Hacking Cyclo ds and Ez 3-in-1 Plus help please!

[SNESGamer]

Ok I have a cyclo and 3 in 1 plus and I was wondreing how I can set this up to play gba games at best, Im not too worried about rumble. Also I was wondering what is this NOR and PSRAM about? What are they? What do they do? Whats the differences?

Thanks in advance!

 

[granville]

NOR and PSRAM are both methods that are used to write GBA games to the card's memory. The differences are that NOR is more permanent. You can write a game to NOR mode and it will never be erased until you choose to write another game. PSRAM makes the rom disappear as soon as you poweroff the system. PSRAM will hold any game up to 16MB, NOR will hold any game up to 32MB. NOR is required for some of the larger games such as Kingdom Hearts COM and Mother 3.

The other difference is that NOR is a lot slower to write games to. It will take several minutes to write a large game to NOR, whereas writing a game into PSRAM will take only about 15 seconds or less.

I can't help you much with your other queries, because I don't have a cyclo. I will tell you that if you can't get the cyclo to work properly with your 3-in-1, use the separate DS software GBAexploader. It's made specifically FOR the 3-in-1 and works on ANY slot 1 card. It's surpassed most of the loaders attempted by slot 1 makers so far. It can control GBA roms, rumble, and memory expansion. So I find it good to have.

 

[SNESGamer]

Can I swap between PSRAM and NOR?? Also with PSRAM, so when you turn your ds off you have to start your file again? Im still a bit confused.

 

[granville]

In PSRAM, you just have to write the rom itself again when you power off. The game save will be stored on the internal battery and will stay there until you write a totally different game. As for swapping, sure you can swap. Saves will still work if you switch from PSRAM to NOR and vice versa.

There's another cool thing I forgot, NOR and PSRAM modes are separate from each other. If you have a game written to the NOR memory, you can have another game written to PSRAM at the same time. I usually kept a copy of Final Fantasy 6 written to NOR when I had a working 3-in-1. That game would stay there permanently. Then I would write some smaller games like the Mario Advance games to PSRAM for quick plays. It's really cool. Plus, you can boot games held in NOR from the official DS firmware menu without a slot 1 card.

 

[SNESGamer]

Ok, Im still a big newb when it comes to these types of things. 1 Last question, what do you mean by "Write the rom itself again when you power off"? Thanks for your help!

 

[granville]

What I meant is that everytime you switch the Ds power off, the PSRAM is dumped of all data. The rom is lost basically. You just have to write the game to PSRAM again though. And the save will always be on the battery until you've written a different game. Don't worry about losing your saves though as you can back them all up to the microSD in slot 1. From my experience, they should be loaded automatically into the GBA save battery when you load their respective games.

And reread my last post, I added some more info.