Hacking EZ-FLASH Junior TestFlight

[Bonnom]

I just flashed the 1.05e RC5 from the website. Now it won't boot past OSINIT.

What should I do?

 

[ndsLight]

I just flashed the 1.05e RC5 from the website. Now it won't boot past OSINIT.
What should I do?

Brick!

 

[DrunkenMonk]

I just flashed the 1.05e RC5 from the website. Now it won't boot past OSINIT.

What should I do?

You can keep trying to reset the device until it eventually boots and install an older version. Something about updating to 1.05 does seem to cause some corruption though. My Jr got so bricked I needed to contact the devs and flash the chip with a specially curated file from them with a universal programmer that was compatible with the particular chip used.

Make sure before you attempt to reformat the SD card and put on fresh files and use a good quality SD card to ensure you're not going to install an even more corrupted version.

There's different amounts of bricking and if yours is as bad as mine was (it took 5+ hours of attempting to eventually get it to boot into the FW flasher which ultimately bricked it further) I think you'll have to contact your reseller for replacement unless you have the specialist equipment to repair it yourself

 

[ndsLight]

I think you'll have to contact your reseller for replacement unless you have the specialist equipment to repair it yourself

I think it's cheaper to buy a new one.

 

[DrunkenMonk]

I think it's cheaper to buy a new one.

Reseller will probably replace it just fine without having to buy another

 

[Bonnom]

You can keep trying to reset the device until it eventually boots and install an older version. Something about updating to 1.05 does seem to cause some corruption though. My Jr got so bricked I needed to contact the devs and flash the chip with a specially curated file from them with a universal programmer that was compatible with the particular chip used.

Make sure before you attempt to reformat the SD card and put on fresh files and use a good quality SD card to ensure you're not going to install an even more corrupted version.

There's different amounts of bricking and if yours is as bad as mine was (it took 5+ hours of attempting to eventually get it to boot into the FW flasher which ultimately bricked it further) I think you'll have to contact your reseller for replacement unless you have the specialist equipment to repair it yourself

That sucks! I might give it a try to unbrick the device. Isn't it just reflashing the SPI flash chip?

 

[DrunkenMonk]

That sucks! I might give it a try to unbrick the device. Isn't it just reflashing the SPI flash chip?

Yes which requires removing the chip from the device, connecting it to your universal programmer, dumping it and hoping it didn't corrupt too hard and get a new file to flash back to it directly from the devs. You can not reflash it with game boy hardware at the point of "peak" corruption like I got haha

 

[EZ-Flash2]

I just flashed the 1.05e RC5 from the website. Now it won't boot past OSINIT.

What should I do?

No, it is not bricked, I suppose you are not using a enough fast SD card. If you have a sandisk red 32GB card. it will boot normally.

if you dont have one. please PM me, I will discuss further with you.

 

[Bonnom]

No, it is not bricked, I suppose you are not using a enough fast SD card. If you have a sandisk red 32GB card. it will boot normally.

if you dont have one. please PM me, I will discuss further with you.

I have tried a bunch of sd cards including a Sandisk Ultra 16 GB. I also didn't have the problem on 1.04e.
Sometimes it is able to go past the OSINT screen but than it is just pure white or completely black screen.

 

[RAHelllord]

I have tried a bunch of sd cards including a Sandisk Ultra 16 GB. I also didn't have the problem on 1.04e.
Sometimes it is able to go past the OSINT screen but than it is just pure white or completely black screen.

Have you tried reformatting the MicroSD card with something like GUIormat and then copying the correct ezgb.dat file to the card as the very first file? The Jr goes on the hunt for that file by looking one by one through the FAT file table, and it can take a while until it finds it if you have a lot of files on it. By copying it first you ensure it's the first entry it looks at, ensuring it can find it reliably and quickly.

 

[Ninoh-FOX]

I have tried a bunch of sd cards including a Sandisk Ultra 16 GB. I also didn't have the problem on 1.04e.
Sometimes it is able to go past the OSINT screen but than it is just pure white or completely black screen.

If you has a GBA SP, try with this console connect to DC adapter, this worked to me.

 

[Bonnom]

The weirdest part about it all is that everything was working with 1.04e, I upgraded to 1.05 and now it does not work.

Have you tried reformatting the MicroSD card with something like GUIormat and then copying the correct ezgb.dat file to the card as the very first file? The Jr goes on the hunt for that file by looking one by one through the FAT file table, and it can take a while until it finds it if you have a lot of files on it. By copying it first you ensure it's the first entry it looks at, ensuring it can find it reliably and quickly.

I used the official SD card formatter application. Then I put only the firmware files on it after that a combination of some files and folders but nothing worked.

If you has a GBA SP, try with this console connect to DC adapter, this worked to me.

Thanks for the tip but I am temporarily using a game boy player. That add-on thing for the gamecube that uses a GBA motherboard.

 

[WiLLiW]

The weirdest part about it all is that everything was working with 1.04e, I upgraded to 1.05 and now it does not work....

Me and v1.04? Stuck like glue with it

 

[RAHelllord]

I used the official SD card formatter application. Then I put only the firmware files on it after that a combination of some files and folders but nothing worked.

The official SD card formatting tool is likely not using the proper FAT32 filesystem but, depending on storage size and detected chip exFAT. That may cause problems with the Junior. I heavily suggest using a tool that explicitly allows you to select the filesystem format the Junior requires from you. Do remember these are not "modern" modern devices trying to use the MicroSD card, those are special devices meant to run on hardware far older than any MicroSD in existence and they might not be able to use modern expected standards.

You can find a working copy of GUIformat at a few places, but for example I got mine from http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm, which is the homepage of the developer for the tool. It's what I use and it works like a charm for me.

 

[WiLLiW]

The weirdest part about it all is that everything was working with 1.04e, I upgraded to 1.05 and now it does not work.


I used the official SD card formatter application. Then I put only the firmware files on it after that a combination of some files and folders but nothing worked.


Thanks for the tip but I am temporarily using a game boy player. That add-on thing for the gamecube that uses a GBA motherboard.

Have you tried this? sd formating tool
or this? sandisk tool

 

[Bonnom]

The official SD card formatting tool is likely not using the proper FAT32 filesystem but, depending on storage size and detected chip exFAT. That may cause problems with the Junior. I heavily suggest using a tool that explicitly allows you to select the filesystem format the Junior requires from you. Do remember these are not "modern" modern devices trying to use the MicroSD card, those are special devices meant to run on hardware far older than any MicroSD in existence and they might not be able to use modern expected standards.

You can find a working copy of GUIformat at a few places, but for example I got mine from http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm, which is the homepage of the developer for the tool. It's what I use and it works like a charm for me.

I also tried other tools and formatted the card in FAT16 and FAT32. I don't think the junior supports the exFAT format.

Have you tried this? sd formating tool
or this? sandisk tool

SD formating tool is the official SD card formatting.

EZflash just send me a recovery ezgb.dat file and now everything works again!

 

[EZ-Flash2]

Right now the firmware5 has higher speed requirements for SD card, if you encounter a slower SD card, it will be stuck in OSINIT, we will adjust this problem in the final version!

 

[Bonnom]

Right now the firmware5 has higher speed requirements for SD card, if you encounter a slower SD card, it will be stuck in OSINIT, we will adjust this problem in the final version!

Can you elaborate on "speed requirements for SD card". I have tried a SD cards with speed qualifications U[1]/(10)/V10 with A1 and they did not work. What are high-end specs for an SD card under 16GB.

Also a bit of feedback for the EZflash website. It might a good idea to place the link for firmware v4 back on the product page, and place a warning for the EZflash v5 firmware. This might prevent people getting the same problem as I had.

 

[WiLLiW]

"higher speed requirements for SD card" ? Now where is the gbatemp's dislike button....

 

[Boomer_Newb]

Hi guys. I ordered an ezflash Junior, it's in the mail.

I only have a 2gb microsd and a 128gb.

For the 2GB I can't use Fat32 @ 32K because it has to be at least 4GB for that format.

Will the ezflash Junior work with the 128gb if I create a smaller 32GB Fat32 32K partition?

What are the performance penalties for not using 32K ? What happens if I use the 2GB card @ Fat32 16K ?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

(the everdrive X7 sports an additional ingame menu and savestates),

I read a few pages back, one of the members said savestates are not possible , how does the X7 do it ?