This is just a warning to anyone who may be thinking of purchasing one of these from them. When I tried to update the fw it said 8181 and have found out these are fake even though the hwid matched that of a legitmate product. They are also not honouring the warranty as my acekard arrived faulty, and are completely blanking contact from myself. Just thought I'd give you guys a heads up incase you were thinking from purchasing from these guys.
Can you give more information on this? Like how do you know they are fake? And could you post a pic of the PCB? My friend bought an AK2i from GameKool that came dead (freezes on the Health & Safety screen, can't be reflashed/unbricked). I originally thought it was a fake, but he opened it up and it's a real one.
Depending on the PCB. I think there is a clone with HWID 81 out there. Maybe the ones RealHotStuff were selling (They were 2.1 cloness with the 1.4 fix forced on them) 2.1s were HWID 80, so I'm guessing those clones were as well. Real HWID 81s are Yellow/Black PCB (the part near the contacts is yellow, the rest is black) and don't have a window/chip sticking out.
I can contest that. I do have a yellow/black PCB but it's an old model Ak2i with the Actel chip. It runs AKAIO 1.8.x(a), AKAIO 1.7.1 etc. It reports 81 with an SVN of 994 on AKAIO 1.8.1. And it flashes properly and AAP works on it.
According to http://www.akaio.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=410&f=8 1). The AceKard2i with the Actel chip is HWID 44. 2). The only AceKard with HWID 81 is the 2i with SST chip.
Which, sadly, isn't uncommon, especially at places that aren't all that popular (first time I've heard of them). Not to mention (no offense intended) that they seem to have a national holiday every month. That combined with their time zone just makes communication all the more difficult. You also claimed that the item you got was a fake... but offered no proof or explanation as to why you think it is a fake. If you're going to accuse a place of selling fakes, you should offer some kind of evidence. As for them honoring a warranty, really there is none. These places aren't covered by the Better Business Bureau or any similar organization in your country. Obviously, it's a good decision for them to offer a 30 day refund/replacement, but they don't have to do anything. Supposedly AceKard has a 90 day or 1 year (unsure) replacement policy that all shops selling their cards are supposed to honor, but I don't think I've heard of any places that actually do this since the 'solution' always seems to be emailing AceKard themselves.
Any legit Acekard products have an unspoken 1 year warranty. Though I've never actually heard of this warranty being used or enforced, it's good to know that it's there. By the way, HWID 81 is real until you can prove yours is fake.
