Hardware review: Firelinker 128 GBA flash card

Post by **miked** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 12:07 am

Noticed theres no hardware reviews posted so I thought I would give it a go.......

Product: Firelinker 128
Bought from: http://dealextreme.com
Price: 9.21 with FREE shipping(yep thats right)

A month or two ago I was given an old original non backlit GBA console. Never owning a portable before it got me excited so I went down to my trusty locally owned pawn shop and bought Zelda A Link To the Past. After playing on it for a few days I decided this was something that I would like to get into, so I hopped on ebay and managed to score a Game Boy Micro for $40 shipped, and then a few days after that I walked into Gamestop and they had the Gameboy Player for gamecube for an amazing $20. Now that I was set up to play some GBA games on the go and in the comfort of my home it was time to get some games. Not wanting to search for games on the net I decided a flashcard would be the way to go, and after searching for about an hour I ran across dealextreme where I found the Firelinker 128 for $9 with free shipping!!! So cheap that there was no reason NOT to order it.

Features

16Mbytes storage(or 128 Mbits if you wish.....)
Multi rom support
Homebrew support
256k SRAM for saves

Now notice that theres not many features, but just keep reminding yourself that it was only $9. With only 16 megs of storage you not gonna get many roms on it and 256mbit roms with not even fit. But this doesnt mean you cant have your self a nice time with this thing, as I currently have Final Fantasy 6, Yoshis Island and Pocket NES with 20 roms loaded onto it. Of course its not like you cant swap out roms anyway. Also note that there is no real time clock feature so games like Golden Sun and Pokemon must be patched to play, but I have not tried this yet.

Now the first thing I noticed when I took it out of the box is the wire used to connect it to your computer. A parallel port...........gross. Many laptops and newer motherboards do not even have this connection anymore so some people might find this a problem. Luckily both of my machines do so this was never a pronlem for myself. On top of the bad cable the only way to load games onto it is through the accessory port on the top of an original GBA or the SP model, so you cant use a Micro or NDS. Thinking about hocking the GBA that was given to me on eBay its a good thing I didnt. Of course I also should have looked at the pics on the website a little closer.........

Included Software and GUI

First off do not use the included software!!! I put it in my drive and my virus software automatically found 2 threats. Instead go to http://gggddfdgju.googlepages.com/home and download the program flashcard.exe instead. Install and open the newly installed program SPlink choose your roms and press burn. After this you must turn on your gba and press the start and select buttons. After that sit and wait for the incredibly slow transfer times as your roms load up..........

As for the gui there is pretty much none to speak of. A solid white backround listing your roms.

Does it work?

Quite well actually! Every rom you throw at this thing should work just fine with no slowdown or glitches except for the previously mentioned RTC and 256mbit ones. As for saving it has some issues. As you might have noticed most GBA games have the ability to save in 3 different slots, and the firelinker struggles with this. For example, if I have a save in the first slot of FF6 and then go to create a save in the first slot of Yoshis Island, my save will be corrupted in FF6. After testing I found that this holds true for slots 2 and 3 also. Now lets all remind ourselves of how much this thing costs.(takes a deep breathe........) Ok I feel better now. While you can still enjoy multiple games with saving support, this makes no sense to me as its supposed to have 256k of SRAM and saves for these 2 games are only 64k a piece. This forces you to be careful when saving your games so you dont lose any important progress(like starting ff6 over 3 times before you realize what going on......). It seems this card would be best if you only wanted to play one rom at a time.

On a positive note on the saves pocketNES saves fine and savestates work as well, which is quite rare from what I understand as the EZ Flash IV and Supercard wont even usually work with this from what Ive read.

Is it worth it?

Hell yes it is!!! At $9 with free shipping its not like your losing alot of money, as its like 2 gallons of gas in todays market. What are you doing?? You could search your couch for change and probably buy this thing!!! lol

Pros:
Roms will work at fullspeed with no problems
20 NES roms in your pocket is great!
THE PRICE!!!!

Cons
Super ancient grandpa cable........
Saving is tricky. Be careful if you dont want to lose data
Included software is in chineese and filled with viruses

SCORE: 5.5/10

Post by **GSZX1337** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 12:19 am

Included software is in chineese and filled with viruses

That right there should drop the ranking down to 0.0! I'm, also guessing that the included software uses .exes and will not work o alternative Operating Systems (ie. Mac OS, FreeBSD, and Linux).

Post by **miked** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 10:47 am

GSZX1337 wrote:
Included software is in chineese and filled with viruses
That right there should drop the ranking down to 0.0! I'm, also guessing that the included software uses .exes and will not work o alternative Operating Systems (ie. Mac OS, FreeBSD, and Linux).

Notice in the review that it was fixed by a quick download that didnt take 5 min of my time so NBD. Well worth the price if you ask me as im playing ff6 and i didnt have to pay $20 for or any other game for that matter.

Post by **GSZX1337** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 3:47 pm

miked wrote:
GSZX1337 wrote:
Included software is in chineese and filled with viruses
That right there should drop the ranking down to 0.0! I'm, also guessing that the included software uses .exes and will not work o alternative Operating Systems (ie. Mac OS, FreeBSD, and Linux).
Notice in the review that it was fixed by a quick download that didnt take 5 min of my time so NBD.

Viruses should never be tolerated.

Post by **miked** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 4:28 pm

sigh.....YOU WIN!!! happy now? lol.........

Post by **Mozgus** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 5:03 pm

By viruses, you mean spyware, I assume?

Post by **miked** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 5:11 pm

Mozgus wrote:By viruses, you mean spyware, I assume?

To be honest Im not quite sure as it just said "threats". From what I hear its pretty common for the majority of flash cards to not come with any software at all, so im not worried about it. I had also read elsewhere that the software was in Chinese and had found links to download splink before it came in.

Post by **xraydash** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 6:35 pm

miked wrote:So cheap that there was no reason NOT to order it... It seems this card would be best if you only wanted to play one rom at a time.

Thanks for the review. Very thorough. I had no idea something like this cost so little. I actually just ordered one because, as you said, there's no reason not to! I'll plan on playing through a game at a time.

Post by **jackspicer** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 7:36 pm

nice write up, does it work with the gamecube player?

Post by **xraydash** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 10:43 pm

xraydash wrote:
miked wrote:So cheap that there was no reason NOT to order it... It seems this card would be best if you only wanted to play one rom at a time.
Thanks for the review. Very thorough. I had no idea something like this cost so little. I actually just ordered one because, as you said, there's no reason not to! I'll plan on playing through a game at a time.

Got it today! Very cool. Thanks again for the heads up, miked. And double thanks for your flashcard.exe tip. Saved me a bunch of time not having to figure it all out and possibly rescued my system from a virus.

jackspicer wrote:nice write up, does it work with the gamecube player?

Yes it does. Get on it! We're talking nine bucks here.