Hacking M3 Real – what version of card do you have?

[beatrixgba]

CPE, I use a 4GB A-Data Class 6 Card. No problems whatsoever so far. I use the GBA and the Rumble pack from the Perfect Bundle.

Errrrr!! CPE. I had a 4GB A-Data Class 6 Card with nothing but problems! Formatted many times. I took the card back after 20 low-level formats.

 

[Swalk]

CPE, I use a 4GB A-Data Class 6 Card. No problems whatsoever so far. I use the GBA and the Rumble pack from the Perfect Bundle.


Errrrr!! CPE. I had a 4GB A-Data Class 6 Card with nothing but problems! Formatted many times. I took the card back after 20 low-level formats.

So was it the SD card causing the problems or the CPE M3? I would have blamed the SD card if I hadn't had the CP2 to test it with.

 

[naes]

Hmm. Maybe there is two shipments of CPEs? That's weird that beatrixgba has the same setup as I do yet suffers from many problems...


For what it's worth I have a Japanese Launch Ice Blue DS Lite.

 

[snowcorn22]

Just a quick note to all who are having problems with this M3DS Real...

are you using soft reset by any chance??

Cause i had a problem with freezing on Mario & Sonic at the Olympic games.... when Soft reset was turned on... turned it off and worked....

Worth a try....

 

[Chedderknight]

I have about 60+ games on my card, so far only cooking mama 2 gives me problems, my friend has the same configuration but has a ds phat and it works fine, same card CPE, same microsd brand, dunno what it is, boggles me really, but thus far every game has work including download play

 

[alldogship]

CP2 with 2GB scan disk micro on FAT, firmware 2.9. At first I formatted it in Fat32 and it gave me "Format Error" when a save file was supposed to be created (NDS and Homebrew). Formatted to FAT and saved creation worked fine.

As for DS games, I didn't try many because I'm mostly emulating old game I have. Mario and Luigi time thing, it froze only once during a transition and graphic glitches happened frequently just before a screen transition. Dragon Quest Hero Slime, lots of graphic glitches on transitions and the time of day animation. I want to blame where I got the roms.

 

[naes]

Hmm, I really think a lot of problems have to do with bad ROMs. I tested all of these problem ROMs so far and nothing went wrong, other than Ontamarama wouldn't load with soft reset (turn it off to fix it) and Cooking Mama 2 wouldn't finish the pizza with soft reset (turn it off to fix it).


Maybe the next update can have a universal soft reset... :-D

 

[TheEak]

This poll has me worried to buy an M3 now. I don't want to have the games I really want to play crashing on me.

 

[cory1492]

I have one of the first batches of chinese units, CP2, which I changed over to english. No problems with it at all with a 1G kingston, though I haven't really used it all that much.

Just a theory but I'd expect CPE is the english revision of the current PCB, they are apparently hardwiring the language to the cards now instead of just using a 0k resistor. So I expect there are currently 3 PCB revisions in production (eng, asian, chinese).
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=63782&st=105

 

[grayfox_nds]

Dangit I just ordered a M3 DS Real Perfect bundle, hope it turns out ok. =/

 

[Chedderknight]

I just redownloaded cooking mama 2, played the game with Soft Reset off, works perfectly, so now my card plays my roms 100%, now im very satisfied, and so is my g/f, lol, thanks

 

[Swalk]

Hmm. Maybe there is two shipments of CPEs? That's weird that beatrixgba has the same setup as I do yet suffers from many problems...


For what it's worth I have a Japanese Launch Ice Blue DS Lite.

I'm sure there must be multiple shipments of CPEs, it's a worldwide market. It could just be the latest UK shipment that's the problem but I hoped this poll would show if there is an issue or not.

Just a quick note to all who are having problems with this M3DS Real...

are you using soft reset by any chance??

Cause i had a problem with freezing on Mario & Sonic at the Olympic games.... when Soft reset was turned on... turned it off and worked....

Worth a try....

Discovered the soft reset problem very early on with the original cards and have never bothered with it since. The M3 boots up pretty quickly anyway so it's not much of a hassle.

Hmm, I really think a lot of problems have to do with bad ROMs. I tested all of these problem ROMs so far and nothing went wrong, other than Ontamarama wouldn't load with soft reset (turn it off to fix it) and Cooking Mama 2 wouldn't finish the pizza with soft reset (turn it off to fix it).

Maybe the next update can have a universal soft reset... :-D

If it's bad ROMs then why do they work on my CP2 but not the CPE? Again, soft reset is always off.

QUOTE(cory1492 @ Jan 31 2008, 03:03 AM)

I have one of the first batches of chinese units, CP2, which I changed over to english. No problems with it at all with a 1G kingston, though I haven't really used it all that much.

Just a theory but I'd expect CPE is the english revision of the current PCB, they are apparently hardwiring the language to the cards now instead of just using a 0k resistor. So I expect there are currently 3 PCB revisions in production (eng, asian, chinese).
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=63782&st=105

My original CP2s are black English models bought in December 07 from a UK supplier who has a very fast turnover of stock, so they are only a couple of months old. You could have a point that very latest batches are marked so the language version can be identified easily.

 

[RetroMan]

I have revision CPE here, together with an 8 gb SanDisk class 6 uSDHC card. No problems whatsoever, all roms seem to load without crashing / hanging. I also specifically tried the large roms like #'s 1969, 1753, 1693, 1577 and 1527.

In the description of the M3 real they advertise with "no loading problems, even from slower SD cards". I recognise what they mean with this: Supercard DS One SDHC version has this problem. On a slower card, larger roms tend to hang. The fuller the card, the more often the problem occures.

Possible solutions (which solved the loading problem on DS One/SDHC, so might help if you run into loading problems on your M3):
1) Format the card (via Windows Computer Management -> Disk Management) at FAT 32 with a 64 k allocation unit size;
2) Make sure that the largest roms ar put on the card first;
3) Defragment the card before you put it in M3/NDS: Right click on the drive -> properties -> tools -> defragment now.

Good luck; feedback welcome!

 

[Swalk]

Possible solutions (which solved the loading problem on DS One/SDHC, so might help if you run into loading problems on your M3):
1) Format the card (via Windows Computer Management -> Disk Management) at FAT 32 with a 64 k allocation unit size;
2) Make sure that the largest roms ar put on the card first;
3) Defragment the card before you put it in M3/NDS: Right click on the drive -> properties -> tools -> defragment now.

Good luck; feedback welcome!

Thanks for the constructive suggestions but I've tried all that, plus just having one ROM on the card, but nothing helps.

As mentioned before I've got cards formatted as FAT and FAT32, they all work perfectly in the CP2s but not the CPE.

Perhaps I've just been unlucky with two flaky CPEs or perhaps one batch had QC issues, though out of 10 CPE votes so far 40% have problems, not that 10 votes is really enough to make a fair judgement yet.

 

[beatrixgba]

Possible solutions (which solved the loading problem on DS One/SDHC, so might help if you run into loading problems on your M3):
1) Format the card (via Windows Computer Management -> Disk Management) at FAT 32 with a 64 k allocation unit size;
2) Make sure that the largest roms ar put on the card first;
3) Defragment the card before you put it in M3/NDS: Right click on the drive -> properties -> tools -> defragment now.

Good luck; feedback welcome!

Thanks for the constructive suggestions but I've tried all that, plus just having one ROM on the card, but nothing helps.

As mentioned before I've got cards formatted as FAT and FAT32, they all work perfectly in the CP2s but not the CPE.

Perhaps I've just been unlucky with two flaky CPEs or perhaps one batch had QC issues, though out of 10 CPE votes so far 40% have problems, not that 10 votes is really enough to make a fair judgement yet.

I've tried all of that as well, no luck with my CPE. However, I looked and noticed that my chinese version (I have one of each) is a CP2. I might as well start using that one. So far, the pole proves flawless for CP2. I had the most problems with the CPE when playing large video clips also and discovered that the 2GB cards I've tried on the CPE have errors but nothing gets corrupted. The files on the 4GB card would get corrupted, resulting in a low level format in order to use the card again.

 

[zhdarkstar]

I purchased 2 CP2's back in late November. Both have been running fine with almost every game thrown at it. The only game I'm having problems with is Ultimate Mortal Kombat. The game just doesn't want to load. I've tried every possible configuration and I cannot get the game to load. I've sent multiple emails to M3 about this and got no response.

I know it's a good rom because I've used it on my EZV and my brother's M3 slot-2 without a problem.

 

[naes]

There must have been a faulty CPE shipment. Please, anyone from M3 speak up on this.

 

[xmortis]

Interesting. I got my M3 Real maybe 2 weeks ago or so. Its a M3 DS REAL - CP2

Maybe they had some stock hanging around so I didn't get a CPE.

Doesn't matter to me. So what the heck is the difference between the two revisions anyway? The 'English' theory someone else posted seems quite viable. Makes sense.

I have had no problems with my CP2 so far, save for a few homebrew apps like to freeze. Like PDADS. I wouldn't use it anyway. All DS roms run great. I haven't played with GBA roms or any emulators yet.

-X

 

[grayfox_nds]

Just got my M3 DS Real Perfect package today and Kingston 4GB Japan card. It's a CP2 I'm guessing as thats what it says on the little bit of PCB sticking out near the contacts, only tried a few games so far but no problems yet.

 

[MAF58]

I have a CP 2 and was the one who started the post about the M3's freezing.