Hacking Some questions about EZIV mini SD

[4saken]

I read some of the threads on the EZIV but some of my questions haven't been cleared up. I'd appreciate it if somebody went through some of these with me.

Note if I go through with the purchase, it will be the GBA-sized mini SD card.

1. I heard the EZIV has built in PSRAM and NOR. Could somebody run through how the GBA manager (or loader, whatever you want to call it) organizes this. Can you choose which memory to load the game to, or is this organized by size? Or am I on the wrong track.

2. Looking at some of the replies on Sosuke forums, there seems to be a sort of "custom firmware" or some kind of modified/hacked loader. What are the advantages of using such a loader? Keep in mind I will only be using it for GBA, on a GBM if that matters.

3. Hopefully this won't matter, but there shouldn't be anything I need to be aware of while choosing a miniSD, like speed or access times?

4. I've read something about a 2in1 launcher (or something along the lines of this) for the EZIV, and I was wondering what it is, and functions I might find useful.

5. Last question. Are there any programs I should be aware of (homebrew or PC client) which will improve my experience with this card? I should know about patching with the EZIV client or GBATA, anything extra?

Thanks for your time!

EDIT: Sorry, but could somebody give me a rundown on the GBA loader menu? Is it stylish, simple, etc in your opinion? Pictures will be nice.

 

[FAST6191]

1. The miniSD version and the lite version both have 128Mbits (16Mbytes) or (PS)RAM. This is what it normally loads to but it gets erased every power off.
They also have 256bits (32MBytes) or NOR, you write to this and what is there stays until you delete it. Time taken to do this is a few minutes normally.

2. I sense you are talking about modulo's loaders, a while back the EZTeam switched from default hard reset to soft reset causing slowdown in GBA games (GBAtek has more on it, it has to do with the not setting stuff to match as I recall).
One of the loaders restores hard reset while the other makes the GBA loader the only one there.

3. For GBA no, provided it is not a piece of junk (old phone miniSD can cause major issues).

4. Rudolph/Ko-Tei/?? (Japanese guy behind a lot of EZ stuff) made a "port" of the 3 in 1 loader that allows people to use the PSRAM to load GBA code with DLDI compatible DS carts as well as use it for browser RAM if they have soft reset and a DLDI compatible card (it was also made into a standalone patch).

5. DLDI aside the FAQ/wiki should answer most questions about this:
http://ezflash.sosuke.com/wiki/index.php?t...ash_IV_Tutorial

6. I can go one better, get yourself a copy of the EZ3 GBA loader and run it in VBA.

 

[4saken]

1. The miniSD version and the lite version both have 128Mbits (16Mbytes) or (PS)RAM. This is what it normally loads to but it gets erased every power off.
They also have 256bits (32MBytes) or NOR, you write to this and what is there stays until you delete it. Time taken to do this is a few minutes normally.

6. I can go one better, get yourself a copy of the EZ3 GBA loader and run it in VBA.

Thanks for the reply.
1. So the GBA loader automatically detects the size of the file and loads in into the most appropriate memory?
6. I can't find it

Is this the same as the EZ3 Manager (the only one I could find)?

 

[FAST6191]

1. If it is below 16 Mbytes it will try and load it into the PSRAM, above and it will load to the NOR. Of course you can force smaller roms onto the NOR if you want.

6. My apologies that was fairly vague, in the EZManager download there is a file called loader_gba.bin (or if you have a version older than 2.09 loader.bin), run this in VBA.