Hacking Large GBA ROMs like Fire Eblem (256 Mb) don't work

[MegaMario]

Okay, large GBA games like Fire Emblem don't work properely on my EZ4 Lite. I load them through the EZ4 Client, but when I go to play them, they don't copy to the SRAM automatically. The load up and it does the GBA chime thing, but there is no "Nintendo" below it and the games don't work. It is as if I turned on a GBA without any games in it. If I try to copy it to the SRAM manually, by pressing select I think, it freezes right as it is about to finish. Can somebody help me?

 

[cornaljoe]

Update to the newest Client/Kernel it fixes the freezing when writing. Here is the link. Also here is the link to my topic with a similiar problem.

 

[KidIce]

Okay, large GBA games like Fire Emblem don't work properely on my EZ4 Lite. I load them through the EZ4 Client, but when I go to play them, they don't copy to the SRAM automatically. The load up and it does the GBA chime thing, but there is no "Nintendo" below it and the games don't work. It is as if I turned on a GBA without any games in it. If I try to copy it to the SRAM manually, by pressing select I think, it freezes right as it is about to finish. Can somebody help me?

You don't copy them to SRAM, you burn them to the 256 Mb of NOR, which unfortunately takes yonks. I thought 256 Mb games were broken the first time I tried to use one on the EZ4 as it didn't bother top tell me what it was doing so it appeared to have just frozen up. It wasn't after some experimentation that I found out just how long it takes to burn a 256 Mb image on an EZ4.

 

[MegaMario]

Alright, thanks. I'll try that out.

 

[zragnarok]

i had this problem at first as well because it never came with any instructions.. to run large gba GAMES.

- boot into GBA mode (remove passcard or boot to GBA with flashme)
- you should see a darth vader logo
- goto the game and press SELECT to load the game into NOR
- goto the NOR directory (3rd icon i think) an load the game from NOR, not from the TF card
- after loading it to NOR, you can also load it in DS mode

 

[FAST6191]

+1 on KidIce's and zragnarok's comments.

However just to add make sure you trim the roms slightly or they might not fit, also do not add soft reset as it can easily send it over the limit on some games.
Some 256 titles, namely mother3,Riviera (US) and I think it was bleach has some junk code at the end of the rom that comes after a whole bunch of 00's/FF's which you can delete to save a whole bunch of space (Riviera is about 135 mbits or something after this).
You will have ti use a hex editor most of the time (I think I have a Riviera xdelta patch and batch file to use it on my site still).

 

[meangreenie]

Note do not run any GBA roms stored in the NOR section from the DS menu.. as the DS side of the EZ4 reads the internal name of the rom in the NOR section (you will see that the rom has a strange/abreviated name in DS mode) and that will not match the save file name created by the client. This will result in 1).. a corrupt file being created in the Saver folder.. and 2) you're save being lost once the SRAM is overwritten by the save of another game.

Always run NOR based gba roms in GBA mode, you will see the rom name in it's correct form, and the save will be correctly saved to the apropriately named sav file in the saver folder.

 

[babelfish]

FYI, both US Fire Emblems are only 128Mbit, not 256Mbit. The reset / save patches are making the ROM go over 128Mbit, which is why it has to be loaded into NOR. When I initially got my EZ Lite this pissed me off to no end, as these are two of my favorite GBA games and having to load them into NOR sucked. However, this has been remidied in the v1.0 (06/09/06) client, and they even patched out the Health and Safety screen from FE: TSS -- go EZ Team go!