#25772 - Jaxel - Sat Aug 28, 2004 5:35 am
I am thinking of buying a Flash linker for my GBA. I don't know which one to get. Which linker to get, and which cart to get. Personally I want a cart that has a lot of space, maybe 512 or 1024.
It is very important that I have the ability to put real Nintendo GBA carts into the linker and backup my cart and saves to my computer. I was looking into an EZF2-PowerStar, but I read here, that you cant put any other cart except the card that comes with the PowerStar into the linker, not even official Nintendo licensed carts. Is this true?
If so, what linker and cart would anyone here recommend? Would there be a better choice then a PowerStar?
#25807 - dagamer34 - Sat Aug 28, 2004 9:08 pm
There aren't any reviews for the ECube Flash cart but it is from a "reliable" desginer over at gba-toys.com. Their previous product, the EZ-Flash Advance, isn't crap. It works as intended and it does it pretty well.
But, ultimately, if ou are just doing development and nothing else, 256Mb would be more than enough. However, if there are... other things you wish to use your flash cart for, then it would be better to indepentently research them and decided which is best for you. There is no "ultimate" cart. Every cart is different and has it's up's and down's. Do go buy an EZFA and expect Pogoshell to work perfectly on it. And don;t go begging to the developer and demand that they make it work (unless you buy them one too)
Ultimately, it just comes down to research.
A couple of obvious things I learned and saw when picking out a flash cart is this:
1) Pogoshell is most compatible with Visoly/F2A carts.
2) The EZFA RTC is NOT compatible with standard libraries (I'm working on changing that...)
3) Most 1Gb carts are still in their "testing" phases. Meaning, they aren't as well tested as their more common 64Mb/128Mb/256Mb counterparts.
4) Don't be blinded by miscellaneous features. The F2A Ultra's features may seem nice, but you have to ask yourself, will you really be using them regularly? Is it worth it?
5) The average speed for writing a 64 Mb ROM is about a minute, give or take a couple of seconds.
6) Pin contacts on flash carts that use multiboot on a GBA to write carts instead of a actual linker unit usually last longer. Besides, its a real pain to constantly remove and place the cart into and from the linker.
7) Try to find a package that will allow you to download a multiboot ROM onto the cart directly from your PC. For ROMs less than 256 kilobytes, it really speeds up development time when testing small parts of your program.
8) The EZF-II Powerstar uses the least amount of energy of all the flash carts available (that I know of).
9) Flash carts in general use more power than regular GBA games. Keep this in mind if you have an original GBA with no AC Adapter. It might be time to pick up a rechargable GBA SP too.
Hope this helped someone... I spent some time thinking about it! :)
_________________
Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(
#26013 - Jaxel - Fri Sep 03, 2004 12:42 pm
What is PogoShell?
What I want, a flashcart that I can backup as many of my legal owned GBA cartridges as possible on. Its a pain to carry around 10 cartridges and I would rather have them as one. In this case I already have save files on most of my cartridges and I dont want to loose them.
So essentially all I need is...
1. Ability to back up Nintendo Cartridges
2. Memory Space
So my question would be... which to get?
XG2 Turbo 1G or EZFlash2 Powerster 1G or Flash2Advance 1G?
I dont plan on doing any developing.
#26016 - dagamer34 - Fri Sep 03, 2004 3:06 pm
PogoShell is an application desgined for the F2A non-Ultra brand of cards that is like a "Windows" on the GBA, sort of.
As all of the cards you have listed do what you want them to do, you will just have to pick one and hope for the best.
_________________
Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(
#26021 - zazery - Fri Sep 03, 2004 5:45 pm
Carts can only have one saved game at a time I believe. I think your best idea is to buy a game holder for traveling and use that.
Recently I lost my Final Fantasy Tactics Advance game cart and ended up buying another one. It's pretty hard to flash the save back on the original cart, which is another reason I didn't do the same thing as you.
#26025 - dagamer34 - Sat Sep 04, 2004 4:02 am
| zazery wrote: |
Carts can only have one saved game at a time I believe. I think your best idea is to buy a game holder for traveling and use that.
Recently I lost my Final Fantasy Tactics Advance game cart and ended up buying another one. It's pretty hard to flash the save back on the original cart, which is another reason I didn't do the same thing as you. |
It's hard for a beginner to get anything but SRAM onto an original cart. Everything else is quite difficult and requires some intuitive thinking! :)
By the way, zazery, you would happen to have easy-to-use Flash ROM functions, now would you? :D
_________________
Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(
#26043 - zazery - Sat Sep 04, 2004 6:58 pm
No I don't. If you are refering to an actual program, I can't find it on gbadev.org or through google. If it's writing my own functions to flash .save file on a cart, no I don't unfortunately. I just started up a new game and am way past my old one.
#26049 - dagamer34 - Sun Sep 05, 2004 12:37 am
| zazery wrote: |
| No I don't. If you are refering to an actual program, I can't find it on gbadev.org or through google. If it's writing my own functions to flash .save file on a cart, no I don't unfortunately. I just started up a new game and am way past my old one. |
:(
Oh well.
_________________
Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(