#67567 - radicalrandy - Thu Jan 19, 2006 2:38 am
I know this has been asked I'm sure about a trillion times, but I need to buy the equipment to flash the game onto a cartridge that is playable with the Nintendo DS. Anybody know the the best equipment for the best price?
#67583 - HyperHacker - Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:22 am
I spent a total of $180 on a GBAMP, wifi card, and 128MB CF card. You can get much cheaper wifi cards (as little as $20, mine was $60), and smaller CF cards (16-32MB should be fine for homebrew; I wanted a big one to play MP3s, and it was the smallest I could get in town anyway) for $10-20, totalling ~$100. And that's Canadian. :-p Course, you need a V1/2/3 DS for wifime, otherwise you need a v2 hardware pass device of some sort.
(If anyone's curious, there's 3 reasons I opted for a more expensive wifi card:
-Don't want one that'll break down in a few months or just not work well
-Only one available in town and buying online was not an option at the time (and I didn't want to wait)
-Ability to return it easily and at no cost if it didn't do the job.)
#67584 - ethoscapade - Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:24 am
passme2 = $20, then you can flash
supercard = $40~50 if you look hard enough
256m sd card = $20 at zipzoomfly.com
#67589 - HyperHacker - Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:31 am
Keep in mind that most existing homebrew has little or no SD support, though. Which is a shame. :-(
#67600 - Rinky - Thu Jan 19, 2006 10:15 am
| HyperHacker wrote: |
| Keep in mind that most existing homebrew has little or no SD support, though. Which is a shame. :-( |
Do you mind expanding on that?
Not too long ago I got a Supercard 2 (since I already had a few SD cards knocking around) and have had no problems so far. Haven't actually flash'd my DS yet; but running my own code has been as simple as it gets. Just copying the .nds file to the card, flinging it into the cartridge and booting up.
I would like to know what the limitations are though. Even if I've already spent the money. :)
#67611 - ethoscapade - Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:50 pm
supercard can boot most any homebrew by simply taking the .ds.gba version, renaming it to .nds, and then copying it to the SD card without using the patcher at all. almost nothing saves, but everything works.
#67711 - Rinky - Fri Jan 20, 2006 12:27 am
| ethoscapade wrote: |
| almost nothing saves, but everything works. |
Uh oh.
I've been taking the .nds file generated by my make instructions and slapping them straight onto the SD card. Everything has been running absolutely fine; but after reading your post I tried wrote a program to test the saving...
Can't get it working. The SupercardNew tool reports that .nds files have no save; and whilst the ds.gba file reports a save in the patcher; it won't actually run on the DS.
This is not good; I just assumed that saving would work and my current project relies on it.
#67719 - ethoscapade - Fri Jan 20, 2006 12:52 am
well. the main purpose of the patcher is to alter the rom to save to a .sav file on the SD card, instead of on sram/eeprom.
problem being, homebrew cannot be patched using the same methods as commercial roms. i would not doubt that it is possible for homebrew to save to supercard. it would require significantly different coding than saving to a flashcart.
#67723 - Rinky - Fri Jan 20, 2006 1:09 am
Ok, there is a way but its rubbish. Found much of the info on a web site somewhere so thanks to the original author - whoever it was.
You can create your .nds file as normal (e.g. demo.nds). Run any .gba file through the patcher so it creates a .sav file (e.g. demo.ds.gba -> demo.ds.sav).
Then rename demo.ds.sav to demo.sav. So you have a demo.nds and demo.sav file on the cart.
The DS program writes to SRAM; then you power off the DS - very quickly power it back on and from the Supercard menu, go to Saver and click your demo.sav file to save the SRAM contents to memory. Then when you start your demo.nds file it seems to be able to load from SRAM fine. Although I've not tested it extensively yet, so far all looks good.
If there was a way to drop out of the DS program and back to the Supercard menu then this would be ok ish. Rather than have to power down.
#67731 - Rinky - Fri Jan 20, 2006 1:34 am
Also just found out that a Supercard I/O source library was released to enable writing directly to the inserted card. Doesn't look very friendly though.
#67765 - radicalrandy - Fri Jan 20, 2006 4:32 am
so what does all of this mean, screw getting a supercard?, your better off getting a passme2?
#67768 - ReRuss - Fri Jan 20, 2006 4:41 am
SuperCard and PassMe are 2 very different things
PassMe , PassKey , PassMe2 , PassKey2 , SuperPass , ect - allow NDS homebrew without FlashMe (tho you need one of these to get FlashMe on your DS anyway)
SuperCardSD , SuperCardCF , M3 , G6 - all these are flash carts (some using memory cards) which is where data is stored (liek a HDD or a CD-RW in a sense)
#68089 - HyperHacker - Sun Jan 22, 2006 12:05 pm
| Rinky wrote: |
| HyperHacker wrote: | | Keep in mind that most existing homebrew has little or no SD support, though. Which is a shame. :-( |
Do you mind expanding on that?
Not too long ago I got a Supercard 2 (since I already had a few SD cards knocking around) and have had no problems so far. Haven't actually flash'd my DS yet; but running my own code has been as simple as it gets. Just copying the .nds file to the card, flinging it into the cartridge and booting up.
I would like to know what the limitations are though. Even if I've already spent the money. :) |
Some programs, such as Txtwriter and Moonshell, load and save files to/from whatever CF card is inserted in your Supercard/GBAMP/etc. Many of these won't work with SD cards; they run, but they can't access the card.