The EZ Flash 3 in1 packs quite the bang for the buck once you understand how the damn thing works. For some reason yet unknown to me, there is little information on the 3 in 1 web page, not to mention the fact that though you receive a box, you do not receive a manual what so ever. So basically, who ever built these were smart enough to engineer the hardware, and to write data to be flashed to the roms, but they can't even write up a simple tutorial...
...I'm still amazed personally.
Anyhow, what this little device does is adds extra Memory to your DS so that you can use the Opera web browser for instance. Considering that I have a M3 Simply, I NEED something like this to use Opera because my M3 Simply does not come with it's own extra RAM.
Secondly, it has built in rumble features for games such as Metroid Pinball, though from what I understand, it will reduce your battery life if used, and considering that I'm on a hand held, I really don't want "force feedback" anyhow.
The third and most exciting feature of this $20 wonder is that it gives you acess to your library of Commercial GBA titles, as well as a fair share of the Homebrew GBA titles, but this is where the confusion begins if you are not familiar with the prodcut. You see the 3 in 1 does not have a memory card, so it appears that there is no way to transfer data to it.
Also when you fire up your DS with the 3 in 1 in the SLOT2 port, you'll notice right away that the DS does not even recognize that your cart is present in the slot.
What needs to be done here is that you will take the Micro SD out of your M3 Simply, R4, or other 3 in 1compatable SLOT1 card, put it into your PC and make a folder in root called "GBA".
Inside GBA you will drop the GBA rom filest that you are interested in running. So for example we'll grab Another World aka Out of this World which is now opensource and free, and we'll take Super Mario Advance 4 which we'll just assume everyone actually owns or has owned by now.
So anyhow, legal matters aside, you will have a copy of Another World and Super Mario Advanced 4 in your GBA directory on the Memory card of your M3 Simply or what have you.
Next you will want to extract and place Rudolf's 3 in 1 Tool into the ROOT of your memory card after which you will put it into your DS, make sure both your SLOT1 and 2 cards are in place, then boot up your DS, and enter the menu that lists your NDS programs, in my case I will press the left most icon since I'm on a Simply.
Now on the screen, you should see Rudolf's 3 in 1 Tool listed amongst your NDS programs. Go ahead an launch that, and that will bring you into a nother software menu that lists all the GBA title you dropped into the GBA folder in your Memory card!
Go ahead and hightlight Another World then press A to load the game. At this point the game should load up fine, and it will create a save file in the GBA directory of your memory card.
Next if you reboot, enter back into the 3 in 1 Tool, scrool down and attempt to run Super Mario Advanced 4, you will notice that it will complain about the RAM being corruprt or what have you. What you will need to do is load up GBATA on your PC, load up the Super Mario Advanced 4 ROM into it. For most games in order to fix the save option, all you need to do is goto the SRAM PATCHER tab, and tell it to patch the ROM, then it will put out a file called output_SMA4.GBA or what ever, which you will rename, copy back to the GBA directory on your memory card, and you should be all set to go.
Unfortunatly for Super Mario Advacned 4, this does not seem to be enough. It is the only game that required an extra step for met to get to work, so I figured I'd use it as an example.
After you have patched SMA4's SRAM, you will need to load up the new Output ROM into GBATA again, then apply the ROM TRIMMER feature, then copy it to the GBA folder on your memory card, boot it up, and it should work, though this game in particular will still complain about memory issues, it should work.
As I was saying all other titles do not require a patch at all, or only require the INTRO removing, or SRAM to be patched in order to work 100% OK. Legend of Zelda - The Minish Cap, is an exmaple of a game that WILL only need it's SRAM patched in order to play.
There is one title I'm aware of that will not load via the normal method, no matter what you do. That title would be Kingdom Hearts. For this what you will need to do in order to get it to work is go ahead an patch the SRAM, the copy it to your GBA folder, boot up your DS, run Rudolf's 3 in 1 Tool, scroll down the list of GBA titles, hightlight Kingdom Hearts, but instead of running it, you will press the RIGHT shoulder button 1 time, which will put you into NOR mode.
You were in PSRAM mode, which I have no clue what that means, but what it does it allow you to load up ROMs like you are probably used to. Basically you have a list of game which you can click on to load, and it will create a SAV file for the game on your memory card, and so the story goes, life is happy.
Unfortunatly there are a few titles such as Kingdom Hearts, that will require to be flashed into the 3 in 1's ROM in order to run. What this does is basically makes the 3 in 1 act as a Single Game cart. In NOR mode you'll highlight your game title you wish to play, you will then press A, but this time the game will copy into the 3 in 1's ROM which can take a little while. Once it is done you can at any time, remove your slot 1 device, and boot up with only the 3 in1 in SLOT2. As you'll soon realize, the DS now recognizes the fact that the 3 in 1 is in the SLOT2 port, and it will allow you to boot and play any GBA title you have copied to it, which in this case will be Kingdom Hearts.
Mind you, just because Kingdom Hearts is flashed onto the card, does not mean you can not go back and play other GBA titles via the other method. You can keep Kingdom Hearts or what ever flashed to the 3 in 1, and still acess all the 3 in 1's other features, infact once Kingdom Hearts is flashed to the 3 in 1, you can feel free to delete the rom file from the GBA folder as you will need it no longer. Just take note that Kingdom Hearts will now store it's game save in the 3 in 1's internal memory, so should you write another game to the 3 in1 in NOR mode, you WILL loose that game save!
One thing you will notice the next time you use Rudolf's 3 in 1 tool is that it will still be in NOR mode. Well if you press the Right Trigger again, you'll go into the Rumble Setting menu, but if you press the Left Trigger, you'll eventually end up back in PSRAM mode where you'll see the contents of your GBA folder again.
All directions for entering and using the different modes on the 3 in1 will be listed on the bottome DS screen.
Now there is also an alternative program to Rudolf's 3 in 1 Tool. The alternative program is NDStation_v1.1. What it does is allow you to create a NDS file with a GBA game wrapped inside so that your GBA titles will run as NDS software. What it will do is take any game over 16Mb, and it will boot that game into NOR mode, meaning it will take forever to boot, after which it will have flashed onto your 3 in 1 card to be booted from GBA mode.
This is pretty pointless, though on the other hand, if you have any GBA titles 16Mb and under such as Minish Cap or the Castlevania titles, what you can do is patch the ROM's SRAM using GBATA if needed, then turn the ROM into a NDS file using NDStation_v1.1, after which you can merely enter into NDS mode, but rather than load up Rudolf's 3 in 1 Tool, you simply load up the new NDS file you created from the GBA game, and so long as your game works with this new tool, it will boot up just fine as if it was infact a NDS game, which is quite the nice feature because now you can have your GBA Mario's together and in the same list as your NDS Mario titles. Or you can do this with Castlevania, the upcoming Zelda, or any other GBA and NDS series. The only down side is it is new and does not have the same level of compatability as Rudolf's tool, though then again the only title that acted up on me using NDStation was Super Mario Advanced 4 which was tricky enough to get running even with Rudolf's program, so all in all the compatability is really good, but I thought it would be nice to mention as it may require a bit of experimentation to get a ROM going every now and then. Speaking of which, you may well NEED to use GBATA's ROM TRIMMER feature in order to get 16Mb titles working!
One final note. User x999x has informed me that certain Homebrew does not work propperly on the 3 in1. You will know this because the Nintendo Logo at boot time will be all scrambled. In order to get titles such as this working you will again use the GBATA ROM tool to fix the header and you should be all set to go!
I can't think of much else to explain, feeling very sleepy. Feel free to contact me with questions. I'll try to get back with you as soon as I can!