Hacking my r4ds/m3ds simply review

[tal32123]

M3 Simply, R4DS
M3 simply and r4ds are pretty much the same, if you don't believe me you can switch firmware between the two using an application that does that. I got my R4DS last year and since then I learned a lot about flashcards (before I got it I knew absolutely nothing about flashcards). Anyway R4DS used to be the best flashcard around until the R4 team got shut down because Nintendo and many other companies sued them because people were using the R4 card to run illegal software. Now R4 does not have any updates so you can't use many of the new games that are coming out with that card, but homebrew still works. Homebrew for those of you who don't know are applications or games that developers make for use on a flashcard. The R4 worked with 99% of the homebrew I used. I especially liked certain homebrew applications like:


dsaim - aol instant messenger
beup live - msn messenger
dsorganize - an organizer that lets you listen to music, online radio, internet that lets you download, etc.
ndsmail - checks your email and rss feeds for you really quick
licks media player aka lmpg-ng - I-Pod like thing that lets you listen to your entire playlist also has shuffle
moonshell and moonshell 2 - let you watch .dpg movies, listen to music, read text, and more
and last dsmplay - lets you see .dsm videos (these videos have the best quality but are large in size)


You can't use any memory cards that are over 2 gigabytes because the R4/m3 doesn't support that size. I noticed no lagging in my music or videos, but when i had too many songs lmp-ng would freeze up. The Text reader that came on the firmware didn't work really well. Also after a while of use the spring loader stopped working and I had to manually take out the micro sd card which wasn't hard because you don't have to open up anything just pull it out. When I had to reformat my memory card due to an issue using dscompress ( a great program that uncompresses .zip files and compresses files to .gz and uncompresses .gz files but has issues with files over 50 megabytes) the middle button (a shortcut for moonshell) stopped working so I had to enter moonshell the long way. Other than that, the card works very well except for certain times (happens to everything) where the DS can't read the R4 or the R4 can't read the memory card. Would I reccomend this to people.........probably not since there are no new updates, but if someone is looking for a good cheap card, then this is the card for them. Keep in mind though that this doesn't work with the new Nintendo DS

 

[Depravo]

A review of two obsolete cards. How... innovative.

 

[tal32123]

people still sell them, however i didn't know that when i bought mine, people said it was the best so i bought it, and i got ripped off when i bought mine

 

[James_Wulfe]

M3 Simply, R4DS
M3 simply and r4ds are pretty much the same, if you don't believe me you can switch firmware between the two using an application that does that. I got my R4DS last year and since then I learned a lot about flashcards (before I got it I knew absolutely nothing about flashcards). Anyway R4DS used to be the best flashcard around until the R4 team got shut down because Nintendo and many other companies sued them because people were using the R4 card to run illegal software. Now R4 does not have any updates so you can't use many of the new games that are coming out with that card, but homebrew still works. Homebrew for those of you who don't know are applications or games that developers make for use on a flashcard. The R4 worked with 99% of the homebrew I used. I especially liked certain homebrew applications like:


dsaim - aol instant messenger
beup live - msn messenger
dsorganize - an organizer that lets you listen to music, online radio, internet that lets you download, etc.
ndsmail - checks your email and rss feeds for you really quick
licks media player aka lmpg-ng - I-Pod like thing that lets you listen to your entire playlist also has shuffle
moonshell and moonshell 2 - let you watch .dpg movies, listen to music, read text, and more
and last dsmplay - lets you see .dsm videos (these videos have the best quality but are large in size)


You can't use any memory cards that are over 2 gigabytes because the R4/m3 doesn't support that size. I noticed no lagging in my music or videos, but when i had too many songs lmp-ng would freeze up. The Text reader that came on the firmware didn't work really well. Also after a while of use the spring loader stopped working and I had to manually take out the micro sd card which wasn't hard because you don't have to open up anything just pull it out. When I had to reformat my memory card due to an issue using dscompress ( a great program that uncompresses .zip files and compresses files to .gz and uncompresses .gz files but has issues with files over 50 megabytes) the middle button (a shortcut for moonshell) stopped working so I had to enter moonshell the long way. Other than that, the card works very well except for certain times (happens to everything) where the DS can't read the R4 or the R4 can't read the memory card. Would I reccomend this to people.........probably not since there are no new updates, but if someone is looking for a good cheap card, then this is the card for them. Keep in mind though that this doesn't work with the new Nintendo DS


QUOTE(Depravo @ Jul 7 2009, 02:48 PM) A review of two obsolete cards. How... innovative.

Well first off having my R4 for over 5 years now i would just like to say, it was one of the best purchases i could have made at the time, and i would still to this day recommend it to new users.

Now to correct some things with this review.....

2 of the original members of the R4 team have moved over to the R4i team and are continuing the updates of the original r4 the current firmware at this time is 1.23 and can be found here -> http://r4li.com/download/r4.html

You can use SD's over 2GB they just can NOT be SDHC this is stated on the packaging of the R4 itself that it supports up to 4GB sd's

The freezing found in some applications is from having to many files and can usually be fixed by organizing your card better, such as in the instance of DSision2, if i placed my games in to folders and categorized them instead of having 50 games on root then it loaded way faster as it only had to load 8 folders and not a million apps.

The middle button error is a known issue that comes from homebrew corrupting your _DS_MENU.DAT file and can be fixed by replacing this with a fresh one, and not using the said homebrew again. Now dscompress in itself is a good application but i feel it is unnecessary, since homebrew such as GameUP, DSOrganize, and Bunjaloo, will download, extract and install to your card without the need for such a third party.


The cart not loading is also a known issue with every cart, this is caused from the pins not connecting to your ds properly (can be fixed with a piece of notebook paper, there is more info on that and many other R4 problems here http://www.r4ds-forums.com/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=1354 and also here http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=98408 scroll to the bottom of the first post for the "paper trick")

Finally i cant say this enough THIS CARD IS NOT OBSOLETE, M3 maybe, but R4 will NEVER die, if it did then why is the forum still here, why does the r4ds-forums exist and still update frequently on info about the R4, why can i still buy this cart everywhere, would it have not dissipated by now if there was no production, and finally THE R4i team has re-birthed it, making it yet again a competitive cart......

PS: not to mention there is alternative methods to using an R4 such as the lovely Moon2/YS combo