EZ4 loader 1.76 released, some bug fixes.

[FAST6191]

The EZTeam released a new version of their EZ4 loader, it seems to be aimed mostly at those with the new GBA sized microSD version but it should work with any EZ4 model you might have.

The changelog is as follows

fixed the halt at 254Mbit when writing a 256Mbit game
improved the compatibility
improved the saver

The 254 issue is seemingly more for those with the new EZ4 microSD model but those with the same issue with 2013 versions might also wish to try it. *update* GBAtemp user migles confirms it fixes the 254 hang on a 2013 miniSD model.

It is unknown what "improved the compatibility" entails at this point, mostly likely a slightly improved soft reset capability (you can do a hard reset by holding L and A to launch the game, this tends to allow games like Yoshi's Island to launch properly).

EZFlash.cn download section
Filetrip download
Discussion thread

Thanks to mbmax for the news.

 

[Essometer]

I'd never thought that I would get support for my EZ-Flash in 2015.
The only downside is that their gui looks god awful.

 

[migles]

OMG YES!!!!!!!!
OMG I AM SO GLAD AND HAPPY
24 hours masturbating celebration!


i have a mini sd version with this problem, and there was lot of people reporting it too, i get angry sad and angry that i would have to buy a new card to fix this

I AM SO HAPPY
GIVE ME EZ IV TEAM EMAIL FOR SEND NUDES!!!!

 

[jonthedit]

I am happy to see the EZTeam is not dead, even if they only support the EZ4.

 

[FAST6191]

I'd never thought that I would get support for my EZ-Flash in 2015.
The only downside is that their gui looks god awful.

The SDHC update was released a couple of weeks ago ( http://gbatemp.net/threads/ez-iv-kernel-1-75-sdhc-for-ez4-new-ez-iv-version-released-soon.377952/ ) in case you missed it. It will mean you need to reformat your ?SD as FAT32 (everything should just be able to be copied back). Apologies if you did catch it but I could read that as though this came out of the blue for you.

The GUI, personally I do not mind it though I should note the Mario Loader is back if you had updated to one of the 1.75 clearlooks or some other alternative skin. If 1.75 works for you (no NOR issues or what have you) and the GUI is a concern then http://ezflash.sosuke.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=20397 should be able to do something until such a time as clearlooks or some other fancy loader gets bundled into a skin (the old skinning tools are troubled a bit by the changed loaders).

OMG YES!!!!!!!!
OMG I AM SO GLAD AND HAPPY
24 hours masturbating celebration!


i have a mini sd version with this problem, and there was lot of people reporting it too, i get angry sad and angry that i would have to buy a new card to fix this

The issue was more for the new model, does it fix the issue with an older run of the EZ4 for you?

 

[migles]

The SDHC update was released a couple of weeks ago ( http://gbatemp.net/threads/ez-iv-kernel-1-75-sdhc-for-ez4-new-ez-iv-version-released-soon.377952/ ) in case you missed it. It will mean you need to reformat your ?SD as FAT32 (everything should just be able to be copied back). Apologies if you did catch it but I could read that as though this came out of the blue for you.

The GUI, personally I do not mind it though I should note the Mario Loader is back if you had updated to one of the 1.75 clearlooks or some other alternative skin. If 1.75 works for you (no NOR issues or what have you) and the GUI is a concern then http://ezflash.sosuke.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=20397 should be able to do something until such a time as clearlooks or some other fancy loader gets bundled into a skin (the old skinning tools are troubled a bit by the changed loaders).



The issue was more for the new model, does it fix the issue with an older run of the EZ4 for you?

i am testing,
it stopped working with my 512mb nokia MINI sd card.. downgraded to 1.75 same issue, (yeah i heard about lossing support to several mini\micro SD cards, was not expecting my mini sd card being one of them)
i did grabbed a 2gb MICRO SD(from transcend) with an adapter and it is working on 1.75

i am trying to flash a 256mb game (mother 3) into NOR under 1.75, (i like to double check things xD)
after this i will update to 1.76 and check if it works

as for the skin, i preefer this skin over dark vader xD, but meh, skin is a optional concern

UPDATE. on firmware 1.75 a 256mb game still freezes at 254mb
i noticed when a mini\micro sd card is not compatible, there is no message, the screen goes all glitched.... (i thought the update bricked the card for a moment....)

SO I UPDATED NOW FOR 1.76
copying to NOR is slow as hell (maybe slower than before...)

CAN CONFIRM IT SOLVED THE PROBLEM, MOTHER 3 NOW FLASHES FINE!!!!

NOW I HAVE NO USE FOR A MINI SD CARD >:C

 

[FAST6191]

Thanks for the update migles. I had honestly thought it was a hardware issue, maybe there was some kind of sector reallocation command.

 

[migles]

yey, for this to be perfect i just ask one (or 2) things!
update the damn client, or release it as open source for people to improve it!
the current one sucks.. sometimes it crashes for whatever reason, (i noticed it does this specially if you only have 1 drive on the pc...)
and the reset thing, not sure if the problem is on the card or the client... never worked here...

i can't ask about rtc since the card doesn't have a clock... that would need a new card... but for that i am guessing best change is wait for krikzz to release is gba card

 

[FAST6191]

The client needs a D: drive to be present which is probably why you had that issue. There was a fix for an older client (the d: drive is referenced in the exe, change that and you dodge that issue) but I am not sure it was remade for the newer one. Most people assign a network drive, add a virtual cd drive, get one of those folder to drive things going on..... just so there is one if their machine does happen to lack such a thing.
The main other crash people encounter is trying to edit the soft reset commands (note this is a different concept to soft reset launching in the loader*), no fix for this but if you want to change them then edit c:\windows\temp\ez4para.ini (it is all reasonably obvious and text based).

Cheats and soft reset patching I will cover in a second, they would require some extra work but basic save patching can be accomplished by any number of programs.

Yeah RTC would really need a new card, or something really fancy work to be done with the DS in DS mode. It is not without issues though (battery drain being the big one) and there are so very few games that use it but we already had all those discussions in the other various threads.

*the ez4 automatically reads the EZ4 loader section of memory and boots whatever is there (typically the EZ4 kernel file you flash using some kind of ezfla_up.bin), it then reads the contents of the NOR and the SD card to allow you to select whatever in the loader. When the GBA file is in the relevant memory section it then has a few options
1) Do a hard reset and make the GBA reading device think the game is there. The game boots as it normally would.
2) Do a soft reset and just assign the memory and tell the game to branch to 08000000 (the location of the cart in memory), technically this is a hidden/undocumented function of the GBA.

Soft reset is quicker as it does not show the logo and in some cases you can some fancy things with code already in memory, nothing you can not do otherwise but easier to do it this way. Not all games work when launched this way (various reasons, most commonly memory is not set how it would be/should be in a normal GBA; good programs clear/allocate memory properly and are not worried about this, other programs might not) hence the option to do a hard launch instead. This was not why the hacked Modulo loader defaulted to hard reset (the reason there was to work around a bug introduced in a later EZ4 kernel, though one that also included nice extra functionality) but as everybody used it, mainly as everybody suggested people use it, the soft vs hard reset distinction was lost got many.

Soft reset in EZ4client is a way to patch a game so you can soft reset at any point in the game by holding a button combo. Depending upon the setup you might prefer to just reset the game itself or you might want to get back to the EZ4 menu without touching the power button. Never something that has appealed to me on any system but to each their own.

 

[migles]

FAST6191

i thought the soft reset options on ez iv client were for get back into ez loader?(which never did anything when i tried)
i am confused, i had been using a+b start+select for soft reset a game and get back to the game main menu

EDIT: JUST TESTED SOFT RESET, IT WORKS! can press L+UP+a+b to get back to ez iv menu!
(i remember i tried it several times in the past, never worked for me)
this is so amazing, i am delighted...

 

[Joe88]

in case you missed it. It will mean you need to reformat your ?SD as FAT32 (everything should just be able to be copied back)

I just tried reformating my 2GB MiniSD to FAT32 (was FAT before) and still getting the same problem in the video here: http://gbatemp.net/threads/ez-iv-ke...sion-released-soon.377952/page-4#post-5298280

tried flashing clearlooks v6 (1.75 first)
with 1.75 flashed my cart (old ez-flash iv) ignores the minisd formated to FAT32 when trying to flash a new firmware and just boots the main menu and crashes
reformated back to FAT and flashed 1.76 in the op, and it crashes at the menu

flashed 1.72 (soft-reset) clearlooks v5 and everything works fine again

I was gonna buy a microsd->minisd converter seeing how my card wouldn't work with new firmwares anymore but waited to see if if the ez-flash team would release a new firmware to fix it but I guess not.

 

[DinohScene]

I'd never thought that I would get support for my EZ-Flash in 2015.
The only downside is that their gui looks god awful.

But but.
Finding Nemo :c

I really should update me old EZ.
Then again, I barely play GBA games these days.

 

[TripleSMoon]

I'd never thought that I would get support for my EZ-Flash in 2015.
The only downside is that their gui looks god awful.

Hopefully we'll get an updated version of the clearlooks skin soon enough.

Why the EZ team insists on these godawful themes based on licensed IPs that don't even have to do with video games is beyond me.

 

[physicallyinsane]

Just received my EZ flash IV micro sd today coincidentally. Now I'm waiting for a 4gb sdhc card with an adapter to come in. I'm fairly new to the flash cart scene and I know this isn't exactly the right forum, but can someone verify these incredibly dummed down directions I've made by learning from various tutorials on setting up the cart?

1. Format sdhc card to FAT32 and place ezfla_up.bin for 1.76 in it
2. Put sdhc in cart and insert cart in any gba device and hold R while booting up
3. Hold R until update reaches 100% then turn off device
4. Place sdhc back into computer and delete the ezfla_up.bin and create folder for ROMS
5. Use the EZ4 client to patch roms (and to customize the soft reset button combination) then allocate them to the micro sdhc
6. Put the micro sdhc back into the cart and plug and play.

Am I missing anything? I know how the change the skin ( using another ezfla_up.bin with a custom skin to update the cart again) but since update 1.76 came out would I have to wait for someone to make 1.76 compatible skin? And what is the relevance of holding L and A to do a hard reset? I apologize before hand for the barrage of questions, but I believe now is a good time to update the info on setting up the cart. Especially for the newer micro sd compatible versions.

 

[TecXero]

I can confirm it fixes the glitch with loading large ROMs into the NOR on older EZ4s.

Just received my EZ flash IV micro sd today coincidentally. Now I'm waiting for a 4gb sdhc card with an adapter to come in. I'm fairly new to the flash cart scene and I know this isn't exactly the right forum, but can someone verify these incredibly dummed down directions I've made by learning from various tutorials on setting up the cart?

1. Format sdhc card to FAT32 and place ezfla_up.bin for 1.76 in it
2. Put sdhc in cart and insert cart in any gba device and hold R while booting up
3. Hold R until update reaches 100% then turn off device
4. Place sdhc back into computer and delete the ezfla_up.bin and create folder for ROMS
5. Use the EZ4 client to patch roms (and to customize the soft reset button combination) then allocate them to the micro sdhc
6. Put the micro sdhc back into the cart and plug and play.

Am I missing anything? I know how the change the skin ( using another ezfla_up.bin with a custom skin to update the cart again) but since update 1.76 came out would I have to wait for someone to make 1.76 compatible skin? And what is the relevance of holding L and A to do a hard reset? I apologize before hand for the barrage of questions, but I believe now is a good time to update the info on setting up the cart. Especially for the newer micro sd compatible versions.

EDIT: I'm sorry for the double post, idk how to delete it

That's right. Just to warn you though: the soft resetting patch might not work, but it's not hard to flick the power off and on again when you want your save file updated, once you get used to it.

 

[FAST6191]

Good to know TecXero.

Just received my EZ flash IV micro sd today coincidentally. Now I'm waiting for a 4gb sdhc card with an adapter to come in. I'm fairly new to the flash cart scene and I know this isn't exactly the right forum, but can someone verify these incredibly dummed down directions I've made by learning from various tutorials on setting up the cart?

1. Format sdhc card to FAT32 and place ezfla_up.bin for 1.76 in it
2. Put sdhc in cart and insert cart in any gba device and hold R while booting up
3. Hold R until update reaches 100% then turn off device
4. Place sdhc back into computer and delete the ezfla_up.bin and create folder for ROMS
5. Use the EZ4 client to patch roms (and to customize the soft reset button combination) then allocate them to the micro sdhc
6. Put the micro sdhc back into the cart and plug and play.

Am I missing anything? I know how the change the skin ( using another ezfla_up.bin with a custom skin to update the cart again) but since update 1.76 came out would I have to wait for someone to make 1.76 compatible skin? And what is the relevance of holding L and A to do a hard reset? I apologize before hand for the barrage of questions, but I believe now is a good time to update the info on setting up the cart. Especially for the newer micro sd compatible versions.

Mostly OK. Most of the old guides are still good anyway other than now wanting FAT32.

3 is unnecessary --- once the loader update screen is visible you can let go of R
4 You don't have to delete it, though deleting it will not hurt anything. You can have ROMs on there from the get go if you want and they do not need their own folder either. The only folder that has to be on there is one called saver which is where every save for every game goes. If you want to put ROMs in folders then feel free to do so.

5 Yeah EZ4client can be used to patch GBA games (GBATA from http://www.no-intro.org/tools.htm is another tool and there are several others).

You can make your own 1.76 skin, however the existing tools to do it are not working with the new SDHC kernels so people are having to go manual for the time being.

L and A to launch I covered above but short version is the EZTeam's preferred soft reset to boot is slightly quicker, the hard reset is necessary for some games (yoshi's island being one that people seem to run into a lot, must be one of those games people never talk about). It is different to the soft reset patch in the EZ4client -- that is to do a software launched reset during the game, this is just how the kernel loaded it in the first place.

 

[migles]

I just tried reformating my 2GB MiniSD to FAT32 (was FAT before) and still getting the same problem in the video here: http://gbatemp.net/threads/ez-iv-ke...sion-released-soon.377952/page-4#post-5298280

tried flashing clearlooks v6 (1.75 first)
with 1.75 flashed my cart (old ez-flash iv) ignores the minisd formated to FAT32 when trying to flash a new firmware and just boots the main menu and crashes
reformated back to FAT and flashed 1.76 in the op, and it crashes at the menu

flashed 1.72 (soft-reset) clearlooks v5 and everything works fine again

I was gonna buy a microsd->minisd converter seeing how my card wouldn't work with new firmwares anymore but waited to see if if the ez-flash team would release a new firmware to fix it but I guess not.

thats the exact same problem that appears on my 512MB nokia MINI SD card, i had switched to a 2gb MICRO SD card from transcend and it works..

if you remove the card it will do the same thing

 

[physicallyinsane]

Good to know TecXero.



Mostly OK. Most of the old guides are still good anyway other than now wanting FAT32.

3 is unnecessary --- once the loader update screen is visible you can let go of R
4 You don't have to delete it, though deleting it will not hurt anything. You can have ROMs on there from the get go if you want and they do not need their own folder either. The only folder that has to be on there is one called saver which is where every save for every game goes. If you want to put ROMs in folders then feel free to do so.

5 Yeah EZ4client can be used to patch GBA games (GBATA from http://www.no-intro.org/tools.htm is another tool and there are several others).

You can make your own 1.76 skin, however the existing tools to do it are not working with the new SDHC kernels so people are having to go manual for the time being.

L and A to launch I covered above but short version is the EZTeam's preferred soft reset to boot is slightly quicker, the hard reset is necessary for some games (yoshi's island being one that people seem to run into a lot, must be one of those games people never talk about). It is different to the soft reset patch in the EZ4client -- that is to do a software launched reset during the game, this is just how the kernel loaded it in the first place.

By "having to go manual for the time being," does that mean we're stuck with the Nemo theme for now :L? Also, say I encounter problems with a rom such as Yoshi's Island, I would have press L and A when selecting it from my list of roms?

 

[Donel]

Could anyone do a Carboon Skin for the loader 1.76?

1.76 is faster in folder navigation and WAY faster in saving, but I have noticed it takes more time to load games. Do these things happen to anyone else?

 

[FAST6191]

By "having to go manual for the time being," does that mean we're stuck with the Nemo theme for now :L? Also, say I encounter problems with a rom such as Yoshi's Island, I would have press L and A when selecting it from my list of roms?

If you are familiar with GBFS and can manually convert the images you can insert new ones into the skin, the older skin building methods usually amounted to "copy these BMPs into the GBA directory of this program and press build".

L and A is the button combo to tell the EZ4 to launch the GBA ROM with a hard reset, the older modulo RESET loader that everybody suggested for previous models did a hard reset by default. You don't even need to hold L the entire time, just hold it and then press a, once the percentage bar starts going up you are good.

Could anyone do a Carboon Skin for the loader 1.76?

1.76 is faster for folder navigation and WAY faster for saving, but I noticed it takes more time to load games. Does this happen to anyone else?

I hadn't seen the navigation and save speeds but games seemed about the same for me, I will have to time a few things.

As for Carbon I will have to figure out a way to build skins with my current setup. Personally as long as I can read the text I do not really care what the skins look like but I tend not to care about the appearance of irrelevant things to what I am doing.