nonnonnon said:
sounds like the m3 team is quite busy!Yes, they are very very
very busy...
On a more serious note, I expect these cards are all sharing a codebase with features enabled/disabled by a simple hardware reply code - it's what they have always done before, why change now? I mean, tell me there isn't
someone with itouch, sakura and m3real firmware booting all on the same card once that hardware reply code is patched, pretty much proving the only difference is a software frontend (even one which seems to lack credit to PALib creators.) Meanwhile compatibility updates are built somewhat universally as a "backend" - the most 'strenuous' update I've seen from them for a while was waiting a couple extra days for the 'scene' to figure out antipiracy patches so they could incorporate them.
The
only reason they have had to drop support of "older" cards (a couple of years in not old when the host platform essentially hasn't changed one iota) is to try and get "newer" models
to sell to current owners. Lacking SDHC compatibility (along with 'flooding' a bunch of new products to market so they have something to later abandon when initial sales taper off) is not enough reason for them to
not fix existing bugs in their software and stop releasing periodic compatibility updates, in fact nearly every one of their competitors did update the hardware to add sdhc all
without interrupting updates to the old non-SDHC versions.
I could only honestly recommend 2 products - anything from supercard (they still update even for their original CF adapter, and if folks remember they didn't need to release a whole new product to add DS support to those GBA cards nor to add RTS to DS1 products) and AK2 (thankfully they don't hoard their source code meaning as long as AK2 users have friends like Normatt they'll never be left out in the cold compatibility and bug wise...)
If one wants to know how it feels to have a product with a limited software update span and planned fake obsolescence, feel free to 'invest' your money in R4/M3 product. I do still value and use my m3perfect from time to time though, some of M3's GBA works are indeed tops even if I haven't seen an update since april 2008 and am
still waiting on english firmware e36 - and this is a card I spent around $100 on, after shipping (imagine how they'll treat you with a $15-40 card then.) I won't even touch (har har) on G6.
Now, if M3 were being perfectly (har har) honest, they'd call their next card the M3-$WCUWANFTSOHDSWCSYM$ ($we came up with another name for the same old hardware design so we can sell you more$.) In the
least they'd outline their software lifespan plans. Yes, that's what this little rant is all about - selling a software update as
entirely new hardware and quite clearly duping folks into believing it couldn't be done on their current card (SDHC/DSi compatibility aside, of course - is there any
real reason to have a DSi only model
as well as a DSL SDHC of these R4's?)
edit:/ btw, after checking the files released I'm quite confident the R4RTS is actually a disguised M3Real, the header of the main binaries are OR'd with 0x72 and follows similar encryption scheme as M3R current firmware (M3R eng was 0x12, gb 0x23, jp 0x07, itouch en 0x32, gb 0x33, jp 0x37 - it's just hardware switches for "different" models, each language locked to promote higher prices at retail on english based models.)
Hopefully I made this long enough no one will actually read it past the picture punch line... I'm just another opinionated screwball who always marvels at the ability of others to allow themselves to be duped
