We had a DS homebrew thread but hell if I could find it.

I have one and run a few DS apps including moonshell for my multimedia needs. It's quite awesome, get it.

A friend of mine has an R4. I messed around with his DS and I didn't like it. None of the emulators ran at full speed including the NES. It was torturous playing Super Mario. Perhaps his setup was flawed, but it completely turned me off of the R4.

I've read that actually flashing your DS, though risky, is a better way to prepare your DS for homebrew.

any hints on where to buy a card, and where to find homebrew apps?

Try http://www.realhotstuff.com. I bought my R4 from there.

I noticed the site www.jandaman.com has them in stock. You can either search on R4 or navigate Nintendo DS then click on the NDS DevKit category to see it (and related products).

I've never bought anything from the site, but over the past 2 - 3 years I've browsed it from time to time out of curiousity.

Has anyone ever ordered from it? I can't vouch for the site one way or the other.

What's a really good, really *basic*(treat me like I know nothing and work from there) site on DS Homebrew? It intrigues me, but every time I've looked into it, my eyes start to glaze over when the nitty gritty details start being talked about. Maybe it's just a fear of turning a fun little game system into a brick that makes me go dumb.

It's alive. IT'S ALIVE!

So, here's the thing. I have way too many DS games. It's a plague upon my life. I'd like to eliminate the need to carry dozens of DS carts with me. I want an R4.

I haven't kept up with the DS homebrew scene so I don't know what is recent. I've heard about such things as M3, SuperCard, Passme and how they all serve different functions. Do I just buy this thing, rip the games and drag and drop? Or is there "more" than what is explained?

I just want to make sure I'm looking at the right item and don't need anything else. Any help would be appreciated.

I actually got an R4 card about 2 weeks ago. They are very easy to use, all you need to do is create the appropriate directories on your microSD card and drag and drop things into the appropriate folders. Setting it up took less than 10 minutes. I watched a youtube video that walks you through it but it's so simple, the video was overkill.

If you visit some homebrew sites, they mention DLDI patching but I think the R4 does that automatically. I've put homebrew onto my R4 that has readme files saying that you need to DLDI patch and it's worked without me doing anything special.

As far as game ROMs, I don't know how you'd rip your cartridges but if you have physical copies of games, there are places you can get the ROMs for them (technically these are pirate sites but if you own the game I don't think there's anything morally wrong with getting the ROMs, other than supporting the sites.) I have ROMs of some of the games I already own. They all work great and are pretty small (32 - 128MB) so you can put a lot onto a single microSD card.

One warning is that the R4 doesn't support microSD cards larger than 2GB, so don't buy anything bigger than that.

Also, Edwin linked this homebrew site a few posts up. It's the best one I've visited.

Mystic--

I just bought a new CycloDS cart... the R4 is a decent cart, but the support team isn't there much these days, and it's generally considered to be an "aging" cart. Part of the issue is the cap on the memcard size, it has a few issues with wifi download play, some homebrew, etc. It's been a pretty great cart for me so far, but I decided to move on up to the CycloDS since dealsextreme is selling them for $35.

Only problem with DX is the shipping times, apparently... so I probably won't get the new card for a few weeks. If you're interested, I would be happy to sell you my R4 card in a few weeks... after the new one arrives. I realize I just spent several sentences saying why I was getting a new one, so I understand how you might be skeptical. Even so, like I said, I'm still using the R4 card right now, and almost all major games have been supported (a few haven't, but so far it's mostly been a few Japanese only roms).

There *IS* a way to rip ROMs and SAV files, but it's beyond my scope of knowledge. I tried researching it and there was some way to copy the ROM using the DS's wifi... but it required a lot of fiddling that I wasn't too capable of. There are also different carts that plug into the GBA slot on the DS... THESE might allow you to rip from the DS slot to the GBA slot, but again, I'm not sure.

Oh, btw... gbatemp.net is a pretty good source of news and reviews about DS flashcarts.

EDIT:

I've found very little worthwhile DS homebrew... esp. compared to the PSP homebrew scene.

I'm thinking of picking one of these up, any suggestions?

Word on the street was that the CycloDS was the one to get, so that's what I'm looking into.

Ive also heard that the CycloDS was good. When my knowledge was initially limited to "R4 is l33t" level I wanted either that or the M3 Simply Real, I eventually edged towards the M3 Simply Real (the more recent one, there is an older one you should avoid which I think might simply be just M3) just because it had organizer software and a rumble pack. While the CycloDS sounds like the better cart it is also harder to find (for me at the time) and a little more expensive so I was trying to get an M3. Trying so hard in fact that I told my father to pass on a DS TT for free when he was in China. The place I had initially found it at ended up wanting exorbitant shipping and would take 3 weeks to "order in", so I cancelled.

Searching for an alternative I found a local shop selling DS TT's and then one night later found dealextreme.com selling them for a fraction of the price and ended up going with that. It turns out the DS TT was exactly what I needed, does everything and more for a fraction of the price of the older more high profile carts. For organizer software you have DS Organize although I've found that inputting things on a stylus means I'm never going to use it and for the rumble, you can get it regardless of cart since its an add on pack that goes into the GBA slot, you can get one that is both a GBA Explorer pak (needed to load GBA games) and a rumble in one. The DS TT is so cheap now (around $20 or possibly even cheaper) its hard to justify 2x the price for a CycloDS. The added functionality is worth it if you go that route, especially the memory dumping/save anywhere but I've found I don't need it for most games (the only one would be Ninja Five-O which kicks your ass and requires old school enemy placement and level memorizing that I just don't have time for nowadays). However if you go with the CycloDS, it doesn't sound like a regrettable choice.

Personally I cannot believe how much the DS TT does for the price, and the loading speed shreds my friends who are still on R4's etc. There is a newer R4 knockoff called the N4 that is even cheaper, around $16-19 but apparently has a fuse related problem lol. I think around the $20 level, price competition just becomes pointless. Hell for the price most of them sell at, its just a matter of choice. The only thing I've *Heard* is that the CycloDS is the slowest game loader because of the extra features.

Dealextreme.com has some stuff like this, there based in Hong Kong and it takes like two weeks to ship but its free shipping and they are incredibly cheap

Game support is mostly HIT with a few MISSES thrown in. For example, my R4 cart can run 99% of the ROMs i've tried. Pretty much everything released in the US works AS OF TODAY. Occasionally a game will have some sort of issue, like FINAL FANTASY: CC... hackers figured out a way to run it in a few days, while official firmware was updated shortly after by the various card teams.

flashcart firmware isn't anything like PSP firmware. No DS games have any kind of firmware check. The only reason the cart teams update the firmware is, as I said, if a certain game has some issue. So 95% of the games released in the next 5 years might very well work on a cart, even if it isn't updated. You just never know. Some teams try and add features to their carts with firmware updates, and some just try and fix the few ROMs that don't work right off the bat.

As for MicroSD size... well, think of it like this-- most DS roms range from 16MB-128MB in size (there are a few 256MB carts out in other regions, but I don't know if any are in the US yet). If you have... say... 20 carts in your collection, a 2GB card will be more than enough. Each SAV file is about 512KB, so those are pretty negligible. Most homebrew is also pretty small in size, although if you install an eBook reader like DSLibris, you might need the space for books... or if you use Moonshell (the media player) you might need more space for MP3s (I've never bothered to try using Moonshell, personally).

Fathamburger seems in love with the DSTT, but the "top feature" cards right now seem to be the CycloDS or the Supercard DS One v3. There are a bunch of other options out there at various price levels, too.

I'm using a 2gb right now but the cards are so cheap, again from dealextreme that you might as well get an 8gb for 50 bucks. SD value is a lot better than Sony memory sticks (even the knockoff ones) and it'll be easier to keep videos, mp3s as well on it as you'll eventually want to. 2gb is fine just for games but I'm already out of space with a handful of mp3's and videos along with the games.

This is a good thread on DS TT vs CycloDS http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=71729
That thread is wrong on the rumble pack though. The DS TT has several different packages, the cheapest omit the rumble. I think its the same for the CycloDS so YMMV. Try to get it if you can as it'll be more expensive to order separately later

I've read that CycloDS had some compat problems earlier but those seemed mostly to have been fixed by firmware. The Cyclo is supposed to be the better card, but their manufacturing base isn't as strong as the others, the reason its been hard to get is because they can't make them in the same volume. This may have changed. The other thing is firmware support, the DS TT team is a mostly chinese team, not from hacker/homebrew/leetz0r community. So far support has been good but who knows if they are in it for the long haul, I do know that however as far as the DS TT concerned it is now the most popular cart in China surpassing everything else, I talked to quite a few of the shopkeepers in my initial quest and most had never heard of "R4" (because by now its really old news) or "Flashcart" or "CycloDS" but they *all* had DS TT's. Going back to experience and Super Nintendo disk drives (which most people have never seen or heard of heh), when it comes to this sort of thing, whichever has the most chinese support, wins.