Hacking R4 DS bricked?!?!

[striderx]

I've had my R4 DS for about two months. It's been working great until this weekend.

I inserted into my DS Lite and... nuthin. The DS boots to the default warning screen. I go past that and it reports "There is no DS Card inserted."

I've removed and reinserted the card ... multiple times, mind you ... and still no joy. Same for the microSD card. I have two microSD's - a 2GB SanDisk (Taiwan) and a 2GB Kingston (Taiwan) and that makes no difference either.

My son has a DS phat, and it was working for him fine until today. Now his has a problem too.

The first time this happened I did the insertion dance about a dozen times and got it to boot. After that it worked fine through multiple power cycles without having removed it. Then my son borrowed it and it hasn't booted again since... neither the phat nor lite work.

All contacts are clean to the eye. My next step is to swab them with alcohol and see if that helps.

Otherwise, it appears my R4 may be bricked.

I've looked through various retail web sites and all of them are out of stock. After following a thread about r4ds.net being down I made my way to http://www.hacken.cc and found suggestions of R4 DS leaving the market in lieu of a new M3DSR (yeah, I know the R4 fanboys aren't happy about this). So it seems that getting a replacement R4 DS may be problematic.

Anyway, any suggestions?

thanks! striderx

 

[androssfox]

This happened to me, I plugged in my R4 to my pc and I saw garbled files named #&$^^@5 and when I tried opening the folders I got syntax errors.
I just formatted it and the R4 worked fine.

 

[Ad_Enuff]

Unless you have run a dodgy micro firmware upgrade file on your R4 that you shouldn't have, your problems as already stated are more likely down to a corrupt microSD card.

IF you can save some of the files ie save files then copy them to your PC first. Otherwise its a simple case of formatting the whole card, copying the kernel across and all the roms again.

As for the R4 team stop supporting the R4 becuase of the M3 DS REAL, forget it! The R4 team will continue to support the most popular SLOT 1 solution on the market today. IF they can get download play to work and they say they are working on it, then if that happens, the M3 DS REAL probably wont make much of a dent in sales.

...and more likely bring out their own version called the R5 or the R4 DS REAL.

 

[JLsoft]

striderx, try folding up a small piece of paper a couple times (like smaller than the R4), place it on the label side of the R4, and insert (well, carefully cram

) both into the Slot 1 so that the shim is pressing the cart toward the slot's pins a little more...see if that changes anything.

...and there's nothing flashable on the R4, so it's not like it could get screwed up from bad a 'firmware'/kernel.

 

[L_o_N_e_R]

dropped the r4 before?

open it and look inside... try to see if the microsd slot is dirty/damaged..

if all else fails get a new one

 

[loathsome]

This happened to me as well, but that was with a DS-X. I got a replacement one, and that works just flawlessly!

I hope you get it solved out, striderx!

 

[GcRayden]

I get this problem alot. All i do is take out my ds card and the micro sd out of the card, then put them both back in and they work fine again.

 

[paul1991]

M3 DS Real? Lame. Knowing the M3 Corp. It will either be yet another N-Card clone or a G6 Real Clone.

 

[striderx]

striderx, try folding up a small piece of paper a couple times (like smaller than the R4), place it on the label side of the R4, and insert (well, carefully cram

) both into the Slot 1 so that the shim is pressing the cart toward the slot's pins a little more...see if that changes anything.

Wow, JLsoft, that did it!

I folded a typical 2x2 post-it into 6 layers and did what you suggested. It worked!

Well this certainly suggests that the cart-to-DS electrical connection was sub-optimum.

I'm going to go ahead with the cleaning and report back.

Thanks!!! striderx

 

[CSD]

Glad you got that fixed.

What causes this, by the way? Mishandling of the R4? Forcing it in the cartridge slot? I ask because I'm getting one soon and I'm a bit paranoid as a result of all these stories. I'm especially worried I'll get a defective R4.

 

[JLsoft]

I don't know if the board on the R4 is thinner than a stock cart or not, making the contacts be farther from the spring pins in the slot :/

I don't remove my R4, and it's the only Slot 1 cart I've ever used in a new Lite. I just swap MicroSDs, but I guess the slight shifting of the cart over a couple months of swapping was enough to eventually make the slot pins not press against the cart's contacts as much.

 

[Maikel Steneker]

M3 DS Real? Lame. Knowing the M3 Corp. It will either be yet another N-Card clone or a G6 Real Clone.

Huh? AFAIK the only clone the M3 Team ever made was the M3 Simply. The GBAMP, GBAMP2, M3 CF, M3 SD... They're all their products!