Extreme Flash Advance
From PHWiki
The Extreme Flash Advance, or EFA for short, is a Chinese GBA flash card that is written to through a USB Type Mini B port that is integrated into the flash card itself, with no GBA or linker required.
It is known to be stable and has great save compatibility (although not 100% as some games still require patching).
The plain EFA has pure NOR onboard.
The newer Extreme Flash Advance II has a combination of a large NAND area where ROMs are stored, which are then copied to a smaller NOR area before they can be executed and played.
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Description
The original EFA has 2 sizes, 256 Mbit and 512 Mbit. The cart comes in this cute purple color. It also has 2 USB cables that come with the package, 1 long, and 1 short (very damn short!). It also comes in a cool wooden case with a silver finish.
Features
The EFA features the following:
- Compatibile with GBA, GBA SP and GBA Micro.
- 256 Mbit or 512 Mbit of NOR storage.
- Supports most save types.
- RTC (Real Time Clock).
- Cheat function (although codes are not provided and must be converted from other sources by the end user).
- Custom menu backgrounds.
- Connects directly to PC via a USB Type Mini B port.
The EFA Client
The flashing software used for the EFA is the EFA Client. The latest version as of November 11 2005 is version 2.62 (although this version is only listed on the support page; the front page still lists 2.61 as being the latest).
This is the main client window:
The columns are as follows:
Index: Denotes a ROM's position in the list. Note that the list cannot be reordered.
Rom Name: The ROM's name as displayed in the menu, taken from the ROM's header. Later clients allow ROMs to be renamed; 2.3 was the first version to allow this but the cheat option had to be selected which adds an extra 0.25 MBit to the ROM size. This requirement was fixed in version 2.4.
Rom Size: The ROM's size in MBits. ROMs are automatically stripped in 0.25 MBit increments when added.
Save Type: Denotes the ROM's save type, either Unknown (for games with no saving capability), EEPROM, SRAM or FLASH (note that FLASH versions are not displayed). Some FLASH versions may not work with the EFA cartridge and will require prior patching (eg. Tsuukin Hitofude, which uses FLASH512_V131, does not seem to work without being patched).
Save Size: The ROM's save size in KBits. This can be amended if the specified save size is either too large (eg. if the save type is "Unknown" then the save size defaults to 256 KBit; this can be reduced to 0 KBit as "Unknown" denotes no save capability) or too small (eg. some homebrew emulators may not reserve enough space, in which case the save data of other games on the cartridge could be overwritten).
Cheat: This enables the cheat function (which patches the ROM with decoded Action Replay codes) and the soft reset function (so that pressing Select + Start + A + B will return to the ROM selection menu). Enabling this will add 0.25 MBit to the ROM's size, and can only be done for supported games; updated efacheat.bin files are occasionally released on the official website's forum but more often than not this file is only updated when a new version of the client is released.
The buttons are as follows:
Search: This searches for and detects a connected EFA cartridge. The other buttons are not available until a cartridge has been found.
Refresh Card: Refreshes the cartridge contents list.
Format Card: Clears all ROMs from the cartridge (note: I don't have my cartridge to hand so this may simply clear the list without writing to the cart -- I'll check and correct this next week unless someone beats me to it).
Write Rom: Writes the listed ROMs to the cartridge.
Write Save: Copies a save game file to the cartridge. Not always compatible with save files produced by emulators (eg. the files created by NO$GBA do not appear to work).
Add Rom: Adds a ROM to the end of the list.
Delete Rom: Deletes the last listed ROM.
Backup Rom: Copies the selected ROM to disk.
Backup Save: Copies the selected ROM's save file to disk.
Sync Clock: Synchronizes the cartridge's Real-Time Clock with your PC's current time.
The two checkboxes perform the following functions:
Use Loader: Enables the loader menu. Note that disabling will clear the ROM list without warning so should be used with care if you have compiled a list but not yet written it to the cartridge.
Use BMP: Selects a BMP image for use as the loader menu's background.
Using on GBA
This is what the menu looks like on the gba. As you can see, i've used a custom background from pokemon emerald, and also it shows the 2 roms that are there (if it's too blurry, or you wanna know, it's fire red and saphire).
Troubleshooting
Seeing as the Official EFA bulletin board gets updated every once in a client update, i will try to post the common problems i've had lately with the efa.
Software Crashes
I found that on my version of windows xp home sp1a (supplied by compaq) the efa client always crashes. I have to update to SP2 and i'll post further research on this. The crash occurs when pressing the button "search".
Roms Not correctly written
This happened recently too. It only happens if you start having trouble writing roms, such as it freezes, and you disconnect your card. If it manages to flash it entirely, when you load up the cart on the gba, you get the previous menu, and when you select a game, it crashes. You have to go to the efa.cc page, and download the dummy files (there's two flavors, one with 00's and one with FF's, any will do). When you are about to write this rom, you could try to format the card, but formatting only deletes the loader and the indexes, so it really does not format the card, soo, you have to write the dummy instead. Write it without the loader. Then try and flash your roms again. It'll work like a charm.
