Gaming Hardware Homebrew DS linker with NOR Flash memory?

[Deleted member 411374]

Hi there!

I recently purchased the GBA EZ Flash Omega Definitive Edition linker, and one of the features that really caught my eye was the NOR Flash Memory!
For those who don't know, this is a memory into which you can write a GBA rom, then by activating a button on the side of the device, the linker will load the rom into memory and its savegame, and treat the linker as the game cartridge itself! This is particularly useful for games that use the DS's double slot, such as Pokémon or Mega Man BN

So I'd like to know if such a function exists on a DS linker please? It's possible to transfer 4th to 5th generation Pokémon between cartridges, but the 4th generation one has to use DS Download to do so, so the console has to think it's a cartridge.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Deleted member 702243]

not that I'm aware, shame that ezflash never thought to innovate in this way for the parallel

the thing is, even slot 2 connectivity with flashcarts wasnt really a thing even back in the days. it's only possible now because of newer flashcarts being made that can actually properly support it

even with older cards like ezflash 3in1, you had to patch the ds game to be able to read the rom and save file from the 3in1 (so you couldnt do it with legit ds games anyway), and a patch like this was only ever made for diamond and pearl. and for other cards like ezflash 4 with nor memory, the nor memory was never directly accessible by ds games anyway, only by the ezflash menu

ds games that do download play stuff like this didn't really exist until 2010+, and innovation for flashcarts stopped happening around that point anyway. so the need for something like this didnt exist before = it wasnt made, and innovation stopped after those games came out = it was never made later

to do what you want a new kind of card would need to be made that allows writing to an on-board memory like this, with another onboard memory chip to hold a save file, and some kind of switch to decide if the ds sees the flashcart or the game. and it most certainly would not work on unmodded dsi or 3ds unless they could properly spoof a real ds card to pass all the checks

and consider there is very limited space on a ds flashcard board, so you have to fit all that on one board alongside microsd card reader and the other chip that holds the flashcart firmware, it's not necessarily a problem though because for example acekard rpg had both microsd card and internal flash memory with an usb port for writing to it, and chip technology these days allows for way bigger capacity in smaller chips. but it would be an expensive design

 

[Apache Thunder]

The closest equivalent to this has existed for some time. N-Cards and their clones. They are known by a few names. Originals went by N-Cards. Some of the better known clones went by DS Fire Card, DS Linker, etc.

They have onboard nand and handle card reads on hardware level instead of using patching. They can actually play SDK5 games (like Pokemon games) without patches despite the fact the cards haven't seen software updates since 2009. Because of how they work I was able to write a custom DLDI driver that mounted a flash image stored in NitroFS in a manner similar to the old FCSR DLDI driver for slot-2 cards though being read only. This only works because of N-Card's unique behavor of remapping retail rom reads which it does even for homebrew roms.

However the big drawback is due to their age. Because they haven't seen updates since 2009 they don't have AP patches. They also don't support 512MB roms like Pokémon Black 2/White 2. Games that use nand base saving like WarioWare DIY aren't supported either.

They use a menu system similar to other cards. If you are wondering how you get games onto them they use a slot-2 USB device that you connect to a PC. When the card boots into transfer mode it shows up as a USB flash drive on your computer. (though I have written software that allows transfering files to N-Cards on a DSi/3DS using a modified build of GodMode9i called GodMode9Nrio)

They don't really act like what you describe in that they don't show up on the console as the games you put on them. They still use their own icon with branding, etc.

However back in early 2008, late 2007 when the earliest N-Cards came out, they didn't use a slot2 device and instead used a USB dongle. They also didn't really have a menu. Instead you flashed a single game to them and their icon would change to match the game. Some "bootlegs" used N-Cards because of this. (I happen to own one that used to be a Dora the Explorer game. I reflashed it to become a standard N-Card. ).

Those USB dongles are unobtainum now and also N-cards do not boot on un modded 3DS/DSi's. You need CFW installed for them to be useable on anything newer then a DS Lite.

N-Cards weren't the only nand based carts made. There is the Acekard R.P.G which had both a nand chip and microsd. There is also the M3 G6. I have never worked with either of those so no clue what their compatibility is like and how they behaved.

 

[Deleted member 702243]

Yeah but when they talk about nor flash memory feature, they dont just want a card with on-board nand, they're referring to the ezode's ability to have ds games recognize the games in slot-2 for dual slot functionality. Except in this case the other way around, they would want a slot 1 card where the ds menu could see a game directly so they can use download play to transfer from gen 4 on flashcart to gen 5

 

[Apache Thunder]

Yeah but when they talk about nor flash memory feature, they dont just want a card with on-board nand, they're referring to the ezode's ability to have ds games recognize the games in slot-2 for dual slot functionality. Except in this case the other way around, they would want a slot 1 card where the ds menu could see a game directly so they can use download play to transfer from gen 4 on flashcart to gen 5

Oh I see. You might need some kind of homebrew cart to do something like that. Even with N-Card using the original adapter, any game you flash to it takes up a specific section of nand and doesnt' replace the rom the N-Card shows to the console so it would still show up with DSGB game code and header. Only the banner was changed with that older hardware/PC software.

 

[Deleted member 702243]

A card like this would be pretty cool tbh, if done right and it spoofed a real card correctly you might even be able to get dsi enhanced games running in dsi mode that way. But it would probably be expensive to produce, I don't see there being enough demand for mass production