I confess my love for my GBA flash cart

[fastbilly1]

I need to buy 4 of the same flashcarts - preferably one that updates with an sd card. I have always wanted to play Car Battler Joe in four player, but never been able to get four copies. I mean I have 4 Gameboy players that NEED something else to do (instead of sleeping in a box). Whats the best GBA card that can still be bought?

I have a Supercard and it was used heavily until I played through the rest of the GBA games I really wanted to play. I never thought about using it for GB games - that is what I used my Tapwave Zodiac for.

[noiseredux]

not sure Fast. They're harder and harder to find nowadays. Even like 2 yrs ago you could just nab em from DealXtreme...

[irixith]

Lots of places still sell the EZ-Flash IV, which is your best bet at buying an affordable GBA flash cart now. Remember that you need miniSD (or microSD with a miniSD adapter) 2GB max size or lower to run it with.

[fastbilly1]

cheers irixith, EZ flash IV it is!

Now to find out if the Classic Linker will play nice with a joystick.

[Hatta]

The EZFlash IV is nice hardware, but I hate that software you have to use. You should be able to just drag and drop roms onto the SD card.

[D.D.D.]

Anyone know which GBA flash carts don't have a battery for saves? I've heard that a lot of the flash carts have batteries and are hard to replace. I have the EZFLASH V that works great but the battery does worry me.

[Hatta]

Aren't saves usually stored as files on the sd card? I think the battery is just for the RTC.

[Ivo]

Anyone know which GBA flash carts don't have a battery for saves? I've heard that a lot of the flash carts have batteries and are hard to replace. I have the EZFLASH V that works great but the battery does worry me.

I suggest that in advance of your flash cart crapping out, you get a 3 in 1 and couple it with a slot 1, moving into a DS or DS Lite to play your GBA stuff.

Ivo.

[scarper]

My EZ Flash IV keeps all the .sav files in a root folder on the card, so the battery does not take care of that. The only other thing I can think of is RTC, but whenever I fire up Pokemon, it tells me the battery has dried and clock based events will not occur.

I have no idea what that battery is used for.

Its fantastic hardware btw, no huge flaws. Just the rare occasion where I have to load it in NOR format by pressing select. If any game boots with nothing but a blank white screen, then press select while highlighting the game inside the browser. It basically re-writes the game in some weird format, and then moves it to the front of the GBA folder.

[irixith]

The EZFlash IV is nice hardware, but I hate that software you have to use. You should be able to just drag and drop roms onto the SD card.

The software is a necessary component, simply because of the wide variety of GBA save types. The software patches the save routine in pretty much every game to make it compatible with the flash cart. I agree that the software is pretty awful, but it serves a very important purpose.

My EZ Flash IV keeps all the .sav files in a root folder on the card, so the battery does not take care of that. The only other thing I can think of is RTC, but whenever I fire up Pokemon, it tells me the battery has dried and clock based events will not occur

Pokemon tells you that because the EZ-Flash IV does not have the RTC (real time clock) component. The EZ-Flash III contained the RTC, as did a few other carts. It's really only necessary for a handful of games, and you can patch Pokemon's RTC routine for carts that don't have it anyway. It was removed from later flash carts as the cost wasn't justified for such a small number of games.

The battery inside your EZ-Flash IV is indeed used for the save files. They are stored in battery backed RAM, and whenever you power cycle, the save in RAM is written to your SD card. It even presents you with a dialog box telling you that's what it is doing. If the battery dies, you will be unable to save unless you replace the battery. The same applies to the EZ 3-in-1, and every other GBA cart that uses battery backed saves.

Some flash carts need soldering knowledge to remove and replace the battery, others don't. Some you can desolder the old battery, and then stick the new battery in with tape. No matter what though, your flashcart absolutely depends on that battery to be able to save the games you play.