Hacking Question about the EZ Flash IV, and DS compatibility

[Radiobread]

Hey guys, so I haven't been on here in quite some time. Just came back two days ago because I was stuck for somewhere to ask for advice on FFVII, and I must say that GBATemp casted FullCure on all my problems!

Anyway, I was thinking about this a few weeks back. I still don't have an EZ Flash IV, even though I've had my eyes on the new MicroSD model since it came out back in February. But, I have one question:

Can the flash card play DS ROMs if plugged into Slot-2 of a DS, provided that FlashMe is installed? I'm sure I read online somewhere that it's possible. If yes, can I install it using an R4?

Thanks.

 

[FAST6191]

The older models and firmwares there could run DS ROMs, I use my original launch EZ4 to this day to do it. However if you buy one of the spanking new microSD GBA size ones then no, the functionality was removed and was never present on a firmware you might be able to downgrade to. I can not rule out the possibility that someone could hack together a kernel or that the EZTeam could compile one but I would not hold my breath for it to happen.
Also the games needed to be heavily patched as well so anything released after mid 2009 (April 2009 was the last patch update for DS games but it was April so not many games came out after that and some still worked) is probably not going to work -- http://gbatemp.net/threads/5-years-of-ds-roms-in-5-days-year-4.237156/

 

[Radiobread]

Okay thanks. I'm not really too fussed about playing DS games, but I thought it may be a nice extra feature of the cartridge. Am I right to think that the battery inside an original EZ Flash IV will affect the ability to save games if it runs dry?

 

[FAST6191]

The battery on all EZ4s will trouble saves if it runs dry. GBA games are patched to use SRAM from whatever they started out as (assuming you have a save and not a password system then that would be various types of EEPROM, Flash or another type of SRAM) and like most RAM the SRAM needs a battery to hold its data. The save is written back to the SD card when you next power the EZ4 and loaded back into SRAM when the game is next loaded, hence you might have read something about soft reset* so the SRAM in the cart is always powered by the GBA slot of whatever it is in and can dodge a dead battery.

*or very fast power off and on again in some cases.

Unless of course you have a line on an older model EZ4, in which case the first batches of GBA sized ones (2006 or so) had rechargeable batteries. Later ones (not sure exactly when) and non GBA sized ones moved to normal batteries and current ones are still on normal batteries. You can replace them easy enough if you/someone you know has basic soldering skills though.

 

[Radiobread]

okay, thanks.