Hacking EZ Flash Omega Observations

[RetroVortex]

Hi. I've had my EZ Flash Omega for a few days and Ive been testing it a lot and I thought I would keep track of unusual things I have noticed. This is all on the latest firmware on a GBA SP.
1. Some games have graphical glitches when patched to support ingame save states and reset. Lady Sia is a good game to notice this.
2. Sometimes the games inexplicably feeze almost a minute or two after booting up, then when rebooted run fine.
3. When taking the cart out of the SP I notice the cart is slightly unclipped from its cover and I gebtly budge it back into place
4. I lost my "Saver" folder completely playing the shmup "Invader". Like completely unrecoverable. But other files were ok still.

 

[Jayro]

Have you tried without the patches, or re-patching a fresh ROM?

 

[kuwanger]

2. Sometimes the games inexplicably feeze almost a minute or two after booting up, then when rebooted run fine.

I've had similar problems with games both "Clean Boot" and "Boot with Addons". I then noticed it was happen on another cart. So, I'd suggest using an alcohol soaked q-tip to clean the EZ Omega's connectors and your GBA/NDS/whatever's pins (you'll probably be only able to get a bit of them cleaned off). If it comes out pretty clean and you continue to have problems, please let us know.

 

[RetroVortex]

I've been booting roms clean outside of a few tests, and I've been using roms from the nointro romset.
I'll give cleaning the contacts a go. Couldn't hurt. Not had a crash with my Everdrive X3 GB as of yet though and I use that loads. (They're sharing the same microSD card too)

As for romhacks, I did play Pokemon Fuligin for a few hours (before I lost my save to Invader), and beat the first two gyms. Seems to run fine and sace just fine. Minor graphic quibble when it boots up to the title screen but it sorts itself out as soon as you go ingams.

 

[t5b6de]

...
3. When taking the cart out of the SP I notice the cart is slightly unclipped from its cover and I gebtly budge it back into place
...

Same here. Tried to make a new case from an old original gba game but with no success, the pcb might be too thin.

...
4. I lost my "Saver" folder completely playing the shmup "Invader". Like completely unrecoverable. But other files were ok still.
...

This happens most of the time if you switch your GBA off too soon after saving, when saving to sd card is in progress

You should format your sd card completly new. After ingame save, you should wait about 4-5 Seconds to be on the safe side.
if it do happen again, choose another SD card. I've a Samsung Evo 64GB Formatted in FAT32. Another Card from Sandisk was tested, UHS-I card, 64GB, too. Works even fine.

kind regards

 

[RetroVortex]

Same here. Tried to make a new case from an old original gba game but with no success, the pcb might be too thin.



This happens most of the time if you switch your GBA off too soon after saving, when saving to sd card is in progress

You should format your sd card completly new. After ingame save, you should wait about 4-5 Seconds to be on the safe side.
if it do happen again, choose another SD card. I've a Samsung Evo 64GB Formatted in FAT32. Another Card from Sandisk was tested, UHS-I card, 64GB, too. Works even fine.

kind regards

I already formatted the card anon and recopied everything I took off back on. Certain games definitely have issues with freezing.
Donkey Kong Country 3 seems to freeze a lot for me. Everytime I play it I get a level or two or three into the game and then freeze. Before I can even save the game.
Anyone else with an Omega please try this game out and see how far you can get into the game.
The microSD I'm using is a 32gb Sandisk Extreme U3 A1 (The gold and red one). Its a very new card. Formatted to Fat32 with 32kb clusters.
Funny thing is with Invader. I turned it off on the middle of a level and its a shmup. I wouldn't have thought it would be saving constantly throughout play. (But it could be) Maybe its possible the firmware isnt selecting the right save type for that game. (It IS pretty niche)

 

[kuwanger]

Certain games definitely have issues with freezing.
Donkey Kong Country 3 seems to freeze a lot for me. Everytime I play it I get a level or two or three into the game and then freeze. Before I can even save the game.

Did a quick test with DKC3 with Clean Boot. Played a few levels and saved fine. Double checked with an rsync and a fsck of the memory card. No problems. Invader meanwhile has no save file.

PS - For point of reference, this is a 4GB Sandisk formatted to FAT32. Cluster size is 32KB. I did have problems with corruption on a 64GB exfat microSD. At the time I thought it might be the filesystem. Later on, I thought it was the contacts on the GBA SP/cart. Maybe it's the actual size that's the issue?

Edit: Updated cluster information and Invader save information.

 

[RetroVortex]

Did a quick test with DKC3 with Clean Boot. Played a few levels and saved fine. Double checked with an rsync and a fsck of the memory card. No problems. Invader meanwhile has no save file.

PS - For point of reference, this is a 4GB Sandisk formatted to FAT32. Cluster size is 32KB. I did have problems with corruption on a 64GB exfat microSD. At the time I thought it might be the filesystem. Later on, I thought it was the contacts on the GBA SP/cart. Maybe it's the actual size that's the issue?

Edit: Updated cluster information and Invader save information.

Aha I think I solved the DKC3 issue for me at least. Turns out that ROM was an old one I had and not one from the No Intro set. Extracted the nointro version and it seems to run fine for me now. No crashing after one or two levels. It may be an unusual case of file deterioration over time or simply a less clean dump of the ROM from years ago.
Invader however WAS from the same No intro romset. I'm too afraid to try the game again incase something goes wrong but here's something interesting to note from it.
Before it corrupted my saver folder, the screenshot for the game appeared in the rom list when I pressed select, but afterwards, once i copied everything back over after formatting, the rom in the menu had no screenshot of the titlescreen at all. Just a white box with an icon in the middle. So clearly something happened to the ROM itself too because the menu was no longer linking the screenshot with the ROM.
(not too big of an issue for me not to play that one honestly)
EDIT: Of course it could also be that the file didn't quite copy over right the first time also. Considered that possibility already too.

 

[RetroVortex]

Not played my GBA SP all day. Decided to play some Metal Slug Advance. Guess what? Error 4 again. Corrupted Saver Folder again. Ugh.
This card has no issues in the Everdrive GB I use it in as far as I know but on here it's being a real pain.
Guess I need to dig up some more microSDs to test with. Split these files up so my GB stuff doesn't get erased in the future. Wouldn't want to kill a good memory card either. (My guess is the card is too new or too big. I'll see if I can find a 4gb knocking around. That's all I need for GBA anyway)

EDIT: Right. This time I got an old 4gb Class 4 card for GBA, and I moved my GBC stuff to a 1gb Class 2. Both formatted to FAT32, 32kb clusters. Both slow as hell. But expendable.

 

[RetroVortex]

I've had a few freezes still with this 4gb microSD I'm using. So I might try downgrading and see if that improves.
Again, using a AGS-001 European SP for reference here.