Once upon a time, I bought an EZFlash 3-in-1. About seven or eight months later, it stopped holding save files. I figured that the little CR1220 battery that keeps the SRAM running must have died, so I tried to replace it and broke my EZ3-in-1 in the process (those wires connecting the rumble motor to the board are surprisingly brittle), so I just got rid of it.

(First person to tell me to "recharge the 3-in-1's battery" gets hit. The 3-in-1 never had a rechargeable battery. Yours doesn't either: open it and see. It's marked CR1220, not ML1220, and has a yellow ring instead of a purple one.)

Anyway, I decided to just get a new one, and I did and it worked great for about six months until it stopped holding saves, too. I just soldered a new battery on, but I must have botched it because it's still not holding saves. Or perhaps something else broke. (I've no idea what, though: the PSRAM and rumble and NORFlash all work fine).

Is there a GBA flash card that has a socketed battery rather than one that's soldered on? Or maybe one that uses Flash instead of SRAM to hold saves? I don't even care if it sticks out from the Lite anymore, really. I just want something that won't die after a year.

 

I've heard of the M3 pack (and the ewin pack, which is reportedly similar), but they use battery-backed SRAM with the battery soldered directly on the PCB, just like the ezflash 3-in-1, so it would probably die just as quickly and be just as hard to replace.

I think maybe I'll get a full-sized cart: an old F2A or something; at least then the battery should last longer.

 

1. I RIPPED the rumble motor out of mine because I hate rumble.
2. Should not have thrown the cart, the motor wires could be resoldered easily.
3. I'm sorry to hear about this, I've replaced mine's battery with a CR1620 which has double capacity so it should last twice as long, you can only do this with a GBA-sized cause the battery is too big.
4. Is the battery on right? Should have the minus pointing upwards. I've fiddled with mine's battery quite a number of times(I even bent the contacts backwards, now battery is upside down so I could place it in a farther, empty area of the case) and it still works. The EZV(and every Gameboy or GBA cart I swapped batteries with) is very battery-change-friendly from my experience it even works with a larger battery without any hitches, don't give up.
5. How are you holding your battery into position? If you're soldering it there MIGHT be a SMALL chance that the solderer heat is killing your battery(I had one of mine go pop and ooze battery acid in one such uninspired attempt), try some scotch tape it works like a charm.
6. I am sick tired of SRAM myself. On everything I've seen it it either dies quickly or corrupts when pulling the flashcart out during functioning(memory is kept alive by constant power so I think the surges screw it up), I tried that with an official game pak with FLASH save, I raped it to hell and was unable to corrupt the save. So I agree, why can't they just DROP SRAM already and start working with chips, they added 32MB NOR flash was it hard to add another 128K of it?

 

Rumble defaults to being off anyway. If you don't use it (it does suck pretty bad IMO) there is no reason to keep the motor when doing a case mod, especially if you're trying to fit an ovesized battery into the cart.

 

I keep wondering why cloned GBA carts of original games nor flashcarts like EZV can give the battery performance of an original Nintendo game pak. The batteries on these things last for about an year whilst my original Gameboy and SNES(15 years old!) are STILL holding their SRAM data.

 

Well, the DRAM on mine still works for the browser, Quake2, NeoDS, etc. It's just the battery-backed SRAM that's not functional anymore.

 

I have an Elink and it has never shit out on me yet.

 

Its a shame no one else makes better quality versions of these things, mine has not malfunctioned yet, but personally i would pay 2-3x the price for one with a better build quality and a method of storing saves in non volatile memory.... or hell, just a battery that recharges from power from the DS.

 

This whole battery issue reminds me of the RRoD example except in a shorter period. Although it's cheap, so I guess it's bearable I suppose.