#43228 - bedrone - Fri May 20, 2005 5:46 pm
Thinking of getting a flashcart?
Don't buy EFA. I can't even write roms to it. The program crashes whenever I try to open the rom into the program. This is ridiculous. I tried my desktop and notebook no luck on both of'em. A lot of problems on the comparison chart isn't joke after all.
#43231 - Fatnickc - Fri May 20, 2005 7:00 pm
What exactly are you doing?
#43233 - bedrone - Fri May 20, 2005 7:30 pm
What exactly am I donig? I'm having trouble using EFA Client 2.3 program.
#43235 - Fatnickc - Fri May 20, 2005 8:01 pm
Have you tried re-downloading it? And are you following the instructions?
#43238 - Veg - Fri May 20, 2005 8:52 pm
Sounds like you have a faulty cart. My EFA works without a problem.
#43262 - tepples - Sat May 21, 2005 5:19 am
My cousin's EFA 256 cart works fine as well.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#43265 - FourScience - Sat May 21, 2005 5:38 am
My EFA 256 is a breeze as well. You either have a bad cart, or your installation is broken. What version of Windows are you using (desktop and laptop)? Did you run the setup for the driver when you plugged it in for the first time (Step 4 of the PDF manual packaged with the program).
Without the EFA cart plugged in at all, what happens when you run EFA_Client.exe? When you click Search (to unlock the other buttons), and then Add ROM (still without the EFA plugged in)?
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Work in progress: Dual-Soft.com
#43276 - bedrone - Sat May 21, 2005 8:30 am
I did everything that I'm supposed to do and it just doesn't work on me. Installed drivers sucssesfully, charged 8+hours, client program tried version 1.9 ~ 2.3 all with detecting my 512 Linker sucssesfully and then when I click ADD Rom, a pop up window opens to select which rom to add to the list, I select roms, click open, program terminates.
I tried 3 different systems. 2 Intel chipset, 1 AMD with absolutely no luck at all. Think I got a faulty cart? I got it from Kicktrading and I've already had gone thru a lot of trouble getting it and I'm totally exhausted. -sigh- any help would be greatly appreciated. (I could synch cart time using the clinent software)
#43277 - Fatnickc - Sat May 21, 2005 8:58 am
Doesn't really sound like a faulty cartridge, because that would only fail when the program tried to communicate. However, choosing the rom isn't communicating, as it puts it into a PC-side to-burn list.
#43284 - bedrone - Sat May 21, 2005 3:31 pm
Exactly. But the funny thing is I get the same client-termination-behavior from 3 totally different systems. I was thinking this morning maybe it could be related to the USB version it is connected with. The computers I tried had USB v1.1. What version of USB do you have? USB v2.0?
#43285 - tepples - Sat May 21, 2005 3:54 pm
My EFA cart works on both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 machines.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#43291 - Fatnickc - Sat May 21, 2005 5:32 pm
Ok, where are you getting the client from?
If it isn't from the official site, try there.
If it is, try somewhere else.
#43295 - bedrone - Sat May 21, 2005 6:32 pm
It is all from their official web site www.efa.cc.
#43300 - Fatnickc - Sat May 21, 2005 7:15 pm
Try somewhere else, then. A good website will only host files it knows to work.
#43322 - bedrone - Sun May 22, 2005 1:06 am
I also d/led it from my vendor and still no luck. Where did you get yours?
#43332 - FourScience - Sun May 22, 2005 5:40 am
Sounds like your copies of the files are fine. I'm sure if there was any real corruption, the zip wouldn't have opened and the executable wouldn't have loaded. www.efa.cc is also the regular site and those files work.
What version of Windows have you tested, and what happens when you don't connect the cart, click Search, and then try to add a ROM (should work until it says not enough space when trying to open)?
There's still some things to check, but it does seem probable that the cart is faulty. Still a few things to rule out though.
_________________
Work in progress: Dual-Soft.com
#43342 - bedrone - Sun May 22, 2005 12:57 pm
I'm using Windows XP Pro SP1 and I've also tested it with Windows XP Pro SP2 system. Like you said it should add roms to the list till it fills the cart's memory limit right? the thing is I can't add even one rom to the client's list. As soon as I click open after I select the first rom, the client program shuts down.
#43380 - FourScience - Sun May 22, 2005 10:09 pm
In this forum and the EFA forum, I've been trying to ask what happens when the cart is NOT PLUGGED IN. Please try my instructions without the cart plugged in, and see what happens when you Search (no cart found, but unlocks the Add Rom button), select a ROM, and click Open. It should say "Not enough space for this ROM.", without crashing. Basically, I'm trying to make sure that your client only crashes with the cart plugged in.
Try that, and then plug in the cart, Search, and then select Format card. Please post any complete error messages in either case.
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Work in progress: Dual-Soft.com
#43410 - bedrone - Mon May 23, 2005 3:29 am
Yes, I just followed your instructions and I think the client programs is fine because it doesn't crash when the cart is not plugged in and I could click open after I clicked add roms without any crashing and then it says "Not enough space for this ROM". The client program crashes only if the cart is plugged in. And formatting doesn't do any good either.
#43412 - cocole - Mon May 23, 2005 5:36 am
Could we know where you bought your card. Maybe there are cheap copies of EFA floatting around ?
#43419 - bedrone - Mon May 23, 2005 7:20 am
I got it from Kicktrading. I guess they sent me a faulty cart and I'm gonna send it back for an exchange or a refund. The fact that I have to spend more money by returning it makes me feel kinda shit. And although they told me they gladly exchange it with a new fully tested cart, I'm still not satisfied. Why couldn't they sell a fully tested cart in the first place? It is not that hard to open a box and perform a test since the box isn't hard wrapped or anything like that. What a waste of my precious time and money.. -sigh-
#43523 - FourScience - Tue May 24, 2005 3:55 am
| bedrone wrote: |
| I got it from Kicktrading. I guess they sent me a faulty cart and I'm gonna send it back for an exchange or a refund. The fact that I have to spend more money by returning it makes me feel kinda shit. And although they told me they gladly exchange it with a new fully tested cart, I'm still not satisfied. Why couldn't they sell a fully tested cart in the first place? It is not that hard to open a box and perform a test since the box isn't hard wrapped or anything like that. What a waste of my precious time and money.. -sigh- |
Yeah it is to hard to test everything a retailer ships out. I think you're just a little buggered, but I'm sure you can see that it's too much to expect retailers to open and test everything before it ships. You'd be paying quite a premium if they were really doing that.
Faulty electronic equipment happens. They throw out Pentium 4's by the hundreds, it happens with flash memory too. Every once in a while a faulty one slips by, or a bad bump during shipping breaks a lose connection.
If Kicktrading makes sure to test the next one they are sending you, they are going the extra mile. If you think this was a big waste of time and money then you haven't spent much time trying to make software and hardware work.
_________________
Work in progress: Dual-Soft.com
#43562 - bedrone - Tue May 24, 2005 6:50 pm
Yes, I guess you are right. But from the point of a buyer, should we worry about the vendors situation? Personally, I don't care how they do it, I just pay my hard earned money to get what they offer based on their own description. It means when I order something from them I expect to get exactly that something from them. It's simple. I ordered it, didn't get what I ordered, so I get angry. I'm not a person who is as kind-hearted as you are. Well, I guess it makes me a bad guy. And it seems as thou almost everyone in this board are on their vendors or makers side disregarding the fact that EFA is quite unreliable with all those h/w defects.. I don't know.
Anyways, I thank you guys in this thread trying to help me. You guys are great.
#43582 - FourScience - Tue May 24, 2005 10:04 pm
| bedrone wrote: |
| I'm not a person who is as kind-hearted as you are. |
It's not being kind hearted, it's understanding basic economics. They get items and they mark them up, say 20%. So a $80 cart costs $96. From that $16 margin they must pay their employees and warehouse utilities/taxes. Maybe 5 employees actually deal with a given product, from unpacking, storing, retrieving, packing, to shipping. From that $16 about $15 is spent on the item, leaving $1 of profit. These are fictional figures, but they are somewhat close and should give you a basic idea of how retail works.
Now if they were to actually TEST everything they shipped, it would cost another $12 for this item, more for some. They'd have to allocate space and resources for a testing lab, and they'd spend more on materials to repack said items. You can see that $1 profit margin go out the window, and see the price marked up another $15 each. This retailer is now out of business as 95% of their customers refuse to pay 15% more for stuff that already works 99.9% of the time.
Some people would be very unhappy with unwrapped items too, as 90% of retail goods are sealed in some way, especially electronics.
It makes much more sense to lose $100 replacing a defective item for about 1% of all sales. So for every $1,000 they profit, the end up cutting out 10% to satisfy the 1% of customers who were unlucky enough to receive a bad item. Often enough it wasn't their fault at all, just bad shipping or a faulty item to begin with.
I am NOT being kind. This is how a store works.
| Quote: |
| it seems as thou almost everyone in this board are on their vendors or makers side disregarding the fact that EFA is quite unreliable with all those h/w defects. |
All those h/w defects? Show me one other instance of a defective EFA cart? If you can do that, show me another? You seem to think that everything you ever buy should be in mint condition and work perfectly. Truth is, the EFA carts are favored because they are relatively fast and inexpensive. They certainly have their faults (GUI only client)...but generally they are good carts. Don't mistake "trying to help someone" for being "on their vendors side," but it makes sense for people to defend brands they have good experience with.
_________________
Work in progress: Dual-Soft.com
#43602 - josath - Wed May 25, 2005 2:20 am
I've had TWO defective efa carts (from kicktrading.ca as well). After the second one, I got a full refund instead of trying to get a third one.
The first one, wasn't recognized in a DS/GBA at all, even though it worked fine in the flashing software.
The second one, worked fine for a week, but then one of the pins on the (nonstandard) mini usb connector in the cart (not the cable, actually on the cart) broke and it stopped working.
#43613 - FourScience - Wed May 25, 2005 3:55 am
| josath wrote: |
I've had TWO defective efa carts (from kicktrading.ca as well). After the second one, I got a full refund instead of trying to get a third one.
The first one, wasn't recognized in a DS/GBA at all, even though it worked fine in the flashing software.
The second one, worked fine for a week, but then one of the pins on the (nonstandard) mini usb connector in the cart (not the cable, actually on the cart) broke and it stopped working. |
Yeah, I noticed your post in the Retailer Feedback forum. That's three bad ones we've seen from Kicktrading. I got 2 good ones off Jandaman... so it's either the retailer or the manufacturer.
Considering josath's problems in addition to bedrone's, I'd say it's the manufacturer. I guess EFA's are hit or miss; they work great unless they fail.
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Work in progress: Dual-Soft.com
#43684 - bedrone - Wed May 25, 2005 6:32 pm
FourScience, you are missing the whole point. My point is the satisfaction when we purchase something from retailers. I don't care how hard retailers work their everyday chores or how they are going extra miles to impress their customers. I sent an email to them 3days ago requesting for a new cart to be sent to me right after I send back the defective cart. All at the same time because I don't want to wait another 20+ days. And I still haven't received any replies from them. I don't trust them anymore. maybe I look like a whinning sorry ass to you but I have my reasons.
I don't really understand why you sound so upset. Do you think I'm lying that I received a faulty cart? or maybe you think getting a defect is rare so it should be forgiven? What is your suggestions? should I just shut up and be thankfull that they are going to test a new cart and ship it after they receive my return? I asked for a help and I get all that basics of economic crap from a guy who have two perfectly working EFAs. This is just great.
Hey FourScience, I like you because you tried to help me and I honor that. But please don't go beyond that. It doesn't work and it will never do. Nothing can change my shit filled damn incident till I get my hands on a nicely working EFA. See? I'm a victim here. ;)