Hacking Acekard 2i - Dissected & Compared w/ AK2 Innards

[GuruPitka]

Acekard 2i - AK2i Dissected & Compared By GuruPitka a.k.a. MrCutieBear =)

Product Name: Acekard 2i
Purchased From: www.TheMott.com / www.MoogleX.com
Purchased Price: $69 & $89 *Promotional Free Next Day Shipping b/c its a Holiday Special.
Shipping Method & Speed: Free Overnighted Next Day USPS Shipping and received after 48hrs.
Shipping Packaging: USPS Overnight Envelope w/ Basic Bubble Wrap

I purchased 2pcs of the AceKard 2i for my White Japanese DSi and wanted to test out its performance to see how it compares to the original AK2. I purchased one from a website called MoogleX.com for $89 and then did some more research on Google and found another site that had it for a couple of dollars cheaper and I ordered the second one from TheMott.com just in case if company had it on backorder then hopefully the other one would have it in stock and ship it out to me. Well...Well...Well...Guess What? Yeeeeees! Surprisingly! They both had them instock and sent me a shipping confirmation within 24hrs. I received my cards within 48hrs after ordering them. Since I have been an avid user of the AceKard user since they had their RPG Model a while back I wanted to upgrade to their latest creation to see if it works as advertised. To my amazement it worked perfectly. It was super smooth on the loading and the Slot for the Micro SD card has the Spring to help pop in and out of the memory card. The AK2i's Exterior card housing does catch when trying to eject from the DSi unit but it does 100% Pop in and Out of the DSLite very smoothly. I tested this on both cards before taking one of them apart and verified that it might be a first batch production problem. This should be easily remedied during their second production batch of these cards. I performed a dissection on the AK2i to see how the innards compared to the older AceKard 2 and have provided everyone with the detailed pictures below on this post. The AK2i had a tough fight but ultimately lost to my trusty X-ACTO knife in the end. YES FATALITY! Its took about 10 minutes to carefully separate the the 2pc's of the Grey card housing of the Ak2i b/c was super glued together by the joining posts on each corner of the card. You can clearly see the glue marks on the pictures provided. On the older AK2 card housing is held together by little clips on the side of the card which I feel works better and much neater by the way. The AceKard 2i can be easily identified by the Yellow contact board and on the Older AceKard 2 the contacts board is Totally Green. Enjoy!

 

[Toni Plutonij]

Moved to the proper section..

And very interested post....It kinda feels bad to look at that damaged case of AK2i, but thanks for the pictures!

 

[Diosoth]

Personally I don't feel that the glued case is worth $50+ over the standard Acekard 2 if you only own a DS or DS Lite. And with the DSi being so new, people should likely wait to get one when they hit the US market. Or maybe when some actual DSi games come out.

 

[UltraMagnus]

they look electrically identical to me, a few vias in slightly different places... guess it is just a bootloader change.

 

[Normmatt]

they look electrically identical to me, a few vias in slightly different places... guess it is just a bootloader change.

Its not the bootloader that makes it work on the dsi trust me i reflashed one of my older ak2s with the new bootloader to test and it didn't work. I'd guess that it was a reprogramming of the ASIC chip.

 

[playallday]

Its not the bootloader that makes it work on the dsi trust me i reflashed one of my older ak2s with the new bootloader to test and it didn't work. I'd guess that it was a reprogramming of the ASIC chip.

You can reflash it? I didn't think you could...

 

[Mbmax]

You mean bootstrap not bootloader, right ?
The bootstrap is the first code loaded by the ASIC chip.

Didn't know it was upgradable on Ak2 ...