Hacking Best and Cheapest emulation

[isaac17]

I know you guys get a thousand of these questions a day, and I've stayed pretty up to date with what's out there (I used to be active on here, for a little bit anyway), but new things keep on coming out. Basically, I'm getting a DS lite in a few days, and I want to know what your opinion on the best combination of hardware for modding that's out there. I was pretty interested in the R4DS until I heard you couldn't play GBA games, which is a consideration. I'll probably end up buying this: http://www.amazon.com/Sandisk-MicroSD-Tran...8&s=electronics
for my memory card (unless you guys think I should get something else) just because it's so cheap and looks nicer than some out there... But I still need to know what the cheapest and best (in your opinions) option for the Pass/Flash or whatever, and the GBA slot (card reader deal).

I just want to hear everyone's opinion, so everyone post

 

[Propionation]

It depends on what you need. Since you want GBA I would suggest the M3 lite because it has decent GBA compatibility. Or even the EZFlash IV lite cause it has better GBA compatibility.

Personally I'll get an R4 cause I don't care for homebrew or GBA at all.

 

[isaac17]

You know what? Your right. I have a macbook, with tons of emulators on it, including gba emulators. I really just need a ds emulator, w/ video support. And the 2 options I see that look best for that are the R4 and the M3 Simply. Another question I have, is how big is the average DS rom? Saves are 512kb, and I need to estimate how much space I'll need to keep a good stock of games on my ds. Thanks!

 

[Propionation]

512 MByte is enough for games
1GByte if you want to store games, videos, and music
2GByte if you want to store movies along with everything else.

 

[lickmy]

Games range between 8mb (megabytes, not bits) and 128mb

 

[glitchbit]

I would not mind being able to play GBA games and homebrew but first and foremost I want a device that will let me play DS games without zapping its battery life to 50%. So the R4 it is! I will purchase another slot 2 solution for my homebrew and gba games, eventually however I would not be surprised to see another slot 1 device fix this issue or maybe even a firmware update to the current line.

One thing is for sure, I think the R4 team knows more of what they are doing than the M3 team, so I will gladly pay them equal or more to have their product. I don't mean this as a hit to the M3 team, I am sure they are on the same side but I'd like to see these companies/marketeers have unique products and not clones. And the DSX GUI looks way better, but... it has its glaring limitations.

 

[isaac17]

Well, I'm a huge RPG guy but I want various other games, and I plan on sticking some videos on. I know for a fact that I'll use more than 512mb by the first week, but in you guys' experiences how much have you used up? I want to load it with games crap (I already have an ipod nano, I'll probably get an iPhone too when it comes out in a couple weeks, so music isn't going to be on it.) I don't know, how many games are actually 128mb? Most of what I play will be RPGs... I'm thinking 1gb and then upgrade to 2 1gb cards if needs be.

 

[glitchbit]

Considering the resolution of the DS you should be able to fit an entire length movie on it in probably 200mb no problems, so to say you need a 2gb for a full length feature film o0? Unless the DS movie playback can't support very good codecs atm which I don't know? I just know my pda is based on the same cpu's and it does fine. At any rate yes I have ordered that bulk card, it would seem the speed issues have more to do with the DS flash card you buy than the SD card itself.

As soon as I get it all in I will let yall know what I think about it but I will not be able to test it against faster cards.

 

[tehcamel]

i have a sandisk ultra II 1gb and it holds about 20 games on it.
i have an sc lite and an m3 simply and both are great cards.

if u want to save cash and dont care about gba or homebrew theres the sc rumble. u have to patch the roms however the benefits of this is that you can trim them to save space and fit more games and theres soft reset.

m3/r4 if u want drag and drop (no patching required) downside so far is no soft reset.