Hacking More info about the upcoming EZ Omega flashcart :D

[KevinMX]

Even more leaks about the new flashcart from EZ team, a.k.a. EZ Flash Omega Definitive Edition / EZODE. I collected some from their internal user group.

Update: See #35 for an early review (Chinese only)

The card will be the same size as an original GBA cartridge, and they claim the new card should suck less juice than the previous 1st gen Omega cart.

The switch on the side is for switching between two modes, one is like all other flashcarts, you'll got the menu and select the rom to run; the other mode behaves more like a original cartridge, just pop in the card and goes straight into the game. This also makes communications between DS&GBA cartridges possible, like trading pokemons between DS and GBA. (Personally I don't play a lot of pokemon so if anything wrong please correct me, and you will need a DS/Lite for that OFC)

The PSRAM is now 512Mbits which allows playing movies on your GBA. (Probably the only flashcart capable with it?)

Now FRAM is used (the previous thread mentioned this as well) to avoid save file loss.

The RTC battery on the board is not soldered any more. Feel free to replace it with any CR1025 batteries.

The card comes with an LED with 3 colours, which can act as an SD card activity indicator. Should be able to turn it off via software settings if you're not into RGB stuff

This card can be used as the RAM expansion card for the DS.

RTC Clock is improved, the time should be more accurate now.

A new motor is added for rumble features.

Some pictures attached as below.

The card will be avaliable in China soon™, probably after new year

Seems pretty appealing to me

 

[dragonblood9999]

Even more leaks about the new flashcart from EZ team, a.k.a. EZ Flash Omega Definitive Edition / EZODE. I collected some from their internal user group.

The card will be the same size as an original GBA cartridge, and they claim the new card should suck less juice than the previous 1st gen Omega cart.

The switch on the side is for switching between two modes, one is like all other flashcarts, you'll got the menu and select the rom to run; the other mode behaves more like a original cartridge, just pop in the card and goes straight into the game. This also makes communications between DS&GBA cartridges possible, like trading pokemons between DS and GBA. (Personally I don't play a lot of pokemon so if anything wrong please correct me, and you will need a DS/Lite for that OFC)

The PSRAM is now 512Mbits which allows playing movies on your GBA. (Probably the only flashcart capable with it?)

Now FRAM is used instead of SRAM(the previous thread mentioned this as well) to avoid save file loss.

The RTC battery on the board is not soldered any more. Feel free to replace it with any CR1025 batteries.

The card comes with an LED with 3 colours, which can act as an SD card activity indicator. Should be able to turn it off via software settings if you're not into RGB stuff

This card can be used as the RAM expansion card for the DS.

RTC Clock is improved, the time should be more accurate now.

A new motor is added for rumble features.

Some pictures attached as below.

The card will be avaliable in China soon[emoji769], probably after new year

Seems pretty appealing to me
View attachment 239216 View attachment 239217 View attachment 239218 View attachment 239219

I was going to buy a omega but I guess I wait a little longer. My EZ-FLASH IV still works so I'm in no hurry to replace it.

Sent from my SM-G975W using Tapatalk

 

[Thunder Hawk]

Even more leaks about the new flashcart from EZ team, a.k.a. EZ Flash Omega Definitive Edition / EZODE. I collected some from their internal user group.

The card will be the same size as an original GBA cartridge, and they claim the new card should suck less juice than the previous 1st gen Omega cart.

The switch on the side is for switching between two modes, one is like all other flashcarts, you'll got the menu and select the rom to run; the other mode behaves more like a original cartridge, just pop in the card and goes straight into the game. This also makes communications between DS&GBA cartridges possible, like trading pokemons between DS and GBA. (Personally I don't play a lot of pokemon so if anything wrong please correct me, and you will need a DS/Lite for that OFC)

The PSRAM is now 512Mbits which allows playing movies on your GBA. (Probably the only flashcart capable with it?)

Now FRAM is used instead of SRAM(the previous thread mentioned this as well) to avoid save file loss.

The RTC battery on the board is not soldered any more. Feel free to replace it with any CR1025 batteries.

The card comes with an LED with 3 colours, which can act as an SD card activity indicator. Should be able to turn it off via software settings if you're not into RGB stuff

This card can be used as the RAM expansion card for the DS.

RTC Clock is improved, the time should be more accurate now.

A new motor is added for rumble features.

Some pictures attached as below.

The card will be avaliable in China soon™, probably after new year

Seems pretty appealing to me
View attachment 239216 View attachment 239217 View attachment 239218 View attachment 239219

"This also makes communications between DS&GBA cartridges possible, like trading pokemons between DS and GBA. (Personally I don't play a lot of pokemon so if anything wrong please correct me, and you will need a DS/Lite for that OFC)"

Big if true. I'm unaware of any other flashcart that can do this.

 

[KevinMX]

"This also makes communications between DS&GBA cartridges possible, like trading pokemons between DS and GBA. (Personally I don't play a lot of pokemon so if anything wrong please correct me, and you will need a DS/Lite for that OFC)"

Big if true. I'm unaware of any other flashcart that can do this.

It is true. Maybe my expression is not that right (I'm not a native English speaker lol), but the new card should be capable of this. Pretend itself to be a regular game cartridge and let DS cart communicates with the GBA cart. Like the previous thread mentioned, that *DS-GBA transfer* feature is right on the box. Anyway the new card is coming soon and we'll see.

 

[dragonblood9999]

Pokemon wasn't the only game to do this. You can get some items in Megaman Starforce if you have any Megaman Battle Network game in the gba slot. I also belive that if you have Boktai 1 or 2 in the gba slot Lunar knights would use the solar sensor from it, Megaman ZX if you have Megaman Zero 3 or 4 in the gba slot you can fight the bosses from them in the game. There's a lot of other games that have some kind of DS/GBA link function.

Sent from my SM-G975W using Tapatalk

 

[EZ-Flash2]

no comments on this post

 

[Lijer]

Haven't read anything about the biggest flaw the omega had. Corrupting your save states.

 

[KevinMX]

Haven't read anything about the biggest flaw the omega had. Corrupting your save states.

They're using FeRAM this time... And FeRAM is non-volatile memory. So... Might be better? We'll see when the cards come out.

 

[KevinMX]

Haven't read anything about the biggest flaw the omega had. Corrupting your save states.

Personally I've never encountered any save file losses on my Omega, only one day I found my SD card's filesystem is corrupted, even an fsck didn't save it xD
But as it turned out, it was the faulty SD card, not the Omega causing the issue...

I've sold my old omega card a long time ago, dunno if they improved the firmware to avoid save file losses/corruptions but it worked fine™ for me xD

 

[Sterophonick]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

 

[ghjfdtg]

Is the plating electro plated gold or hard gold? For long term usage you want hard gold just like on original games. The former is very soft and will wear off quickly. It's often used to save costs.

Is the FPGA handling save types correctly to avoid unnecessary patching?

Otherwise looks promising. This might be the Everdrive killer if the price is right.

 

[djpannda]

im usually a Krikzz person but this is interesting, hopefully the price is nice and I'll pick it

 

[tatumanu]

It's looking pretty awesome! Rumble is one of the features I wanted but what I really want is Gyroscope support! If they manage to do that I will buy it, even though I have several flashcarts for GBA already.

 

[KevinMX]

Is the plating electro plated gold or hard gold? For long term usage you want hard gold just like on original games. The former is very soft and will wear off quickly. It's often used to save costs.

Is the FPGA handling save types correctly to avoid unnecessary patching?

Otherwise looks promising. This might be the Everdrive killer if the price is right.

The card is not released yet and there's nothing more I know by this point. But I did heard that they will open source the firmware some day. We'll see.

 

[Ryccardo]

I'm unaware of any other flashcart that can do this.

Ezflash 3in1 (by flashing a game directly to NOR), or for that matter all the first generation "passive" flashcards using an external programmer - ie those that immediately make the rom directly available on the bus without a selection menu

That covers everything that just needs a GBA game present, or actively communicates with them using features built into the GBA title (ie pokemon colosseum/box); applications that directly access the save chip will also require the original save chip (which for 99% of those asking means just use PkHeX, it's superior to the official way )

 

[FAST6191]

Saw this the other day.
Not sure rumble is of any great use for my purposes, gyro even less. Granted RTC is also nothing of great note to me. Would rather lose the lot for PCB space and power drop. That said if you are making an all singing, all dancing device then why not play all the oddball* games you can as though people actually care. I quite like my Omega, save issues were not something I ever had outside of me being stupid and inducing it, though those not respecting a delay (I always gave one even on original carts) could find themselves having to unlearn a habit. That said I was also happy enough with my EZ4 -- you mean with minimal effort I can play 99%+ of all games ( https://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995 ), what horrors.

*I have seen this played out time and time again over the GBA, DS and beyond (looking at forums, faqs, and whatnot for emulators, flash carts not being so popular before, then it also applies to that. Don't think I was too into forums for PS1 modding but the disc ripping software wars were at their height and more with various degrees of subtlety were flashing their creds for ripping PS1 games that others might now. You might get a few pokefiends buy your cart if it works slightly more slickly than your competitor, though that also means you get to answer their questions.

Ezflash 3in1 (by flashing a game directly to NOR), or for that matter all the first generation "passive" flashcards using an external programmer - ie those that immediately make the rom directly available on the bus without a selection menu

That covers everything that just needs a GBA game present, or actively communicates with them using features built into the GBA title (ie pokemon colosseum/box); applications that directly access the save chip will also require the original save chip (which for 99% of those asking means just use PkHeX, it's superior to the official way )

For the sake of the random forum goer that might somehow stumble upon this then I should also note the existence of pokepatch, which also works with the EZ4 (or some versions at least -- not sure what goes for all the fancy new kernels and the newest editions)
It patched the DS ROM to read from the flash cart setup. I don't know what became of the porting it to cheats option.
https://gbatemp.net/download/pokepatch.27240/

 

[Takeshineale128]

got the og EZ-flash Omega and 1 Pokemon rom hack (Omega Red v3.0 English) is just over 32MB and get file overflow error every time I load it and even trimmed the rom but the v2.3 version workes fine when trimmed. the v4 works but in Spanish

 

[Kioku]

no comments on this post

..but... That IS a comment.

 

[KevinMX]

Ezflash 3in1 (by flashing a game directly to NOR), or for that matter all the first generation "passive" flashcards using an external programmer - ie those that immediately make the rom directly available on the bus without a selection menu

Yeah, from that perspective, the new Omega kinda looks like ez 3in1 + 1st gen Omega features. Hopefully it won't be that power hungry as the previous gen omega.

 

[Ryccardo]

is just over 32MB

32MB is the maximum size of a GBA title without mapper, therefore that game is by definition broken!