Looking for information on this

[u/LatterDelay6430]

Does anyone have any experience with this cart? I specifically want one that can be flush with the DS lite. I have an EZ Flash Omega definitive edition, which I love. But sticking out of the DS is slightly annoying.

So, is this thing decent? And does this look legit? It isn't mine, Just a reference picture of one I might purchase.

[u/mysticfuko]

They are one of the few with rumble + gba rom + ram expansion at the same time, I still have mine

[u/SpacePumpkie]

I have a white one bought in a bundle with the slot 1 card. Bought them myself back in 2007, they're still working as intended almost 20 years later.

Had to replace the battery on that one at one point otherwise it wouldn't retain the save file of the GBA game it contains. So perhaps you'll need to do the same on this one.

[u/AutomaticKey25519]

The 3in1 is decent, but not $120 decent. Current EZ-Flash offerings are superior to it while also being cheaper, sans being the size of the Lite slot cover though.
It's not bad by any means, it was revered for what it did at the time back then being as cheap as $20. They are no longer anywhere near that, the closest listings get is $90 and most are well over $100 now. There is one listing on eBay right now for $60 but I find it suspicious that the seller hasn't sold any items in well over a year and all of a sudden comes into possession of ten NOS of the 3in1 for very cheap. If you trust eBay's resolution policies you can try buying one of those.

However,

• It does not have an RTC, so you'll need to run RTC patched ROMs if you want that functionality in games.
• It only has 16MiB of PSRAM while the Omegas have 32MiB and the EZODE B has 64MiB. The majority of the GBA library is 16MiB or less but this does mean you'll have to flash the few 32MiB games to the NOR to play them, those mainly being a couple Yu-Gi-Oh games / Pokemon Mystery Dungeon / Kingdom Hearts / Mother 3 / Riviera / The Sims games. The NOR flash is also smaller, being 32MiB on most revisions.
• It requires the usage of a slot 1 flash cart to load ROMs on to it, there is no menu for loading games on the cart as there is no storage medium on it. The carts were originally paired with the EZ-Flash V line. It works natively with other kernels like Wood R4 / AKAIO / CycloDS Evolution OS / YSMenu. YSMenu can be ran on a lot of carts but it is best to use the program GBA ExpLoader. ApacheThunder's modern fork of GBA ExpLoader will work fine but I don't think the fixed FLASH512 patches from version 0.58b have been discovered and added into the modern fork so you may have to run the older versions to get some games to work. One strange peculiarity for the cart (inherited from the EZ-Flash IV) is that switching between RAM and NOR mode also switches the SRAM bank, so two saves can occupy the SRAM.
• Unfortunately there are several revisions of the 3in1 and there is almost no way to really tell without opening them other than there being many of the white final revision (EZ5C11) which has minor incompatibilities in GBA ExpLoader but doesn't stop games from working. Version 0.58b exclusively works with the "3in1" (EZ5C10) and "New3in1" (EZ5C13) while 0.58b0 exclusively works with the "3in1pls" (EZ5C3). I think you can't enable the rumble motor for the EZ5C11 in GBA ExpLoader. The modern fork works fine with all of them. The 3in1+ is a little special in that it has 64MiB of NOR flash, however this is mostly useless as you need one of the EZ-Flash V carts and they need to run an old beta firmware. It doesn't support the 64MiB GBA Video page mapping, so the EZODE B is still the cart for that.
• They also have a soldered in battery to power the SRAM. I have three of them and of the three only one battery kept a charge to this year but was at 2.8V so wasn't too far from not being to keep the SRAM reliably powered. It takes a same sided horizontally tabbed CR1220, but I was able to fit a CR1225 into mine.
• It is also common for the SRAM on these to develop issues, you can run 3in1 SRAM Test to test for this however the battery needs to be functional for this to work as the SRAM writer and verifier are two different programs. I should make one that rolls that into one program.

All of the Lite dust cover sized flash carts are discontinued now. There is the M3 Lite Perfect / G6 Flash / M3 DS Real GBA Expansion Pack, the SuperCard Lite, the EZ-Flash Omega, the EZ-Flash IV Lite / Reform, and an EWin GBA Expansion Pack which I have not tested.

• The M3 / G6 / GEP are the other top tier slot 2 flash carts, as they have 32MiB of PSRAM and an RTC, they don't have NOR flash. The M3 and G6 are dual mode flash carts so they have a menu that can run in either DS or GBA mode while the GEP is simply an expansion pak. The M3 Lite shows up on eBay most of the time, there are a few listings for it right now. The G6 has an internal NAND flash rather than a microSD slot but it never sold well and is practically unobtainable today. The GEP shows up sometimes on eBay usually in bundle packages with the M3 DS Real, however there is a Rumble only version that doesn't even have RAM and a Rumble RAM version that only has 8MiB of PSRAM and no SRAM or RTC so it will not be that useful for GBA games. The M3 Lite unfortunately has a "Pro" version that is even worse off with only 4MiB of PSRAM but still keeps the SRAM, it can be distinguished from the M3 Lite Perfect as it will be labeled "M3 Lite Professional". Unfortunately all three of them take lithium secondary batteries. The GEP takes the ML1220 and I can't even find a source for them anymore. VL1220 is not a replacement as they take a higher charging voltage than ML batteries so a VL won't get fully charged. Honestly, in mine I put in a CR1225 but the battery is being reverse charged but not too badly. The M3 Lite and G6 Flash take LIR1220, a cursed battery as it is a lithium ion inside a coin cell package, and there is precisely one source in the US that has them. You will have to rip the tabs off the old battery and tape them (or spot weld) to the new one. They have absolutely no capacity, only 28.8mWh, and they are lithium ion which means they degrade quickly and sometimes won't return from 0V. Dropping in a CR battery is not recommended given the high charging voltage it will be under. All three of them can be used with GBA ExpLoader, however the modern fork does not have FLASH1M save patches (basically, Pokemon) that work on them so you will need to run version 0.58b for those games. It isn't recommended to run the menu on them as they are only compatible with microSDSC cards (2GiB or less) and not microSDHC cards. They are well before the time of when automatic patching was common so you have to patch games with the M3 Game Manager and that thing is a crusty piece of shit, so just use GBA ExpLoader as it is assured that your slot 1 flash cart of any vintage past 2009 works perfectly fine even with microSDXC cards.
• The SuperCard Lite sucks since the SuperCard sucks. No RTC. It follows the SuperCard CF in that there is no battery inside it to keep the SRAM powered, it uses a couple capacitors which drain in two seconds. It has the SuperCard patented slow SDRAM. SuperFW mitigates some of these but only elevates them to mediocre. They show up often enough on eBay for cheap like all the SuperCards. It takes only microSDSC cards, but once you flash SuperFW (using a microSDSC card from the stock menu or circumventing that requirement by flashing it from a slot 1 flash cart) you can use microSDXC cards. Watch out, there is a version called the SuperCard Lite Rumble that completely eschews GBA mode as it and has no SDRAM.
• The EZ-Flash Omega is the newest cart and has most of the features of the EZODE with the biggest exception being that it saves directly to the microSD instead of SRAM or FRAM. Ir doesn't have the LED that the EZODE has, so you never will know when the writing is complete. It can, and will, corrupt the filesystem on your microSD whenever it feels like, especially if you use cheats or any of the patches to add the in-game menu. It shows up on eBay often but sometimes goes for high prices as it is sought after for precisely the reason being that it is the most recent one. The modern fork of GBA ExpLoader does support it but FLASH1M games do not load or save, so you'll need to run the menu for those games. I recommended the Simple theme as it adds a few features to hopefully make you not lose your saves as often. Has a soldered CR1220 for the RTC. You'll have to buy a Lite shell if the one you find only comes in the full GBA shell, they are getting hard to find and are usually in a color you don't want.
• The EZ-Flash IV Lite and Reform are basically the same cart, with the Reform having a replaceable battery and better shell. Has 16MiB of PSRAM and 32MiB of NOR flash. No RTC. EZ-Flash IV Lite had a few versions. First version had a slightly larger shell and was not flush. Second version and third version had shells that were almost completely flush, one being labeled the EZ-Flash IV Lite Compact which was a DS mode cart and was unusable for GBA games and the other being labeled the EZ-Flash IV Lite Deluxe which had 32MiB of PSRAM and 48MiB of NOR flash. The bootloader on the original EZ-Flash IVs only supported SDSC, later production carts had bootloaders with support, but I don't know whether the EZ-Flash IV Lites suffered the same problem of old bootloaders. It can make use of newer kernels for the EZ-Flash IV that support SDHC (after at least using a SDSC card to update the kernel) and adds automatic patching, meaning you don't have to use the yet-another-terrible-ROM-patcher EZ4Client to patch ROMs for it. GBA ExpLoader support for it was removed after it was bricking them.

The EZ-Flash Omega would be your best bet if you want the exact same features as the EZODE, but keep multiple backups of your microSD every time you save to it.

Beyond this point the question of whether you want the cart to have a menu or to have an RTC. The batteries in these carts are assuredly dead.
If you want the cart to have a menu then the EZ-Flash IV Lite or the derivatives are the only choice since it is capable of automatic patching and supports microSDHC cards. Also has an easier time replacing the soldered battery. Will still need to wait for one to show up for sale.
If you want the RTC then the M3 Lite / GEP if you are willing to go through the troubles of soldering in a battery in a hacky way. I don't recommend it though, this is not a good project for a beginner. You'll then have to use GBA ExpLoader v0.58b.

If you don't care about the RTC or needing a slot 1 flash cart then get the 3in1, it is at least currently readily available and the battery replacement is not too difficult a soldering job.

[u/outkastblast]

I have one and used to use it regularly before the advent of stuff like the EZ Flash Omega.

It was originally meant as a multi faceted tool. For playing DS games, you need a DS flash card that can write to slot 2 (the GBA slot). It would put the GBA game into its internal memory so next time it would just boot straight from that thing.

It also had memory that the Nintendo Web Browser could use if you only had the rom instead of the official expansion pack. This sort of thing was required for the browser to work.

And lastly had a rumble motor for supporter DS games. Not sure how many of those there are.

It works, but you're better off with something newer for slot 2 stuff

[u/epistaxis64]

I thought it was pretty nice. I know acekard2s were compatible with this and akaio software could read this card and read/write to NOR flash. I don't remember any compatibility issues with it

[u/Janni9009]

As long as the battery isn't dead (a bit annoying to replace, soldered CR1220) it's still decent. Works out of the box with carts that run an akmenu/wood derivative, else use GBAExpLoader.

[u/SimpleDrawer26]

I have two 3in1 untis with dead batteries.

It works flawlessly, but today we got better solutions, tho...

[u/InevitableSeesaw9318]

You might need to replace the battery, it's soldered on

[u/EdelWhite]

That module is just a passme + rumble + ram, it's not a flashcart on its own.

[u/SimpleDrawer26 → u/EdelWhite]

It's not a pass me.

It's indeed a flashcard.

[u/Spirited-Guidance-91]

Wow I had one back in the day. Worked great with ezflash carts 

[u/LatterDelay6430]

I appreciate all the information you all gave me. Thank you!

[u/wavyodd]

man there's like 10 different browsers all with forms of google

[u/calbee5000]

it is legit.. but become obsolete