Hacking Looking for reccomendations/opinions

[Samutz]

Me and friend are looking into buying DS lites mainly for the homebrew stuffs we can do with them. And since I've been away for over a year, I know almost nothing about whats going on in the current scene. So I looked through the site (mainly reviews and guides) and tried to figure out what I need.

If I got it right, then I need:
- A DS (duh)
- A passcard
- A gba flashcart

Is this correct?


If so after looking at the reviews, I like the Passwe 3 and plan to get that unless someone has some very good reason not to.

But where I'm stumped is the GBA cart. I went through the reviews and didn't find any that seemed to stand out. So I'm asking for recommendations for what cart to use.
I would prefer a SD cart (as I already have SD cards), but I'm willing to go with a MiniSD cart if they are particularly better than the SD carts since MiniSD cards are cheap(er) now.


Also a couple of questions that we came up with:
- If I load a wireless game, such as Mario Kart, with the passcard, will I be able to play wirelessly? (My friend and co-worker wants to be able to play Mario Kart between the 2 of us on our lunch breaks and such).
- Are there any differences in speed between a SD cart, MiniSD, or cart with its own storage? Specifically, differences that effect a game's speed.
- Is there anything else (besides type of storage) that might affect the performance?
- Are there any good solid emulators to run the DS? (for emulating NES, SNES, etc)

 

[tama_mog]

You're right, that is all you need. As for the passme device, you should purchase the one offered by the flashcart you're buying for maximum compatibility:

ex: if you buy a m3 or a g6 product, buy a passcard3
if you buy a supercard product, buy a superkey
etc etc.

All devices that uses a microsd is for size optimization. Supercard lite, m3 lite, g6 lite whatever.....it's so the flashcart fits in the slot2 (gba slot) without sticking out.

In regards to your question:

1) There are no guarantees to download play and multiplayer play with these passme devices like passcards.....the safest way is to flash your ds with flashme for maximum (100%) compatibility with wireless play. (this is the short answer, but the reasons are there if you do a search and pull up some threads)

2) Differences in speed of the card vs gameplay slowdown depends on the device, you should determine the flashcart of choice first then research what other people have used to get perfect gameplay without slowdowns.

3) Not much else that affects performance.

4) Once again that depends on the device, there are emulators out there for NES and SNES etc like you said, how well they work are a topic of their own of which you can search and look around in the emulation area looking @ picodrive, snezzi, whatever.....some flashcarts also come with built in implementations for emulating certain formats. How well they work is once again pending on the device.

In general if you're looking @ homebrew, supercard has the best support overall for that.

I would keep reading and post more specific questions as you go along. Good luck.

 

[Samutz]

Thanks for the help.

After I got home from work I spent a few hours reading more reviews, guides, and other people's posts and also looking at various dealers.

I ordered a M3 Perfect mini-SD with Passcard 3 from Kick Trading. And a DS lite, a 1GB mini-SD card (150x), and a usb card reader from New Egg.

I decided to go with mini-SD because with SD card I have now, I have no idea what speed it is (doesnt say right on it and I don't have the packaging). I didn't even know there were different speeds until my reading today.
The mini-SD was pretty much the exact same price as the SD anyway (for the same size and speed), and I wanted the smaller form since carts sticking out of my gbasp have been bugging me.

I doubt my buddy will get his stuff right away, so I'm gonna wait a little while before trying to flash the firmware. I'm a bit paranoid about getting it bricked since I'm new to this. I'll look into it more when the time comes.

Maybe now I'll be active on the boards again when my stuff gets here.