So I bought a DS... now what?

[trevelyn]

hah! happy birthday MATTGSX!

     First Id like to say that I like Mac's but Apple is a shitty company and have downgraded as far as their hardware goes.  one example being switching from Atheros to Broadcom.  What a joke.  And the act they put on over third party apps for their phone is childish.  Apple sucks.  I have an old white 13" macbook with nice hardware in it though, and its the best computer ive ever owned (minus the fact theirs no "insert" key or "printscreen" etc..  Secondly check out meh post about my DS upgrade in the hack board! xD

[trevelyn]

Hey I have the M3 Real now, and can boot 2 GBA games from it - both 32Mbit (super mario world && Klonoa 1)
It's quite cool but theres a lot Home brew that doesnt work at all, and the emulators like Doom, flashback, etc, dont work either.  BUT the good thing is that mp3's can be played no matter the sample bitrate, and - NO MORE PATCHING WITH MO OR MAX CRASS METHOD!!! nope! you just dump the ROM.nds into the NDS directory and EVERY single nds ROM i have tried works flawlessly.. very cool, but sadly for some reason wished more home brew worked like SvSIP and GBA games worked, like FF1 && FF2.

[MattGSX]

Yeah, M3's have a notoriously low compatibility for GBA games and homebrew. The R4 is even worse with it, though. The problem has to do with the firmware and the way the system loads ROM headers for commercial game compatibility, since they use clean ROM dumps that don't require patching. The cards that have the best homebrew support are the ones that don't play clean ROM dumps, such as the Supercard CF/SD Slot-2, the CycloDS-SD Slot-2, or even the MMD using a homebrew launcher like Channels and either FlashMe or Chism's alternate DS Firmware. In short, most other Slot-2 devices

I likes your DS hahks. They makes me happy in the pants.

My current set-up:
DS Fat, firmware ver. ?
FlashMe "Stealth" (normal health + safety, boots from Slot-2 in DS mode to remove the need for a NoPass and extend battery life)
CycloDS-SD, running Supercard firmware 2.65 (no auto DLDI patching - I'll explain below)
MiniVMac, 4MB version
GeosDS B+W mode (doesn't support virtual disks, so pretty much useless)
Bunjalloo
DSOrganize (see problems below)
Moonshell (it's actually on my MMD, but whatever)
NesDS
NethackDS
DSCompress (gzip compression/decompression tool)
DLDI (allowing me to patch programs using my DS, bypassing the need for a PC)
some commercial games

Since the old Cyclo products are just rip-offs of Supercards, they can use the Supercard firmware to improve commercial DS/GBA compatibility. This works because the Cyclo reads the same headers off of commercial games that are created when you patch a ROM with the Supercard "magic" patcher. The other cool thing about the Supercard firmware is that if you AREN'T using it for commercial games, you can have it boot a default file if you rename it to BOOT_SC.nds or something like that.
However, the Cyclo doesn't support the Supercard's DLDI. Though I have the Cyclo DLDI patch on the root of my card, I was still running into some problems with homebrew that auto-patched. I think it's Supercard's way of trying to fuck over "fake Supercard" manufacturers. That just means that while I can run DS-Organize, I can't actually open programs from it. Fuck that, anyway. Bunjalloo supports caching and runs faster than Shaun's browser, and DS-Organize has this really bad problem with libfat always getting corrupted. I do like to use it for the homebrew database, though, especially with the ability to use custom databases.

It's also kinda funny, but the SC firmware boots all unfamiliar file extensions in GBA mode (.nes, .src, .srm, etc, etc), and you can actually create custom firmware for it if you save it as a .bin (which is the same way Cyclo created their slot-2 firmware)

I'm still having problems with my shoulder buttons being really inconsistent on my DS. I'm not really that great with electronics, so I'm not sure if I can just clean the contacts or if I'm going to have to strip wires or what, but do you think it's really worth it? I might just try to find a DS Lite, or switch over to the GP2X once the price drops a bit.

[trevelyn]

youre doing all of that without an LED backlight?  go for the DS Lite man, Top lit just doesnt cut it...
also those L and R buttons are soldered on mush buttons similar to the push buttons soldered onto the sides of Cellphone Mobo's.  I know cos of the mod I did to Ethermines DS.  And the M3 Real has built in patchers that work great, but like I said I cant play games that are over 32Mbit.  I am just sooooo happy I dont have to go through that shitty Arm7 process anymore.

My last memories of my Max Media Dock were patching the batch of games that came out with Mortal Kombat DS.  I spent about 20 minutes per game (about 7 games or so) to find out that the patch work did nothing and it was all a waste of time.  I ordered the M3's and took the MMD out side with a hammer and laid it on the street.  I called up my friends brother and asked him if he wanted it with the hammer held high in the air.  He said "yeah man, I wanna try homebrew.. " and i took it back inside and put it on the stand next to my dorr where i put outgoing mail.  The M3 has played EVERY single NDS ROM i have tried and really thats all i want the DS for anymore, the gimmecky stuff was fun, like SvSIP, and DOOM, but i just wanna play games now.

Youre right about the compatibility though, i get kinda mad.  But I look at the M3 and see that it says "movie player" on it, and not "pirated ROM player" and im fine with that.

NDS Lite is teh smex.

[MattGSX]

haha. I just blew some compressed air into my DS and it works like a charm again. Take THAT, need to upgrade!

Seriously, though, I really don't play outside or during the day, and the DS Lite firmware is hard as hell to flash (shorting out SL1 is a bitch on them), so I don't like dealing with it.