New SuperCard DS(ONE) Info and Photos! *Update*

[Kosmo]

I'm probably gonna get mine later today from a local flashcart retailer...

The advertised price is pretty good there, too

If I have any time before the evening, I'll test some games out... Any requests?

Besides Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam, of course

What's the price there?

 

[Mystic-Homer]

Okay... That's quite a few for this afternoon, haha... I still have to grab the card first

Here's my list of games I'm gonna put on today or tomorrow (for now) because they're either: 1) Popular games; 2) Known to have had problems in the past; 3) Have been requested:

0056 - Super Mario 64 DS (U) (v1.1)
0085 - Jump Super Stars (J)
0121 - Castlevania - Dawn of Sorrow (U)
0122 - Trauma Center - Under The Knife (U)
0127 - Phoenix Wright - Ace Attorney (U)
0142 - Metroid Prime Pinball (U)
0168 - Mario Kart DS (U)
0366 - Tetris DS (U)
0367 - Metroid Prime Hunters (U)
0434 - New Super Mario Bros. (U)
0540 - Star Fox Command (U)
0556 - Megaman ZX (U)
0570 - Danny Phantom Urban Jungle (U)
0573 - Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 (U)
0577 - Pokemon Diamond (J)
0626 - Gyakuten Saiban 2 (J)
0636 - Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam (U)
0655 - Elite Beat Agents (U)
0659 - Nacho Libre (U)
0661 - Yoshi's Island DS (U)
0681 - Final Fantasy III (U)
0696 - Jump Ultimate Stars (J)
0732 - Kirby - Squeak Squad (U)
0733 - Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin (U)
0756 - Naruto - Shinobi Retsuden (J)
0765 - Full Metal Alchemist - Dual Sympathy (U)

I'm not gonna play all of them that thoroughly - Just gonna note any black/white screens (obviously), as well as slowdown (intros more highly-scrutinized), saving issues, etc.

And also, I'm going to use Standard Mode for these... Clean roms

In response to Saturn: Sorry, I can't try with a Slot-2, seeing as I kinda sold my SC Lite already >.

 

[Hanafuda]

Does anyone know yet if the firmware contains an .ini that matches up rom headers to their corresponding save type, or if save type must be chosen and attached to a game manually before first use, or if there's some magic involved in getting the proper save file size when running clean roms? I can see what looks like a drop down menu in the chinese pics where save types are listed by size, and it appears the user may need to make a manual choice. Hopefully you only have to do it once. Or even better, hopefully I'm dead wrong and its really is judt drag, drop, play.

 

[ancient_imhotep]

Hanafuda,

The firmware is already preloaded onto the SCDS1 when you get the card and no new version has been released yet.

When you get the SCDS1 you have to download the OS that is placed on the MicroSD card. It is just a .nds file and a directory with lots of files/folders inside which you place on the root of the card.

Basically the .nds file is the loader for the MoonShell frontend that the SCDS1 uses to run everything from. Then the directory contains all the bits for MoonShell (like the background, icons, fonts, skin.ini file, sounds and some plug ins used to run everything).

I have checked all the .ini files and cannot see anything that stands out as being a list of game save types for each game. I even checked everyother file that I could open and read.

My understanding is that the clean roms on first run should have the save type automatically detected. Then you simply save as normal in the game and then when you turn off your DS and then back on it creates the .sav file with the same name as the .nds for the game and copies the save info into this file. Then when you launch the game again it loads from the .sav file as normal.

I also understand that there may be issues detecting the save file size and that this is why the menu you have seen is provided. This allows you to manually set the size in case of problems with the dectecting (I would guess a sign of this would be not being able to save).

I could be wrong on all of this, but if you download the files for the DS1 from the supercard website you can double check about the MoonShell bit and see if I have missed a file.

Testing will commence at 12 midday UK (GMT) time.

Cheers,

Ancient_imhotep

 

[sarah99]

Mine is still in the post to me (posted Monday)
1st class from London to Plymouth is slow at the moment.

 

[Sinkhead]

I want to buy one, but I'm getting an M3 Simply and an R4 so I can't see the point really.
When I get more money, I will buy this because the SuperCard Team seem really good.

- Sam

 

[Kliviwiki]

Playing with it?...you must be foreign...in american we call it crying...or buyers remorse..and rkenshin is correct...it is a wasted head start..but i'm glad real companies are coming to the rescue for all the people that saw through the smoke and mirrors and decided to wait for a fair priced product.  For 130 bucks i'd expect atleast a gig of memory.  Congradulations to everyone that saw DSX and said pass...and i'm sorry for everyone who didn't.  REALLY...REALLY 130 dollars...for 512MB...wtf, I saw a 1GB SD card at staples today for 20 dollars.  For shame DSX...for shame.


Where I live, the flashkits' prices are calculated by adding another zero to the final price. For example, the Supercard DS1 costs about 50 USD. Here, it costs R$ 500,00. 1 USD = 2,12 R$.

The DSX here costs R$580,00, that would be almost USD 290,00. Yay!

How come everything's so pricey in brasil? Wii is like 650$ US.. I don't beleive brasilians are HYPER RICH..

No, brazilians are far from being super rich, but the Wii pre-order was about R$ 1500,00, wich is almost U$D 600,00. The reason for that are the taxes, wich can elevate the consoles' price up to 250%.

 

[Mystic-Homer]

Sucks to be you guys... Well, at least your women have nice asses

And an update... For reasons that I couldn't control, I couldn't make it down to the place today to grab my SC DS...

But I WILL go tomorrow for sure, and test those games I previously listed.

Probably better - I couldn't test that many today even if I wanted to

 

[ancient_imhotep]

I just had a visit from my friendly postman and he had my SuperCard DS with him......

First impressions, absolutly fab.

The build quality is excellent and the MicroSD slot is spring loaded. It fits into the DS Slot without any problems and ejects just as smoothly.

You will not be lossing either your SCDS or your MicroSD card with this Slot 1 device.

Boot up is fast, with the card automatically loading the OS without going to the DS Loader screen.

The GUI is super smooth in both looks and operation, however I did encounter an error on loading of the OS relating to it not being able to read the disc or file (this would appear to be a problem with something I have copied over, maybe due to copying files from a DVD?). This error does not stop the OS from loading, however I have not tried any games yet.

At work, so will not be able to post images or test results until about 3 hours time.

Stay tuned.

Cheers,

Ancient_Imhotep

 

[HMan]

Anxiously waiting for your impressions!

 

[BlueStar]

Finally gonna upgrade to a lite when I find out which slot 1 card is going to be the better choice. Hoping it''s supercard out of brand loyalty from my trusty SCSD and the fact I guess it'd make it easier transferring all my saves over.

 

[ancient_imhotep]

OK, time to play with my SCDS.

I cannot take any pictures at the moment because my camera is not very good. Will post images this evening.

But a quick run down on the menu options at the top of the touch screen: -

1) Saver Menu - has options for 4K, 64K, 512K and 2M/4M. My guess is that this menu is used to set the size of the Game Save that is used as temporary space when playing the game, it is set at 512K by default and seems to reset to this on each power off/on.

2) Other Menu - has options for Enable GBA Union, Set SC to Rumble Mode, Display Chinese Name and Save Menu Option. I am not 100% sure on these menu options, but I do know that each of the first three have a check box and that when you select Save Menu Option it saves the settings for these three.

3) Option Menu - has options for ICO Modality (changes icon sizes for ROMs from Big to small to off), File Sort (either by Time or Name), Language (English or Chinese), SD Speed (1x, 2x, 3x, 4x & 5x - defaults to 3x on mine), File Info (used to display further info about the selected file) and About (displays info about MoonShell version etc).

4) Help Menu - displays a list of controls that can be used to do things like pause startup of the OS, change volume, change brightness etc.

So far I have formatted my MicroSD card using both FAT and FAT32, in both cases the OS will boot up without issues.

I copied 42 All-Time Classics to the MicroSD card, in native mode (drag n drop .nds file). When you turn on the DS you are displayed with the menu as above and a list of games which shows the Icon, Game Name and also the games Save File size (64Kb in this case). By highlighting the game with the up and down buttons you can then select the "File Info" option from the menu and it will show you further info on the game selected. In the "File Info" window you get most of the same info as on the actual game select screen, but you also get a button to change the Save Game size manually and also it tells you what the actual Rom file name is on the card.

42 All-Time Classics started up first go and allowed me to fully play a couple of quick games. I then turned the DS off and back on and this time when the OS loaded a message appeared telling me that it was copying Saver to the memory card. This only took a second to do and then upon playing the game again it had all the save information loaded automatically.

Upon taking out the MicroSD card to see what it had saved to the card, it had created a .SAV file named after the ROM that I had been playing. However this does appear to be one issue, when you view the File Info for the NDS file it shows the ROM file name as something like 0583 All~.nds and this is the naming used for the save game file. It would appear that the SCDS does not like long file names for creating the save game, although everything still works as normal which is weird.

Also I can confirm that save games from the SC Lite work with the SCDS.

Sorry, work is getting busy so will have to leave it there until later on tonight. However one last thing Tony Hawkes Downhill Jam does work on the SCDS in native mode.

Cheers,

Ancient_Imhotep

 

[NeroMayCry]

Gotta test some homebrew on that next, man. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[kazumi213]

The fact the size of save being displayed along with the game name, but having implemented a custom save size setting capability could indicate save size info come from some kind of database file. I could be wrong, of course, because, in example, VBA fails to autodetect the correct save type for some ROMs. Just by changing manually the save type the ROM suddenly works. A test to invalidate the "save type/size database file" existence would be to test the newest dumped ROM (beware, not being a dupe from a long time released one) and check if the save info is displayed then.

 

[HMan]

Looking good...

Now you work, we wait

 

[NowhereLand]

ancient_imhotep nice

I'm gonna get my SCDS tomorrow. xD

One question? How are you playing with the SDcard? FAT or FAT32? Any difference you can see between?

 

[Shtroodle]

Great sneak preview. Please be sure to test some homebrew apps as well. Thanks.

 

[ancient_imhotep]

At the moment I have tried both FAT and FAT32, although very quickly on both.

I have settled on FAT32 at the moment and will do all my tests using FAT32, as this is what I would like to use in the long term. However I might have to try changing to FAT in case this helps to explain the short filenames on the save files that are created.

With regards to the save database bit, I am not sure. I have checked through every single file in the OS and cannot see anything that would suggest this. However when you load up the SCDS and get the GUI up, it defaults to the storage space on the MicroSD card, but you can tap the up arrow and actually gain access to what I believe is the actual Firmware area that seems to contain some files related to booting up without the OS on the MicroSD card or without a MicroSD card inserted.

The suggestion that I seem to be understanding is that it trys to detect the Save Game size from the ROM, and if it cannot detect it then you go into the File Info window for the ROM and set it manually.

Also there is a Saver menu which would seem to be used to change the size of the temporary save game size, this is used to store the game save in when you are playing the game (if you have a .sav file on the MicroSD this is loaded into the temp save space on starting the game) then when you power off the DS and back on it transfers the contents from the temp save space into the correct .sav file on the SD card. I am not sure why you would want to change the size of the temp save space, I would have thought it was better to leave it at the max of 4Mb.

I have some of the most recent ROMs at home so I will try them to see if I can shed more light on the posibility of it having a database.

Homebrew will be tested, however the games people have listed will be done first (along with images) and then I will ask for suggestions on homebrew to test.

Cheers

Ancient_Imhotep.

 

[754boy]

Nice preview imhotep! Can't wait til I get my hand on one

 

[Hanafuda]

one of the mods at scdev (sneef) reported slowdowns in Animal Crossing, but he added an edit later that bumping the card speed setting to 4x and formatting with 64k clusters helped. I don't recall if he said he formatted in FAT or FAT32.

He also said in an earlier post that he had trouble with the card's fit in his DS - trouble ejecting. I'm glad A.I. (Ancient Imhotep) here has something different to report.

I spent a couple days trying to tell myself to wait (see my What to do with $100 thread for instance), but in the end I uttered an expletive and ordered one. Should have it Friday or immediately after Christmas.

A.I., we're all ears, friend. Keep the info coming!