Hacking Issue with NOR on a new Ez Flash IV

[jdx7777]

Heya guys,
Got an EZ Flash IV this week, and have had no problems until yesterday.

NOR flashing has been working fine: Mother 3 primarily along with Pokémon Mystery Dungeon and Spyro The Eternal Night.
But now my NOR flash stops writing at 254mb and stays there.

It often works anyways, but it still show the name of the last successfully flashed game. (Whether it be a 32mb or smaller game)
I've tried erasing and formatting the NOR on different firmwares, and have no idea why it started doing this.

I'd be okay with the different naming if it wasn't for the fact that that effects the saver file it uses. =/

Any help would be appreciated! =)

 

[driverdis]

Heya guys,
Got an EZ Flash IV this week, and have had no problems until yesterday.

NOR flashing has been working fine: Mother 3 primarily along with Pokémon Mystery Dungeon and Spyro The Eternal Night.
But now my NOR flash stops writing at 254mb and stays there.

It often works anyways, but it still show the name of the last successfully flashed game. (Whether it be a 32mb or smaller game)
I've tried erasing and formatting the NOR on different firmwares, and have no idea why it started doing this.

I'd be okay with the different naming if it wasn't for the fact that that effects the saver file it uses. =/

Any help would be appreciated! =)

This happens to me as well, it sucks as I do not know what to do about it

 

[jrbmed08]

Newbie here. I was wondering if you guys could help me get my EZ-Flash IV working a little better than I have it now.

So is looks like I have one of the 2013 models, because when I used the older versions of ezfla_up.bin, I couldn't play any ROMs or write to the NOR. After a lot of searching I found this thread on another forum:

http://ezflash.sosuke.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=20396

Prior to the most recent update on that post, I was able to get it to work using the "release.bin" update on my GBA SP (1.71), but I still had to write each game individually to the NOR before I could play it, and the process took forever. Not a huge deal since I usually play RPGs and like to finish one before I move onto the next, but it was a slight annoyance. Also, my games would sometimes freeze up, and the only thing I could to to fix it was restart, delete the game from the NOR, and rewrite it. It caused a lot of lost progress and frustration. I just installed the most recent update from that thread (1.74), and aside from it looking crappy with the Darth Vader skin, it seems to work OK and isn't requiring me to write the games to the NOR one at a time. So it seems pretty good so far.

HOWEVER...there's one thing I'd really like to fix. I have a DS lite with an M3 Simply, and it can boot Slot 2 carts. I'd like to use it so I don't have to carry around both my DS and my GBA SP (in fact, I specifically bought the EZ-Flash IV because I knew it could be used on the DS with a flash cart in Slot 1). Before, when I was using the version that didn't load my games at all (1.72 I think), I was at least able to boot it on the DS and select a game, although they wouldn't load. Now (with both 1.71 and 1.74), I can't get it to boot at all. My DS will boot into the M3 menu, but when I select Slot 2, it proceeds to rewrite the update if ezfla_up.bin is still on the card, asks for a restart, but then does the same cycle again. If the ezfla_up.bin file is not on the card, I get an error message saying that it can't find ezfla_up.bin. But I can't just start it up without it trying to update.

So...can anyone help me get it working on my DS, or should I just be glad I didn't sell my old SP?

 

[cheesypr09]

HOWEVER...there's one thing I'd really like to fix. I have a DS lite with an M3 Simply, and it can boot Slot 2 carts. I'd like to use it so I don't have to carry around both my DS and my GBA SP (in fact, I specifically bought the EZ-Flash IV because I knew it could be used on the DS with a flash cart in Slot 1). Before, when I was using the version that didn't load my games at all (1.72 I think), I was at least able to boot it on the DS and select a game, although they wouldn't load. Now (with both 1.71 and 1.74), I can't get it to boot at all. My DS will boot into the M3 menu, but when I select Slot 2, it proceeds to rewrite the update if ezfla_up.bin is still on the card, asks for a restart, but then does the same cycle again. If the ezfla_up.bin file is not on the card, I get an error message saying that it can't find ezfla_up.bin. But I can't just start it up without it trying to update.
So...can anyone help me get it working on my DS, or should I just be glad I didn't sell my old SP?

I have the exact same issues with v1.74. Every time I try to use EZFlash IV in my DS Lite it tries to reflash ezfla_up.bin.
I did not have this issue with v1.72, however NOR wasn't working. I just gave up since support seems to be very limited...

 

[jrbmed08]

Good to know I'm not the only one.

 

[Cactuar]

I just received my EZ-Flash IV and installed the 2014 kernel that was inside EZ4_20140306.zip

And I can get some games big or small (32Mb Yggdra Union), but when it comes to Mother 3 (Eng translation patched) it seems to stall out at writing 254Mb. Then I have to power cycle, and the NOR game title becomes grabled but it will load Mother 3 and seems to play.

I read through the comments but couldn't seem to any of the suggested firmwares to work fine with Mother 3.


UPDATE: Mother 3 seems to play fine (at least in the beginning) even though the writing to NOR stalled out on 254MB. I'm not really enjoying the Star Wars skin but hopefully there is a clearlooks made with the same kernel soon.

 

[KidIce]

<snip>

So...can anyone help me get it working on my DS, or should I just be glad I didn't sell my old SP?

Stop booting the EZ4 from the M3 (or any other slot 1 flash cart), it boots the EZ4 up in DS mode not GBA mode. Boot from the DS menu, the GBA compatibility has always been suspect at best from DS mode on pretty much every slot 2 cart ever made.

Edit: Hmm... 1.72 not working for people is a bit troubling to me. It used to be my go-to build (w/ awesome Dreamcast skin) for trouble shooting. I haven't followed the trials and tribulations the EZ4 for years, and hardware changes were inevitable... But still, that combo fixed a hell of a lot of "defective" EZ4's.

 

[pillsmith]

1.74 wont even work on the old cards it seems
http://ezflash4.tumblr.com/post/80201476982/can-i-flash-my-ez4-with-1-74-even-if-its-not-a-newer

I just want to say that I don't see any reason all EZ-Flash IV users shouldn't update to 1.74.

I have two EZ-Flash IVs here, one bought in 2011 and one bought in 2014. Both are running Clearlooks v5 1.74 with no problems. NOR works, resetting works (I have it patched in my games to L+R+Start+Select if it matters), saving/loading works, Yoshi's Island works. All of those things worked in the Clearlooks 1.72 I was using as well, so maybe neither of my carts is a 2013 model.

This is the file I used to update: http://www.sosuke.com/ezflash/viewtopic.php?p=79039#p79039

Before updating I deleted the games I had written to NOR (press select on them) as a precaution.

One reason to upgrade to 1.74: Saving is a lot faster than it was on 1.72, like it takes 2 seconds rather than 20 seconds! It almost seems too fast to be true, but I've double checked and it IS actually saving my progress.

So no matter when you got your EZ-Flash IV I think you should try updating... Let me know if I'm crazy here

 

[FAST6191]

I will still have to confirm some of the NOR stuff.

For the faster saves are these on the same miniSD card? Kuwanger mentioned much of the slowdown was due to having lots of files in the saver directory. If you have a different miniSD with fewer files.....

 

[jrbmed08]

Stop booting the EZ4 from the M3 (or any other slot 1 flash cart), it boots the EZ4 up in DS mode not GBA mode. Boot from the DS menu, the GBA compatibility has always been suspect at best from DS mode on pretty much every slot 2 cart ever made.

Whoa, thanks! I'm actually facepalming at myself for not realizing it was so simple, but it works. I was always under the impression you needed a working flash cart in Slot 1 to boot a flash cart in Slot 2. The DS screen is so much brighter than my SP, so it's really awesome that this works.

 

[jdx7777]

Apart from my Mother 3 254MB problem, I've also seen loads of people say Mother 3 runs with no issues/lag, yet mine has plenty of audio stutter and slowdown.
I've heard the Forest section does that anyway, but the town just before is slow and sounds awful too.

Does it get better from there or something?

 

[Tokee]

I just did a account for saying this: So nice to see that so many people are still interested in the GBA and the EZ-Flash IV.

 

[Cactuar]

Apart from my Mother 3 254MB problem, I've also seen loads of people say Mother 3 runs with no issues/lag, yet mine has plenty of audio stutter and slowdown.
I've heard the Forest section does that anyway, but the town just before is slow and sounds awful too.

Does it get better from there or something?

If you send me your .sav file I'll test it on mine and let you know.

 

[invaderyoyo]

Apart from my Mother 3 254MB problem, I've also seen loads of people say Mother 3 runs with no issues/lag, yet mine has plenty of audio stutter and slowdown.
I've heard the Forest section does that anyway, but the town just before is slow and sounds awful too.

Does it get better from there or something?

Mother 3 runs perfectly for me. I haven't encountered any slowdown or stutter. It doesn't get better, something else is wrong for sure.

 

[jdx7777]

Interestingly enough, the problem seems to just be gone. Some minor slowdown in some other games, but Mother 3 is working like a charm now in regards to slowdown.
I used the firmware that Pillsmith linked to, and it seems to have cleared up the slowdown issues.

Now if only I could solve the NOR issue for Mother 3. Don't want to get a good bit into it to find out that the 2MB it didn't write causes some sort of issue.
Other NOR-necessary games seem to write fine, and Mother 3 wrote fine exactly once, but now it seems to adamantly stick at 254MB.

I even have another EZ Flash IV that does the same thing, but from the get-go. /=,

 

[cheesypr09]

Have you checked CRC of your Mother 3 ROM and compared it to clean ROM? If this issue is happening on multiple cards, maybe your ROM is corrupt?

 

[gaboumafou]

I have the same issue with Mother 3 and other "big" games (Riviera, Yggdra) getting stuck at 354MB then getting confused with the save filenames... It's really infuriating as I spent $50 on a brand new EZFlash IV, and now I've been struggling with that problem for hours. Tried many different firmwares (like the ones on the previous pages here), but I still have the problem. The worst thing is, I managed to copy Mother 3 properly before that started happening... Could it be a faulty batch? Not sure I want to deal with customer service at RealHotStuff to return something that might or might not be defective...

 

[Hanafuda]

Guys, not saying it's going to help, but you might want to look at my thread I posted yesterday, here. I'm using a combo of pintcat's Clearlooks 5 FW along with a 2006 version of the EZ client. I've only been messing with this thing for a day, so not enough to be able to make any declarations of reliability and etc., but I've been testing games/saves on PSRAM and NOR, formatting the NOR, overwriting the NOR, and the shit's working for me. (So far.) Soft reset to EZ menu is working too, in most games.

*knocks on wood*

.

 

[gaboumafou]

Tried that combination, still nothing; Mother 3 stuck at 254MB transfering... I'm starting to think it's probably a hardware defect.

EDIT: Okay, I spent another 2 hours searching, and I really can't find anything... I guess I'll have to ask RealHotStuff for a refund...

 

[invaderyoyo]

Hey, I started getting the 254MB problem. I think it's a firmware thing. Anyway, you may have thought of this already, but what I did was rename a small rom, that always successfully writes to the NOR, Mother 3. After that I format the NOR and write the real Mother 3 to it. Now I still get the 254MB thing, but it's named correctly now and it reads the correct save. On Mother 3 I'm a bit past the battle with the Jealous Bass and nothing in the game has messed up yet, even with the 254MB problem...