the DS side. They also have fast boot times (at least compared to G6 lite) and i don't see much slowdown at all.

In all, The cart's core stability is great (didn't quite phrasse that how i wanted to)

The users certainly make inumerable and invaluable contributions to the cart, that i agree. I wish to thank all of you especially cory142, mondulo, fast6191 (at least you guys come to mind, sorry if i didn't mention the other guys, i know you're there

).

But the ez team doesn't appear quite as horrible to me as you believe.

 

[larvi]

@FAST
I removed the ssk files and still have the issue, although I like the non-skinned look a lot better so I think I'll keep it

. Just to give you an idea what I'm seeing here's a couple of small before and after screen caps of my explorer:
Before:

After:

As for Win98 and video editing it does have some limitations, i.e. 1GB memory max and 4GB file size max but I actually do quite a bit of capturing/video editing in 98. I have a Canopus ADVC-300 external capture device and although it claims not to work with 98, it works great. I've also found Ulead's Video Studio v9 to be one of the more stable video editors in Win98 (newer version don't support it anymore unfortunately). But XP is definitely better for larger video projects, no argument there.

@sidney
A lot of us were users of EZ GBA products and compared to the competition back then the EZ products were much better quality than a lot of the competition, I had some real stinkers of GBA carts (cough XG Flash) and found my EZ 2 to be far and away the best that I owned. I do have a Super Card slot 2 card too and would definitely recommend it as well for non-GBA usage, but it's also had some compatibility problems that have required 3rd party patches. Harvest moon is one of the examples that needed a patch that was developed by someone else than the SC team if I remember correctly.

To me though, 100% compatibility isn't a big deal. I buy the commercial carts of the game I'm interested in and use flash cards as tools to enhance my gaming experience, i.e. I can copy and backup saves, play the Japansese versions of certain games before the US versions come out, and apply translation and other patches to games. And as long as the card can do that I look at other aspects such as build quality, I want a card that will still be working in 5 years as my EZ 2 still is. The advantage for me of the EZ4 over the SuperCard is the hardware save whereas SC writes to the flash media everytime you save which takes much longer. Try saving in pokemon and you will see what I mean, in fact the EZ4 save faster than the pokemon retail carts.