EZ Flash Omega DE visual glitches when running games off SD card? But work fine from NOR memory?

Cencil

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Hey hoping someone here can help with this issue I'm running into with a brand new EZ Flash Omega DE I just received the other day.

When running most games off the SD card I'm getting visual glitches at certain points in the games. For example when playing Golden Sun, whenever I enter a building everything looks distorted.

I found an old thread from 2022 on GBAtemp with someone having a similar issue but not exactly the same, and a user there says "Could be bad PSRAM. What happens if you try to play a game from NOR memory? If games work happily that way, that would indicate the PSRAM is bad." https://gbatemp.net/threads/ez-flash-omega-de-graphical-glitches-and-freezes.607650/post-9747599

Looks like I do have bad "PSRAM" according to that user - but not entirely sure what this means after some digging around. If I load the games into NOR memory the problem no longer persists. It only happens when running games directly off the SD Card. I would just play the games off NOR memory but this would become quite tedious as you can only load 1-2 games onto it at a time, and many times it freezes when trying to load a game onto it so it takes a few attempts.

Things I've tried are different micro SD cards, 4gb, 8gb, 32gb etc with different formats being Fat32, Exfat etc with no luck. This was on the latest Firmware for the EZ Flash Omega DE so I decided to downgrade firmwares and none of them have fixed it either. Lastly I've tried it on multiple different GBA's (IPS modded GBA, GBA Micro, AGS 101 SP and Analogue Pocket) with the issue occurring on all of those as well.

I booted into Safe mode and tried the "Test Card" option and it says "read S71 ID OK" and "read S98 ID OK".

Another thing I tried is a "ram hash test rom" that I found here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/ez-flash-omega-de-rtc-not-working-randomly.604513/post-9704785

When booting this test rom from the SD card, I've attached a pic of the first test "Hash entire ROM (SHA1)" and "Check ROM padding" test as well. The Hash ROM test resulted in a different hash than the rom's header name, and the ROM padding test resulted in "Mismatch at address 0x804C8D8. Expected 0x55555555, got 0x55555455."

When booting the test rom from NOR memory, the Hash ROM test ended up matching the test rom's name this time, and the ROM padding test says "No mismatch found"

I've also attached images of running Golden Sun off the SD card with the glitches and another from NOR memory working fine, both in the same location in-game.

If anyone has any idea how to fix this it would be greatly appreciated!
 

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Last edited by Cencil,

EZ-Flash2

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This could be due to drops or jolts during transportation causing a poor solder joint on the BGA chip. Please contact the dealer for a replacement.
 
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Cencil

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This could be due to drops or jolts during transportation causing a poor solder joint on the BGA chip. Please contact the dealer for a replacement.

Thank you, I'll get a replacement then if there's no fix for this. Appreciate the response!
 

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