Hacking basic-ish R4 questions

[Nitro Edd]

I own a DS lite, and have had an ak2.1 for a few years now.
a friend recently bought a 3DS, and came to me for flash cart advice, being the only person he knew personal that owns one, and he asked me questions that I could not answer, hopefully someone here can clarify.

1. Does the orignal R4 team still exist?

2. Are clone cards inferior in terms of function?

3. What exactly is 'wood'? is it a kernel or firmware?

4. Who is yellow wood goblin, and why is he so awsome?

5. Will wood persist to work with any possible 3ds firmware updates?

and a question from me:

6. Why did acekard stop updates for the DSi/3DS? have they gone under?

 

[Pong20302000]

1.No
2.Yes
3.Kernel = Game Compatibilty, Wood is Kernel updated by YWG
4. just a guy
5. Wood is a kernel not a firmware, so the card needs to have firmware support to work on 3DS updates
6. the Hardware chips became full and the 4.5.0-10 3DS update stopped loads of cards due to more hardware needing emulation

 

[Nitro Edd]

7. are all currently in production R4's classified as clones though?, because they seem like the best 3DS option (aside from the expensive DStwo)

 

[Pong20302000]

7. are all currently in production R4's classified as clones though?, because they seem like the best 3DS option (aside from the expensive DStwo)

R4ids.cn/r4idsn.com have there own hardware even thought its a modified version of the original but there very well made (they have had quite a few revisions but only 2 major revisions that made a large difference)

R4i-SDHC.com have there own but seem to go through a major change every other update (seems more like a cash thing though, why release updates when you can sell more cards sort of thing) but evidently its a DSTT clone

Supercard DSTwo being the only real card that is an original team and not based of any previous hardware but there own

 

[Rydian]

http://gbatemp.net/t290097-which-flash-cart-should-i-get

As far as all the fakes and clones... these are Chinese aftermarket goods, so there's a lot more bad-quality products out there than good ones. Especially when it comes to any cart with "R4" in the name, 99% of those are fakes or knockoffs because the original R4 team only made "R4". Any "R4i", "R4 SDHC", or anything else like that was not made by them (and a large majority of them are badly-supported carts). These carts will often give two or three updates, then drop off the face of the planet.

While there are some flash carts that actually try their best to give support and updates (you'll notice an R4-named cart IS in the list), the majority out there will drop support quickly in order to get you to buy a second cart, then a third, then a fourth...

 

[TackyPie]

If you want to get a R4 get one from www.r4ids.cn

 

[Trevor Belmont]

Pssst! Ebay has some.
Don't tell anybody...