Hacking Where to buy a Japanese Kingston in the UK?

[rumblesushi]

Has anyone managed to get a JP Kingston with any consistency from any 1 retailer?

I went for a 2gb Kingston from SVP, due to it being the cheapest I could find including shipping. Unfortunately I got a Taiwan made card.

The read speed is awful too, I've benchmarked it with the included full size SD adapter, via a PCMCIA card slot, and also a standard SD usb reader. I haven't tried a microSD USB reader.

The read speed is 4x, so I'm imagining some games could have problems streaming etc.

Incidentally, does anyone know what the read speed is of a true DS cart?

 

[Mikef]

Read speed of a Jap 2G Kingston is about 20M/sec for me, I have 6 of them bought at different times.

Your reader might be a bottleneck and may show the card being slower than it really is.

 

[rumblesushi]

That's what I thought, but seeing as I've tried it with a USB card reader, plus a PCM CIA card bus on my laptop, I think it's the true speed.

It is the taiwan card, but are they meant to be quite this slow? I didn't think the jap cards would be 5 times as fast.

 

[ashesburn]

Try getting on Amazon or eBay. But do ask the seller beforehand, although there is still a chance of getting fake ones.

I have cards there were made in taiwan and they work just fine. Not too slow for my liking although I did not try measuring their speed.

 

[rumblesushi]

Hey ash, maybe it's going to work fine, I'll have to wait and see. Have you tried your Taiwan card with Castevania, EBA, Hotel Dusk, Pheonix Wright etc?

I thought about ebay, but decided against it, as most of them seem to be fakes.

 

[ashesburn]

All games I tried work out fine. I tried Hotel Dusk and Phoenix Wright and no problems at all.

What about trying to buy from local sellers in eBay only? Rather than overseas sellers?

 

[Silent Storm]

Japanese Kingston MicroSD cards are the ones that have Japan written on them on the bottom right or left hand corner right?

If so, PC Jerry might have some, I got them for £7.99.

 

[Ericthegreat]

I bought 5 2gb from http://l8shop.net/ when i emailed them they said they all are the only thing is shipping is around 2 weeks to the us. (I would recommend emailing them yourself to confirm they still only sell japan cards but i only got mine last month so should be ok)

EDIT: Heres a link to the cards http://l8shop.net/products/Kingston-2GB-Mi...emory-Card.aspx

 

[FlatFrogger]

I have, www.memorymegastore.com

I've order 6 kingston microsd's various sizes different times, all japanese. Whether it was pot luck or consistent I dunno, but still.

Most places mark jap kingstons up, memorymegastore price match, only thing which is a downside is their postage can be abit high, but it might be worth it if you are ordering multiple cards.

 

[IzzehO]

www.dealextreme.com have japanese and chinese ones: they say in the title. I never had any problems with the Japanese one I got from there...

 

[UltraMagnus]

I use http://www.7dayshop.com for most of my memory cards, they are cheap and I have never had a problem with them

 

[wilddenim]

Well, I've been lucky with eBay (now I've said that, I might not be lucky next time!) and got real Kingston and SanDisk micro cards.

They were very cheap! SanDisk Class 4 8GB for £20(Last year) and 4GB Kingston Class 6 for £3.

 

[ashesburn]

Well, I've been lucky with eBay (now I've said that, I might not be lucky next time!) and got real Kingston and SanDisk micro cards.

They were very cheap! SanDisk Class 4 8GB for £20(Last year) and 4GB Kingston Class 6 for £3.

That's not too bad! I got the Kingston class 4 8gb for £14.

 

[wilddenim]

Yeah, I bought an unnamed 8gb Class 6 micro last month for £10, works fine but I wouldn't recommend that to be safe.

 

[ashesburn]

Yeah, I bought an unnamed 8gb Class 6 micro last month for £10, works fine but I wouldn't recommend that to be safe.

But I guess as long as it works fine or as expected then probably it's ok to go for brandless ones. Much cheaper too.

 

[rumblesushi]

Thanks for the replies.

If the class 4 SDHC cards work fine with all games, I might get one of those actually, as I have at least 3 gigs worth of games.

wilddenim, what sellers did you buy from?

About DX, although they claim genuine, a fair few of the posts there seem to say they're fake. Do you think they are real or fake? Perhaps pretty good quality, fast fakes?

Incidentally, could I see my existing full size sd adaptor, inserted into a laptop card bus to use the SDHC card? Or would the adaptor not work because it's not designed for SDHC?

 

[wilddenim]

I bought mine from eBay. I wouldn't suggest buying cards from DealExtreme, you can buy them off British sites for similar prices and better quailty.

Full size SD adaptor will works, I've got a non SDHC and a SDHC cards and both works with single adaptor.

I suggest have a look at Amazon.co.uk. They are quite cheap there too.

 

[ashesburn]

My existing SD Card Reader wasn't able to read my 8gb SD Card. I had to get a new one off eBay, but I managed to get 1 for 30p and it works!

 

[UltraMagnus]

Well, I've been lucky with eBay (now I've said that, I might not be lucky next time!) and got real Kingston and SanDisk micro cards.

They were very cheap! SanDisk Class 4 8GB for £20(Last year) and 4GB Kingston Class 6 for £3.

That's not too bad! I got the Kingston class 4 8gb for £14.

7 day have transcend class 6 cards for £10 with free shipping...

 

[ashesburn]

7 day have transcend class 6 cards for £10 with free shipping...

Wow..That's a good price!

I'll have a look at their website later.