Good GBA flash carts

Discussion in 'Nintendo Game Development' started by Evotistical, Dec 10, 2011.

  1. Evotistical

    Evotistical Robust Member

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    Whats your favorite GBA flash cart? Are there any that have GBC/GB compatibility?
     
  2. Avanaboy

    Avanaboy Spirited Member

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    I've The ezflash IV , and it is GREAT !
    You can play gb/c games using an emulator called goomba color !
    This card have an excellent compatibility too and is quite cheap .
     
  3. karsten

    karsten Member of The Cult Of Kefka

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    found nowhere to buy it... any suggestions?
     
  4. Avanaboy

    Avanaboy Spirited Member

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    I've bought it 1 month ago .. I'm writing from my iPhone Now , when I come back home , I'll post the site link ;)
     
  5. derekb

    derekb Well Known Member

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    if you can track down a gb bridge you could use one of the older flash only carts as an actual gb/gbc cart (still hoping for an everdrive gb)
     
  6. Avanaboy

    Avanaboy Spirited Member

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  7. gallos_11

    gallos_11 Rising Member

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    I bought an Ezflash IV about a year ago, it's really great!

    When you'll need to replace the battery, you'll face a big problem! I don't know if I did something wrong, but they could make a better design for battery contacts. I don't think you can avoid soldering and some patent work to fit everything in the tiny space...
     
  8. Pikmin

    Pikmin Resolute Member

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    I bought an EZFlash IV and it came with a dead battery... The seller was kind enough to provide me two spares at no cost. Removing the battery was a b*tch. I cut myself a few times, used a scalpel and I can be persistent.
    From what I remember the only downside is that there's no real time clock emulation but luckily I also have a Flash2Advance 512mbit cart that does. Still nothing beats copy and paste to sd card compared to using a usb flash linker and their own software....
     
  9. derekb

    derekb Well Known Member

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    doesn't the EZIV require using their software to patch/load roms to the SD?
     
    Last edited: Dec 19, 2011
  10. Pikmin

    Pikmin Resolute Member

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    I didn't have to use any software to load roms onto the cart. Just copy and paste using windows explorer.
     
  11. 12ianma

    12ianma Active Member

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    I like my 8$ fire linker 128. I have about 20 nes games on it, 8 gameboy color games, and a GBA game on it. Don't like using the parallel port but it is cool that it flashes the cart through the GBA's link port
     
  12. gallos_11

    gallos_11 Rising Member

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    It doesn't work for me, I have to use their software to patch roms to the SD...
     
  13. Azathoth

    Azathoth Spirited Member

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    Really? I mean, IV's use a normal battery?

    I own an EZ-Flash II that I bought when they first launched that model, it has a rechargeable battery attached to the PCB. Why in the hell would they move away from that?
     
  14. Pikmin

    Pikmin Resolute Member

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    Yeah EZ-Flash IV comes with a rechargeable battery too as far as i know. First I thought it was flat and needed recharging but after 5 hrs of having it connected to my gba + power source it was still saying that the charge was low and my saves kept getting lost. Tried charging it a few more times afterwards to no avail
     
  15. gallos_11

    gallos_11 Rising Member

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    I remember replacing a CR2025 battery which definitely isn't re-chargeable. After a quick search found that originally EZ4 was equipped with re-chargeable battery (VL2020), but later revisions (including the ones they currently make) switched to standard batteries...

    If I replace standard with re-chargeable, will it work fine? I mean will it be charged normally..?
     
  16. Azathoth

    Azathoth Spirited Member

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    If it originally came with a disposable battery it shouldn't have the circuitry in place to recharge a rechargeable battery. It would work, but just until the charge was gone and it would never recharge on it's own.
     
  17. Lum

    Lum Officer at Arms

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    Man that sounds irritating.
     
  18. gallos_11

    gallos_11 Rising Member

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    Thank you Azathoth for the info.
    Maybe a mod would make it feasible, but don't think will be easy...

    Τoo bad for those who bought later version :(
     
  19. modrobert

    modrobert Rising Member

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    My favorite flash cart for GBA is the F2A Ultra. Compatibility is great; games play just like an original cart. Stable design based around an ASIC (also lower power consumption compared to FPGA). No crappy RAM loading from SD card which gives slowdown and other buggy effects, this cart uses a flash circuit where the timing properly matches an original cart.

    I've tried flash adapters like Supercard SD and CF, that general design loads the data from SD card into a RAM buffer in the device which is a compromise affecting gameplay, feels more like playing on a poorly written emulator, timing is way off at times.

    The Nintendo DS doesn't suffer from this effect since the original media is read from like a disc rather than accessed like a ROM, so SD card solutions run fine.

    TL;DR version:
    Use carts with dedicated flash when playing on GBA. All SD card adapters out there suck regarding hardware compatibility compared to an original cart.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2012
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