Table of Contents
Catalog of old Flash cartridges. Part 3 (E-F)
EZF Advance
Website: gba-toys.com
This cartridge is another creation by Borden. Essentially, it differed from the first EZ-Flash in two ways:
- It did not have a reader, but instead had a USB cable that plugged into the Game Boy Advance:
- This cartridge implemented the RTC (real-time clock) and calendar function.
An interesting fact: this cartridge has "All CopyLeft Reserved" written on it.
The development of this cartridge would become the ECube, but according to reviews, it was much worse than this one.
EZF Advance II
Website: www.ezf-advance.com
As one might think from the name, this cartridge was a continuation of EZF Advance, but no. Some people (Chinese) created the website www.ezf-advance.com (completely copied the design from Borden's site - gba-toys.com), posted their creation there, and started selling it as a continuation of EZF-Advance.
Inside, it was actually an XG2-Turbo.
Here's what Borden himself wrote on the forum (http://bbs.gba-toys.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2404):
Recently there is a flash cart named EZFA II in market, it's a fake one since 'EZF Advance' is our brand but this cart is not our product and has none of our business. And it's even not a rip off of EZFA, it's just an XG cart labeled as 'EZFA II'. The 'www.ezf-advance.com' is a fake 'official' EZFA site too. We never released product named 'EZFA II' and www.gba-toys.com is the official site of EZFA. So everybody just beware of that, and if u like ur EZFA cart, please let more people know this to help them from being trapped by this fake, thank all.
EZF Advance III
Website: unknown (sold on linker4u.com)
Pirates... They saw and released EZF Advance III, and these were not the same people who released EZF Advance II.
Flash Advance 64M
Website: www.cd64.com
Website: www.visoly.com
Well, this is the first Flash cartridge, and that says it all. The first revisions of this cartridge were very problematic (to the point where games had to be slowed down to prevent crashes).
Interestingly, the cartridge developer claimed that the chip they used allowed games to run and be played for some time. And that, supposedly, was all the developers needed.
You can read more about the history of this cartridge and why they had different labels in this article: The history and emergence of Flash cartridges for Game Boy Advance. Part 1. Attack of the Clones.
There were 5 revisions; in the photo below, you can see the second, third, fourth, and fifth revisions. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a photo of the first revision.
In the second and third revisions, you can see that slow chip (bottom right) that required games to be slowed down.
The fourth and fifth revisions were released with new chips.
Unfortunately, besides the obvious difference (the large chip), we don't know what other differences there are between the revisions.
These cartridges started selling from the third revision. Mass production began with the fourth revision and ended with the fifth revision.
Interestingly, this cartridge came without a manual or software, and they had to be downloaded from the official website.
Flash Advance Turbo 64M + 128M (EPLD)
Website: www.cd64.com
Website: www.visoly.com
These cartridges were released almost immediately after the 64M (large) version. They only differed in size and capacity.
The only significant drawback of this cartridge was the lack of promised EEPROM support.
Flash Advance PRO 64M + 128M (ASIC)
Website: www.cd64.com
Website: www.visoly.com ?
These cartridges were released in November 2001 along with the 256Mbit version of the cartridge. They replaced the old turbo versions.
The only unclear thing is whether there was a Visoly version of these cartridges. And, apparently, if there was, they didn't change the label but simply released it as is, but with a new design.
This cartridge has hardware EEPROM support.
Flash Advance 256M
Website: www.cd64.com
Website: www.visoly.com
This cartridge was released in November 2001. It's clear that there was a Visoly version of this cartridge. It differed from the smaller PRO siblings in memory size. And most importantly, this was the first Flash cartridge that fit inside the Game Boy Advance without sticking out!
Flash Advance Xtreme
Website: www.visoly.com
This is the last cartridge (and, by the way, also the first, because they bought the previous cartridges, but this one they developed themselves) from Visoly. According to reviews, it was not very good. Probably, the only difference from the old Pro cartridges was the increased memory slot and a slightly improved reader, which, in addition to the LPT port, also had a USB port, and when working from it, no additional power supply was required for the reader.
Flash2Advance 64M, 128M, 256M
Website: flash2advance.com
I described the history of this and the next cartridge in detail in the article: The history and emergence of Flash cartridges for Game Boy Advance. Part 1. Attack of the Clones.
What wasn't mentioned there is that there were three versions of how to write games to this cartridge: LPT cable, USB cable, and USB reader:
Flash2Advance Ultra
Website: flash2advance.com
This, in turn, is the last cartridge in the history of the legendary BUNG. It had a Real Time Save function. And it had 2 buttons on its body to use this function.
