EZ-Flash USA Forum

Hi@all, I used to have an EZ3, now finally switched to EZ4 to play on GBA, not NDS.



There's a weird thing happening when I add games to the SD-Card:
At some point the list just breaks in the middle of a filename and all items below that point don't have names, just folder-icons.
All games AFTER the break don't even work.
I had 96 games on my card, the break always happened at the 80th entry.

Here's what I've tried so far.

• Adding games with EZ-Client -> same result
• Adding games directly via Windows Explorer (Vista64bit) -> same result
• Deleting all games BEFORE the list breaks up -> games show up and work

Another thing that bothers me is that it takes about 17 seconds to write a saver after the GBA is turned on
and about 12 seconds to enter the "EZ-Disk" folder until the list shows up.
My EZ3 was much quicker...

I really hope there's someone who can help...
this is kinda frustrating

I just found this post about MicroSD-Adapters causing problems:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=17228

Could it be that my issue with the gamelist is related to the adapter?
Have you ever had that issue too?

Thanks!

There is an 80 games per folder limit. I am not sure why it happens but it does- stick some games in another folder and it should go away (obviously do not wander into the saver folder but you should never have to go there anyway).

The saves will probably continue to take that long (GBA speeds and writing do not go hand in hand) but once you lose a few files from the directory it should take less time to parse it and display it.

As for the adapter stuff on rare occasion they do work for people but considerably more often than not they cause troubles so we advise strongly against using them.

My two cents, from some observation. While it might not be obvious, the EZ-Flash IV sorts a directory listing before displaying it (directories are put at the top, although I don't think in alphabetical order, and files in alphabetical order at the bottom). Presumably the 80 file per folder limit is a consequence of allocating space for a set number of names then doing the sort. Since it doesn't simply cut off at 80 but becomes garbled after that point, I'd presume it's actually overflowing the amount of available space and is luckily not simply hanging. Actually accessing each file name, though, doesn't require a sort, so having a saver folder with lots of files is actually fine, read/write wise. But like FAST6191 said, you probably don't want to actually ever view the folder.

As for the saves taking a long time, I think your time measurements give you a partial clue on what's happening: it just takes a long time to read the file names. Presuming the actual sort and display of files takes very little time (say, under a second), it takes about 11-12 seconds to read in 96 file names. For an average search in a linear list, it takes processing about half the list to find the desired item. So, it'd be a good presumption that it takes about an average of 5-6 seconds to find the appropriate save file in the saver folder. That means the average writing to the miniSD card takes about 11-12 seconds. I know on my own cart with ~280 games (and hence ~280 saves), it takes ~30 seconds to do the whole save. Doing the math I just gave, I would presume it would be closer to 43 seconds, so apparently my estimates are a bit off. If you only have one save file and one game on your EZ-Flash IV, you'll probably get a better idea of the other extreme and better narrow down just how long the save file locating vs writing to the miniSD takes (I've done it before, but I figure what the figure was).

So, yea, a slow save on the EZ-Flash IV is just a sad fact of life. :/

thanks for the infos! yes, that makes perfect sense.
so i ordered 2 miniSd cards just to be save.
also i created some subfolders on the card and it's working out well.

thank you all again!