Hacking Old flashcart stuck on "Loading..."

[EmoNerdChild]

Let me start by saying that I've been out of the loop on the whole flashcart thing for a while now, so forgive me if I'm not making sence in some cases.

So my r4i gold 2.0 is not booting for some reason.
When inserted in a dsi (ver 1.4.3E) it shows up as a r4ds ultra and does not boot (no suprise there).
And when inserted in an old DS console, the cart boots up and gets stuck on this Loading screen: http://imgur.com/YEWLlpw


The files I put on my sdhc card was downloaded from this site: http://www.r4ids.com/
It's the same files I used to use back when the card was working, that much i am sure of.
This is how the file structure of the two different systems are.

AKAIO 1.8.6a.R4iDS:
http://imgur.com/1jaxEFY

And YSmenu
http://imgur.com/6dWKa6E

Both of these used to work, so i have no idea what could be wrong.


This is the card itself:
http://imgur.com/kaS9vFL


If anyone have any idea what could be done to solve this issue, it would be most appreciated!

 

[Foxi4]

Getting stuck on the loading screen usually means that the flashcart has problems with mounting the SD card. First of all, I suggest switching to Wood for R4 instead of using a hack-and-slashed AKAIO menu or the outdated YSMenu. Secondly, clean the contacts of the SD card just to make sure that the connection isn't the problem. In addition you could check using an SD card rather than an SDHC one (up to 2GB capacity) to see if that works - I've encountered cards that get stuck on the Loading screen whenever they encounter SDHC cards for whatever reason even if they worked perfectly fine before a firmware update.

 

[EmoNerdChild]

Tried cleaning the contacts, didnt work. Used another sdhc card, that didn't work either, and these are the only micro sd cards i've ever had, so one of them used to work with this flashcard. And i never updated the firmware on the card, so it shouldn't have stopped working?

Is this the wood for r4 you are talking about?
http://gbatemp.net/threads/wood-firmwares-v1-62-update.352802/

Now that i remember, the card might have stopped working after my cousin tried to boot it on an updated 3ds, is it a possibility that it might have been bricked?

 

[KazoWAR]

what does the sticker on the cart say? it seems weird to me it shows up as r4ds ultra in the dsi are you sure its not a R4 ultra? it was a ds only cart. no support for dsi or 3ds.

try this firmware on a old ds and see what happens. http://www.flashcardguide.com/r4ds-ultra.html

 

[EmoNerdChild]

Tried the firmware you linked, did not work.

This is the card:
http://imgur.com/kaS9vFL

Under "revolution for DS"
it just says (dsi/ll/xl/dsl) and www.r4ids.com

The cart did actually have dsi and 3ds support for a while, but the makers of the cart released a newer flashcart and dropped the firmware support for the older one.

 

[tbgtbg]

You may want to try another SD card even if you are sure that one of the two you have has been what you used before. I have an SD card that just randomly stopped working on Wii, but still works fine in everything else (except Wii U). I know it used to work because back when I hacked the Wii it was the only SD card I had. No formatting or attempts at correcting for contact issues or anything will make it work more than very intermittently anymore. Still works fine on PC and DS flashcards, though.

 

[EmoNerdChild]

Ah, shoot. Might have to go out and buy a sd card then because the only other sd cards i have aren't micro.
I must ask though, can you restore the firmware/kernel on the flashcart itself somehow? I wouldn't put it out of the picture that i might have tried to use a unsupported kernel back then and broken it that way somehow.

 

[Foxi4]

Try this firmware, it's the original one from www.r4ids.com, thanks Wayback Machine!

http://web.archive.org/web/20131103203204/http://r4ids.com/download/software/ENGLISH.rar

 

[EmoNerdChild]

Try this firmware, it's the original one from www.r4ids.com, thanks Wayback Machine!

http://web.archive.org/web/20131103203204/http://r4ids.com/download/software/ENGLISH.rar

That one isn't working either.


By the way thanks for trying to help me with this guys!

 

[Foxi4]

That one isn't working either.


By the way thanks for trying to help me with this guys!

I'm sorry, I accidentally linked you to the R4iDS.com firmware, not the 2.0 one. Try this:

http://r4ids.com/download/V2.0/AKAIO 1.8.6a.R4iDS.rar

 

[EmoNerdChild]

I'm sorry, I accidentally linked you to the R4iDS.com firmware, not the 2.0 one. Try this:

http://r4ids.com/download/V2.0/AKAIO 1.8.6a.R4iDS.rar

Ah, that's the one i mentioned in the OP, its one of two firmwares that used to work back when the cart didnt get stuck. Tried it again now and still doesnt work. :C


I think the problem is that the flashcart can't read the sd card somehow, as you guys said. Feels like that anyway. Even if i turn on manual start up mode on the ds, the flashcart forces itself to boot and just skips the main menu.

I'm gonna try to borrow a friends sd card that he is using for his flashcard and see if that works, might take a couple of days before i can get a hold of him though.

 

[Foxi4]

I know, I still wanted you to try a fresh download in case your old archive got corrupted. The problem does seem to be on the SD side, or so I hope, since it's the easiest component to replace.

 

[EmoNerdChild]

Yeah, I hope so too. I'll probably report back whenever i get the chance to test a regular sd card . Worst case scenario i'll just have to pick up another flashcard. Thanks for the fast replies though!