AgaCart has been a great alternative while we wait for the Lynx GD (Game Drive) to arrive, but it's always bothered me that it takes a long time to load ROMs. Well no more! There has been a new firmware update that makes ROMs load over 2x faster, as well as other improvements.
Below are the combined change log notes for all of the firmware updates to AgaCart so far...
Changes in v3 version:
I have changed two things - now you can put any number of subdirectories and files with any extension on the SD card, the cartridge will see only those with the extension .lyx.
The second change involves a different operation of the quick start function, for details, please refer to the instructions.
Changes in v4 version:
- improved support for newer SD cards
- double the speed of loading files
- improved button operation
- shortening the waiting time for programming after choosing a game
Changes in v5 version:
- increased number of supported files to 299, selecting a file above 199 extinguishes "1" and lights the upper segment at the position of hundreds of display. After this update you will need to re-program "speed dial" because the addresses in the memory will change.
The v5 update can be applied without having to apply other updates as it will contain all the previous version updates too. The file is downloadable from here. Once the file is downloaded and extracted there will be two directories...
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To apply the update, copy the agacart.bin file from the agacart_V5 directory to the SD card you use with the AgaCart. Insert the SD card it into the AgaCart, then insert the AgaCart into your Lynx. Turn on the Lynx. When it boots, the letter P will illuminate temporarily on the AgaCart display while the firmware updates.
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Once the P on the AgaCart stops flashing you may get EE displayed, that is OK. Turn off your Lynx and make sure to delete the agacart.bin file from the SD card.
The above process may not work with new/faster SD cards and may require you to use an old/slow SD card (that's what we had to do, using an ancient 128Mb card).
So what are the results? Well lets see...before the update, Paperboy was taking an average of 8.1 secondsto load. After the update this time dropped to 3.8 seconds. That's more than 2x of an improvement! So it's really worth trying this update out. It's still not an instant load like an original cart, but it's much, much better than with the default firmware!
Also don't forget we have a huge selection of ROMs you can download from our game database and you can use our LNX2LYX conversion tool to make ROMs that are compatible with the AgaCart. You can add your name to the AgaCart order list on this forum thread: "AgaCart" my version of the Atari Lynx SD cartridge.
Update - There were some mistakes in the above procedure in the original article (lost in translation!) but we've corrected it now, enjoy! 😻