Hacking Cheap backup slot-1 flash cart?

[cutterjohn]

OK. I ordered an Evo, but it was DOA. (Works electrically but requires a shim to allow the edge connectors to mate with the DS which is not good IMO, so I'm planning on sending it back once Christmas/New Year are past.)

In the mean time I need another card to use and found what seems to be a good deal on EZ Flash V, and Supercard DS One v2(I think) at a US store, or optionally spending a little more on a M3 DS Real.

Personally, I like the Supercard, but do NOT like the battery backup saves it does with clean apps, and I'm not a big fan of having to pre-patch apps to get full functionality(all other cards). (I think that the Evo must patch clean apps on the fly to get it's functionality, but they don't mention it...)

Can only find M3 DS Real's in combo packs. Don't care about rumble, and I've already got a 3in1 ATM and plan to eventually by an EZ Flash IV Lite deluxe.

Anyways, give me your opinions, I'd like to have an auto-DLDI patching card that is able to use clean ROMs as I don't want to start having to keep track of everything.

(I'd've ordered another Evo from RHS but they're out of stock, and divineo has an assininely high price ATM, so they can keep their Evos.)

[EDIT]
I am aware of the fact that the EZF IV is a slot-2 card and would require patching NDS apps AFAIK, but it IS something that I had planned on getting eventually as a more fully featured slot-2 solution than my 3in1. I kind of think of the EZFIV as killing two bird with one stone solution, but I'm not sure if my GnM will work as a passcard for it. (Supposedly they do if there's no uSD card in it's uSD slot...), and I'd still want/need a second slot-1 card as a backup...
[/EDIT]

[EDIT2]
If you're going to look, you must have some sort of opinion, so please VOTE.
Cleaned up some of the above a little and fixed supercard name, oops...

Also please leave a reason as to why you picked the option that you did...
[/EDIT2]

 

[sidneyyoung]

All the cards use DLDI for homebrew apps, the sc-ds1 has auto DLDI patching for apps, can't say about the others but i expect they do to.

All the carts use a battery to store the save for comercial ds roms in saver memory until the next restart, and that is when it gets written to the mem card, apart from the sc-ds1 which can write the save direct to the memory card in real time (so no battery is used at all) or it can do it the same as all the carts by holding the save in battery backed saver ram... also it has multi save slots unlike the others... set it how you want it in the options in the scds-1 menu

 

[cutterjohn]

All the cards use DLDI for homebrew apps, the sc-ds1 has auto DLDI patching for apps, can't say about the others but i expect they do to.I'm aware of this.
QUOTEAll the carts use a battery to store the save for comercial ds roms in saver memory

I don't think that this is correct, as the only slot-1 that I recall seeing a PCB w/a battery on it is the DS One, but I'll have to go check again.

[EDIT]
A quick look at the clear pic of an AceKard clearly shows that it has no battery. Presumably the battery is a unique "feature" of the DS One, which the rest probably avoided because of the additional cost that, that design incurs, as it implies that there is volatile RAM on the DS One card, and enough of it to save the largest possible NDS save file.
[/EDIT]

Thanks for the reply anyways...

 

[sidneyyoung]

All the cards use DLDI for homebrew apps, the sc-ds1 has auto DLDI patching for apps, can't say about the others but i expect they do to.I'm aware of this.

All the carts use a battery to store the save for comercial ds roms in saver memory

I don't think that this is correct, as the only slot-1 that I recall seeing a PCB w/a battery on it is the DS One, but I'll have to go check again.

[EDIT]
A quick look at the clear pic of an AceKard clearly shows that it has no battery. Presumably the battery is a unique "feature" of the DS One, which the rest probably avoided because of the additional cost that, that design incurs, as it implies that there is volatile RAM on the DS One card, and enough of it to save the largest possible NDS save file.
[/EDIT]

Thanks for the reply anyways...

Afaik most carts save to mem card when restarting, the technical details on how they work to do do this i'm not sure (i presume with a battery/capacitor of some sort, but they hold the save in saver memory for writing to the mem card on restart. I admit I know nothing of how the acekard works when it comes to saving, I think i'll check shaun's review.

SC-DS1 carts give you the choice of saving direct to mem card during gameplay on commercial roms, just like the SC slot-2 range has always done, by writing the save directly to the mem card and not to saver ram, just set the 'patcher' option in the scds-1 menu, no actual patching required. This is one of the reasons I should think that SC are the only ones to develop this further and have 'real time saving' as well.

edit (just checked shauns acekard review)..quote from shauns's Acekard review.... "The Acekard R.P.G. creates .SAV files with the same file name as the game they were created for, inside the same folder as the ROM. The size of the .SAV file depends on the specific save type of the game it's linked to, unlike other flash kits that create a 512KB .SAV file regardless of the actual required size. During gameplay, save game files are written directly to the memory card and are not stored in a temporary memory, eliminating the potential loss of save games" ..... so the Acekard does save direct to mem card just like all SC's, afaik that makes it the only other one to do so (impressive imo)

 

[cutterjohn]

Evolution does that as well, and I still am 99.99999% certain that every other slot-1 cart on the market saves directly to the uSD card when you save the game.

Either way, just because it creates a .sav file doesn't mean anything, as IIRC the SCDS1 also creates a raw save file when it's rebooted from the contents of the battery backed up memory, but I haven't looked at any other card closely to be certain of anything about them.

RTS: has nothing to do with being able to write directly to uSD, it just helps a little in that they don't have to have c. 5MB of RAM on the slot-1 card to save a state. The hard part of RTS is saving the register state in a fashion that you can prod the ROM to going back to the "state" in which it was saved. It's no trivial task, but it certainly does not require battery saves.

(Presumably any game that entirely consumes the DS RAM probably won't ever be able to do a RTS unless they find some tricky way that the state loader can overwrite itself as it reloads the RAM and register files then tries to start the ROM...)

 

[sidneyyoung]

edit.. been looking up old reviews and found r4/m3s save direct to mem card, so it seems I was mistaken

I guess saving to mem card is commom for most flash carts these days contrary to what i said before.. apologies

 

[cutterjohn]

That's what I thought, but my main interest was not having people come in later and get the impression that it was common...
[EDIT]
Uh oh. The SCDS1 is catching up to the M3, I just know that you guys are going to leave me with a 3 or 4 way tie...
[/EDIT]

 

[Psyren]

Edit -> Started a topic as to not hijack your post.

 

[cutterjohn]

Er, can some of you guys give some REASONS as to why you voted the way you did?

The first two on the list are there solely because of cost from a US based store that uses USPS(FAST) shipping... and because they are halfway decent cards if not contenders compared to recently designed cards. (I really do NOT like the battery in the DS1, I just think it's a very BAD idea... another point of failure... same with the spring loader in the M3s...)

 

[sidneyyoung]

Well get the sc-ds-1, take it apart and throw away the battery (though later models use some kind of capacitor thingymabob).. then in the sc-ds1 menu tick the 'save patcher' box, and save the setting.

Or get the m3-real and take the spring out, remodel the slot slightly so it becomes a wedge fit.

 

[cutterjohn]

Why is there no love for the EZ-Flash? I thought that they were a fairly solid, if not awesome card...

@sidneyyoung
Battery: kind of kills some of the functionality of the card if I remove it...

M3: kills my warranty, which with a DOA Evo I'm leery of ATM...

 

[sidneyyoung]

I have an EZ4, it's OKish.. bit slow DS side and some roms are never fixed (DKJC for 1 example, amongst a handfull over the DS life cycle) but it does play the vast 99% majority of ds roms fine... pity the English EZ support forum is full of porn ads and virus/malware advert posts though

you will need a passcard or a flashed DS to use it btw


The EZ5 does sound nice, plays all the ds roms with no fixes needed afaik.. not many fancy features but some users like that, I have no idea if it uses a battery system to save like the ez4, but i've not noticed many 'lost save' file posts from ez5 users on these forums, so it can't be bad.

 

[DarkAura]

Cyclo DS/R4 + EZFlash 3-in-1, the most classic combination just cuz it works. 'Nuff said.

The good part about the slot 1s is that you do not have to patch your games, and that it runs less power. That's why you have the Expansion pack, so you can run GBA games on it too. And if you do plan to get an EZFlash IV or a G6 or another slot 2 device after, your R4 or whatever can be your NoPass, and then you will not need to flash your DS. The Cyclo DS is one of the best carts at the moment, IMO, just cuz the features are good, plus it looks nice(GUI and the cart itself). I would also go for the Top Toy DS or SuperCard DS One. Every cart is different, and you should pick the one that has the features that you like. The only thing about the R4 is, it cannot support SDHC cards, and the newer ones can.

Just saying, go for R4 and an EZF Expansion. It's cheap, about 50 bucks ish in total. There's a bundle on www.gameyeeah.com

 

[OSW]

hey, about this whole saving business.

SC-one didn't always have the direct save option. It was broken a few SP's ago right? But as we've established it is all good now.

I thought R4 saved directly too?

I had* an M3 real, but i never saw any indication (loading bar or whatever) that there was save backup on reboot so i assumed it was direct save. It could just be doing it transparently.

With acekard RPG, after commercial roms are played there is a short loading bar displayed. But i believe it must be doing some other kind of process, since it appears that the save is direct to sd.

 

[4saken]

M3DSR has direct save.

 

[cutterjohn]

Thanks for the replies, they've been helpful and saved some leg work on my part.

I actually already own an Evolution, but, it needs to go back for replacement directly by Cyclops as the vendor purchased from is NOT swapping from stock. (Also made the mistake of purchasing from a European vendor so even if they were swapping it wouldn't be much faster...) So the whole point of this exercise it to get some sort of flash cart that can run most NDS stuff quickly and cheaply, which also means that I'm only considering US based vendors. (I thought about an R4 but all the US vendors have IMO WAY too high of a price on it, for what it does... same goes for most EZF V vendors, but I happened to find a store that had the poll prices which made those two cards(EZF V & SC DS1) attractive options... plus they had cheap USPS shipping(FAST!).)

I've also already got a EZF 3in1, but plan to eventually pick up an EZF IV Lite Deluxe, but not right now, I think...

I'm most inclined to try the SC DS1 ATM, and will likely order today.

 

[ganons]

only difference in supercard 1 v2 from v3 is sdhc support?

 

[4saken]

Yes, and other minor hardware modifications (just observations after looking at both PCBs).

You may want to consider the DSTT. It is very cheap, and performs quite well. And for some strange reason, some fit flush while others have a bump.

 

[iritegood]

^DSTT, I think it's the cheapest card with all the modern features, on the market right now.

 

[cutterjohn]

Yes, and other minor hardware modifications (just observations after looking at both PCBs).

You may want to consider the DSTT. It is very cheap, and performs quite well. And for some strange reason, some fit flush while others have a bump.

I did a quick look around a few days ago for these, and didn't see anyone selling them. Also, I thought that the reviewers said that their software was a little "rough" ATM...

General note: I'm only looking at US vendors as I want the card as quickly as possible while not being raped on shipping.

SCDS1: I'm not an expert, but I'd expect the variations between the versions to be fairly minor other than as noted above v3 supports SDHC, which isn't a concern at this point.