If you're willing to risk a DOA the Cyclops DS Evolution has the BEST software, but their card defect rate seems to be abnormally high, so go with a US based vendor who will swap a replacement from their stock.

I recommend realhotstuff, but they're out of stock ATM.

caveat: Evo's my first flash cart, mine was DOA(although electrically it works because I can use a shim to force it's edge connectors into contact with the DS' and it will work normally, but a consumer should NOT have to jury rig a fix for a commercial product).

The M3 DS Reals sound nice, but I don't like the spring loader(uSD pops out propelled by a spring rather than manually pulling it out). Plus if you like GBA stuff you can get the perfect combo and be set all in one shot.

The supercard DS One SDHC is nice, because they beat EVERYONE to realtime saves, but I don't like having to use a battery backed memory to save clean ROM saves. VERY bad design decision IMO. (battery will die some day, and you'll need some soldering skills to replace it...)

Acekard RPG sounds nice with open source firmware meaning that it could potentially way outlast ANY card, but I don't see much of a community working on the firmware source, plus the gimmicky onboard FLASH RAM makes it WAY too expensive IMO.

The older cards are fine, but most don't support alot of the brain dead features for full functionality, and don't support SDHC which if it takes off will eventually make current uSD cards obsolete limiting their usefulness unless you get a nice stock of uSDs... (May never be a consideration, but with my luck...)

 

works on both

 

Well, I ended up ordering a Supercard DS One SDHC from realhotstuff today as my backup card, and card to use while my Evo is getting shipped for replacement.

RHS, is very good. I ordered a 3in1 from them last month and got it in 2d, and am expecting the same for this cart. They also exchange DOA items from their stock so you won't have to wait forever like I'll be doing for my replacement Evo...

Kick gaming heard that they're ok too, but I've never ordered from them as they appear to ship from Canada which COULD mean a long shipping delay if it gets held up by customs.

Beyond that, go check the prices on the stuff, and then also go as far into checkout as you need to get the shipping cost. I'd hazard with shipping that RHS will be a little cheaper than kickgaming.

[EDIT]
@Gannon are you sure about the M3 DS Real exp packs fitting a phat?

(this may be wrong)
Phat original NDS. Don't bother with the M3 DS Real combos as the rumble/RAM and GBA pack will NOT fit the phat NDS. They are lite designs ONLY.
[/EDIT]

If you really want to also get him a GBA pack to play GBA stuff on RHS carries the phat (GBA size) version of the 3in1, c. $22. Acts as a RAM expansion pack too, so he could run Opera, and it has a rumble feature which I've not tried on mine, but hear is pretty noisy... But you haven't got many options for the phat NDS...

[EDIT]
I got the GBA size 3in1 myself. Sticks out a little like real GBA carts do on a lite, but I can also use it with my real
GBA IF you put the game into FLASH insted of PSRAM. Loading carts to PSRAM is faster, but you lose them ever time you power down(saves are in SRAM so they're kept), and you're limited to a max cart size of 16MB in PSRAM. The FLASH RAM can store up to 32MB carts which is the largest GBA cart IIRC, and there aren't too many that large. (Takes a while to load into FLASH though as it erases FLASH and then WRITES FLASH, but the cart remains even after a power off. Tested a flashed cart and it worked on my real GBA. Also tested opera and it ran fine(with Evo). I use Rudolph's 3in1 expansion pack tool myself for the loader.)
[/EDIT]

 

Cool! Because I went ahead and ordered a Supercard DS One SDHC this morning anyways...

So, I won't have to turn on the patch mode or whatever it was to get it to save directly to flash now then, eh?


BTW: I just went and looked at the M3 DS Real review, and the pictures of the xpansion pack cards show in there are definitely NOT GBA size, so they will NOT work with an original/phat NDS.

Either get that combo AND a GBA size 3in1, give him the 3in1 and keep the expansion pack from the M3 for yourself(not sure how you're going to load anything on them as I don't think any of the homebrew loaders support them) or just buy a different card and the GBA sized 3in1.

 

But the M3 DS Real would work for the Phat DS, correct? I don't need to get him the GBA slot pak, etc...if I buy that package, I could use those for mine, as long as my DS Simply would recognize it.

And if I did get him a GBA 3-in-one, which would you recommend? *do these also need their own micro SD cards as well?*

 

AceKard RPG and M3DS Real have too many options for a newbie and are fairly complicated to operate.
CycloDS Evolution is the most expensive, but it's worth it.
R4/M3 Simply are the cheap but cheerful options, they are simple to use, I'm not sure how severe his condition is (or how old he is), but I would hide the firmware folders so he doesn't accidentally delete them, they can still be overwritten to put new firmware on.

- Sam

 

Two things:
I think that you misunderstood about the 3in1. It SHOULD work just fine with any card that has a decent DLDI driver(or autopatches) and Rudolph's 3in1 exp pack tool (what I use). (The only slot-1 card to really "natively" support it, is the EZF V which it was intended to be bundled with. Other card may add more integrated support later for GBA stuff, but almost all already support it as a rumble/ram pack.)

Second thing is that the slot-1 cards, like native NDS carts, and the flash cart that you're looking for all are the same size for both the phat DS and the lite. Only the slot-2 size changed, and original GBA sized carts and slot-2 carts for the phat will stick out a little of the bottom on the lite, maybe 0.5".

In any event the point is that for his phat you need to make sure that the slot-2 card is the old cart size. Most stores call it the GBA size, e.g. RHS lists the 3in1 (GBA size) IIRC in their online catalog. I think that some of the older multi-function slot-2 cards, e.g. EZ Flash IV (MUST be deluxe if you want GBA functionality too), might be GBA size, but you'd need to ask the vendor. Those are usually more expensive, but they are also capable of running NDS apps as well as GBA stuff. As to the GBA functionality you need to be careful about that as well, since some cards were made without RAM necessarry to run GBA stuff to reduce the cost of the cart, before we had slot-1 solutions.

Just to keep it simple I'd go with a 3in1, and maybe the NDSLoader (?) app. That program pack the GBA ROM in with a NDS loader for each ROM such that it can be run just like any other NDS app, and it'll load the ROM to the 3in1 and handle the saves without having to do it manually. (I've never used because I'm lazy... but it sounds like it'd be perfect for your brother.)