GBC Flashcart

[Satoshi_Matrix]

I'm not sure if such a thing exists, but I figured you guys might know.

I am looking for a Gameboy Color flashcart. I'm looking for one that has large storage and the ability to run both GB and GBC roms, and be playable on the GBA as well. Must have a storage medium of some sort. I want to replace my aging GB library and its dying batteries with something I can count on.

Please tell me if something like this exists, and where I might be able to find it. Thanks.

[Anapan]

The EMS 64M Smart Card plugs in to usb and stores a lot of small roms, or 2 big ones.
http://store.kitsch-bent.com/product/usb-64m-smart-card
http://www.nonelectronics.com/
http://www.robwebb1.plus.com/copiers/copiers.htm
It does have some random flaws that people here have noticed
http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... =2&t=20903
There's also a similar product called Bleep-Bloop.
http://gameboydev.org/

There have been others, but they haven't been in production for a long time so you'd have a hard time finding one or getting roms onto it in a newer operating system. They mostly ran through a printer port and their software has problems with Windows XP and newer.
Bung's Dr GB/GB Xchanger are the most well known, and work really well if you can find one. I prefer it to the newer ones due to their lesser power consumption and the better multi-game menu which allows color assigning to non-color games on a GBC. Plus I didn't have a problem running it on my Gameboy Player.

Afaik, there has never been one that uses removable storage (eg. CF or SD cards), but I heard of a "GB-Bridge" device that let you play gameboy roms off the much larger capacity Flash Linker Advance GBA flash cart. It's also one of those ancient devices that has been out of production for a lot f years and would be near impossible to find now (I tried many years ago to find one and couldn't get one even then)
http://www.gameboy-advance.net/flash_card/gb_bridge.htm
^BTW, this site has questionable information that is very out-of-date...

[slowslow325]

I know it's not what you want, but if your problem is dying batteries, you can back up your saves with this thing called the Mega Memory Card. It works for me.

http://www.pcworld.com/shopping/detail/ ... icing.html

[Satoshi_Matrix]

Thanks for all the help guys. I think I'm going to go with the EMS 64M Smart Card.

I have a few questions I hope I can find answers to regarding it.

Just what is the storage? I can never be sure with these sorts of flashcarts. Is this 64 MB or 64 Mbit, meaning its just 8 MB?

In my experience, GBA flashcarts tend to drain battery life much quicker than normal carts. Is this the case here as well?

What are the flaws you mentioned? I want to use this to backup my Wayforward GBC games and test out various older GB games before I buy them. As long as it's able to play them correctly I'll be happy.

I like the idea of being able to colorize GB games. Does this cart support that?

[Anapan]

The EMS cart is 8 Megabyte. It's actually Two 4 meg pages of roms switchable by rapidly cycling the power. Each allows only one battery save file. You can put up to 4 megs of roms on each page, but the save memory is exclusive to the page (if you have 2 games that allow battery saves, only the first will work, and the other game(s) will report corruption and/or overwrite that save data)
The EMS one I've definitely noticed has a more rapid battery drain (to the point that LSDJ's faqs mention reported save corruption when saving a song on a gameboy pocket with low battery power). It's pretty apparent on my Gameboy Light as I have to often change the contrast of the screen while editing songs in LSDJ.
My Bung cart doesn't seem to draw as much power, but still appears to use more than regular carts.
I haven't been able to get rom compilations made with Flash Linker software to boot on my EMS cart. It seems the header is only compatible with the bung carts (or I screwed up somewhere - it's worth trying again for that ability). The colorizing feature is actually only available on one flashing software with a home-made menu header (can't remember the name just now but I can provide a name or copy of the software if anyone wants it).
The bugs I mentioned with EMS carts have to do with the carts functioning on different systems. With mine I only get a blank or corrupted screen when using the cart on my Gamecube Gameboy Player tho it works fine on the rest of my systems (DMGs, GBCs, GB Light, Super GB 1&2, GBA & GBASP). Nathan wasn't able to use his with his backlit modded DMG gameboy, and Hateshinai couldn't get his to work on any of his mono systems (as mentioned in that thread). The places I listed selling the carts are reputable and shouldn't have a problem exchanging a faulty cart.
I think the EMS carts are cheaper-clones of BleepBloop carts, and therefore getting a Bleepbloop might eliminate these problems. I haven't heard much about them but their creator is well-known for owning 8bitcollective.

As far as backing up, the coppiers on consolegoods.co.uk will allow you to extract both rom images and save files from your original carts, but the EMS carts obviously do not have a coppier device to back up any of your games or saves since they connect through a mini-usb port on the top edge of the cart itself.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

I'm totally a newbie when it comes to gameboy flashcarts. There's a lot in your post I don't understand if you don't mind going over some of it.

What do you mean by "rapidly cycling the power"?

What is LSDJ?

Why would the EMS only function on certain versions of the hardware? It seems very puzzling to me that it shouldn't work on the Gameboy Player...don't all Gameboys share the same chipset?

You said the EMS is a cheap clone of something called Bleepbloop. I'm assuming that's another GBC flashcart? What is its storage capacity? USB as well? Where might I pick one up?

Really, I'm just looking for something that's functional to run backups of my commercial GB game collection. I don't like the idea that only a single game can be saved, but I don't see a lot of other options. thanks for your assistance Anapan.

[Anapan]

There's a green led in the EMS cart that turns on when you're on the second 4 meg page of roms. To activate it you switch the gameboy off then on and it'll load the second page. Turn it off and on again to switch back to the first page.

LSDJ (Little Sound DJ) is a music composing program for gameboy. It can make full use of the gameboy's sound chip to create music on the gameboy.
http://www.littlesounddj.com/
Here's a collection of music made with predominantly gameboys, and other low-fi hardware (Called Chiptunes).
http://8bc.org/
The guy who made and runs that site makes nearly identical flashcarts to the EMS ones. You can buy them here:
http://gameboydev.org/
I don't know much about BleepBloop carts but I couldn't find any mention of problems with them either. If you ask on 8 Bit Collective's forums you'll get all the answers you need. All I know is they're a bit more expensive, and hand-made by Jose Torres.

I really don't know the reason for the carts not working in different hardware. My guess is it is related to the greater power consumption requirements of the carts or boot up speeds of the different hardware revisions. Even tho the core of the systems are really similar (The GBC has more speed, memory, etc), the rest of the systems are modified to meet the needs of the hardware outside the main processors. Also the cart is dual-compatible - Both DMG and GBC which may have something to do with it...

Reguarding battery saves in the EMS cart. It supports 2 save files per cart, one on each 4 megabyte page. You can back any of them up tho using the software. Really, there are not that many Gameboy games that use real battery saves. Most just use a password system.

No problem, I didn't see all this information anywhere else, so it's good to have it collected in one place. Google will publish it and it'll help others.