New Review - DS-Xtreme 4Gbit

[lagman]

Yes it does, you trimmed the roms before dropin´ them.

 

[g.crow]

Yes it does, you trimmed the roms before dropin´ them.

thx. with what do you trim the roms? or is there a software in the background which trims the roms for you when you drop them?
this whole "no patching needed" doesnt make sense to me if i have to trim the roms by myself (or live with the fact that the ds-x holds less roms on 4gbit than any other card which supports trimming when patching).
i must say im getting interested in this card

mars


edit: typo, sry for my bad english

 

[KaiBosh]

Bleh, I am not as impressed as I hoped to be. For one thing, the size is a serious problem - a lot of us use our DS as a full on media center and I have a little stack of mini-SD that have DS backups, GBA backups, and tv shows ready to go. Yes, I play all the games on there, a few minutes here and there at work.

There are still unanswered questions. How does the DS-X work in a DS that is already flashed? I'm sure it works fine, but... Does that include the ability to play wifi romz properly? And how about SNES? Did you guys load up moonshell and play some movies, etc?

Nothing about the DS-X is better than my SuperCard except for aesthetic properties, which is a valid thing I admit, but considering that I play a lot of GBA gamez I am more than happy with what I have.

 

[Hanafuda]

Well, I'm glad this thing finally came to market. Now the SC and M3/G6 teams can figure out how the thing works and make us some half-priced clones! Yeah babay!


gotta give credit for the DS-X team here for setting the bar while SC M3/G6 teams were behind.

oh absolutely. But very likely it'll be just like when Datel released the MML/MMP package earlier ... very soon afterwards all the Chinese mfgr's suddenly had "nopass" products on the market.

when ye make yer gold selling to pirates, ye better be one yerself. Arrrgghh!

I would not be surprised if SC and M3 bunch, maybe even EZ, have something out by Christmas. just have to wait and see.

 

[yee]

Great review Shaunj!

Haha, I wouldn't be surprised to see people using M3/SC/EZ4/G6 along side the DS-X because of the space

 

[Sors]

the DS-X kinda convinces me

i love the option to play single card multiplayer without having to fear it won't run, thats in fact the major letdown on my M3 for me

the skinning features also seem very nice, is there a online documentation somewhere about it? (a reference like one? ^^)

the only thing i will look for until i decide to buy this sweety is the service of the DS-X team about frequent firmware upgrades and such ^^

 

[shaunj66]

Yes it does, you trimmed the roms before dropin´ them.


thx. with what do you trim the roms? or is there a software in the background which trims the roms for you when you drop them?
this whole "no patching needed" doesnt make sense to me if i have to trim the roms by myself (or live with the fact that the ds-x holds less roms on 4gbit than any other card which supports trimming when patching).
i must say im getting interested in this card

mars


edit: typo, sry for my bad english


You don't have to trim ROMs. But if you want to do it to save space, there are plenty of tools out there to do it, or you can do it yourself with a simple hex editor. Just remove 00's of FF's at the end of the ROM file.

QUOTE(KaiBosh @ Oct 17 2006, 03:40 PM)Bleh, I am not as impressed as I hoped to be. For one thing, the size is a serious problem - a lot of us use our DS as a full on media center and I have a little stack of mini-SD that have DS backups, GBA backups, and tv shows ready to go. Yes, I play all the games on there, a few minutes here and there at work.

There are still unanswered questions. How does the DS-X work in a DS that is already flashed? I'm sure it works fine, but... Does that include the ability to play wifi romz properly? And how about SNES? Did you guys load up moonshell and play some movies, etc?

Nothing about the DS-X is better than my SuperCard except for aesthetic properties, which is a valid thing I admit, but considering that I play a lot of GBA gamez I am more than happy with what I have.Â

People are either happy or not happy with 512MB of space. If you're not happy with it then the DS-Xtreme isn't for you! I don't see why people have to keep bitching about it. We'll just have to wait and see if the DS-Xtreme team come out with a larger size card or one with micro SD support.

About the flashed DS - this was covered in the review, it works just fine, and appears in the DS main menu just as a normal game would. Single cart multiplayer works between any kind of flashed/unflashed DS/DS Lite combination. Wi-Fi also works fine.

SNES was covered too - SNEmulDS works, Snezzi does not. Moonshell also works.

People! Read the review before posting comments.

 

[webez]

Could you try some gbfs/romdsikfs homebrew like hexen, heretic, snesDS, nesterDS, DSMS, flashback (gpf one) or some like that to know what compatibility we can expect in the future for that? Thanks

Edit: I ask because Snezzi DS works in a similar way and it's the only one that hasn't worked (the other ones used fat)

 

[Paralel]

I can't imagine that a few more MBits of EEPROM would have cost that much to include,

I don't think they need to - they're implementing reprogrammable hardware. They can update the EEPROM size with a firmware update.

Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA for a more technical explanation.

But how does this solve the problem if there is only physically 2Mbits total?

 

[g.crow]

do i get this right: you have to select the card via the ds menu, it is not able to boot directly to the card?

another thing i dont understand why you claim 99% ds rom compatiblity when you have tested like 30 roms and one doesnt work (that would be 3% of the roms you tested, and maybe some or a lot of other dont work, too).
i understand that you cant test all the roms, but you cant say it is 99%, because its only 97% of the "few" (5% of all roms out) roms you have tested.
or am i getting something wrong?

when the card is able to boot directly, the pokemon and m3 problem is fixed within this week i will get one, not that you think i want to bash or something.

greetings, mars

 

[kazumi213]

Just my modest opinion, but many of the posters here complaining on the limited storage capacity for their own video and music DS experience, homebrew incompatibilities, and no GBA support should buy a laptop instead of a DS flashkit. Most important feature for a DS flashkit is flawless DS ROM support. DS-X is near this with a simple yet elegant solution. The rest of features are "nice to have" ones. And remember, its price is always cheaper than 10 of the hundreds of titles to come.

 

[shaunj66]

do i get this right: you have to select the card via the ds menu, it is not able to boot directly to the card?
Yes that's right. But all Nintendo DS's have the ability to boot straight to the DS slot and skip the menu. If you had taken the time to research it you would have known that this option can be found in your main DS settings under start-up mode.

another thing i dont understand why you claim 99% ds rom compatiblity when you have tested like 30 roms and one doesnt work (that would be 3% of the roms you tested, and maybe some or a lot of other dont work, too).
i understand that you cant test all the roms, but you cant say it is 99%, because its only 97% of the "few" (5% of all roms out) roms you have tested.
or am i getting something wrong?

when the card is able to boot directly, the pokemon and m3 problem is fixed within this week i will get one, not that you think i want to bash or something.

greetings, mars

Compatibility isn't just what boots, it's how it works and performs. Many flash kits out there may support many of the games - but may still have problems within the game such as slow down or sound/video issues, or some sections not working. The DS-Xtreme worked just fine throughout as much of the game as we could test on the games that did work.

We are continuing to test compatibility and so far have not had any more problems other than the new Pokémon.

The card can boot up directly. But we'll just have to wait and see if the DS-X team release a firmware update that fixes any of the current problems found in our review! Time will tell, keep an eye on the portal for the update.

 

[g.crow]

thx shaun for being helpful.

one last (...) question : in your video review (thx for that) when you try to show the music playback, you hit the button quite a few times and it doesnt seem to respond very well. whys that?

also it seems slow to me, when you choose an option in the main menu it seems to hang for quite a "long" time. is that so?

mars

 

[stinkingbob]

I can't believe how many people are griping about the size of the ds-X!! How many games do you want to put on it anyways? Do you guys really play 10 games at one time? Of course not. Stop bitching about it. The ds-X extreme covers just about everything users would need in a flashcart, with the most important being compatibility.
And with a price of about $125, that is not bad at all for what it offers.

 

[accolon]

One of the biggest differences is that DS-X, unlike the majority of other flash kit companies did not originate and are not based in China or Taiwan.

Does anybody know where the company is from? I read this whole thread and looked at their website, but all I could find out is that their domain is registered on a guy from China.

 

[g.crow]

One of the biggest differences is that DS-X, unlike the majority of other flash kit companies did not originate and are not based in China or Taiwan.

Does anybody know where the company is from? I read this whole thread and looked at their website, but all I could find out is that their domain is registered on a guy from China.

t think its from germany (could explain the price too, everything here is damn expensive) or around, like luxemburg.

mars

 

[shaunj66]

thx shaun for being helpful.

one last (...) question : in your video review (thx for that) when you try to show the music playback, you hit the button quite a few times and it doesnt seem to respond very well. whys that?

also it seems slow to me, when you choose an option in the main menu it seems to hang for quite a "long" time. is that so?

mars

That was actually Costello, he wasn't actually tapping the screen hard enough so it didn't work. It was quite funny trying to hold the laughter in as he tried... Trying to juggle a DS, cameraphone (sorry about pisspoor quality) and a stylus isn't easy!

One of the biggest differences is that DS-X, unlike the majority of other flash kit companies did not originate and are not based in China or Taiwan.

Does anybody know where the company is from? I read this whole thread and looked at their website, but all I could find out is that their domain is registered on a guy from China.

I could tell you but I'd get told off!

You're wrong though. Heheh.

 

[AshuraZro]

Out of curiosity, is there a place where I can grab the included skin files to have a looksie?

EDIT
My bad.

 

[Costello]

I was actually supposed to double-clik (well double-tap) but I forgot about that. And yeh it was difficult to hold the laughter

About compatibility, we have tried the main commercial games, the most important ones, the ones everyone wants to play. PLUS a bunch of random games. PLUS all the games that caused trouble on other linkers. PLUS a bunch of the best homebrew. Why do you think it took us so much time (almost 1 complete day) to write the review?
We were told that compatibility was 100%, I assume they have tested quite a few games themselves already. We did a good effort testing so many games and eventually found out a contradiction. I can tell you it is quite boring to run dozens of game and tick boxes "Working, working, working, working, working, working..." so we're pretty lucky we found a non working game!
It seems that the DS-X team have come up with a solution that lets you boot backups considered as real games by the nintendo DS. The only non working game is Pokémon Diamond but that is most probably because the save chip on the PKM carts is 4 Mbits while the eeprom chip on the DS-Xteme is 2 Mbits. EVERY other game has absolutely no reason to be troublesome. There is no other 4mbits eeprom game at the moment

This is why I can safely say that compatibility is 99.9%. Prove me wrong!

Out of curiosity, is there a place where I can grab the included skin files to have a looksie?

It's been on the front page since yesterday...........
http://www.gbatemp.net/shaunj66/skin.rar

Anyway if any of you have the least doubt about our rating, then remember this:
- we already own every flash kit
- we have reviewed them all
- our favorite IS the DS-Xtreme, by far, and this is not just subjective, this judgement is based on facts
- the rating is also based on the previous ratings. The G6 Lite had received a nice 9/10 mark. And according to us, the DS-Xtreme is better than the G6 Lite. So it deserves a higher rating.
If you still have any problem regarding the rating then fine, buy all flashkits, do an extensive review for each product and tell us what you think

 

[SectionX]

I was actually supposed to double-clik (well double-tap) but I forgot about that. And yeh it was difficult to hold the laughter

About compatibility, we have tried the main commercial games, the most important ones, the ones everyone wants to play. PLUS a bunch of random games. PLUS all the games that caused trouble on other linkers. PLUS a bunch of the best homebrew. Why do you think it took us so much time (almost 1 complete day) to write the review?
We were told that compatibility was 100%, I assume they have tested quite a few games themselves already. We did a good effort testing so many games and eventually found out a contradiction. I can tell you it is quite boring to run dozens of game and tick boxes "Working, working, working, working, working, working..." so we're pretty lucky we found a non working game!
It seems that the DS-X team have come up with a solution that lets you boot backups considered as real games by the nintendo DS. The only non working game is Pokémon Diamond but that is most probably because the save chip on the PKM carts is 4 Mbits while the eeprom chip on the DS-Xteme is 2 Mbits. EVERY other game has absolutely no reason to be troublesome. There is no other 4mbits eeprom game at the moment

This is why I can safely say that compatibility is 99.9%. Prove me wrong!

so yeah what happens if more games will use 4 Mbits of eeprom in future as well? Hopefully there is a solution for this stuff. Especially if all Nintendo future games will use it.