Hacking DS-X not 100% COmpatible

[MR_COW]

I bought the DS-X, and the games it currently doesn't work with I could care less about. But it's easy enough to use with enough storage and enough features for me. I like it better than the Slot 2 solutions.

Is it perfect, no. Will it be, no. Will Acekard be, no. Will anything be perfect, no. Is it close, um, yeah. Could it be better, sure. Could M3 be better, sure.

It's like picking mod chips for the XBOX. There's so many, and each one does the same thing with it's own unique features, apps, twists, and bugs. Pick the one you like the best.

Enjoy your faulty games, pitiful compatibility, and having to use paper to make the unit fit inside your NDS.

Heh, ok. I will.

 

[Cliffius]

The ds-x appears to work for most american games, but does the same compatibility transfer over to the japanese games? Thanks.

 

[thefoxhole]

Yea, I am curious to read the new review.. however I doubt much has changed with the unit. As far as the other slot 1's I am a firm believer that they are just phantom carts.. Like pictures of bigfoot, we just want to believe that an awesome cart is out there.

lol

 

[dblank]

Wouldn't it make more sense to write a new review after the next firmware release (supposedly within a few days)

I hear it's supposed to be quite a big update.

Quick note: we are currently in the process of writing a "2nd opinion review" of the DS-Xtreme!

 

[XmemphistoX]

I bought the DS-X, and the games it currently doesn't work with I could care less about.  But it's easy enough to use with enough storage and enough features for me.  I like it better than the Slot 2 solutions.

Is it perfect, no.  Will it be, no.  Will Acekard be, no.  Will anything be perfect, no.  Is it close, um, yeah.  Could it be better, sure.  Could M3 be better, sure.

It's like picking mod chips for the XBOX.  There's so many, and each one does the same thing with it's own unique features, apps, twists, and bugs.  Pick the one you like the best.


Ugh. I hate when people mess up this expression. It's "I could not care less," since you're implying that you don't care at all about those games, it is no longer possible for you to care any less about the games then your current disposition.

Enjoy your faulty games, pitiful compatibility, and having to use paper to make the unit fit inside your NDS.

Whats your problem buddy? You sound angry for no reason whatsoever.

 

[rkenshin]

anger leads to hate, hate leads to the wild side

 

[Bram Stoker]

Enjoy your faulty games, pitiful compatibility, and having to use paper to make the unit fit inside your NDS.

You should realize that all those established and beloved GBA flashcard makers (M3, supercard, etc) are just squeezing every penny they can for a GBA product and spin it as a DS product?

Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that you are playing DS games from a GBA slot?
All those GBA flashcards need to have the DS games patched in order to make them work; This inherently means LESS compatiblity than DSX.


DSX is a native DS slot device with reprogrammable hardware.
It is obvious that the current hardware solution they have is not working so good. But know what? That is no problem!
Here is the fun fact.. they can change it with a simple firmware upgrade to make some completely new hardware layout (for those interested, read up on FPGA on wikipedia) to run DS games natively.
What do you have then? A hardware solution with 100% compatibility that runs DS games NATIVELY.

I put emphasis on NATIVELY alot here in this context because it is very very important to grasp in my hypothetical situation.



Now.. on to a very hypothetical situation which will break your favourite GBA cartridge with DS support:

Suppose Nintendo decides to take measure against piracy on DS. They add in their SDK a magic function called "SDK_CheckHardware()";
What this SDK_CheckHardware does is very simple; It calculates a hash checksum from the DS ARM9 and ARM7 executable binaries and compares this with a hash checksum in the DS header somewhere. It sees that the ARM9 binary has been patched (thank you M3 and Supercard), and refuses to load the game; or worse, Nintendo decides to brick your DS.

Now the only flashcard which will run this game is DSX because it does not need to patch it (more on this later, see 1).

Now some might say "oh but then M3 and Supercard will just release firmware updates to fix this SDK piracy protection".. But keep in mind that Nintendo is not stupid and knows this can happen too.

What to do? Simple again. The SDK function SDK_CheckHardware() can be encrypted with a key specific for a game (randomly generated; this is possible and very easy for Nintendo since each game already has a seperate syscall.a library).
That leads to a situation where M3 and Supercard will have to patch *each and every game* individually that uses this SDK in the future.

Simply put.. not fun at all.

Note 1) I don't know if DSX patches or not; But they have reprogrammable hardware, and this means they can reprogram the hardware to make it NOT patch when they find a proper solution to do this.


These are just my 2 cents.

Oh and don't get me started about the poor support and crappy looking OS loaders for M3 or Supercard..

In summary:
Even though the DSX seems to have only 98% compatibility, reprogrammable hardware will make sure DSX will stay at the top.

 

[melloncollie]

Enjoy your faulty games, pitiful compatibility, and having to use paper to make the unit fit inside your NDS.


You should realize that all those established and beloved GBA flashcard makers (M3, supercard, etc) are just squeezing every penny they can for a GBA product and spin it as a DS product?

Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that you are playing DS games from a GBA slot?
All those GBA flashcards need to have the DS games patched in order to make them work; This inherently means LESS compatiblity than DSX.


DSX is a native DS slot device with reprogrammable hardware.
It is obvious that the current hardware solution they have is not working so good. But know what? That is no problem!
Here is the fun fact.. they can change it with a simple firmware upgrade to make some completely new hardware layout (for those interested, read up on FPGA on wikipedia) to run DS games natively.
What do you have then? A hardware solution with 100% compatibility that runs DS games NATIVELY.

I put emphasis on NATIVELY alot here in this context because it is very very important to grasp in my hypothetical situation.



Now.. on to a very hypothetical situation which will break your favourite GBA cartridge with DS support:

Suppose Nintendo decides to take measure against piracy on DS. They add in their SDK a magic function called "SDK_CheckHardware()";
What this SDK_CheckHardware does is very simple; It calculates a hash checksum from the DS ARM9 and ARM7 executable binaries and compares this with a hash checksum in the DS header somewhere. It sees that the ARM9 binary has been patched (thank you M3 and Supercard), and refuses to load the game; or worse, Nintendo decides to brick your DS.

Now the only flashcard which will run this game is DSX because it does not need to patch it (more on this later, see 1).

Now some might say "oh but then M3 and Supercard will just release firmware updates to fix this SDK piracy protection".. But keep in mind that Nintendo is not stupid and knows this can happen too.

What to do? Simple again. The SDK function SDK_CheckHardware() can be encrypted with a key specific for a game (randomly generated; this is possible and very easy for Nintendo since each game already has a seperate syscall.a library).
That leads to a situation where M3 and Supercard will have to patch *each and every game* individually that uses this SDK in the future.

Simply put.. not fun at all.

Note 1) I don't know if DSX patches or not; But they have reprogrammable hardware, and this means they can reprogram the hardware to make it NOT patch when they find a proper solution to do this.


These are just my 2 cents.

Oh and don't get me started about the poor support and crappy looking OS loaders for M3 or Supercard..

In summary:
Even though the DSX seems to have only 98% compatibility, reprogrammable hardware will make sure DSX will stay at the top.

Christ guy, could you be any more of a DS-Xtreme fanboy?
There's pros and cons.
That little hypothetical scenario is just that, hypothetical.
Thereby meaning, the weight of it's proof is lost.
I think, as of current, that slot 1's are a little more than a load of bollocks.
No GBA support = not good in my book.
Stop throwing your defensive babble at us and accept that some people don't have the same view on a product as you.
As of right now, the DS-Xtreme doesn't seem close to being the end-all-be-all of flash carts.

Also, about the menus: you missed the G6 Lite there buddy.

 

[outphase]

Everyone wants to justify their purchase... they do this by saying others' choices are bad.

 

[Extreme Coder]

Enjoy your faulty games, pitiful compatibility, and having to use paper to make the unit fit inside your NDS.


You should realize that all those established and beloved GBA flashcard makers (M3, supercard, etc) are just squeezing every penny they can for a GBA product and spin it as a DS product?

Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that you are playing DS games from a GBA slot?
All those GBA flashcards need to have the DS games patched in order to make them work; This inherently means LESS compatiblity than DSX.


DSX is a native DS slot device with reprogrammable hardware.
It is obvious that the current hardware solution they have is not working so good. But know what? That is no problem!
Here is the fun fact.. they can change it with a simple firmware upgrade to make some completely new hardware layout (for those interested, read up on FPGA on wikipedia) to run DS games natively.
What do you have then? A hardware solution with 100% compatibility that runs DS games NATIVELY.

I put emphasis on NATIVELY alot here in this context because it is very very important to grasp in my hypothetical situation.



Now.. on to a very hypothetical situation which will break your favourite GBA cartridge with DS support:

Suppose Nintendo decides to take measure against piracy on DS. They add in their SDK a magic function called "SDK_CheckHardware()";
What this SDK_CheckHardware does is very simple; It calculates a hash checksum from the DS ARM9 and ARM7 executable binaries and compares this with a hash checksum in the DS header somewhere. It sees that the ARM9 binary has been patched (thank you M3 and Supercard), and refuses to load the game; or worse, Nintendo decides to brick your DS.

Now the only flashcard which will run this game is DSX because it does not need to patch it (more on this later, see 1).

Now some might say "oh but then M3 and Supercard will just release firmware updates to fix this SDK piracy protection".. But keep in mind that Nintendo is not stupid and knows this can happen too.

What to do? Simple again. The SDK function SDK_CheckHardware() can be encrypted with a key specific for a game (randomly generated; this is possible and very easy for Nintendo since each game already has a seperate syscall.a library).
That leads to a situation where M3 and Supercard will have to patch *each and every game* individually that uses this SDK in the future.

Simply put.. not fun at all.

Note 1) I don't know if DSX patches or not; But they have reprogrammable hardware, and this means they can reprogram the hardware to make it NOT patch when they find a proper solution to do this.


These are just my 2 cents.

Oh and don't get me started about the poor support and crappy looking OS loaders for M3 or Supercard..

In summary:
Even though the DSX seems to have only 98% compatibility, reprogrammable hardware will make sure DSX will stay at the top.

A few things to say to this DS-Xtreme fanboi :

1) Not one flash-card until this point in time, is able to run DS games natively. They are either patched from the PC(M3,SC,EZ4) or on-the-fly(DS-Xtreme,MK2/3,NinjaDS). How do you suppose that the game knows how to read the type of internal flash memory the DS-Xtreme has? How do you suppose that the game knows where it is stored in that memory? How do you suppose the game knows that they have to save to the internal flash memory?

2) Your proposed event of Nintendo fighting piracy had already happened before. A while ago, a bunch of new games came out that no flashcard was able to run. What happened? All flashcard patching software got an option named "Force R/W"(or similarly named) that patched the functions Nintendo added. If the same thing happens again, a new patch will come out. Simple.

3) M3/G6/EZ4 has got one of the best skinned loaders for a flashcard for the NDS, and I wouldn't call their support poor.

Just clearing some things. The DS-X may be a good card, but it isn't the holy grail of them.

 

[CronoTrig]

Enjoy your faulty games, pitiful compatibility, and having to use paper to make the unit fit inside your NDS.


You should realize that all those established and beloved GBA flashcard makers (M3, supercard, etc) are just squeezing every penny they can for a GBA product and spin it as a DS product?

Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that you are playing DS games from a GBA slot?
All those GBA flashcards need to have the DS games patched in order to make them work; This inherently means LESS compatiblity than DSX.


DSX is a native DS slot device with reprogrammable hardware.
It is obvious that the current hardware solution they have is not working so good. But know what? That is no problem!
Here is the fun fact.. they can change it with a simple firmware upgrade to make some completely new hardware layout (for those interested, read up on FPGA on wikipedia) to run DS games natively.
What do you have then? A hardware solution with 100% compatibility that runs DS games NATIVELY.

I put emphasis on NATIVELY alot here in this context because it is very very important to grasp in my hypothetical situation.



Now.. on to a very hypothetical situation which will break your favourite GBA cartridge with DS support:

Suppose Nintendo decides to take measure against piracy on DS. They add in their SDK a magic function called "SDK_CheckHardware()";
What this SDK_CheckHardware does is very simple; It calculates a hash checksum from the DS ARM9 and ARM7 executable binaries and compares this with a hash checksum in the DS header somewhere. It sees that the ARM9 binary has been patched (thank you M3 and Supercard), and refuses to load the game; or worse, Nintendo decides to brick your DS.

Now the only flashcard which will run this game is DSX because it does not need to patch it (more on this later, see 1).

Now some might say "oh but then M3 and Supercard will just release firmware updates to fix this SDK piracy protection".. But keep in mind that Nintendo is not stupid and knows this can happen too.

What to do? Simple again. The SDK function SDK_CheckHardware() can be encrypted with a key specific for a game (randomly generated; this is possible and very easy for Nintendo since each game already has a seperate syscall.a library).
That leads to a situation where M3 and Supercard will have to patch *each and every game* individually that uses this SDK in the future.

Simply put.. not fun at all.

Note 1) I don't know if DSX patches or not; But they have reprogrammable hardware, and this means they can reprogram the hardware to make it NOT patch when they find a proper solution to do this.


These are just my 2 cents.

Oh and don't get me started about the poor support and crappy looking OS loaders for M3 or Supercard..

In summary:
Even though the DSX seems to have only 98% compatibility, reprogrammable hardware will make sure DSX will stay at the top.

Christ guy, could you be any more of a DS-Xtreme fanboy?
There's pros and cons.
That little hypothetical scenario is just that, hypothetical.
Thereby meaning, the weight of it's proof is lost.
I think, as of current, that slot 1's are a little more than a load of bollocks.
No GBA support = not good in my book.
Stop throwing your defensive babble at us and accept that some people don't have the same view on a product as you.
As of right now, the DS-Xtreme doesn't seem close to being the end-all-be-all of flash carts.

Also, about the menus: you missed the G6 Lite there buddy.

Guess what retard, slot1's will never support GBA games.

 

[Noobix]

He didn't actually claim they did...what he was trying to say is that the the slot 2 cards (EZ4 lite, G6, supercard etc) DO!

Therefore that's a plus point for them since they run both DS and GBA.

It's a bit obvious who the retard is.

 

[Bram Stoker]

I can't believe everybody expects a DS flashcard to support GBA.

Nobody seems to be complaining that GBA flashcards don't support Gameboy Color or Gameboy Mono games.. or that it does not support PlayStation 3 games.



All this aside, maybe my hypothetical situation is not so hypothetical.

Remember the Metroid Trainer for DS, which gives you unlimited health during online deathmatch?

Game development companies don't want that to happen to their own DS game.
And if you know how trainers for DS work, then you know one way to find out if you have a trainer installed is to check if the game has been patched.

Just my 2 cents again

PS: This is Retard, signing off.

 

[dblank]

Emulators exist for GB/GBC, and people do complain.. to the emu authors

Nobody seems to be complaining that GBA flashcards don't support Gameboy Color or Gameboy Mono games.. or that it does not support PlayStation 3 games.

 

[Bram Stoker]

Ah, touché

 

[OSW]

Emulators exist for GB/GBC, and people do complain.. to the emu authors

Nobody seems to be complaining that GBA flashcards don't support Gameboy Color or Gameboy Mono games.. or that it does not support PlayStation 3 games.

good answer

and to the dude who said DS-X has reprogramable hardware - .... you make me laugh

 

[BlueStar]

So people think that Nintendo is going to stop Slot-2 solutions working all together (And only slot-2 solutions)? And that will stop piracy by...? making pirates shell out cash for the inevitable slot-1 devices that the SuperCard and M3 team will be bringing out at some point and make all DS pirates give even more money to Nintendo's Chinese nemeses?

People are always bleating on about Nintendo crushing piracy/slot-2 devices with one stroke of their Neo power every time some pokemon game hasn't been patched for a day, it aint gonna happen. I'm glad people are happy with their DS-X, but there's nothing it does which would make me trade it for my trusty big old blue SuperCard SD at the moment.