Hacking Help me with my confusion about R4i Gold cards

[RoyJonesJr]

evening chaps, being somewhat new to the whole handheld homebrew scene, i've read a lot about flashcarts and what not. I'll be buying a 3DS soon (ocarina of time oh my delicious).

I've pretty much decided i'm going to get an R4i gold card, but for the life of me don't know of any decent places to buy a genuine "www.r4ids.cn" tagged card. They seem to be the R4 cards to go for, and there are others floating around that have "www.r4ids.eu/com/etc" that are supposedly not as decent as the original.

There's a link on their official website that points to a UK-based retailer, but their information and packaging is massively different from what i've seen before.

This isn't a "OMG I WANT TO RUN PIRATED 3DS GAMES LOL WHEN WILL THEY HACK IT OHNOES" thread, I've only been reading this forum for a week and it's already doing my head in, too I can imagine I'm retreading old ground though so please be gentle.

Any help from UK based people who have bought genuine "www.r4ids.cn" tagged cards and would recommend a retailer for them would be brilliant.

 

[AceWarhead]

slickgate.com has the real ones, go there.

 

[RoyJonesJr]

slickgate.com has the real ones, go there.

You are a gentleman. Thank you for the prompt reply

 

[AceWarhead]

slickgate.com has the real ones, go there.

You are a gentleman. Thank you for the prompt reply

No problem. If you need any help, feel free to ask!

 

[RoyJonesJr]

Thank you for the offer, i will take you up on it

At slickgate, they have an R4i gold card, but it's specified for DS/lite/XL/i.

There's another version on the r4ids.cn site called the "revolution 3ds," and slickgate carry a version of that card from r4idsn.com. Does it really matter if i go for that standard r4i gold card over the Revolution version? These things can get confusing

On top of that, i know all about needing the latest firmware before updating the 3DS to 3.0.0.6. The update megathread states the latest firmware is 1.51b, but the highest firmware i can find on the r4ids.cn site is 1.46. As you can see, confused! I guess that's the one i download and use. Is there anything else i have to download too? Heh looks like i need an installation guide. sorry for being a massive newbie at this.

 

[Janthran]

Pretty sure the Gold is better than the Revolution, but I don't have either so I guess I'm not the best authority.

 

[Rydian]

Sites tend to not update their pages unless it's needed, so while many lump 3DS-compatible carts in with DSi-compatible ones, some still don't.

The problem is there's only one actual R4. The R4. ALL others are different carts cashing in on the name. So the problem becomes picking out the good ones from the bad ones. Even a single difference will mark a totally different cart (for example "R4i Gold Upgrade" and "R4i Gold 3DS" are two different things, and r4dsn.com and r4idsn.com and two different things), they just all choose similar names to cash in on the "R4" branding. China don't give no fucks about trademarks.

The R4iDS.CN model has proven itself to be a very good one, so yeah it's important to make sure it's from that site. Their packaging HAS changed majorly once.

The review I did on this site for it was done with the older box packaging as seen here...
http://www.slickgate.com/r4i-gold-wood-compatible-for-3ds-nds-lite-ndsi-ndsi-xl-ndsi-143-compatible_p1326.html?zenid=g1iv4d34mq1n616udtt8p10496

But new stock uses a plastic sleeve-type thing, as seen here.
http://www.digitopz.com/r4i-gold-revolution-for-dsndsindslnds-p-12.html

Some sites have updated their images, some haven't.

 

[RoyJonesJr]

thanks. Looks like i'm going with that slickgate site for the R4i gold card when it comes to updating the thing, do i need to do the wood firmware 1.46 and the kernal 1.51C update? Or do i only need to bother with one or the other? I'm betting there's a helpful little guide for all of this nestled somewhere sweetly within this site.

 

[Rydian]

Wood is for game compatibility, the default kernel software thing doesn't support retail game loading (at least when I did the review it didn't).

The bootloader/firmware updates are to make the cart work on later firmwares for the DSi/3DS.
http://gbatemp.net/topic/315784-flash-carts-and-dsi3ds-updates/

Like 1.4.4, which just came out yesterday or so and appears to have blocked most carts, so don't update your 3DS yet, until you can get the flash cart and update that first.

 

[RoyJonesJr]

Alright then, Do i need to install both of those things (wood and the kernal) or either one on it's own?

[edit]the 1.4.4 update is for the dsi? How would that affect my usage on a 3ds? ;p

 

[Rydian]

Wood is the actual software you run games with, the firmware update is what lets the cart actually start up, so yes do both.

The 3DS has it's own updates that also block carts, and both are bypassed with the same type of updates for the flash cart, so it's important to update it anyways just in case.

 

[Mantis41]

I have the R4ids.cn and R4iDSN.com. Personaly I would go for the R4iDSN.com
package looks like this: Make sure the correct web site is on the card and box before buying.

 

[RoyJonesJr]

any reasons why, mr mantis41?

 

[Mantis41]

any reasons why, mr mantis41?

• They are almost the same card. They just take different variations of the wood firmware.
• The "CN" card has a tendency to get stuck on removal and requires quite a hard tug to get out.
• The "DSN" card has wood updates directly from @YWG. The "CN" card you have to wait for the vendor to release their version of wood. This is usually only a couple of days later but you are still relying on a 3rd party release rather than having the Wood updates from the source.
• I have never had contact issues with the "DSN" cart but had to pack the "CN" for proper contact. It used to loose contact when bumped on some consoles.

 

[Rydian]

With mine I've found tilting them to the side makes them easy to remove, but I've never had any contact issues.

But yes the R4iDS.CN and R4iDSN.COM versions are pretty much considered the same sort of thing around here, the major difference in usage simply being where you download the firmware from.