Will there be a new Everdrive for GBA?

[DoItRight]

I dearly want a flash cart for my Gameboy Micro, but I'm struggling to find a good fit.

I see that there are a couple of current GBA flash cart threads, but I didn't want to hijack them with my specific situation and concerns.

The EZ Flash Omega seems like a wonderful value, but I am concerned about the save stability issues I've seen. I'm also concerned about the battery life, since most of what I've read points to a fairly high power usage with this cart, as well as durability, mainly because of how similar it looks in design to the Supercard.

I've had 3 GBA Supercard SD minis, and they fail within weeks, this is a device I keep in my pocket at all times, and I guess this and bad design leads to fast failure. Otherwise, this device worked just fine for me, since I really only play one game at a time, after the slow flash to nand (or nor, whichever this cart uses) boot times were just fine.

The Everdrive-GBA X5 is awesome, and I like that it has lower power consumption and what appears to be the best GB/GBC support, but the high price and how it looks in the Gameboy Micro are pretty big turn offs.

That said, if Everdrive is making a new GBA OEM form factor cart, I would happily get that. Does anyone know if this has been hinted at or is in development?

How does the GB Micro's battery perform when using a high power cart like the Omega? Can the save states or other features be disabled to reduce power consumption?

Are there any other carts that I should be looking at? Should I be looking at a new device (IE Dingoo/GPDXD)? Is there one of these units in a comparable size to the micro?

 

[steelseth]

Just get the omega, there is no comparison the the supercards.
I have a couple as well as a few other ezflash versions and never had any problems,
If you look over at the everdrive forum people are having the same or even more problems with the everdrive cards, the difference is that on gbatemp users are usually less respectful and you see topics like "OMG MY CART STOPPED WORKING PLEASE HELP ME NOW" and Ezflash usually responds within a day or two.
On the other hand in the everdrive forums you see topics like "I have problem, I may have done something wrong, could someone please help me." and if they are lucky someone responds in a week.
Regarding power the omega consumes more than a regular cartdridge, if I remember correctly around 70% more but I suspect the everdrive does also, Krikzz stated somewhere that it consumes as much as a regular cart and everyone too his word for it but if you look at the GB everdrives and a gameboy pocket there are issues there because of the AAA batteries and the everdrive being more power hungry.

 

[DoItRight]

Thanks for the response, I'm glad you've not had any problems with your EZ Flash carts.

I'm following this video for power consumption, and while it might be acceptable, it's certainly not negligible:

What are some of the most common problems you've seen with The Omega of the Everdrive?

 

[gnmmarechal]

I personally own an EZ-Flash IV, I've never had any issues with it (aside from the whole using a miniSD, but that's been rectified in the most recent EZ-Flash IV carts and its successors). As for battery life.... I can't say I'm unhappy.

 

[steelseth]

Thanks for the response, I'm glad you've not had any problems with your EZ Flash carts.

I'm following this video for power consumption, and while it might be acceptable, it's certainly not negligible:

What are some of the most common problems you've seen with The Omega of the Everdrive?

As I said from the top of my head the EZflash uses 70% more, last time I checked nobody checked the power draw for the everdrive, your guy found 87% more for the omega and 25% more for the everdrive (His math is BAD). And his equipment display amps. 0.08A does mean NOT 80ma, it could be 87ma, it could be 81ma, it could be 78ma.
Also the run times he states are not not realistic because firstly his math is BAD and secondly due to external factors you will maybe get 75% of the stated battery capacity.
So in reality its closer to 18hours for the original cart, 15hours for the everdrive and 10hours for the omega, using the specific GBA with those batteries, every GBA has different powerdraw.
Have a look at this https://imgur.com/a/BVQvn#mF29MyX
The difference in powerdraw of using a 40pin GBA vs 32pin GBA is greater than the difference of the Omega vs the Everdrive.
In any case see whats best for you and decide.

 

[DoItRight]

@steelseth He's not "My guy", I'm not defending him, just simply pointing to the only immediate evidence I see when it comes to this matter, regardless of how effective his testing methods are. It's a bummer the micro didn't get tested in the link you sent. Also a bummer to see people trusting the free multimeter from Harbor Freight (As almost all of us are guilty of), better than nothing though!

If someone were to loan me any variety of carts, I would be happy to do a full test of power consumption using calibrated equipment, but I don't think I can justify spending the extra $100 just to do a power test.

@gnmmarechal Did you notice any change in battery life when using the flash cart? Have you heard of any common issues with that series of cart?

 

[steelseth]

@steelseth He's not "My guy", I'm not defending him, just simply pointing to the only immediate evidence I see when it comes to this matter, regardless of how effective his testing methods are. It's a bummer the micro didn't get tested in the link you sent. Also a bummer to see people trusting the free multimeter from Harbor Freight (As almost all of us are guilty of), better than nothing though!

If someone were to loan me any variety of carts, I would be happy to do a full test of power consumption using calibrated equipment, but I don't think I can justify spending the extra $100 just to do a power test.

@gnmmarechal Did you notice any change in battery life when using the flash cart? Have you heard of any common issues with that series of cart?

I wasnt implying you have any association with the dude in the youtube video, and my somewhat aggressive tone was towards him not you.
Obviously the everdrive draws more power than a regular cart and the omega alot more but saying that 25% more is nothing and 87% is twice as much is plain bullshit.
Whats your current playing time on your micro? Just assume that you will get half that for the omega and if its worth for you go for it.
I probably get 4 or more hours on my 101 sp but I rarely play for more than an hour at a time anyway so its not an issue for me.

 

[pasc]

Aside from a horrible uncooperative support team, the Omega is fine as is...

 

[DoItRight]

@steelseth You're right that it's likely to be fine for real world applications, I'm just trying to determine if there are features on the cart I can disable to save power, just in case I really do want to play it for 4+ hours without charging.

I'm bummed there's not a good micro USB mod, I don't really want to experiment with my micro considering how expensive they are.

@pasc Are you talking about support for issues with the hardware, or software development? Being as it's a direct from china order, I would never expect support, which is why I'm being cautious about buying an Omega.

 

[sTo0z]

Sorry you feel that way about the EverDrive cart, you really cannot go wrong with Krikzz, I think I own every single product he offers and I've never looked back.

 

[gnmmarechal]

@steelseth He's not "My guy", I'm not defending him, just simply pointing to the only immediate evidence I see when it comes to this matter, regardless of how effective his testing methods are. It's a bummer the micro didn't get tested in the link you sent. Also a bummer to see people trusting the free multimeter from Harbor Freight (As almost all of us are guilty of), better than nothing though!

If someone were to loan me any variety of carts, I would be happy to do a full test of power consumption using calibrated equipment, but I don't think I can justify spending the extra $100 just to do a power test.

@gnmmarechal Did you notice any change in battery life when using the flash cart? Have you heard of any common issues with that series of cart?

Well, I haven't had any issues. However, do keep in mind that I haven't upgraded my cart's firmware to the latest (the latest firmware doesn't require any manual ROM patching for saves to work and stuff, but I haven't added games in a *very* long time so I never bothered to mess with that.

As for battery life, again. It still lasts for a very long while, but I haven't used a normal cartridge in quite a while so I can't offer a direct comparison (one of the main reasons for me to get a flashcart was so I wouldn't need to use my cartridges).

 

[DoItRight]

Sorry you feel that way about the EverDrive cart, you really cannot go wrong with Krikzz, I think I own every single product he offers and I've never looked back.

Me too, I would love to see him produce a OEM sized cart. I'm hoping some day I'll have enough to buy one of his flash carts for all of my home systems.

@gnmmarechal I'm glad to know it's been a good experience for you. How long have you had it, and do you carry it with you daily, or is it an at home and intentional travel system?

 

[gnmmarechal]

Me too, I would love to see him produce a OEM sized cart. I'm hoping some day I'll have enough to buy one of his flash carts for all of my home systems.

@gnmmarechal I'm glad to know it's been a good experience for you. How long have you had it, and do you carry it with you daily, or is it an at home and intentional travel system?

I've had it for.... Uh. Over 4 or 5 years maybe? I do carry it with me frequently, I barely ever remove it from my dedicated travel GBA SP (the most scratched one which I use to play games while the pretty ones stay back home).

 

[Spokenlastchance]

Me too, I would love to see him produce a OEM sized cart. I'm hoping some day I'll have enough to buy one of his flash carts for all of my home systems.

@gnmmarechal I'm glad to know it's been a good experience for you. How long have you had it, and do you carry it with you daily, or is it an at home and intentional travel system?

I really wonder why he cannot condense the device down to the same levels of the OMEGA? Is there any specific reason why he states he needs it that big? Honestly the device is already the most expensive on the market. I assume the components could be changed, and he could make a different layered board, but I'm not an expert on the matter.

 

[GBAResearcher]

I'm hoping an X7 comes out. Savestates and cheats. Until then I don't plan on getting the X5 ever. To me the size doesn't matter because I'm using an original gba with a 101 screen I made a few years ago but I totally understand that others use the different other gbas out there. Maybe some day he will make the X7 and a smaller form factor but for now it doesn't look likely at all.

 

[Stwert]

I’d go with the Omega, I have one (and an EZFlash IV, the Omega is a great card for the price and features.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Krikzz’s products. I have his SD2SNES, Game Boy, N64, PC-Engine, MegaDrive, Game Gear, Master System and NES carts. Love them all, wouldn’t be without them.
But his GBA card is the only one I’ve had and sold, simply because of the Omega.

I know some people complain about the power draw of the Omega, I’ve yet to measure it myself and I’m unlikely to, it’s never been an issue for me.

Until the Everdrive GBA X7 with save state support comes along. I’ll stick with the Omega. Even when the X7 comes, it’ll be a tough call considering the price difference.

 

[Localhorst86]

I do not own an Everdrive GBA x5, but I do own several other GBA Flashcards that I can share my opinion on (and also why I didn't buy an EDGBA X5)

Flash2Advance: One of the earliest cards. It has very limited storage and needs clunky patching. Hard to find these days and very cumbersome to work with (you need a (virtual) XP machine) - avoid. Goes for any of the "old-style" flash cards like the EZ-Flash III and prior.

Supercard Mini SD: Avoid. Just avoid. It's the cheapest card available (I bought mine brand new for like 12€) but it only works with the short lived mini SD card format or by using an adapter with older (<4Gb) micro SD cards. Suffers from incompatibility, game stuttering and a clunky saving system (you manually need to save game progression by using a button combination.) Also requires a proprietary tool that only barely works on current systems. Again, just avoid.

EZ-Flash IV (micro SD version)/Reform: Personally, still one of my favourite cards. It has basically full game compatibility, without any sort of patching or PC required. It basically works like a normal card, there are no special procedures required (like the omega does, in regards to saving). The downside is a lack of a few advanced features present in the Omega: instant game loading, save states, cheat codes. If you don't need those features, this is a sensible choice if you can still find it. While I personally never had any reason to complain about the power consumption of either the IV or reform (or Omega, for that matter), I can see how it can be a downside to some people. But with about 6 hours on my rechargables, there was never really a reason to complain for me.

EZ-Flash Omega: On paper, an unbeatable card in terms of features and bang for your buck. Full game compatibility, save states, RTC, instant game loading. The savegame implementation - in retrospect - was probably not the best choice from the EZ-Flash team, tbh. I understand that they were trying to make saving independent from the battery to avoid losing savegames to a dead battery but that now puts the burden on the user to "take the proper steps" to avoid data corruption. - but with a price at 1/3 that of an Everdrive GBA X5 i'd still say it's the better choice.

EverDrive GBA X5: Now, I own several Flashcards from Krikzzz (Everdrive GB, Everdrive 64 and SD2SNES) and their build quality is superb so it's only natural to assume the EDGBA X5 is no exception. It most likely feels like the "highest quality" card in this lineup. For me, personally, it had a few drawbacks that kept me from buying it. Mainly price and physical size. There are a few things that might make the EDGBA X5 more attractive to some people (lower power drain, resulting in a longer battery runtime, [easily] replacable savegame battery), however.

 

[kuwanger]

Throwing my two cents in, I also vote for the EZ-Flash IV. The save battery thing is mostly a non-issue--if you always do a reset to write the save to the mini/micro-SD you can have "dry battery" and the worst you have is the inconvenience of it defaulting to Chinese (IIRC). Different EZ-Flash IVs and kernels seem to have different load times (substantially so), and that's annoying. The only major downside is only having 16MB of PSRAM. And saving/loading can be on the order of 20+ seconds with a lot of saves or on one of the slower kernels.

I agree also about the EZ-Flash Omega on paper just being awesome. However, it's still the case that I've had random issues of corruption no matter how careful I try to be. It's infrequent and I've gotten beyond the point that I care--I have a backup image and all my saves are from my EZ-Flash IV. It's pretty unacceptable though that there's a serious risk and there's nothing that I or others can really do.

The last part is, I don't have a EverDrive GBA so can't speak at all about the quality or value of it. Nothing about what it has to offer (even if it has substantially better battery life than the EZ-Flash IV) seems tempting enough, though. *shrug* Has anyone done battery life testing with the EverDrive GBA? I'd be curious about the results.

 

[Rune]

I think regarding Krikzz' products, they're usually the top of the range with a price tag to match. So my advice usually is to pay the premium for them. Except IMO the GBA Everdrive isn't perfect (at least by my standards). So IMO its the only Krikzz cart that you should hold off from buying until a newer revision is out with a smaller shell and other possible features.
You should only be paying for much for a flash cart if its flawless. If you're willing to accept flaws, there are cheaper carts with flaws that you might as well buy instead.

 

[GBAResearcher]

The Omega is very picky with rom addons such as trainers, annoying intro credits added by the team that ripped the rom and bad rips. I noticed that as long as I use clean roms it has been behaving just fine even with savestates but maybe mines just one of the good batch.