3 in 1 expansion pack for EZV

Perseid · March 15, 2007, 02:37:23 PM

I finally got the bundle and here's a few notes so far:

The bundle is, of course, two pieces - the NDS cart and the GBA cart - and that's all you get. An ugly orange box with two carts in it. No CD, no manual, nothing. And you need software to make the EZ5 do anything at all. You need to install a customized Moonshell "shell" folder to get it to even come up. There is also a new firmware the DS cart needs to get it to see the GBA cart. Since I ordered the bundle I assumed this version would be preloaded. Alas, no. I had to install a new firmware revision to get the GBA cart to work. I also had to install a new gamelist file to make EZ5 know which games had rumble. So basically this thing doesn't work out of the box. And since there wasn't so much as a leaflet telling me these things, this all took about a half hour to figure out. Lame.

Good:
Copied over the (E) version of Opera and it just straight up worked.
Rumble works with no extra configuration as well, though it is quite loud.
Rhythm Tengoku, the GBA game that had slowdown on my SCSD seems so far to work 100% perfect.
My Supercard save games copied over no problem

Bad:
The GBA cart does not work in the Gameboy Player.
GBA copying is quite slow.

liquidnitrogen: What games GBA link and how does it work? I'll try it.
sirpoonga: Rumble works fine with ROMs, but like PharaohsVizier said it is only for games that support the official rumble pack(which is good IMO).
h8uthemost: DS ROMs are drag and drop to the microSD, though there is a patcher you can use to trim the rom if you like. GBA ROMs need to be run through the EZ4(not EZ5) patcher, then copied over the microSD. Boot the EZ5 on the DS, find your GBA rom, hit R+Select and it copies. You now have a standalone cartridge that saves games onto itself. Then you can use the DS cart to copy your save from the GBA cart to the microSD.

On a side note, this is my first experience with a microSD card. Damn those things are small. Too small if you ask me...

sirpoonga · March 15, 2007, 03:32:52 PM

Quote from: "Perseid"
On a side note, this is my first experience with a microSD card. Damn those things are small. Too small if you ask me...

That is the one advantage the dsx has if you have small children and don;t want to worry about them loosing the microsd

Is the microsd slot spring loaded? I have learned to hate spring loaded slots for something that small. The slot on my r4 is busted. I have to hold my microsd card in with tape.

Perseid · March 15, 2007, 03:38:45 PM

Quote from: "sirpoonga"Is the microsd slot spring loaded? I have learned to hate spring loaded slots for something that small. The slot on my r4 is busted. I have to hold my microsd card in with tape.

Nope. It's not. Takes some fingernail power to get it out though.

dantheman · March 15, 2007, 05:30:17 PM

Writing to NOR space is slow for any cart, including the fastest ones of the GBA generation. My Flash2Advance Ultra cart can flash about 128 Megabytes in maybe 20 minutes, which I consider to be a decent speed. Thats just what you get with NOR flash: slow to write to, very fast to read from, which makes it ideal for GBA binaries that require very fast read speeds.

liquidnitrogen · March 15, 2007, 06:58:27 PM

well

games that have GBA link

the one that i know of is Pokemon Diamond/Pearl - though you have to complete the Elite four or something (i guess get a save... from somewhere)

and then you can transfer pokemon from your GBA cartridge to the Diamond

for the other one - it deals with Megaman ZX, something about unlocking bosses...

PharaohsVizier · March 15, 2007, 08:49:20 PM

Did you check out the EZ Flash forums, someone is working on a patch to make the 3-in-1 work with the R4 and any other cart. I think it was cory and bigboss. Not too sure. Anyways, if it works, it'll be SO AWESOME!

h8uthemost · March 15, 2007, 09:28:44 PM

Thanks for all the great info Perseid.

Perseid · March 15, 2007, 09:57:15 PM

I've been asked about PoR and I figured I should post here.

I have a Patriot 2GB. When unpatched PoR crashed very badly. Worse than with the Supercard SD, in fact. But when I ran it though the patcher, it did seem to magically fix it. I tried pausing and unpausing for about a minute straight and it did not crash. I haven't actually played the game yet, though.

And I'll see about finding a Pokemon save.

liquidnitrogen · March 16, 2007, 12:42:33 AM

maybe a more simple one would be Harvest moon...

the screen for the NDS one would be different.... though i would need to research a bit more on this to make it easier for you to test... update tomorrow...

Perseid · March 16, 2007, 01:22:39 AM

If you play Feel the Magic with certain Sega GBA games inserted you get to unlock body parts for the girl in Maniac mode. Pretty silly, really. I copied Chu Chu Rocket to the GBA card and ran Feel the Magic and, sure enough, I unlocked a funky looking head. So GBA link apparently works.

h8uthemost · March 16, 2007, 01:31:34 AM

Quote from: "Perseid"I've been asked about PoR and I figured I should post here.

I have a Patriot 2GB. When unpatched PoR crashed very badly. Worse than with the Supercard SD, in fact. But when I ran it though the patcher, it did seem to magically fix it. I tried pausing and unpausing for about a minute straight and it did not crash. I haven't actually played the game yet, though.

And I'll see about finding a Pokemon save.

Sweet. Thank you for mentioning this.

If you could though, since you mentioned you haven't actually played it, only paused it frequently, would you mind playing up to the first portal? That's only like two minutes into the game.

Because that's where the game always froze for me, on my R4. Once I would activate the portal, the screen would freeze. And if it doesn't freeze. Try standing at the portal, then pausing and un-pausing a couple times real quick, then entering the portal real fast after that.

If it doesn't freeze after that, than it's pretty safe to say that it runs perfectly while patched.

Thanks for checking this if you do. If you come back confirming that it didn't lock up after that, than I'm going to order me one.

And how is the chip? Does it stick out that bad, and is it hard to get it in and out of the DS?

Thank you for any info.

liquidnitrogen · March 16, 2007, 02:30:28 AM

Quote from: "Perseid"If you play Feel the Magic with certain Sega GBA games inserted you get to unlock body parts for the girl in Maniac mode. Pretty silly, really. I copied Chu Chu Rocket to the GBA card and ran Feel the Magic and, sure enough, I unlocked a funky looking head. So GBA link apparently works.

awesome. thats nice to know... (i really feel like getting the combo... but...

i cant right now.. maybe in a month... sigh)

Perseid · March 18, 2007, 06:56:44 PM

1) I can't really recommend a Patriot microSD. It's slow. The lowest I can set it in the EZ5 settings is 6 out of 10. Lame.

2) The EZ5 patcher really does remedy that, though. Dawn of Sorrow's opening video lagged badly unpatched but after a run through the patcher it plays 100% perfectly.

3) And so does PoR, even saving. Even pausing a lot then saving real fast like h8themost asked.

A few questions of my own now, though:

The EZ5 patcher has the Soft Reset option unchecked and greyed out. Why?

What does the EZ5 patcher DO that makes it speed up the games so well?

h8uthemost · March 18, 2007, 10:21:56 PM

Thank you very much Perseid for trying what I asked. It sounds like I really great card.

And even though I don't know much about this card, I have heard that you have to do something like patch each game, so they can utilize Soft Reset. Is there an option like that in the patcher program? Maybe that's why it's greyed out.

liquidnitrogen · March 19, 2007, 12:08:06 AM

yeah, i believe that in order to enable softreset, you must patch the game

i guess the three options are... TRIM, PATCH ROM, and SOFT RESET... so i guess to enable Soft reset, you must choose PATCH ROM.. (and usually TRIM)...