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Author Topic: gba flash carts?  (Read 5794 times)

bond697

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gba flash carts?
« on: August 07, 2008, 11:35:34 PM »
where might i find something decent? i don't know which sites i can and can't trust on google.   :bah:
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Dragonsbrethren

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Re: gba flash carts?
« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2008, 12:30:29 AM »
Since you have a DS now you might want to go with a DS flash card and an EZ 3-in-1 that can function as a GBA cart (In addition to a rumble pack and RAM expansion for some homebrew games). I bought my EZ-Flash V from DealExtreme:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.1893

Nice package, and the card's been getting lots of updates that are making it competitive with all the competition. It's considered lower quality by a lot of people but I don't really see why, I don't use it for running all that many commercial games but everything I've tried on it has worked flawlessly. If you get one of these I can easy help you get it up to date too. :happy:

Actual GBA flash carts are getting harder to find and they're a lot more expensive than the DS cards with a lot less capacity--the 3-in-1 may require you to reflash every time you want to switch games (Actually, not anymore, another firmware update allows for multiple ROMs on it at once as long as the total is less than 32MB) but you can fit a ton of games on even a 1GB microSD card.

If you order from DealExtreme be prepared to wait a long time for your order though, it took a few weeks to get here but free shipping can't be beat, especially when you consider what some of the other sites charge you for the same shipping method.

:edit:

This is probably a better deal, it's the new model that supports SDHC cards:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.13681

Doesn't come with the memory card but if you've already got one that's not a big deal, and you can buy them just about anywhere nowadays. You might want to wait a little longer though, there's also a new 3-in-1 Plus that's supposed to come out with more storage space for GBA ROMs.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2008, 03:14:31 AM by Dragonsbrethren »

bond697

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Re: gba flash carts?
« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2008, 12:21:56 PM »
thanks for that.  i think i'm just gonna go with the first one.  i don't need anything real complex, just the ability to play both kinds of games. i only play a couple at a time, anyway.

i had originally just wanted a gba cart, because i figured a ds one would be expensive and i'm not interested in many ds games, but for the price, that's an excellent choice.  :happy:
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Dragonsbrethren

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Re: gba flash carts?
« Reply #3 on: August 08, 2008, 12:39:37 PM »
Okay, cool. Let me know when you get it and I can walk you through flashing the newest firmware to it and everything.

bond697

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Re: gba flash carts?
« Reply #4 on: August 08, 2008, 05:45:31 PM »
let me ask you one last thing that i was thinking about while i was at work.  i have an ff4a pal game that i've completed and i'm in the lunar ruins with everyone at lv. 99with near-perfect stats.

is there ANY means of using those saves with this ds flash cart? i mean i can grab some pal ar codes and do it again, but i'd rather not. :)  is there any chance that vba saves will work in there?
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Re: gba flash carts?
« Reply #5 on: August 08, 2008, 06:09:49 PM »
Yep, VBA's saves are just normal SRAM, if you mean a savestate you just need to make a normal in-game save after loading it. Right now you need to name the save the same as the ROM's internal header name to use it, the next firmware update is going to change that so it needs to use the same name as the ROM itself, which is much more convenient.

bond697

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Re: gba flash carts?
« Reply #6 on: August 08, 2008, 07:12:20 PM »
nope, i meant save game, a regular sram.  :happy:  thanks for the info. glad to hear that all the time won't be wasted.

once last question, can i screw with the framerate at all? i know it sounds odd, but i play most of my gba games at 225 fps, my nes games at 175, and snes at 215. does this thing by ANY chance allow for a changed framerate? no big deal if it doesn't, but it doesn't hurt to ask.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2008, 08:05:42 PM by bond697 »
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Dragonsbrethren

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Re: gba flash carts?
« Reply #7 on: August 08, 2008, 07:30:08 PM »
No, you have to play at the original framerate. I can't recall if any of the emulators for the DS let you increase the framerate or not, I know nesDS does but I'd recommend using PocketNES on the 3-in-1 cart over that, it has a lot of improvements over the version of PocketNES nesDS was based on.

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Re: gba flash carts?
« Reply #8 on: August 09, 2008, 04:09:45 AM »
nope, i meant save game, a regular sram.  :happy:  thanks for the info. glad to hear that all the time won't be wasted.

once last question, can i screw with the framerate at all? i know it sounds odd, but i play most of my gba games at 225 fps, my nes games at 175, and snes at 215. does this thing by ANY chance allow for a changed framerate? no big deal if it doesn't, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

That's quite fast. You play mostly RPGs?

bond697

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Re: gba flash carts?
« Reply #9 on: August 13, 2008, 12:03:27 PM »
yeah, mostly rpgs.  for other games like zelda3 and zombies ate my neighbors, i keep it at about 75 or 85 with fast forward set to 150. for stuff like super mario world, the rate sits at 60.
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Re: gba flash carts?
« Reply #10 on: August 16, 2008, 05:31:06 PM »
ok, ordering the flash cart tomorrow.

still deciding on these things:

http://www.square-enix-shop.com/usa/dsp_product.cfm?product_id=119


if the characters were in their gba/snes forms, i'd already have ordered that set. not in love with the ds versions.
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Re: gba flash carts?
« Reply #11 on: August 17, 2008, 11:05:02 PM »
ok, ordered the flast cart.  now, i wait.. :)
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bond697

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Re: gba flash carts?
« Reply #12 on: August 28, 2008, 03:04:34 PM »
ok, it came! what the hell do i do now? where do i get latest firmware, and how do i flash this thing?

what's the lil green thingy do?



:edit:
yes that is, in fact, a hi-c juice box in the background...  :blush:
« Last Edit: August 28, 2008, 03:30:15 PM by bond697 »
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Dragonsbrethren

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Re: gba flash carts?
« Reply #13 on: August 28, 2008, 03:22:51 PM »
Mirror of the latest stable firmware is here. You can always get them from the official site but the server is in China and it can be really slow at times. Stick ezsys.bin and the cht and moonshl folders on the root of your SD card and you should be good to go. I'd right click each of them and hide them too so they don't show up as files and directories in the file browser. Grab GBA ExpLoader  and throw it on there too, the latest open beta is writing garbage files to my card when I use it with GBA games, this program has a much nicer interface anyway. The EZ5 auto DLDI patches so you don't need to worry about that for homebrew.

Green thing looks like some sort of adapter, not sure what it's for though. When I bought mine you got a card and that was it, they didn't start bundling things with it until about a year ago.

 :edit:

Oh, and this is the semi-official English forum. I post there occasionally but the number of people whining about every tiny problem and not appreciating all the improvements its gotten lately make it painful to read at times.

If you need help with anything else, or want some suggestions for stuff to put on there, just let me know.
« Last Edit: August 28, 2008, 03:46:15 PM by Dragonsbrethren »

bond697

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Re: gba flash carts?
« Reply #14 on: August 28, 2008, 04:30:26 PM »
got it working perfectly. thanks a ton! i just used the exploader thing to start up ff4a pal with my save! :happy:

any recommendations? where might i find some emulators? 
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