Hacking EZ Flash IV - Certain games stop working

[lolboy]

Hi everyone,

I need some help with my EZ flash 4 that is acting weird.

Some games do not work (golden sun, wario land 4, pokemon, aladdin). Some will startup and crash when in game and others wont get pass GBA logo. They all freeze and make static sounds.

I tried many things in order to get them working:

• Different firmware (1.7 up to latest)
• Different GBA consoles
• Different Sd carts (size and format).
• Different roms
• Used EZ client to patch the games and also without EZ client (using latest firmware)
• Checked the battery (none recharable)
• Cleaned all the pins (cart and gba)

So I gave up and played some games that worked (Super mario 4). After few days I accidentally started golden sun and it worked!

I tried all the other non working games and they all worked without any issues. After playing for few days they all stoppped working again. I did not change anything, they just stop working. Only aladdin seems to work but all the others keep crashing.

What is going on? Is some component of the cart defective?

I tried everything..again. This time I also deleted save and patch files but nothing seems to help.

 

[kuwanger]

Yea, considering everything you did it's hard to believe it's not an issue with the EZ IV cart. The only thing else I could recommend testing is using your unpatched roms on the latest firmware but launch a game with L+B. This will disable Global Softreset and Sleep patching, in case that's the cause of your issue. It also wouldn't help to verify the hash of your games matches the no intro set. For example, Golden Sun should have an md5 hash of "1CDD7F33C9A27061201E1D1CE029A700" if Europe/USA.

 

[lolboy]

Yea, considering everything you did it's hard to believe it's not an issue with the EZ IV cart. The only thing else I could recommend testing is using your unpatched roms on the latest firmware but launch a game with L+B. This will disable Global Softreset and Sleep patching, in case that's the cause of your issue. It also wouldn't help to verify the hash of your games matches the no intro set. For example, Golden Sun should have an md5 hash of "1CDD7F33C9A27061201E1D1CE029A700" if Europe/USA.

Thanks for advice. I tried L+B but it did not help.

 

[FAST6191]

"Cleaned all the pins"
Does this include the ones in the *SD card slot?
While I am not going to rule out something in the EZ4 going awry the symptoms are still that of bad contact (usually a micro to mini adapter but can be other things).

Cleaning the SD card slot pins is hard as there is no direct access. I usually do OK getting a fatter ?SD (or making it fatter), getting some electrical contact cleaner on the pins and in the slot and inserting and removing the SD card a bunch of times.
In a pinch some try adding a sheet of paper, electrical tape or something behind the SD card to force better contact.

 

[lolboy]

"Cleaned all the pins"
Does this include the ones in the *SD card slot?
While I am not going to rule out something in the EZ4 going awry the symptoms are still that of bad contact (usually a micro to mini adapter but can be other things).

Cleaning the SD card slot pins is hard as there is no direct access. I usually do OK getting a fatter ?SD (or making it fatter), getting some electrical contact cleaner on the pins and in the slot and inserting and removing the SD card a bunch of times.
In a pinch some try adding a sheet of paper, electrical tape or something behind the SD card to force better contact.

Thanks for the advise. I did not think of this because some games just work. I will give it a try.

 

[FAST6191]

I generally conceptualise it as the data has to get from the SD card to RAM or NOR. If you have intermittent contact with the SD card then the copying process might mess something up along the way, this usually troubling larger ROMs (while several trouble ones there are on the smaller side Golden Sun at least, especially if you have a hacked version*, is larger) or NOR writing sessions (which take longer to write and thus invite more chance for a bad read). If it is random it also means some games might randomly work some times but not others.

*stuff like the voice acting experiment mod bumping it up to 32 megs.

 

[lolboy]

I generally conceptualise it as the data has to get from the SD card to RAM or NOR. If you have intermittent contact with the SD card then the copying process might mess something up along the way, this usually troubling larger ROMs (while several trouble ones there are on the smaller side Golden Sun at least, especially if you have a hacked version*, is larger) or NOR writing sessions (which take longer to write and thus invite more chance for a bad read). If it is random it also means some games might randomly work some times but not others.

*stuff like the voice acting experiment mod bumping it up to 32 megs.

I managed to get golden sun running but when I load my save game the game camera moves away to the bottom of the map. Games runs, music works and I can access menu but I cannot control my character/move camera.