Hacking What's that for a card?

[BaamAlex]

Hello community. Can anyone say me what this for a card is? A fake? A clone? Any help is appreciated.

This is the front from the card.


This is the pcb from the back.


And the front from the pcb.


And the card is listed as a spongebob squarepants game in the 3ds home menu.


Its from a german forum called psxtools.de. And we are not really sure which model that is. Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[hanasaku]

Yeah that's most likely a flash-cart, the micro SD slot and game being different is obvious sign. I think even the crummy label gives the whole thing away

But yes that is indeed a fake.

 

[Vague Rant]

It looks like a DS-mode flash card, since there's a whole microSD slot right there on the board (helpfully labelled as SDHC). There's a lot of DS cards that masquerade as Atlantis Squarepantis, it could be a DSTT clone, some R4i-SDHC variant, etc.

 

[hanasaku]

I mean have seen flash-carts that'll have masqueraded as multi-carts, but it being one game? thats pretty odd :/

 

[Deleted member 668561]

its a fake card, if you go to ebay and many other places (Chinese retail), you'll find fake ds games or a bunch of 256, 512, 482 in 1 nds game cards, they're all just repurposed flash cards (r4 or dstt clone) with micro sd preloaded with games, this just looks like they took a flash card and just probably used it to boot mario kart ds, if thats was actually on it to begin with, r4 and dstt based clones cost cents to make nowadays (i got an r4i for 3 bucks free shipping), so its cheap to make a "fake/clone" ds card and make a simple profit.

 

[Quantumcat]

I mean have seen flash-carts that'll have masqueraded as multi-carts, but it being one game? thats pretty odd :/

Not very odd, a lot of flashcarts have the beginning of their memory look like a game in order to fool the 3DS and allow it to show on the menu and be launched.

 

[The Catboy]

It's not an R4i-SDHC/R4-SDHC, I can tell you that because I am very familiar with those boards.
Something tells me that this is most likely an Ace3DS/R4 SDHC Dual-Core (r4isdhc.com.cn,) /R4i Gold-clone cart. The board looks close to the one I was playing with last year

 

[Deleted member 668561]

Not very odd, a lot of flashcarts have the beginning of their memory look like a game in order to fool the 3DS and allow it to show on the menu and be launched.

its not really the actual game ( i.e alex stormrider, spongebob, or bomberman land touch) they just use malformed headers which just literally contain the logo, title, cart ID, and payload but when you launch it the header points to the flashcard's boot-loader payload instead of loading the game data(this bootloader is what actually boots your firmware file), this has been done since DSi, , thus why (99%) original nds cards don't work, either they have a "corrupted" (bad) header and rely on the original nds autoboot feature, some did have proper headers but showed up as a flash card on the ds menu, only due the ninty changing the order of how the console reads from cartridges, they can easily detect a flash card vs legit nds game card, nds and dsi/3ds effectively would see these as two different cartridges, with the latter blacklisting them


that card reminds me of darkfader's passme or or natrium42's dserial (the wild west days of home-brew when people still used GBA flash cards to boot nds software), it's probably a generic r4 or dstt clone, with a cpld used store the header and payload, and what looks like an eeprom, they didn't use glob top chip on board (which is actually cheaper though)

 

[hakd88]

It's not an R4i-SDHC/R4-SDHC, I can tell you that because I am very familiar with those boards.
Something tells me that this is most likely an Ace3DS/R4 SDHC Dual-Core (r4isdhc.com.cn,) /R4i Gold-clone cart. The board looks close to the one I was playing with last year
View attachment 180745 View attachment 180746 View attachment 180747 View attachment 180748

I think that it is an Ace3DS or Ace3DS+. If you want, I can post the Ace3DS+ firmware here.

 

[The Catboy]

I think that it is an Ace3DS or Ace3DS+. If you want, I can post the Ace3DS+ firmware here.

Those tend to be the most common clones, right next to the R4i-SDHC clones. I am not sure if all Ace+ all use the same binary launcher, but I do know they all use the same hacked version of Wood R4

 

[Deleted User]

I really love how the box art is the image they used for the front.

 

[Ryccardo]

I mean have seen flash-carts that'll have masqueraded as multi-carts, but it being one game? thats pretty odd :/

r4isdhc.coms are so cheap and crappy (and so are small microSDs in bulk) they're likely cheaper than making actual custom roms (especially given that since the GBA, the chip holding the game is not just a rom but has "smarts" for sequential access, encryption since the DS, etc)