Hi,

Sorry about the new thread but I felt this would be a lot more visible than getting lost in the megathread.

I just bought an EZ Flash IV MicroSD cart and can’t get Mother 3 to work at all – it loads to NOR fine but crashes after the gameboy player logo. I think my NOR is damaged but others haven’t been so convinced about my estimate.

Check here for background information: https://gbatemp.net/threads/ez-flash-iv-mother-3-hangs-after-game-boy-player-logo-nor-damaged.469076/

They say that the game is too big for the NOR even though it seems to be the correct size of exactly 32MB, which is 32,768KB or 33,554,432 Bytes (just in case people see the ROM as 32,768 on their EZ Flash and freak out thinking it’s too big).

They say that it doesn’t fit properly because the cart needs to have its own loader as part of the NOR memory too. Or that only specially patched versions of the game work because it is too big (i guess they mean a somehow compressed version).

That said, I looked in the ROM file in a hex editor and there did seem to be a reasonable amount of unused space.

I wanted to ask whether anyone has managed to get Mother 3 working at all on the new EZ Flash IV carts – the black microsd versions that look like this:

If you look on the back of the cart, shine a light through the casing and you can see the board revision number. Mine says

EZ402TF 2014.0814

Apparently the carts have changed slightly for the newer MicroSD versions so please feedback if you have one.

I have also tried various levels of FW, including 1.76, 1.77, 1.78 and 1.74.

I have tried patching with both the official EZ Client software and the community ezgba patcher. When running the official patcher I have just applied the SRAM patch but not the reset patch.

The unpatched rom has the correct md5 checksum of

af8b0b175f7ec8914cb87b3161ba1aaa

Patching it with the latest official EZ Client version EZ4_20140306 with just the Save Patch tickbox applied gives an md5 checksum of

b044de4106b0f296d34a46a869872233

The game copies to NOR fine but when I run it, it goes through the titles and crashes after the GAME BOY PLAYER logo.

See this video here:

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=43628528947986895835

With the fan translation applied, the same thing occurs (except of course you see the translated health and safety screen and the little red disclaimer screen before the gameboy player logo).

So has anyone managed to get it working? Please try with the same patcher EZ4_20140306 and 1.77 FW and list the checksum of your patched ROM.

NOTE PLEASE DON’T APPLY THE FAN TRANSLATION – just for simplicities sake. I have tried with the fan translation as well and get the same issue in exactly the same place, but just to keep things simple, please test this on the original japanese ROM, checksum af8b0b175f7ec8914cb87b3161ba1aaa

If anyone gets it working then please tell me your process, patched checksum etc.

To be honest, I think it is a problem with my NOR memory being damaged but I would like to confirm it works for others too and that I haven’t done anything wrong.

TLDR:

Test using FW 1.77 or 1.78 EZ Client version EZ4_20140306 (latest on official site) Don’t use / apply the fan translation for this test (to keep things simpler) Standard japanese rom md5 hash: af8b0b175f7ec8914cb87b3161ba1aaa Patched with only the Save Patch applied md5 hash: b044de4106b0f296d34a46a869872233 (correct for you too?)

Does it work?

Thanks!