EZF Advance - GBA Flashcart
by zYX/a51

The EZF Advance is a flash cartridge system designed for the 
Gameboy Advance. There are a few GBA flash kits available on 
the market but this one seems to be getting all the rave reviews 
at the moment. As the client software has just reached an official
version one I deem it worthy of a second look here. 

Please note that as this is the only GBA flash cartridge I own, 
I can only comment on what I have and so I cannot fairly compare 
this with similar products. Of course, I'm not adverse to companies 
giving me free bits of kit to review in the future... Worth a try, 
ain't it! 

My first impression of the EZF when it arrived in the post was that 
there wasn't a lot of it! The little white box it comes in contains 
an attractive looking transparent red plastic cartridge, a USB to 
GBA link cable and a small instruction leaflet written in broken 
english. The big plus with this flash kit, as you might have already 
guessed, is that it connects your Gameboy directly to your PC. No 
messy unplugging the cartridge and inserting it into a separate linker. 

Something was missing from my package though. Reading the EZF's 
official site shows that there should have been a small credit 
card sized CD in the box also containing the necessary client 
and link cable driver software. This wasn't a problem, however, 
as until recently the client software has been in beta status and 
new updates were being released on an almost monthly basis. 
Therefore, as with most hardware, your best option is to ignore 
the supplied drivers and check the official website for the latest 
version. 

As I've touched on previously, the beauty of the EZF is in it's 
simplicity. Your first task should be, as above, to download the 
latest version of the client software. This is typically around 
500K so it's by no means a major download. The zip archive contains 
a small driver for the link cable, the EZF client executable and a 
single library required by the exe. 

Installation consists of inserting the link cable into a spare USB
port on your computer, giving Windows the link cable driver files 
upon request and extracting the client executable to a spare directory 
on your hard drive. This takes a matter of seconds and isn't something 
most people can fuck up easily either. 

Now you are ready for action so load up the EZF client which, for the 
time being, won't be doing much except "Waiting For GBA Connection...". 
At this point plug the other end of the cable into the link port of the 
Gameboy (the port normally reserved for linking up multiple GBA's). To 
get your devices communicating simply switch on the Gameboy whilst 
holding down the START and SELECT buttons until the screen shows the 
"EZF Advance" banner. The client should now confirm that a connection 
has been established and all it's options will be unghosted. 

Use of the actual client is virtually self explanatory. Basically, you 
load compatible GBA ROM images into the list and click another option 
to burn directly to the cart. The burn process is surprisingly speedy 
and you can transfer a full 256MBits of data to it in little over a minute. 

As you can see the basic function of this system is fool proof but it 
also contains some handy additional features over rival products. One 
of these is the ability to run files which are no bigger than 32KB 
directly on the Gameboy via the link cable. This is especially useful 
for development work as you can test your code tweaks straight to 
actual hardware without the tedious burn process each time. 

Just as you can use the link cable and client to copy ROMs to the 
Gameboy you can even use it to rip ROMs back to the PC. Insert an 
original cartridge into the Gameboy, connect it all up with START/SELECT 
and use the dumper option in the client. Naturally, copyright restrictions 
apply when using a feature such as this but I shouldn't need to mention that. 

The client also gives you the ability to back up and re-write save 
games for ROMs contained on the cart. Whilst this has it's obvious 
advantages be sure to back up any saves and ROMs from your flashcart 
before you upgrade a client version. The reason for this is that Borden 
(the creator) seems to alter the structure of the data written on the 
flashcart with each new update. This lack of backwards compatibility 
is initially a pain but considering they are improving your purchase 
with each update it's something that should be lived with. 

The EZF was also one of the first systems which was built with an on 
board clock for recording the current time and date. This, and client 
improvements, meant that it was capable of running ROMs such as Pokemon 
Ruby and Sapphire which had previously failed on other flash systems. 

Finally, an interesting feature that is new to version one of the client 
is IGF, which is an Action Replay-like addition for inserting cheat codes 
into ROMs. 

All in all this is a very compact and professional package which has even 
reduced in price since I bought mine almost a year ago. The actual 
instructions supplied are hopelessly "engrish" but not totally 
incomprehensible and you'll probably never need to use them anyway. 

Reference: 

http://www.gba-toys.com/indexE.htm
- The EZF's official website for latest driver updates and information 
(English version). 

http://www.gbax.com
- A UK supplier of the EZF kit.