EZ-Flash USA Forum

Hi all. I got my EZ-Flash IV solely to backup saves from my commercial games. But when I try to use cart_save, the cart resets my GBA whenever I re-insert it as prompted.

This video :



discusses what appears to be an identical issue w/ a different cart, but I've had no luck with the proposed workaround on my fat GBA.

Any help please? Thanks in advance!

I know we talked on IRC but for the sake of others reading/keeping note this was an odd one
Others if you can run DS code you can get GBA saves from rudolph's GBA dumper
http://filetrip.net/f3228-GBA-Backup-Tool-0-21.html
Also Eepinator has some abilities in that world
http://blog.davr.org/2007/03/31/eepinator/
We highly suggest you opt for those.
In however was using this
http://www.4shared.com/get/jsJDS5xq/cart_save.html
It is an unchanged version of http://chishm.drunkencoders.com/SendSave/index.html (scroll down) with a DLDI patch from the same link and the command line DLDI tool used to patch it.

At my disposal I have
an original EZ4 (miniSD using)
an EZ4 lite which I should mention has a dead battery.
Two EZ4 lite deluxes (one of which was new until this)
Lite sized ones as case modded to fit in a full sized GBA slot (or I swapped them into one that did)
An EZ2 for that matter but that does not support DLDI so that is more of a test thing for later (I am not going down the FCSR route- http://dev-scene.com/NDS/FCSR_Tutorial ).

A GBA
A GBA SP
An original style DS.

The only GBA game with a save I have to hand is minna no soft tetris (1336 or so if you use numbered lists) which 512byte (4kbit) EEPROM by the looks of things but that is neither here nor there for this. By the way it dumps exactly as the scene version and does not appear to be underdumped as I have openly suspected over the years (for those that would call clone this is full box, perfect case, perfect PCB).

The issue as you say is the cart resetting when it comes time to reinsert. I have managed to replicate this but I have also had successful saves and writes. More interestingly is how it varies between consoles.

My GBA has few batteries but it worked well enough.

I managed to use all but the lite on the DS even when they were resetting the SP. The GBA was slightly more reliable than the SP b ut the DS was the best.
For giggles I managed to launch the program on the lite and run it far enough on the SP and then when it came to reinsert I stuck an EZ4 original in there and had it work too.

I managed to cause resetting in a previously working device by changing the loader and fixed it by changing to another loader still (seems older ones are better but I have not checked properly) however the EZ4 lite resets my GBA, SP and DS with the smallest amount of contact so I am not inclined to rule out contact issues and luck that the few tests worked (I did not really repeat the tests in a very controlled manner much to the chagrin of the inner scientist). I made a half hearted attempt at the post it fix and also a go at taping up the pins (all of them at once rather than anything with any thought behind it- looking at an SP the rightmost pin when you have the buttons facing up might be an issue) to no effect. The big difference with the EZ4 lite that I can see is the thin trace section is far longer than a EZ4, EZ4 LD, my tetris game or my EZ2 but I taped those over to no effect not to mention most of the others have a bit of case space before the PCB unlike the EZ4 lite and it does the same thing on your EZ4- it is likely a later spin of it through (mine is a near launch if not launch one).
I am however not going to rule out some initialisation routine changes ( http://www.sosuke.com/ezflash/files/EZ4 ... carbon.zip has a "working" one prebuilt in it I used but do not use it on a EZ4 lite compact or deluxe as I am not sure it supports them). The video you linked calls out power consumption which I can get behind I guess- I have a few devices try to draw too much power on boot/initialisation causing all sorts of issues including stuff like this. Alas I do not tend to keep coin cells with solder tags in stores and I am not about to externally power the SRAM at this point.

You have me stumped. You might want to try a few more loaders but I am not convinced it will do any good but hopefully what I have written might make something click in a passing viewer of the thread.

As mentioned in IRC, I discovered that using a small piece of paper to cover one of the leftmost pins (when the cart's sticker is facing up with its bottom facing you; please let me know if I'm not being clear enough) seems to enable it to be reinserted without a reset. Don't know why I was making such a fuss about trying this approach.

However, I have still yet to successfully backup a game save. During the first time I used the above technique to prevent a reset, cart_save offered me to select a directory (none were listed, but I think the MiniSD card had one named "SAVER"; no positive though). Although it seemed to behave as normal and claim that a save was successfully written, I have yet to see a save file. Since then, I have not been able to get cart_save past "press a to write to cart" in spite of continuing to preventing resets.

EDIT: I got a DS Lite. cart_save resets this console as well unless I reinsert the side of the flash cart facing the headphone jack first. After that everything appears to work fine.

However, problems emerge when I try to use the saves I've made. First off, I should mention that one of main goals in all of this is to be able to use these saves with Mednafen, an emulator for jailbroken PS3s. Here are the games that I'm trying to work with (all of which are US versions, though I have read that roms could vary in other ways):

Golden Sun
Rayman Advance
Super Mario Advance
Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Metroid Fusion

Golden Sun is of particular concern because no matter how many times I use cart_save, the .sav file produced is listed as 0 KB and appears to be completely blank when opened in a text editor. It, along with both of the above Super Mario Advance game saves fail to have any affect when used with roms on Mednafen or the EZIV. In the case of Yoshi's Island, EZIV fails to load the rom itself but that isn't my concern ATM. FWIW, I think the Yoshi's Island rom is the only one with a Mode7 intro.

Rayman Advance's save is the same on the EZIV, but if I recall correctly, on Mednafen it successfully loaded the last two of the game's three save slots.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance and Metroid Fusion work perfectly on both EZIV and Mednafen. They are also the only two games in the above list that use sram according to http://offlinelistgba.free.fr/index.php.

Any idea what could be going on here? Should Rudolph's Tool be more reliable (ie. Is it time for me to get a DSTwo)? Thanks for your help!