Hardware EZ flash IV bricked

[Driver66]

I have a ez flash iv white mini sd version with 2006 written on board, standard gba-sized, non-deluxe version, bought in 2012. On gba sp I get a black screen after booting past Gameboy logo, and the same on DS . I read several old threads here with situations similar to mine, and came to conclusion that the bootstrap was corrupted/deleted. I tried using old tools from Cory1492 I found in these threads to reflash, but I was only able to make a dump from my cart with them, when I try to reflash, it's just deletes NOR forever. Tried another tool from cory, bootstrap restore. It writes succesfully and then I poweroff. That didn't help too. Any suggestions?

 

[patters]

AFAIK you will need to find a 2GB FAT16 formatted SD card in order to re-flash the boot loader. It can't work from an SDHC card. It's a limitation of the fact that the card was designed before SDHC, and the firmware was updated to support it later. Flashing the firmware however, remains constrained to requiring legacy SD and FAT16 because it relies on some recovery code baked into ROM.

 

[Driver66]

I expected that, so I already ordered brand new 2 gb Smartbuy micro SDHC, I'm waiting for it to arrive.

 

[Driver66]

So, my 2 GB micro SD arrived and after putting it in miniSD adapter I was able to reflash a 2.05 kernel, but after booting into menu and selecting language it froze. After that I made a rom with EZPDA and reflashed several times, now it's at least working in the menu. But, sometimes I get errors when I go to and out of folders several times and have to reboot, also I can flash games to NOR, but the games I tried (wario land 4, warioware, both metroids) are corrupted when I start them, or get corrupted later. One time when I wrote a game to NOR it froze near completion. And starting in PSRAM is impossible, I always just get a white screen after gameboy logo. Also, I read in some older thread here that removing a battery corrupts the name of the game written to NOR - that's true for me too, after removing it, the name is garbled. So, are the memory chips dying/dead or what?

 

[Jayro]

So, my 2 GB micro SD arrived and after putting it in miniSD adapter I was able to reflash a 2.05 kernel, but after booting into menu and selecting language it froze. After that I made a rom with EZPDA and reflashed several times, now it's at least working in the menu. But, sometimes I get errors when I go to and out of folders several times and have to reboot, also I can flash games to NOR, but the games I tried (wario land 4, warioware, both metroids) are corrupted when I start them, or get corrupted later. One time when I wrote a game to NOR it froze near completion. And starting in PSRAM is impossible, I always just get a white screen after gameboy logo. Also, I read in some older thread here that removing a battery corrupts the name of the game written to NOR - that's true for me too, after removing it, the name is garbled. So, are the memory chips dying/dead or what?

Are you using a MiniSD or a MicroSD in a Mini adapter? Because the adapters can be problematic. (I got lucky with mine, I use an 8GB Micro SD in my Mini adapter, and keep my 1GB *real MiniSD card* for kernel updates/recovery.)

 

[Driver66]

MicroSD in mini adapter. Crap, now I have to buy a real mini sd. What a pain in the ass.

 

[Trevor_2012]

What files do I use to unbrick?

 

[Driver66]

What files do I use to unbrick?

Latest kernel from ezflash site and a rom made with EZPDA if that didn't help.

 

[Jayro]

MicroSD in mini adapter. Crap, now I have to buy a real mini sd. What a pain in the ass.

I got extremely lucky and found mine inside of an old Wii console I bought from Goodwill. It had a SD to MiniSD adapter too.

But eBay should be your friend, I think they're still fairly cheap:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/196051173775

 

[Driver66]

Ebay is not an option for me anymore.
Anyway, I bought a new and sealed 1 GB Silicon Power miniSD card, reinstalled a 2.05 kernel from it, and it works much better now. No errors, no corruption, the same games work correctly now, so it REALLY makes a difference whether you use a miniSD or microSD in adapter.
So, to summarize, it kinda looks I bricked my ez flash by accidentally using it on AKAIO with GBA ExpLoader on DS, but reflashing a kernel by holding R while booting from GBA SP fixed it. It doesn't work on DS now, but at least I can use it on GBA. And a dead/missing battery corrupts the names of games flashed to NOR, for some reason.

 

[Driver66]

So I thought that since it's working on GBA SP(AGS-001, C/AGS-JPN), it will also work on GBA(AGB-001, AGB-JPN-1). But I decided to check to be sure, and it actually doesn't work, not even recovery mode. Anyone know why is that? I played some official GBA and GBC games and they work, so it's not a slot problem.

 

[Jayro]

Ebay is not an option for me anymore.
Anyway, I bought a new and sealed 1 GB Silicon Power miniSD card, reinstalled a 2.05 kernel from it, and it works much better now. No errors, no corruption, the same games work correctly now, so it REALLY makes a difference whether you use a miniSD or microSD in adapter.
So, to summarize, it kinda looks I bricked my ez flash by accidentally using it on AKAIO with GBA ExpLoader on DS, but reflashing a kernel by holding R while booting from GBA SP fixed it. It doesn't work on DS now, but at least I can use it on GBA. And a dead/missing battery corrupts the names of games flashed to NOR, for some reason.

That definitely sounds like you have a hardware problem somewhere. That's not normal stuff. I run a MicroSD adapter in mine without issues.

 

[zxr750j]

Have you tried cleaning all the contacts with something like IPA (card and slots)? Just to eliminate dirt as one of the problems?

 

[Driver66]

I cleaned both slot and a cart with IPA right now, nothing has changed. I also have a EZ flash 3in1, and like official cartridges it works fine on DS. I have read somewhere that EZ Flash IV detects hardware, and for DS it has a different bootloader, so my theory right now is that it got corrupted. So my goal right now is to get it working on DS, if that's possible. And if it really detects hardware, that might explain why it doesn't work on clones like ExeQ.