Bought a GBA flash cart—now what?

[eskil]

So I got myself an EZ-Flash IV and an 8GB mini SD card. And now I have no clue where to begin.
I want to use the cart for two things: Play all my games off one cartridge and of course homebrew.
Concerning the games, I have all of them downloaded as ROMs, but apparently I need to format the mini SD in Fat16, which I have no idea how to do. When I put in the cart without the SD, I get a window saying the disk can't be found. When I put in the SD, I get a black screen after the boot-up.
And as far as homebrew goes, does anyone know a good site to download games from?

[Hatta]

I'm not sure how you'd format something as FAT16 in Windows. I'd imagine you right click on it, select format, and then pick FAT16 from a drop down list or something. Who knows. In linux all you have to do is 'mkfs.vfat -F 16 /path/to/flash'.

But to use the EZ Flash IV once your card is formatted, all you really need is the client software here. It's unfortunate, because it's Windows only, and there's not really a way around it. The client software patches the roms to run on the flash cart, and trims empty space. I can't even get the thing to run in Wine, I have to use a VM to get it to run.

I will never again buy a flash cart with closed source software.

[irixith]

Your first problem is that the EZ-Flash IV only supports MiniSD up to 2GB (which arrives pre-formatted as FAT rather than FAT32). You can't use SDHC in that cart, so you're stuck until you can get a 2GB, 1GB or smaller MiniSD.

You can use MicroSD with a MiniSD adapter, but the EZ-Flash IV is famous for having issues with that setup. A pure MiniSD card is best for the best experience with it.

[irixith]

I'm not sure how you'd format something as FAT16 in Windows. I'd imagine you right click on it, select format, and then pick FAT16 from a drop down list or something. Who knows. In linux all you have to do is 'mkfs.vfat -F 16 /path/to/flash'.

In Windows, FAT16 is just plain 'FAT', and will only show up as an option on devices that can be formatted that way. (i.e. a 2GB SD card, as I just mentioned above.) If I ever have any trouble with Windows and it's bizarre formatting decisions, I just throw in a GParted LiveCD.

But to use the EZ Flash IV once your card is formatted, all you really need is the client software here. It's unfortunate, because it's Windows only, and there's not really a way around it. The client software patches the roms to run on the flash cart, and trims empty space. I can't even get the thing to run in Wine, I have to use a VM to get it to run.

I will never again buy a flash cart with closed source software.

There is actually a more up-to-date version of the EZ4 client here. You will also want to update the cart to the latest internal firmware, 1.720 here. Sorry, that particular download is tied to a Mother 3 skin, but hey, it's much nicer looking than the default!

@Hatta if you're looking to use your EZ-Flash IV in an alternate operating system, all the EZ4 Client does is save patch so that the games use the cart's SRAM rather than whatever save type they originally used. Get yourself an SRAM patcher that works through Linux, and you won't have to rely on the client any longer.

Where the client does come in handy is if you're using it as a Slot-2 NDS cart, which I can't imagine anyone in their right mind is doing any more.

[eskil]

Okay, so I just bought a 2GB microSD card with adapter from Amazon. It all works fine now, I can drag&drop the roms on the card, and I have all my games on one cart. Now I just need to figure out how to save. Does the cart have some sort of state save function? Or do you just save like in a normal game?

[irixith]

The EZ-Flash IV doesn't support save states, so you'll just have to save at the normal points/in the normal way for any game you're playing. Remember that the EZ-Flash IV stores the save for the game you're playing in battery-backed SRAM -- so THE NEXT TIME you turn on/power cycle your GBA, it will dump the save from SRAM to your MiniSD. It doesn't write directly to your MiniSD while you're playing. Also, it only holds one save in SRAM at a time, so be sure before you go to play another game that you let it dump your current save game to the MiniSD first.

[gtmtnbiker]

I can drag&drop the roms on the card, and I have all my games on one cart.

I don't think you can drag/drop your roms onto the SD card. You have to use the client software to patch the roms appropriately.

[robbievgb]

I have the same one. Here's the EZ flash wiki, should have all the info you could ever need (including a setup guide)

http://ezflash.sosuke.com/wiki/index.ph ... =Main_Page

[eskil]

Okay everybody, I'm back. It took me a moment to reply to this thread because I've been busy playing my GBA!
A big thanks for your help. It turns out that even though you can drag&drop the ROMs, you do in fact need to patch them with the EZ client. The problem was I thought I'd already done that, but I hadn't set the client to copy the patched files to the SD card, so I drag&dropped the unpatched files, which obviously led to a lot of confusion.
But it all works great now, and the saving mechanic doesn't really bother me in the least. One more question that I have would be emulation—is it possible to run NES/SMS games on the GBA? Or is the hardware too weak for that?

[Hatta]

I know this exists, but I don't know how well it runs.