Yes, a regular and lite DS work with all flashcarts and cannot be updated to block them.
Yes, you can just drag and drop into the root. No, you don't have to setup folders. Yes, the games need to be unzipped (as far as I'm aware).
I run my games from the root without issue.And it's probably better to create a folder for your games instead of running them from the root.
so I just need to download and extract AKAIO.1.9.0 to the root of the sd as well as my unzipped gamesI run my games from the root without issue.
That is correct.so I just need to download and extract AKAIO.1.9.0 to the root of the sd as well as my unzipped games