- Introduction
The EFA or Extreme Flash Advance is without a doubt is among the best Flash Carts in the market making this product a new revelation in products of the year 2004. Making its appearance out of nowhere, this unit has a long road ahead.

This product, with its peculiar characteristics and its precise design makes it perfectly stand side by side among the best Flash units around. In this report, we did a thorough analysis of the unit highlighting the software and its compatibility.

- Presentation
The first impression you get of the EFA couldn’t be better. The unit is presented inside a metallic gray compact wooden box with a fine finish, a whole new novelty in the Flash Linkers world, with makes us realize what this fantastic unit has to offer from the start.

 
 

Once you open the box, you can find the Flash Cart and two USB cables with mini USB connections to make a direct connection to the unit. It also includes several cables of different lengths to fit the laptop and desktop user’s needs.

- Tech Specs

Name:	EFA - Extreme Flash Advance.
Capacity:	128, 256 & 512Mbits.
Linker:	Direct conection to the Cart by Usb port.
S-Ram / Eeprom:	Complete Support, 2Mbits on 256Mbits unit and 4 for 512.
Date / Time:	Both, supported by hardware.
Compatibility	Very High, almost 100%
Power needed:	200mA
Notes:	Bicolor led (red/green) on the cart indicates the state of the operation during the flash/delete.

- Instalation
To install the drivers and the software is very simple, all you need to do is to connect the unit to your system and the system will ask you for drivers and after a few seconds the unit will be ready for use. At the beginning the drivers are compatible with all the different versions of Windows that support a USB port.

We must remember that the unit that we are using also uses rechargeable batteries, which must be charged for 8 hours before using by connecting the unit to the USB port to charge.

- Software
The EFA uses his own EFA Client 1.0 as a principal software, which is without a doubt one of the most user friendly software’s and the most practical programs that you can find in the world of Flash Linkers. These are some of its characteristics:

- Automatic detect type and size for saves.
- Automatic Trimp ROMs. (intros,trainers,nonrequired space).
- Boot Support (Boot-a-Mat Advance).
- Support for Zip files.

The EFA Client support to set manually the save type and size for every game so will dont be more dificult that make some clicks work with future comercial games.

The EFA has a simple menu selector with different tittles were you can make different adjustments like changing the date and the time of the clock. To sum it all up, the software is clear and simple to use which makes it easy for a person with or without any experience in Flash Linkers.

- Compatibility
The EFA has become one of the most compatible units that we have has an opportunity to see, it’s compatible to 99% of al titles in the market. These are some of the specific test that the unit was submitted.

- Eeprom Test
We compared the units support by using hardware for memory type Eeprom; we chose two different recent versions like v_122 and v_124 to use as reference in this titles:

- Boktai - The Sun is in Your Hand.
- Mario & Luigi - Super Star Saga.
- Need for Speed Underground.
- The Sims - Bustin Out.
- Onimusha Tactics.

- Eeprom v_122
- Eeprom v_124

In both test the EFA did not face any problems supporting the last different models of memory Eeprom known at the moment.

- Flash Test
It supports about 1Mbit of memory for every save, which is one of the novelties of this Flash unit. To prove it we used the following different and compared the EFA functions of memory of 512kb and 1Mbit as the different recent versions of memory Flash that we could find in a commercial cart.

- Yu-Gi-Oh! - Dungeon Dice Monsters.
- Premier Manager 2003-04.
- Final Fantasy Tactics.
- Super Mario Adv 4.
- Sword of Mana.
- Sonic Battle.

- Flash v_126
- Flash 512 v_130
- Flash 512 v_131
- Flash 1M v_102

In all of the different test the EFA unit responded with great satisfaction, the software automatically recognized the size and type of memory it every game. Throughout the different test we proved that the software did not accomplish any operation to patch the games to work of the different types of memory, we dump the games laters and no change on the CRC was made, so this support is REALLY by hardware.

- S-ram Test
To test the most recent versions of memory S-Ram 256 and 512Kbits available in commercial packaging, for the different test we used the following titles:

- RockMan EXE 4 Tournament Blue Moon.
- RockMan EXE 4 Tournament Red Sun.
- Harvest Moon - Mineral Town.
- Minna No Ojisama.
- Ashita No Joe.

- S-Ram v_112
- S-Ram v_113
- S-Ram F v_103

- RTC Test
To test the EFA function with different games that use a clock with accurate time or RTC, for that we used two new Pokemon series games like Boktai- The Sun is in your Hand. We used a clean free release of patches that make the clock work in an artificial way; in both cases the EFA response was satisfactory.

- Test Pokémon Rubí & Zafiro
- Test Boktai - The Sun is...

Once the game was process and tested we proceeded to dump it and compare the CRC with an original release to compare how effective it would be with the flashing software without adding any patch and the RTC function woks without any intervention by the user.

- Emulator Test
We tested the EFA unit with different popular emulators that are available for Gameboy Advance, this way we can test its support to this type of program, as well as to see if it automatically detects the software size and type of memory it uses for each program.

- Goomba
- Pocket Nes
- Dr Sms
- Pce Advance

- Pogoshell Test
Pogoshell is one of the most usefull utils for the Flash Linkers users, we test EFA's compatibiity with the lastest versions of this shell

- Pogoshell 1.3
- Pogoshell 1.35
- Pogoshell 2.0 beta 1

The EFA is only compatible with the lastest versión of Pogoshell and work without any problem.

- Flash / Dump Times
We took notes of the different times for Flash and Dump operations on EFA by using different ROMs of different sizes between 32,64,128 and 256Mbits. The result was the overall times for use during 5 consecutive operations that were done with the unit. The times of the Flash included the flash, erase and charge of the loader by the program; these were the results that were obtained:

Tamaño:	Flash:	Dump:
32Mbits	0:35s	0:25s
64Mbits	1:08s	0:50s
128Mbits	2:12s	1:39s
256Mbits	4:10s	3:06s

The EFA goes above its direct competitors, reducing the time of the flash in about 2 minutes compared to the Flash 2 Advance unit or EZ Flash, to flash 256Mbits cart does not reach 260 seconds.

- Software / Roms used

Software:	Roms:
- EFA Client 1.0 & Drivers. - Pogoshell 1.35 - Pogoshell 1.3 - PCE Advance 5.1 - Pocket Nes 9.9 - Goomba 1.8 - Dr Sms 5.0	0041 0606 0898 1161 1194 1212 1246 1248 1267 1268 1305 1312 1319 1320 1335 1338 1342 1347 1351

All the test on RTC releases was done without any kind of patch to activate the RTC.

- Notas finales
Just out of curiosity, I just showed how was impossible to flash the cart the GBA SP because the USB port energy passes directly to the GBA SP and the unit does not start correctly. During all the different test of the real time clock (RTC) it behaved correctly and it did not suffer any type of unwanted adjustment.

- Agradecimientos
Many thanks to Futura Videojuegos for the reference unit for test purposes, thx too for Tony Cool for some information about another Flash units.

Logan McCloud.