Hacking R4i Gold Pro and Clones

[Iamapirate]

I was talking to the youtuber r4woodcentre, and he told me the R4i Gold Pro is basically a budget version of R4i Gold 3DS.

Now, I don't care how strong it is, I'm just wondering do clones work fine, or will they eventually crap out?

I'm just thinking, because I have enough for an R4i Gold Pro in my flashcart savings, but not enough for a Gold 3DS.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Well, one of the biggest questions is what you plan to use it in.

Do you plan to use it in a DS/DS Lite, or do you plan to use it in a DSi/XL or 3DS/XL?

If you plan to use it in a DS or DS Lite, you may as well just go with a cheap R4 Revolution For DS card, which some places sell for about $2 USD (downside is you can only use cards up to 2GB).

If you plan to use it in anything newer than a DS Lite (any console with a camera), it might work, and it might work for now, but expect that at some point it'll be blocked by a system update. The R4i Gold from r4ids.cn has proven to have more support than most of the other cheap cards at this point, so that one (which is typically about $15 USD) would be a better choice, however for the most ease of mind knowing that your purchase ought to continue working for the far foreseeable future, the Supercard DSTWO is more or less the best card on the market, but it weighs in with a hefty $40 USD price tag.

However, if you're asking about if it'll crap out hardware wise, no, they all ought to work the same and last for a fair bit of time. Keep in mind they're all just shit Chinese electronics though.

 

[Iamapirate]

Even the R4i Gold 3DS?

Ja. It's for my OG 3DS.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Sorry, I forgot to put this link in the previous post: http://gbatemp.net/threads/which-flash-cart-should-i-get.290097/

That'll help you determine what flash cart is gonna be best for you. The only ones we recommend here on the site that are compatible with the 3DS on newer firmwares are the Supercard DSTWO (which is expensive) and the R4i Gold 3DS which is from r4ids.cn

Others may and likely will work for some varying amount of time, but your mileage may vary.

Now the only thing I'm not sure about (I haven't looked into it at all, perhaps someone else can weigh in on it) is that previously the R4i Gold 3DS needed a specific trace on the board to be cut in order to update it. I have no idea if they ever produced a new card that circumvents that issue, or if there are ways to update the card after doing that.