Where to buy a flash cart?

[Segata]

I'm in the market to buy a flash cart so that I can actually play my GBA roms on the go. Can anyone recommend a good place to buy one at a good price?

[DreamCastLover]

Here is a list of reliable sites and where they are located

 

Hong Kong:-

http://www.success-hk.com/pp/success.asp

http://winsunx.com/

http://www.dcslinks.com/catalog/

 

Indonesia:-

http://www.gbagod.com

 

USA:-

http://www.mwelectronics.com/

http://www.mybayside.com/index.php

 

UK:-

http://www.consolesandgadgets.co.uk

http://gbax.com

 

Sweden

http://shop.01media.com/en/

 

You should be able to find one that suits you from that list. Some are cheaper than others but it all depends on where you are prepared to buy one from really

[Segata]

Thanks. Wow, those are a bit more expensive than I had anticipated. Any flash carts that I should stay away from?

 

Edit: By the way, do these support original GB/GBC roms?

Edited January 14, 2004 by Segata

[DreamCastLover]

Most of the carts are good but there are some minor differences.

 

If you want to play the Pokemon, Tony Hawk Underground games properly (ie the real-time clock) then you will want to get an EZF-Advance or an EZ Flash 2. Both have a built in real-time clock and the EZ flash 2 powerstar also has much better power consumption so your batteries in your GBA last longer.

 

I would personally go for F2A (mainly for pogoshell support) or an EZF-Advance. XG and EZ Flash 2 are still good cheaper cards but they can be buggy when using stuff like pogoshell.

 

The only other advice I can think of is to make sure the linker has USB support for flashing. This is pretty important if you have a GBASP as flashing with a parallel cable can cause problems with the GBASP. If you have an older style GBA then it doesn't really matter.

 

Also, you can't just run GB and GBC roms on any of these flash carts. If you want to do that then you will need to get a GB bridge which is just another linker and pretty cheap. You can however use Goomba which is an excellent GB emulator and it plays nearly every GB mono game at 100% speed. It doesn't have GBC support yet but that might arrive in the near future.

Edited January 15, 2004 by DreamCastLover

[Iori Yagami]

my 2 cents:

http://members.lycos.co.uk/somerandomcrap/fcfaq.txt

[RuneEdge5k1]

The best one to get is EZFA. Thats the one I have. It runs all the programs mentioned and works on the GBASP unlike a few other carts. Its even one of the fastest ones too. Anotehr good thing about it is that the person who made the cart, updates the software very often on his message board. The cart has a Real Time Clock and it will even let you use the online adaptor. All other carts can't do that.

I can go on but ain't gonna bother. Just buy EZFA.

[Iori Yagami]

The best one to get is EZFA. Thats the one I have. It runs all the programs mentioned and works on the GBASP unlike a few other carts. Its even one of the fastest ones too. Anotehr good thing about it is that the person who made the cart, updates the software very often on his message board. The cart has a Real Time Clock and it will even let you use the online adaptor. All other carts can't do that.

I can go on but ain't gonna bother. Just buy EZFA.

You've been out of the flash cart loop for a while huh?

[Segata]

I've been planning on buying this flash cart. However, I didn't realize that 256 Mb was megabits, not megabytes. That's a bit less space than I was anticipating. It seems to me like I wouldn't be able to fit more than one or two games at a time with that capacity. Oddly enough, the pictures on the page mentioned above show many games, making it seem that there's lots of space to go around. So... how many commercial roms could I really store on the 256 Mb cart at a time?

[Iori Yagami]

I've been planning on buying this flash cart. However, I didn't realize that 256 Mb was megabits, not megabytes. That's a bit less space than I was anticipating. It seems to me like I wouldn't be able to fit more than one or two games at a time with that capacity. Oddly enough, the pictures on the page mentioned above show many games, making it seem that there's lots of space to go around. So... how many commercial roms could I really store on the 256 Mb cart at a time?

pasted directly from the FAQ:

Yes the flash carts memory is mesured in megabits not megabytes

Here's a simple scale:

128 megbit = 16 megabytes

256 megbit = 32 megabytes

512 megbit = 64 megabytes

1 gigabit = 128 megabytes

[Segata]

Darn. I suppose the picture is rather deceptive, then.

 

Edit: Would I be able to keep them zipped and still use them?

Edited February 5, 2004 by Segata

[DreamCastLover]

Darn. I suppose the picture is rather deceptive, then.

 

Edit: Would I be able to keep them zipped and still use them?

No you can't use zipped files but 256M has always been enough for me to have a good selection of stuff on my cart.

 

Like right now I have

Fire emblem (128M),

Super Monkey Ball Jr (32M),

Goomba with loads of games including Legend of Zelda, tetris, Megaman 2 & 3, Pokemon Blue, Final Fantasy Adventure, Super Mario Land 1,2 and 3, Boxxle, Choplifter III and more (about 34M)

Dr Sms with Shinobi 1 & 2, ecco the dolphin, Sensible Soccer, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 & triple trouble, Super off road and a few others. (about 30M)

Elite (8M)

Tetanus on drugs (1M)

and a couple of other things that I forget.

 

It doesn't take long to flash either so if you get bored you can easily change stuff around. You can also use pogoshell to manage your saves so you dont' have to start from the beginning everytime you put something on your flashcart.