Dalto
Certified Guru
Can anyone recommend a good place to buy a GBA flash cart? I live in the US.
Also, can anyone make a recommendation on which kind to buy?
Also, can anyone make a recommendation on which kind to buy?
Gba Flash Cart
- Thread starter Dalto
- Start date
WhizzBang
Grotesque Peasant
I can't give you an answer from personal experience as I only have one flash card and so do not know what the others are like. However, from reading the GBAemu forums, I have a general impression that the EZ kits (the cheapest ones) are the most troublesome, and the F2A are the best and even have a rewind feature now.
I have an old F2A 256MB card (from before they started doing them as USB with extra features) and I find it pretty easy and trouble free. Save handling on these carts isn't as friendly as on the GP32 so I would very much recommend the unofficial cart writing software LittleWriter. With this software, it automatically backs up your saves to your PC evertime you use it, and it also automatically works out which saves you need on your cart when you flash games onto it.
PogoShell is the ultimate in making your life easy with regards to save handling, but you will probably need to read up a little before you get it sorted out, but once you understand it you can pretty much forget about saves from there onwards as Pogo will do it all for you.
I recommend you get as big a cart as possible. I bought mine from Lik Sang who don't sell them anymore, so I cannot recommend anywhere.
I have an old F2A 256MB card (from before they started doing them as USB with extra features) and I find it pretty easy and trouble free. Save handling on these carts isn't as friendly as on the GP32 so I would very much recommend the unofficial cart writing software LittleWriter. With this software, it automatically backs up your saves to your PC evertime you use it, and it also automatically works out which saves you need on your cart when you flash games onto it.
PogoShell is the ultimate in making your life easy with regards to save handling, but you will probably need to read up a little before you get it sorted out, but once you understand it you can pretty much forget about saves from there onwards as Pogo will do it all for you.
I recommend you get as big a cart as possible. I bought mine from Lik Sang who don't sell them anymore, so I cannot recommend anywhere.
mr twit
A can of spam!
I've bought three flashcards from www.jandaman.com, they have been very efficient all three times, even though they are in the US and I am in the UK.
I bought EZFA's every time and have never had a problem with them. They do their job brilliantly. You can't run Pogoshell on them, though I don't really see any point of it, other than the image and text and stuff viewers built in, but I have my GP32 for that.
I have a feeling many of the people who are disappointed with EZFA's did not realize that you have to hold Start and Select when turning it on when linked up to get it to work properly, I did not realize this for about a week when I first bought one and was wondering why I could never get it to work. Then I figured that out and have had no problems since!
I bought EZFA's every time and have never had a problem with them. They do their job brilliantly. You can't run Pogoshell on them, though I don't really see any point of it, other than the image and text and stuff viewers built in, but I have my GP32 for that.
I have a feeling many of the people who are disappointed with EZFA's did not realize that you have to hold Start and Select when turning it on when linked up to get it to work properly, I did not realize this for about a week when I first bought one and was wondering why I could never get it to work. Then I figured that out and have had no problems since!
WhizzBang
Grotesque Peasant
Thank's for clearing that up. I have been thinking about buying another card and if not being able to use Pogoshell is the only drawback, I may get one of those EZFA cards.
I have never used Pogoshell for that text and image stuff, and it did take me a long time to work out why Pogoshell is so good. The main advantage of it is that you never have to think about saves again. It keeps one bank of 64k sram free and the rest it uses to compress your save files. This means you can have a huge amount of save files on your card (probably hundreds) and never have to think about them again. Every time you load a rom, Pogoshell sorts through your SRAM files and finds the right one and moves it into the 64k area that is free.
However, I could go back to just using Littlewriter to manage my saves so I may get one of those EZ cards after all.
I have never used Pogoshell for that text and image stuff, and it did take me a long time to work out why Pogoshell is so good. The main advantage of it is that you never have to think about saves again. It keeps one bank of 64k sram free and the rest it uses to compress your save files. This means you can have a huge amount of save files on your card (probably hundreds) and never have to think about them again. Every time you load a rom, Pogoshell sorts through your SRAM files and finds the right one and moves it into the 64k area that is free.
However, I could go back to just using Littlewriter to manage my saves so I may get one of those EZ cards after all.
mr twit
A can of spam!
Be aware that there are many different types of flashcards with very similar names, containing EZ. The ones I was talking about is EZFA, or EZ-Flash Advance. There are, however, completely different carts made by different companies called EZ-Flash 1 and EZ-Flash 2 and stuff. This page shows most of them. I reccommend the EZFA but I haven't tried any of the others. EZFA's are also cheap, jandaman.com sells the 256 mb version for $99.WhizzBang posted on Aug 8 2004 at 09:06 PM said:
Why couldn't they have been more original with their names ?
Edit: Also, I don't think Littlewriter supports EZFA yet, unfortunately. So you would have to add and remove saves manually (which I admit is a little annoying)
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Exo
Member
something to watch out for almost everyone advertises there gba flash cards in Mb not MB when you get a 256 Megabit card you are actually getting a 32 megabyte cart (I think ???)
Dennisisthlm
Still Fresh
Hmm I don´t think you only get 32 megabytes..Exo posted on Aug 9 2004 at 12:18 AM said:
Because my pal in sweden have a flash card, and it´s about 256 megabit...
He have at least ten games inside...
The roms are as bigest 16 megabyte...
And the smallest is about 2 megabyte...
So you know what I´m trying to say...
No It must be at least 60 megabyte in the card..maybe more....
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WhizzBang
Grotesque Peasant
Exo is right. A 256MBit card allows you to store 32 Megabytes of ROMs.
Divide the number of MBits by 8 to convert to MegaBytes.
Divide the number of MBits by 8 to convert to MegaBytes.
Da Fixer
Still Fresh
no man The roms are as bigest 32 megabyte(256 Mbit)Dennisisthlm posted on Aug 9 2004 at 06:04 AM said:
i have 2 games (japan) of 32 mb for the gba :lol:
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Wolfsclaw
can't be longer than 2 months right?
f2a is only so widely spread because it was one of the first, after the old model, flashcarts but actually it has some save problems in some games, you have to patch eeprom games etc.
with my ez-flash 1 cart 128Mb i never had any save problems, even final fantasy tactics advance, which without save patch didnt even work in VBA or on many other flash carts, worked flawlessly.
with ALL COMMERCIAL games i tried i NEVER had save or other problems, except generell problems, like missing solar sensor in boktai, but thats normal and fixable with a patch.
i can recommend everyone ez-cart 1, it does not have any special features, its a standard flashcart, but its damn easy to use, has a text hackable and modifiable loader, you dotn have to mess around with save banks like on f2a, nice programs for flashing, now with cheat support, etc etc etc....
the ezfa is also fine, its basically the same but is more expensive and has some special stuff like internal clock etc. for pkmn
with my ez-flash 1 cart 128Mb i never had any save problems, even final fantasy tactics advance, which without save patch didnt even work in VBA or on many other flash carts, worked flawlessly.
with ALL COMMERCIAL games i tried i NEVER had save or other problems, except generell problems, like missing solar sensor in boktai, but thats normal and fixable with a patch.
i can recommend everyone ez-cart 1, it does not have any special features, its a standard flashcart, but its damn easy to use, has a text hackable and modifiable loader, you dotn have to mess around with save banks like on f2a, nice programs for flashing, now with cheat support, etc etc etc....
the ezfa is also fine, its basically the same but is more expensive and has some special stuff like internal clock etc. for pkmn
Horscht
Banned?
well, F2A isn´t as bad as Wolfsclaw says. Its easy to use, if you use pogogshell. Personaly i´m happy with my F2A, and patching games isn´t a big deal. There are programs available, so, quite easy. Well, if you have a look at pogoshell, you will probably like it. F2A supports pogoshell fully, because it was written for it. But i think i read somewhere, that Pogo2beta4 supports EZFA, too. Well, to add one BIG thing: Stay away from the X-GAY 1 series, since that totaly sucks (I once saw a video where some guy was burning his XG for making him trouble all the time!). I think the new generation carts aren´t that good either, what do I need a rewind feature? Ort RTC (except for Pokémon games)? I also heard good things about the X-ROM, which has a 1G version available (which is 128Mb).
EDIT:
OK, pogoshell doesn´t work with EZFA ( ), but with
Visoly/F2A
XG1 ( :angry: )
and X-ROM
you can download pogoshell here:
http://www.obsession.se/pocket/
and have a look at it. If you like it, you should either go for F2A or XROM
EDIT:
OK, pogoshell doesn´t work with EZFA (
), but withVisoly/F2A
XG1 ( :angry: )
and X-ROM
you can download pogoshell here:
http://www.obsession.se/pocket/
and have a look at it. If you like it, you should either go for F2A or XROM
