The Official GBA/DS Thread. [was Damn Right!!!!]
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McNevin
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The DS lite is almost upon us!
Nintendo’s upgrade to the Nintendo DS’ hardware will finally be in reach of our grubby yankee hands come June 11th (a Sunday, of course).
The lighter, brighter, and all-around awesomer DS Lite is expected to retail at a beautiful price–$129.99.
Unfortunately, we will only be able to get the handheld in “Polar Whiteâ€, US’ equivalent to Japan’s Crystal White edition.
Enamel Navy and Ice Blue DS Lites will be a luxury enjoyed exclusively by our Eastern friends, for the time being.
Tossed it on last night. I only played a couple of levels, but WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!! It is THE perfect Mario game. It's like Super Mario World, with hints of the newer games, incredible animation, tons of nifty "just for effect" visual features, and it plays perfectly. I can't wait to dig a bit more.
Admiral: If you needed a reason to send your M3 back, this would be it. Or even, *gasp* go pick up the actual game card when it's available.
Admiral: If you needed a reason to send your M3 back, this would be it. Or even, *gasp* go pick up the actual game card when it's available.
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McNevin
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This is the DS cart i WAS actually looking at.
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=41279
It unfortunately does not play GBA games.
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=41279
It unfortunately does not play GBA games.
The Mk series is more of a development platform. You still need an EZ Flash cartridge in the GBA slot (at least as of the Mk3.) I haven't read up on the newer ones.
Even if you're a little pissed at the QC issues of the early M3s, the new ones are DEFINITELY the way to go. Haven't had a single problem with my M3 Lite Perfect. It takes MicroSD, fits completely inside of the Lite, is quick, VERY compatible, and is very well supported.
(They were willing to replace McNevin's, but he didn't send it in.)
(Though to be fair, I can understand not wanting to pay to ship to HongKong.)
I really don't think there is a better way to go with the M3 Lite Perfect. Everything works on 4X DMA, you can in fact do a direct copy most of the time, and it supports everything.
All I've had to do to load mine up, is directly copy GBA games. For DS, I use their utility, but I just set it to 4X DMA, and let it copy. No more setting specific options for specific titles.
I use Corsair flash memory (cheap, reliable, fast and the quite compatible with everything I've tossed at it.)
It comes with every color of shell you could need for a Lite, and even comes with a GBA/large DS shell in case you want to use it in one of those. Just a small philips screw, and you're in a new shell. No slot problems either.
This is the one, (and this is the best place to get it:)
http://www.divineo.cn/cgi-bin/div-cn/ds-m3lmsd
Even if you're a little pissed at the QC issues of the early M3s, the new ones are DEFINITELY the way to go. Haven't had a single problem with my M3 Lite Perfect. It takes MicroSD, fits completely inside of the Lite, is quick, VERY compatible, and is very well supported.
(They were willing to replace McNevin's, but he didn't send it in.)
(Though to be fair, I can understand not wanting to pay to ship to HongKong.)
I really don't think there is a better way to go with the M3 Lite Perfect. Everything works on 4X DMA, you can in fact do a direct copy most of the time, and it supports everything.
All I've had to do to load mine up, is directly copy GBA games. For DS, I use their utility, but I just set it to 4X DMA, and let it copy. No more setting specific options for specific titles.
I use Corsair flash memory (cheap, reliable, fast and the quite compatible with everything I've tossed at it.)
It comes with every color of shell you could need for a Lite, and even comes with a GBA/large DS shell in case you want to use it in one of those. Just a small philips screw, and you're in a new shell. No slot problems either.
This is the one, (and this is the best place to get it:)
http://www.divineo.cn/cgi-bin/div-cn/ds-m3lmsd
It's the most compatible device available. Also, with the Corsair MicroSD cards I use (which are cheap btw,) the DoS intro plays exactly the same as it does from the real cartridge (I've tested it as I have the cart.) GBA games slow down on many of the other devices (short of the ones that have built-in flash memory.) The older style GBA cards with memory on them, are expensive for the amount of memory you get, and you can't upgrade them. I've got about 15 DS games, 15 GBA games, and still have some space left over on my card right now.
So, I forgot that I had ordered a Neo-2 package for Aug. (showed up today) It is a Neo-2 light GBA flash cart, with a Mk4 and SlimLoaderIV. (not all that different from the Mk5 you mentioned)
The hardware seems ok. The software is slow and tedious, but it seems to be working now. The disc came with about 50 folders on it, full of all manner of useless things. It didn't say which software package to install for the hardware I got. After about 8 failed attempts at getting the software to see the hardware, I did some searching. I was using the wrong utility, though there isn't anything to indicate this one way or the other on the disc.
Their website is basically just a forum, so finding anything on it is a little tedious as well. I finally found a link that helped, got the right manager software, and got it working. I'm 20 minutes into formatting a 256MB cart, (and the progress meter is at 25%.) I hope I only need to do this once.
In order to use DS games, you have to use their ROM patcher, which handles one ROM at a time. You can then add these converted ROMs to the manager list, and burn them to the device.
I have yet to see them actually work, so we'll see what happens when the format is complete.
The Mk4 card is bascially used for save storage. It has EEPROM, etc. so saved games can be routed to Slot 1. All actual game ROM data is stored on the GBA cart. I'm not thoroughly impressed so far.
I imagine having a version that uses SD/Micro/Mini would be a bit better, as you could access the file system through Windows. Who knows if you still have to convert all the ROMs first.
The M3 software patches games, (in order to route the save data to the right slot etc.) but it's nearly transparent. It does it during the copy process, so you don't even notice. I'm definitely not giving up my M3 for any Neo/Mk product. A slight cost savings is definitely no reason to get one.
There may be some other cards that would work pretty well, so I'd research them instead of looking at these ones. Once again the version I got may not be totally indicative of the rest, but purely from the software side of things
I think the Neo products are aimed a little more at homebrew, development, etc. I think playing commercial stuff is an afterthought.
Anyway, I still see no reason to get anything but an M3 product.
Edit: The ROM manager tells you that the quick format option is only for testing purposes, and not to use it. Then I go to their site, and it says to choose the quick format option. Is it too much to ask for a little consistency in a product people are paying money for?
Verdict: TOTAL BLOODY SHIT!!! I realize that this isn't their flagship product, but it really, truly, sucks. Avoid it. I have relegated it to Mi's GBA to play Little Mermaid and Dora games.
Ok, it's not even working for that purpose because their fucking software crashes left and right. TOTAL GARBAGE!!!
The hardware seems ok. The software is slow and tedious, but it seems to be working now. The disc came with about 50 folders on it, full of all manner of useless things. It didn't say which software package to install for the hardware I got. After about 8 failed attempts at getting the software to see the hardware, I did some searching. I was using the wrong utility, though there isn't anything to indicate this one way or the other on the disc.
Their website is basically just a forum, so finding anything on it is a little tedious as well. I finally found a link that helped, got the right manager software, and got it working. I'm 20 minutes into formatting a 256MB cart, (and the progress meter is at 25%.) I hope I only need to do this once.
In order to use DS games, you have to use their ROM patcher, which handles one ROM at a time. You can then add these converted ROMs to the manager list, and burn them to the device.
I have yet to see them actually work, so we'll see what happens when the format is complete.
The Mk4 card is bascially used for save storage. It has EEPROM, etc. so saved games can be routed to Slot 1. All actual game ROM data is stored on the GBA cart. I'm not thoroughly impressed so far.
I imagine having a version that uses SD/Micro/Mini would be a bit better, as you could access the file system through Windows. Who knows if you still have to convert all the ROMs first.
The M3 software patches games, (in order to route the save data to the right slot etc.) but it's nearly transparent. It does it during the copy process, so you don't even notice. I'm definitely not giving up my M3 for any Neo/Mk product. A slight cost savings is definitely no reason to get one.
There may be some other cards that would work pretty well, so I'd research them instead of looking at these ones. Once again the version I got may not be totally indicative of the rest, but purely from the software side of things
I think the Neo products are aimed a little more at homebrew, development, etc. I think playing commercial stuff is an afterthought.
Anyway, I still see no reason to get anything but an M3 product.
Edit: The ROM manager tells you that the quick format option is only for testing purposes, and not to use it. Then I go to their site, and it says to choose the quick format option. Is it too much to ask for a little consistency in a product people are paying money for?
Verdict: TOTAL BLOODY SHIT!!! I realize that this isn't their flagship product, but it really, truly, sucks. Avoid it. I have relegated it to Mi's GBA to play Little Mermaid and Dora games.
Ok, it's not even working for that purpose because their fucking software crashes left and right. TOTAL GARBAGE!!!
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McNevin
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Yes, yes you do! You need patch free NDS play, and on the fly GBA patching. You put a clean GBA ROM on the MicroSD, and it will patch, and copy it to the GBA expansion in 10 seconds. So far I’ve only gotten it to work with the single save state saving ability, but I'm mainly interested in playing clean DS ROMs.
We'll be M3 buddies again!
We'll be M3 buddies again!
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McNevin
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I'm not sure how to get them to work! There is a filter for *.NDS, and *.GBA so they don’t show up on the file browser, and I even tried renaming them to GBA and NDS but that just locks it up. The M3 forum went down, there is a new one, but it has only a few post as of yet. I'll keep the R and D coming.
As for the GBA saves, its working sometimes, Mario Advance has an 80% success rate, but unfortunately I've only seen Castlevania save once, out of maybe 30 times.
I was going to update the firmware, but as far as I can tell, it has no firmware! It looks like everything is stored on the MicroSD.
As for the GBA saves, its working sometimes, Mario Advance has an 80% success rate, but unfortunately I've only seen Castlevania save once, out of maybe 30 times.
I was going to update the firmware, but as far as I can tell, it has no firmware! It looks like everything is stored on the MicroSD.
Strange. I have yet to read much about them either, so I don't know how they work exactly. This place usually has some decent information: http://www.m3-forums.net/index.php
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enderzero
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Almost a 2 year thread revival yay!
So I am thinking I finally need to pick up a DS. First anyone have an extra one to sell? 2nd - what version should I go for to get best flash/mod support? Littler the better I am thinking (DSi right?) but wanna make sure it supports a card with SD support.
\//()l2l)
So I am thinking I finally need to pick up a DS. First anyone have an extra one to sell? 2nd - what version should I go for to get best flash/mod support? Littler the better I am thinking (DSi right?) but wanna make sure it supports a card with SD support.
\//()l2l)
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Bill Drayton Jr.
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Bill Drayton Jr.
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