Questions about GBA Everdrive

[MDCStudios]

I don't have the drive, but was curious about getting the X5 mini when that comes out soon. My main concern with the X5 is the the absence of an isolated RTC feature. I would just wait until the X7 releases, but that probably won't be for a long time. Though I wish an X7 would be released instead of an X5 mini as I'd really like to have isolated rtc and cheats.

I was wondering just how the absence of isolated rtc exactly affects when you play multiple games with a real time clock.

There are only like 5 games with an RTC after all; the Gen. 3rd Pokemon titles (I'd play Emerald), Boktai 1 & 2, Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, and Rockman EXE.

I know there's potentially a patch for Emerald that helps with the RTC potentially

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3927/

Though I haven't tried it yet. I just assume that it just allows you to change the rtc at the Pokemon centers but I don't know if that's exactly how or if it works the way I assume. My thoughts were to try and see if there were workarounds for this issue like with that patch for Emerald which would just allow you to change the rtc in game whenever, so that if the clock resets whenever you play a different game with a rtc, you could just change it, but there doesn't seem to be patches like that with the other games. Even if Boktai allows you to change the rtc whenever, I'd be stuck when it comes to Friends of Mineral Town since you have to set your rtc at the beginning of the game, so wouldn't switching between the games break a few of them even with the Emerald patch? I don't know. I don't really care for playing Rockman EXE, so I'm trying to figure out if there's some way to be able to play Friends of Mineral Town, the Boktai games, and Emerald on the device without breaking the games with the rtc resetting and without too much of an inconvienance to get the rtc back for each individual game when playing.

I'm also curious as to the emulation on the drive. I know that NES is scrunched on the screen, but how does it and GB/GBC run on it? Is it consistent and decent emulation? Does saving work properly? I know Goomba doesn't emulate the rtc but I'm okay with that because I could just play FireRed or Leafgreen, I'm more curious about the emulation quality itself.

And do you think you'd be able ot transfer the games and save data from the X5 to the X7 whenever that comes out?

Thank you!

[MDCStudios]

Also is there a way to set each GBA game to open with the GBA intro?

[Richardragon87]

I'm also curious as to the emulation on the drive. I know that NES is scrunched on the screen, but how does it and GB/GBC run on it? Is it consistent and decent emulation? Does saving work properly?

NES/Stretched 16:9 ratio across the entire GBA screen

GB/GBC Half letterboxed 4:3 ratio in the middle of the GBA screen and it's a bit smaller in length to how it runs on the real hardware

SMS/Stretched 16:9 ratio across the entre GBA screen

GG/Can either be kept in its original 4:3 ratio or disable the black bar area to make it pseudo 16:9

Neo Geo Pocket/Hard to tell but I think its the same as the GB screen I never knew the ratio so it may be letterboxed in too

PC Engine/Stretched 16:9 ratio across the entire GBA screen

SNES/Stretched 16:9 ratio across the entire GBA screen, makes so games unplayable due to the unavailability of changing the ratio at will but with time and programming to make a game play like how the GBA would do it... it's indeed possible to make the camera follow the sprite so that the cut off top area can be accessed aside from button holding the select button and pressing either up or down!

As for emulation it depends on your definition of decent, if you want to see how far the emulation pushed the GBA to its limits its quite extraordinary but don't expect it to be perfection like a Raspberry Pi but with what the GBA uses to emulates the games its not that bad.

For example the NES, GG, SMS, GB, GBC runs at a proper 60HZ while the Neo Geo, SNES, PC Engine run at random HZ however some can be sped up in some trickery such as changing the Timer IRQ off on the PC Engine and changing what I presume is the bitrate on the Neo Geo Pocket while the SNES heavily relied on an outdated method of speed hacks that don't function on devices these days to make them.

And lastly as for saving all saved games will be kept on the NES, GG, SMS, GB and GBC as they have a save feature being a save slot, the data is kept in the SAVE folder in the emu save category but be careful on how many save states you make or how many games have been ran on the device as of when it exceeds 11,000 loads it will bring up a Disk I0 error where you would then have to remove all memorized games to get the device to boot up the games again. As for Neo Geo, PC Engine and SNES they don't keep states...

Oh yeah before I forget as of now the PC Engine never worked on a GBA X5 unless you tracked down the pre-made sets that were in a list so there is that too.

[Shadow666]

I don't have the drive, but was curious about getting the X5 mini when that comes out soon. My main concern with the X5 is the the absence of an isolated RTC feature. I would just wait until the X7 releases, but that probably won't be for a long time. Though I wish an X7 would be released instead of an X5 mini as I'd really like to have isolated rtc and cheats.

I was wondering just how the absence of isolated rtc exactly affects when you play multiple games with a real time clock.

There are only like 5 games with an RTC after all; the Gen. 3rd Pokemon titles (I'd play Emerald), Boktai 1 & 2, Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, and Rockman EXE.

I know there's potentially a patch for Emerald that helps with the RTC potentially

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3927/

Though I haven't tried it yet. I just assume that it just allows you to change the rtc at the Pokemon centers but I don't know if that's exactly how or if it works the way I assume. My thoughts were to try and see if there were workarounds for this issue like with that patch for Emerald which would just allow you to change the rtc in game whenever, so that if the clock resets whenever you play a different game with a rtc, you could just change it, but there doesn't seem to be patches like that with the other games. Even if Boktai allows you to change the rtc whenever, I'd be stuck when it comes to Friends of Mineral Town since you have to set your rtc at the beginning of the game, so wouldn't switching between the games break a few of them even with the Emerald patch? I don't know. I don't really care for playing Rockman EXE, so I'm trying to figure out if there's some way to be able to play Friends of Mineral Town, the Boktai games, and Emerald on the device without breaking the games with the rtc resetting and without too much of an inconvienance to get the rtc back for each individual game when playing.

I'm also curious as to the emulation on the drive. I know that NES is scrunched on the screen, but how does it and GB/GBC run on it? Is it consistent and decent emulation? Does saving work properly? I know Goomba doesn't emulate the rtc but I'm okay with that because I could just play FireRed or Leafgreen, I'm more curious about the emulation quality itself.

And do you think you'd be able ot transfer the games and save data from the X5 to the X7 whenever that comes out?

Thank you!

EZ-FLASH Omega has isolated RTC, Cheats, Reset back to menu without power cycling and fits flush in GBA/DSlite

[James Cree]

I don't have the drive, but was curious about getting the X5 mini when that comes out soon. My main concern with the X5 is the the absence of an isolated RTC feature. I would just wait until the X7 releases, but that probably won't be for a long time. Though I wish an X7 would be released instead of an X5 mini as I'd really like to have isolated rtc and cheats.

I was wondering just how the absence of isolated rtc exactly affects when you play multiple games with a real time clock.

There are only like 5 games with an RTC after all; the Gen. 3rd Pokemon titles (I'd play Emerald), Boktai 1 & 2, Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, and Rockman EXE.

I know there's potentially a patch for Emerald that helps with the RTC potentially

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3927/

Though I haven't tried it yet. I just assume that it just allows you to change the rtc at the Pokemon centers but I don't know if that's exactly how or if it works the way I assume. My thoughts were to try and see if there were workarounds for this issue like with that patch for Emerald which would just allow you to change the rtc in game whenever, so that if the clock resets whenever you play a different game with a rtc, you could just change it, but there doesn't seem to be patches like that with the other games. Even if Boktai allows you to change the rtc whenever, I'd be stuck when it comes to Friends of Mineral Town since you have to set your rtc at the beginning of the game, so wouldn't switching between the games break a few of them even with the Emerald patch? I don't know. I don't really care for playing Rockman EXE, so I'm trying to figure out if there's some way to be able to play Friends of Mineral Town, the Boktai games, and Emerald on the device without breaking the games with the rtc resetting and without too much of an inconvienance to get the rtc back for each individual game when playing.

I'm also curious as to the emulation on the drive. I know that NES is scrunched on the screen, but how does it and GB/GBC run on it? Is it consistent and decent emulation? Does saving work properly? I know Goomba doesn't emulate the rtc but I'm okay with that because I could just play FireRed or Leafgreen, I'm more curious about the emulation quality itself.

And do you think you'd be able ot transfer the games and save data from the X5 to the X7 whenever that comes out?

Thank you!

EZ-FLASH Omega has isolated RTC, Cheats, Reset back to menu without power cycling and fits flush in GBA/DSlite

True that.
The Omega trumps the X5.
I'm hopeful that the X7 will be epic, but that might be years away...

[Richardragon87]

EZ-FLASH Omega has isolated RTC, Cheats, Reset back to menu without power cycling and fits flush in GBA/DSlite

So did the Super Card SD but if we are talking about bonerfied real devices those don't count besides eventually clone knock offs eventually burn out with no way to continue using them... take the Super Card SD it had a reset back to menu prssing L/R/Start/Sselect without power cycling and perfectly fitted into the GBA/DSLite without sticking out the top like Yoshi's Topsy Turvy on GBA did but overtime due to how cheaply it was made it now only comes up with the text "Not found SD Card/Please turn GBA off" so in short these more expensive ones last for life (or well longer than a knock off one does even if the knock off looks superior it is infact inferior when you realize they originated from China)

Well case in point the Super Card SD could play PC Engine games on the go just by copying and pasting a found PCE file from a rom pack and loading it up on the Super Card SD menu while the X5 can only do it with premade pack sets... but that's a story for another time

[Shadow666]

EZ-FLASH Omega has isolated RTC, Cheats, Reset back to menu without power cycling and fits flush in GBA/DSlite

So did the Super Card SD but if we are talking about bonerfied real devices those don't count besides eventually clone knock offs eventually burn out with no way to continue using them... take the Super Card SD it had a reset back to menu prssing L/R/Start/Sselect without power cycling and perfectly fitted into the GBA/DSLite without sticking out the top like Yoshi's Topsy Turvy on GBA did but overtime due to how cheaply it was made it now only comes up with the text "Not found SD Card/Please turn GBA off" so in short these more expensive ones last for life (or well longer than a knock off one does even if the knock off looks superior it is infact inferior when you realize they originated from China)

Well case in point the Super Card SD could play PC Engine games on the go just by copying and pasting a found PCE file from a rom pack and loading it up on the Super Card SD menu while the X5 can only do it with premade pack sets... but that's a story for another time

well there is no clones of the EZ-Flash Omega so it wont have those problems unlike the supercrap SD

[nuu]

I was wondering just how the absence of isolated rtc exactly affects when you play multiple games with a real time clock.

There are only like 5 games with an RTC after all; the Gen. 3rd Pokemon titles (I'd play Emerald), Boktai 1 & 2, Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, and Rockman EXE.

The total number of RTC titles is closer to 20. Harvest Moon FoMT and Rockman EXE are not among them. Harvest Moon uses a virtual in-game time which is unrelated to real time. If it used real time you would miss events and stuff in the game unless you played 24/7. Harvest Moon GB (a GB and GBC game, not GBA) is the only HM game I know that uses an RTC, and it's used with a feature of the harvest sprites which (if enabled) will work your farm while you are not playing. Rockman EXE 4.5 do seem to use an RTC. Maybe that's the games you where thinking about.

The problem with the 3 Pokemon games is that they only use the RTC as a reference and has no way to set it. Only when you start a new game they reset it (to date: 2001-01-01 and time: 00:00), and you are able to set the time which is only saved as a time difference between the RTC and whatever you set. While other games like Boktai uses the time and date saved in the RTC directly. So when you start a new Pokemon game it will reset the RTC and games like Boktai will be need to set again. And when you set it in Boktai it will mess up Pokemon since it's based on a time difference value.

The solution is to make sure the time difference value in Pokemon is as close to 0 as possible. This is done simply by setting the wall clock at the start of the game to a few minutes after midnight (depending how long the intro took, the RTC is apparently reset before the intro). Do this every time you start a new Pokemon game in any of the games. After this you can just set the RTC to whatever you want in Boktai or whatever. Preferably you should at least set it to a later date than 2002-01-02, because  doing that fixes the berry glitch.