Hacking My Mac and a M3 DS Simply

[RadioDog]

I recently got a DS Lite and a M3 DS Simply. I've got two Macs (PMG4 Dual450/10.3.9 & PBG41.5/10.4.8). Mac support and apps were always a bit lean with my Visoly FlashAdvance Xtreme/GBA but I'm surprised how much I can get done on my mac with my NDSL/M3DSS. This post is to help Mac users with a M3DSS (and I assume most other MicroSD/Slot-1 devices). Most apps are freeware/system/included, for all others goto macserialjunkie ;-). These are my own experiences and I'm not responsible for anything that stuffs up.

Formatting
------------
I got a Japanese 1gb Toshiba card for my M3DSS. Using the built-in Disk Utility I formatted the card, selecting "MS-DOS File System" (which is FAT32). I also unchecked "Install Mac OS 9 Disk Driver".
If you're really finnicky and you want to format your card FAT16 you can use MacDrive [http://www.mediafour.com/].

Installing
------------
I downloaded the latest console software from M3 and copied the relevant parts to my card. You can use an app called KopyMac [http://digitol.homeip.net/kmb2.61b.sit] to copy files over to your card without all the hidden mac system files (it'll also clean out any hidden system files). But I found I could easy clean them out using the browser on the M3DSS, and the hidden files don't seem to wreak havoc with the MSDSS.

Games
------------
Running clean dumps was a no-brainer. Copy to card, play. You can use Rominator [http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=44909] to manage your roms. Works well, a couple of bugs and it crashed my aging mac trying to view all the icons. But it does a great job of trimming roms properly. I had used the M3 trimmer in VirtualPC but it did something screwy to the wi-fi games. Big thumbs up for Rominator!

Homebrew
------------
Only just getting into homebrew and it seems you get DLDI patchable stuff that works and non-DLDI stuff that probably won't work. If you can patch your piece of homebrew, I use DLDI Drop [http://www.blogadresse.de/2007/01/29/dldi-drop-dldi-patcher-the-mac-way/]. Drag-n-drop patching. Too easy. Homebrew-wise, DSOrganize, NDSmail and Comic Book DS are great places to start (but there's no .cbds creator for mac).

Movies
------------
Hurrah! You can create .dpg movies for moonshell in OS X! DPG Converter [http://homepage.mac.com/atkinson.d/DPG Converter.zip] and Mencoder [http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mplayerosx/ffmpegXbinaries20060307.zip] (drop both unzipped files into the same folder) do this job quicky and easily.

Thing I Haven't Done On A Mac
------------
These might be able to be done (please show me!) but for now I have to launch Virtual PC or a real windoze box.
• Patching - .bdp and .ifo
• Getting a slot-2 adapter soon - more playing

Thanks for reading, hope this helps someone. Hopefully, I'll be updating this post in the near future.

Robbo

 

[BoneMonkey]

dude you should have gotten a dell

 

[leetdude_007]

Cool. Mac lovers will love you now. I like the operating system and the hardware is damn fine, but EXPENSIVE. Thanks for your contrib!

 

[RadioDog]

dude you should have gotten a dell

I wouldn't inflict a dell on my worst enemy. But please, no flaming/trolling re: mac vs pc. This post is for people who use macs and want to get started with a M3DSS (or similar)

Robbo

BYW, mac are much cheaper than what they used to be ... look at what you get!

 

[R-Unit 4]

How do u use the video converter?

 

[RadioDog]

How do u use the video converter?

Download and unzip DPG Converter and mencoder into the same folder. Then run dpgconverter. That's it!

 

[R-Unit 4]

THANK YOU!
Now I can convert my videos in to dpg...but there are somethings that need to be improved...the best level of video is no better than better.
It can't convert most .mov files properly. Only the ones in Hi-res can, or if they don't move tom much...when I tried to encode 'The Codex, after a while, half the screen suddenly blops downwards.
Also, could you give the option of making the screen brigher like with DPGtools?

But other than that, THANK YOU!!!

 

[reemixx]

Thank you for this.

I own both a PC and a Mac. Currently I do everything from the PC, but soon I'll be in a position where I'll only have my Powerbook with me for a few days a week, so this has come in very handy for me. Thank you very much

 

[R-Unit 4]

and another tip...make it more than divx and mov format...I can't run wmv through it

 

[R-Unit 4]

and another tip...make it more than divx and mov format...I can't run wmv through it

 

[RadioDog]

THANK YOU!
Now I can convert my videos in to dpg...but there are somethings that need to be improved...the best level of video is no better than better.
It can't convert most .mov files properly. Only the ones in Hi-res can, or if they don't move tom much...when I tried to encode 'The Codex, after a while, half the screen suddenly blops downwards.

I have been pre-converting all my videoes to VCD mpegs using FFmpegX, Toast or Burn. A 320x240 mpeg transcodes in no time at all and the results are fairly acceptable on the tiny NDS screen.

Robbo

 

[R-Unit 4]

I can't do it on mine for some reason...I can't dl mpeg2enc.intel properly...