Hacking Best DS Flash-Card

[fangames]

r4ds or the m3 ds real perfect

 

[316894]

New here, hi all.

Was wondering if all you in the know could give me a few pointers and recommend the best flash card for me, sorry if it's the kind of question you get alot.

I have a DS lite and I'm from the UK so I'll be looking to buy from the UK, probably Amazon or the like..
Price isn't a major issue, but noone minds saving a few notes and there might not be much point in me paying more for extra features I wont use.
Basically I'm looking for a flash card (flush fitting preferably) with good compatibilty with games, little slowdown and obviously one which is reliable. I wouldn't say no to Realtime saving either, but it's not a necessity.
I don't intend to use it for homebrew so that isn't an issue.

From a quick look on Amazon UK the DSTT seems quite cheap and a neighbour of mine has it too, what are your views on these?

Thanks, Scott.

 

[sidneyyoung]

DSTT is fine, you could consider the scds-1 which can also double as a dstt plus give you all the features.

 

[316894]

What advantages would I have getting the SCDS-1 over the DSTT Sidney?

Scott.

 

[Wrekz]

I'm new to flash carts and was considering either the SCDS1or the CycloDS Evolution, is there any features that the CycloDS has, that the SCDS doesn't have. And which has a lower failure rate. And which is cheaper.

 

[Defiance]

512 votes, and only 2 for the DS-X. Who else could there be beside p1ngpong?

 

[Curley5959]

Theres no EDGE.. I just want to know if its good so i can buy it before making a mistake..

 

[LuOmeoga]

Theres no EDGE.. I just want to know if its good so i can buy it before making a mistake..

The EDGE is basically a Cylco with less features and like half the price. So if extra features is something you can live without then get the EDGE.

 

[Uzumakijl]

So the Cyclo DS are the best? I mean you might consider:

*You can download from wi-fi from Daigasso? [Exist a flashcard who does?]
*You can have multiple saves of the same game
*The firmware actualizes regulary?
*Most of games are compatible?
*They admit any sav? (mb or kb)
*What is the max gb capacity?
*Are customizable?
*Are "Friendly" Whit user (i mean good menus, language etc.)
*Have a good soft reset? (Like the r4 a+b+x+y+l+r)
*Whats about GBA?
*The lates firmware for this come on 1.7.2008 so 2 monts ago, How such good are?
*You can Downgrade your firmware?

Maybe i have more questions, If someones wants to answer will be good

Usualli i have r4 and until the next firmware comes i dont know who is better, But if my card gets crash by the firmware i want to get one new, but for the vids on youtube that i watched, Maybe cyclods dont are good, But i want to know if other have so many options an actions that you can do, Well from now its all, Thanks for the guy who answers me.

Se'ya

 

[Uzumakijl]

Honestly if you want a lot of features, you are bound between the Supercard DS ONE and the CycloDS Evolution, and in this case, go to this link:

http://dsdatabase.org/forum/viewtopic.php?...w=unread#unread

So much thanks!!! I be reading.....

EDIT: I read, And i think I will buy a CycloDS, But both are so good.... But thanks

 

[Searinox]

Interesting. I have a Supercard and I'm very pleased with its functions, I voted for the CycloDS and it's still not by far behind in votes. XD

 

[Defiance]

RHS is selling CycloDS's with a free 1GB MicroSD. Get it while you can!

 

[Uruha]

are EDGE's and Acekard 2 not popular ones?
well i think the Edge is a pretty good card

 

[Bootsum]

I have some research on the following cards: M3DS Simply, M3DS Real, CycloDS Evolution, R4DS, DSTT, AceKard2, EzFlash Plus 5, Supercard DS One.

I'm surprised to see the majority of posts *on this thread* prefer CycloDS Evolution, saying it is the best. It gives readers illusion that CycloDS Evolution has a big edge over all other cards (that's why it's a clear winner). However the votes show Supercard DS One is actually pretty close to CycloDS Evolution, but few say a word about Supercard DS One. Probably the users from Supercard DS One don't like to talk (post) much. Hehe...

People seem to miss one thing about CycloDS Evolution which readers may not realise. It's the price. Reader Wrekz (in Post #86) is interested in CycloDS Evolution but he missed the fact this card is actually the most expensive flash card (US$55-60). The price is double of Supercard DS One (US$25-29).

Readers seem miss it so I pointed it out as price is an important factor for readers when they make purchase decisions.

Anyway, back to the topic, what is the best?

First part, best card without the consideration of price
Only two cards so far are rich in features, namely CycloDS Evolution and Supercard DS One.
Well, even if we ignore the steeply high price tag of CycloDS Evolution, it's still not clearly the best either. I would still pick Supercard DS One as the best.

I don't do a neck-to-neck comparison, comparing every single feature or tiny function offered by each card. But after considering most major/useful/valuable features, I can't see that CycloDS Evolution has an edge over Supercard DS One. Actually it's Supercard DS One which has an edge over CycloDS Evolution, feature-rich.

Real-time save -- both have it, being CycloDS introduced it first
Real-time guide -- Supercard DS One has it first. CycloDS recently has it (in Beta).
Multi-save -- only Supercard DS One has
Multi-OS -- only Supercard DS One has
Cheat system -- Supercard DS One wins. CycloDS Evolution lacks far behind
(if you take multi-OS into account, you can pick the OS which has the strongest cheat support, and Supercard DS One will lead much further away)

Well I believe why some people think CycloDS is superior because it has a better and more user-friendly interface out of the stock. Supercard DS One has not-so-fancy menu by default. This problem can be solved completely since it supports multi-OS. So you simply download the unofficial file which contain 3 OSes for you to switch. Well but users may miss such an option.
Also it is said CycloDS support is superior (lots of impression scores). The support of Supercard DS One is not bad but it can't be said as "superior".

Second part, best price/performance card
Supercard DS One is clearly the winner if we take price into consideration. This card is half the price of CycloDS.

 

[AndreXL]

Good to know someone is doing his homework. Thank you.
Another thing to note: Supercard has great support.
I still have a Supercard Slot 2 card and it's still very much alive due to their continuous support.
Not dissing Cyclo in any way. It also has great support for their current slot 1 card.

 

[ojsinnerz.]

I have some research on the following cards: M3DS Simply, M3DS Real, CycloDS Evolution, R4DS, DSTT, AceKard2, EzFlash Plus 5, Supercard DS One.

I'm surprised to see the majority of posts *on this thread* prefer CycloDS Evolution, saying it is the best. It gives readers illusion that CycloDS Evolution has a big edge over all other cards (that's why it's a clear winner). However the votes show Supercard DS One is actually pretty close to CycloDS Evolution, but few say a word about Supercard DS One. Probably the users from Supercard DS One don't like to talk (post) much. Hehe...

People seem to miss one thing about CycloDS Evolution which readers may not realise. It's the price. Reader Wrekz (in Post #86) is interested in CycloDS Evolution but he missed the fact this card is actually the most expensive flash card (US$55-60). The price is double of Supercard DS One (US$25-29).

Readers seem miss it so I pointed it out as price is an important factor for readers when they make purchase decisions.

Anyway, back to the topic, what is the best?

First part, best card without the consideration of price
Only two cards so far are rich in features, namely CycloDS Evolution and Supercard DS One.
Well, even if we ignore the steeply high price tag of CycloDS Evolution, it's still not clearly the best either. I would still pick Supercard DS One as the best.

I don't do a neck-to-neck comparison, comparing every single feature or tiny function offered by each card. But after considering most major/useful/valuable features, I can't see that CycloDS Evolution has an edge over Supercard DS One. Actually it's Supercard DS One which has an edge over CycloDS Evolution, feature-rich.

Real-time save -- both have it
Real-time guide -- Both of them have it now.
Multi-save -- Sadly enough, CycloDS Evolution somewhat has multisave as well, 2 saves per game (not intended for this purpose but can be used that way).
Multi-OS -- only Supercard DS One has
Cheat system -- Tied. Although the cheat system is far more superior, but the fact that the characters get cut off is annoying.
(if you take multi-OS into account, you can pick the OS which has the strongest cheat support, and Supercard DS One will lead much further away. That may be so, but lots of SAV files don't get recognized while using the Multi-Os, and you wouldn't be able to use the features the SCDS1 to your advantage.)
Well I believe why some people think CycloDS is superior because it has a better and more user-friendly interface out of the stock. Supercard DS One has not-so-fancy menu by default. This problem can be solved completely since it supports multi-OS. So you simply download the unofficial file which contain 3 OSes for you to switch. Well but users may miss such an option.
Also it is said CycloDS support is superior (lots of impression scores). The support of Supercard DS One is not bad but it can't be said as "superior". The only reason why people may think they're superior is because they can speak, and respond in English perfectly well. That, and they have beta firmwares. The SCDS1's support team is a great one, so in my opinion, they're both equal.

Second part, best price/performance card
Supercard DS One is clearly the winner if we take price into consideration. This card is half the price of CycloDS. This, I agree with.

I bolded some responses to the quote.

Here's what I wrote to a guy who was deciding between the Cyclo and the SCDS1. To let you know, this response is 2 months old, but the information is still perfectly valid.


Get a CycloDS. Faster updates, and lots of updates that actually matter very much. The newest firmware that came out for the SCDS1 added the multi-skinning function, which is limited, and a few game fixes. It took them about 4 months to do that. None of the problems of the GUI has ever been fixed, to my knowledge. Supercard "fixes" the problems by adding in even more features. That's how they have the Homebrew soft-reset, but never updating it, or so I think.

I have a SCDS1, and it does fit everything you've mentioned, except the UI part. The UI is pretty slow (Not as every thinks it is, but everyone has their own opinions), and not perfectly accurate with the touchscreen. If you DO get it, you do need to "set it up" but it only takes about 3 seconds, because you just need to press the button that puts everything at a suitable setting. And if you don't like that for some apparent reason, you can just use the YSmenu.

I had trouble with the RTS just once, but out of all the times I've used it, the chance of getting this problem is slim to none. It happened when I was playing EO. I used RTS, and it shut off all of a sudden. When I turned it back on, and loaded the file, it kept turning off. I tried it over and over. Same result. Still, after 4 months of usage, that happened once, and what happened to me probably never happened to anyone else, so it's not too bad.

The Cheat menu is pretty annoying as well. It's the green text with a black background. It's very ugly looking, and if the names for the cheats are long, they get cut off. I hate how the SC team never fixed something that could be solved so easily. Of course it doesn't matter if you don't use cheats, but for those who do use it, it'll be annoying. Worst of all, the cheat files are made separately made for each game, so you'll be having over 800 cheat files, etc.

Well, the ups for the SCDS1, is that the support team won't stop giving it improvements. That's what they've been famous for to begin with anyway. It still has a whole lot of features, just as many as the Cyclo. A few good things are the In-game Cheat menu, which lets you toggle through cheats during in-game. There's also the tripple loader, which is very neat for people who don't like the SCDS1's GUI. It's also useful if you have a slow-micro sd.

Here's what the SCDS1 does well.
- Features
- A good support team
- Game compatibility
- Plays music photos and videos without launching moonshell (Videos not recommended.)

The bad things
- Slower than a few other carts
- Even thought it has a great support, the firmwares don't come too often. (IMO)
- The GUI
- How ugly the cheat menu looks.

If you don't mind any of those, or low on budget, get a SCDS1. I'm not regretting my purchase, because I'm pretty confident it'll get better in the future.

If you do mind them, get the CycloDS.

 

[Bootsum]

Tropicana, thanks for the exchange of ideas. Yes the character limit of the DsOne cheat system is really lame. It may be okay for Chinese users since Chinese words are shorter than English. Well I believe it is not too easy to fix. I know a bit about computing. Something look easy for a user may be difficult for a programmer (for example its 8+3 save file naming).


About the RTS, I got no problems so far except minor glitches. Sometimes when I load the RTS, it produces some random strange background sounds when playing. It appears where you load the RTS can determine the occurrence of the random strange sounds. I learned that if you load when the background is silent, such a glitch will never occur (so far I tried). Otherwise the strange background sound may sometimes occur. A few times when I load the RTS, the background (graphic) is screwed. The glitch is gone when the next background is loaded.

While RTS is generally reliable, it's not too reliable. My advice (1) Make sure you don't overly rely on it. Treat RTS as temporary save only. A normal save is still preferable. Someone reported that he used RTS heavily and frequently and somehow the RTS corrupt or whatever. He didn't keep any normal saves so he has to start all over again. What a pity! (2) Try to pick a better moment to do RTS. Try not to save when there are a lot of actions. I tried to save in a static situation (or I pause the game and do RTS) to minimise risks. Also I tend not to save so frequently (eg play a few seconds -> RTS -> play a few seconds -> RTS).


About the SAV files not being recognized, it is because DSOne uses 8+3 naming convention for the save files. However this problem is solvable. You just need to be smart and adapt a bit.
(1) Shorten the ROM name to 8 characters only. (So the single SAV will be recognized in all 3 OS systems ^o^)
(2) [Optional] I hate using short names. I want to see the full name of the game. Hehe... I found a workaround. Just below the ROM, I immediately put a dumb file which contains the full name. For example:
8110PGWM (= ROM file)
8110 Play Golf with Mario (= the dumb file)

The only problem left is the solution is not so nice and neat. Apart from that it solves every other problems that we face. Personally I'm very happy with this solution.


About Slow GUI, it's partly due to the sub-optimal factory defaults. First the system assign a very slow default speed of your memory card. You should run a speed test (you can find it in DSOne menu) and let the system set the right speed for you. Second read this page. It shows, after some tweaking, the apparently slow GUI can be pretty fast too: http://dsdatabase.org/cdevsscds2.html

DSOne is good, even better after the tweaks. Once I get used to it, I love DSOne the most. YsMenu is too plain and ugly. DSTT menu only shows all ROMs in one page (no folder view

)

By the way, when we talk about slowness, it means a few seconds slower (or even less). Some people do mind but I know some care less about it. They are not racing for a few seconds. Is it really important when you can boot into the system one or two seconds faster? We are always wasting a lot of seconds in your life when you are idle or lazing, and so on.

The bad things
- Slower than a few other carts
- The GUI
- How ugly the cheat menu looks.

Well don't stay away from Supercard DS One simply because of those drawbacks. Why? It's because all those so-called drawbacks are eliminatable. The solution is multi-OS. Each OS has its own pros and cons. No OS can be all-round (including CycloDS). This is the strong point of multi-OS. When you need strong cheat system, pick DSTT menu. When you need real-time saving and strong saving features, DSOne menu. When you need to boot and load game as fast as possible, use YSMenu.


In conclusion:
* If you are willing to spend some time to tweak, go for Supercard DS One. It can do what CycloDS can (plus more).
* If you want a more user-friendly solution out of the stock, go for CycloDS.
* If you want more bang for the buck, go for Supercard DS One. After all you save half of the price while the level of quality is the same.
* If you want the best of the best personal support from the official teams, go for CycloDS. The Team seems to be very responsive and are keen on solving the usage problems that you may meet when you use this card.
* If you are willing to read and learn, and are okay with fairly good support, or wait for other users to answer your questions, go for Supercard DS One (they can't speak proper English so it can be a problem if you are someone who needs ask a lot of questions).

 

[Toni Plutonij]

While reading trough all this, I was just thinking the same thing.......This was all said and covered before....
I was about to post a link to your comparison, but I see you posted it on the top of the page..
..
..
Well, it can't hurt to post it again: http://dsdatabase.org/forum/viewtopic.php?...w=unread#unread
This is VERY detailed comparison of CycloDS and SCDS One!!

 

[Wrekz]

just got a cyclo, its awesome

 

[mysticdrake]

PharaohsVizier! I read through your comparison! Twice! In the end, I still got a DS1.

Owning several flash carts and playing through most of the carts on the list, I find that the RPG gets the most run time. Not owning a Cyclo, I can't say that that's an accurate measurement. I have used one several times (many of my friends own one) and found that the in-game menu is really awesome.The one thing I dislike about the DS1 is the need to remember the numerous hotkeys. It makes it more difficult to utilize fully. (Also, no forum topic is stickied that guides you through all the how to's for the DS1, making it more difficult to find a decent compilation of information on it).

However, i'm one of the 30ish posters who voted RPG as the AKAIO team have made it into a powerhouse (thanx guys!). Sure it may not have RTS and RTG, but the OS is probably to most useful thing it has. It's really user-friendly and not difficult to learn how to use or edit. I mean it is still the ONLY card that can copy files from one microSD to another, which makes multiplayer much smoother.

Though this thread mainly has DS1 and Cyclo comparisons, a few months back, it was the RPG being compared to the Cyclo because they were in the same price bracket. (I guess now Cyclo is compared to DS1 more because they have similar features while the RPGs features diverged).

That being said, the AK2 is really good too since it has basically everything RPG does except file sharing. If you read around, you'll also find that many moderators have one and even help test AKAIO's betas.

So while the DS1 and Cyclo are dominating, Acekard shouldn't be forgotten either. (The AK2 is really cheap at DX right now too).