Hacking I'm Pretty Sure It's A Fake

[mechadylan]

I've come across an Acekard 2i that I believe to be "fake." The cart itself fell apart into two halves while I was removing it from the package and was surprised to see a chip on the non-sticker side of the board as the sticker side of the shell obviously had the square cut-out. The pcb and chip didn't match the pictures from the gbatemp or acekard forums regarding "how to tell if your Acekard 2i is fake."

I popped in an msd with akAIO 1.8.1 and voila, it was off and running in my DS lite. I tried it in a DSi XL 1.4 and I noticed that it was already "Danny Phantom'd" so it worked there as well. I tried to flash the cart to 1.4.1 compatibility and it flat out refused. I said "oh well, akAIO works on it so I'll just use it for my DS Lite."

But now, certain games that have been fixed as per akAIO's 1.8.1 changelog don't work. And some games that require the anti-piracy feature to be enabled in order for them to work don't.

What the hell is this thing?!?!? Is it an R4i in AK2i clothing?... and if so, can it be flashed to work with 1.4.1? Should I try a different 3rd party firmware? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

Some games still don't work with AKAIO 1.8.1 anti-piracy bypass, depending on the Micro SD.

 

[mechadylan]

Some games still don't work with AKAIO 1.8.1 anti-piracy bypass, depending on the Micro SD.

I used the same msd from my legitimate AK2i. AP bypass for "Phineas & Ferb Rides Again" works on my old AK2i, but not on this new one. I even tried a formatted 2GB msd... same results.

 

[CannonFoddr]

AFAIK - any card that can run AKAIO >1.5 is not a fake, so if yours can run 1.8.1 then I guess it's not one

You also say that 'as the sticker side of the shell obviously had the square cut-out' -
IIRC the OLDER ak2i were the ones with the square cut out - newer one didn't

Spoiler: does your card look like this - if so it's not a fake

 

[mechadylan]

There's no SST logo on the chip.

 

[mechadylan]

Just got the sticker off...

Actel
ProASIC 3
A3P250
YQG100 1005
ZA839194


TAIWAN

 

[Another World]

i'd like to see some photos. its possible its a new clone no one knows about yet. its also possible its OLD stock of the ak2i from when acekard still used the actel chip.

-another world

 

[mechadylan]

I was just in the process of taking pictures so as to submit them to either GBATemp and/or akaio.net but I am apprehensive as to the latter because I too fear the wrath of FawkYew RTFM. LOL!

If I may shed a little more light on the subject: my gf bought 5 of these carts from a site which I will only disclose via PM unless I can get the "go ahead" from a GBATemp moderator to name them here. I've tested all 5 carts in question and they have all yielded the same result. I'm not interested in returning them as they have piqued my interest enough to keep 'em around for a bit.

BTW, the bottom screen from the akAIO Help Menu reads as follows:

AKAIO v1.8.1 HW:81 SVN: 994

 

[Another World]

please tell us what site it was. it will only help the community if we were told what site was selling fakes, if indeed these are fake.

hw81 is a real acekard. i can't recall if the acetel chipped cards had a different hardware id or not.

you can't base if it is real or not on how AP works, because the 1.8.1 AP requires a FAST microsd card. slow cards (and this has nothing to do with class speed) will fail. did you try to flash the acekard update on a dslite or a dsi?

-another world

 

[ShadowSoldier]

You're allowed to post the name of the site?

realhotstuff.com?
0shippingzone.com?

 

[mechadylan]

please tell us what site it was. it will only help the community if we were told what site was selling fakes, if indeed these are fake.

hw81 is a real acekard. i can't recall if the acetel chipped cards had a different hardware id or not.

you can't base if it is real or not on how AP works, because the 1.8.1 AP requires a FAST microsd card. slow cards (and this has nothing to do with class speed) will fail. did you try to flash the acekard update on a dslite or a dsi?

-another world

ice-pray...angels... (um)...ay.

I ran into problems with 2 ROMs in particular: 5381 - Michael Jackson The Experience (E) and 5397 - Phineas and Ferb Ride Again (E). I have both of these ROMs running on a SanDisk 8GB MicroSDHC on my own personal AK2i that I obtained from way back in the day. I loaded the same ROMs on a 4GB SanDisk microSDHC and they both gave "weird" results on this new AK2i.

I then placed the 4GB into MY AK2i and they both worked fine... but when I placed my 8GB MicroSDHC in the new card... the results were the same as the original 4GB.

As far as flashing these "clones," IIRC, I was away from my DS Lite and attempted to flash them with my REALLY old DS Phat... not sure that this would be an issue. I have never attempted to flash any of these 5 carts with a DSi or DSi XL.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

ice-pray...angels... (um)...ay.

Price Angels?

 

[mechadylan]

Bingo. I tried "price angels"...one word; but GBA cleans it up to "shoptemp."

 

[mechadylan]

WOW! Just tried "Billy Jean" on MJtheXP with this cart and it crashes with better rhythmical results that I have ever personally obtained with ProteinDS! ... (props to gorgull.) It loops the first 4 bars over and over again without going into the actual game and there's a "strange" loop that's actually quite pleasant.

 

[Another World]

one of the firmware devs i've just spoken to has a sandisk that is to slow for AP patching. there is a utility out there for testing the latency. its on filetrip but i can't remember the name of it! you want a latency thats lower than 8255. if you wanted to wait to test this out again, the next build of akaio fixed the latency issue. ap patching now works on all msd cards and no longer kills download play. i don't know when it will be released and i'm not sure of the warranty policy of priceangels. you might want to RMA the cards before you run out of time.

from what you have said your problems read more like msd speed issues and not acekard clone issues. give us some images of the PCB when you get a chance -- if you can.

-another world

 

[twiztidsinz]

there is a utility out there for testing the latency. its on filetrip but i can't remember the name of it!

Is this it? http://filetrip.net/f1238-Speed-Tester-for...DI-Support.html

 

[Evo.lve]

please tell us what site it was. it will only help the community if we were told what site was selling fakes, if indeed these are fake.

hw81 is a real acekard. i can't recall if the acetel chipped cards had a different hardware id or not.

you can't base if it is real or not on how AP works, because the 1.8.1 AP requires a FAST microsd card. slow cards (and this has nothing to do with class speed) will fail. did you try to flash the acekard update on a dslite or a dsi?

-another world

Actel chipped "old" Ak2i here, AKAIO 1.8.1, HW ID 81. I can confirm this. Oh, and it's genuine.

 

[mechadylan]

one of the firmware devs i've just spoken to has a sandisk that is to slow for AP patching. there is a utility out there for testing the latency. its on filetrip but i can't remember the name of it! you want a latency thats lower than 8255. if you wanted to wait to test this out again, the next build of akaio fixed the latency issue. ap patching now works on all msd cards and no longer kills download play. i don't know when it will be released and i'm not sure of the warranty policy of shoptemp. you might want to RMA the cards before you run out of time.

from what you have said your problems read more like msd speed issues and not acekard clone issues. give us some images of the PCB when you get a chance -- if you can.

-another world

I'm not sure why one msd would work on one AK2i and not the other (no formatting, no file changes, just straight swap of an msd with akAIO and a handfull of ROMs.) That leads me to believe that it is not a latency issue. Or do legitimate AK2i's vary in msd compatibility from batch to batch?

 

[mechadylan]

 

[ProtoKun7]

Bingo. I tried "price angels"...one word; but GBA cleans it up to "shoptemp."

We were getting spam advertising it, so that was set up in an attempt to make it backfire.