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DS Flash Equipment > Buying an M3 - A mistake??

#87219 - cyrax - Mon Jun 12, 2006 6:04 pm

Right now I am wondering if my decision to buy M3 card was a good one or not.
I have M3 card, but its Chinese language make. I stay in Korea and the only language version available is Chinese. I could not even find a Korean version, but that is besides the point.
M3 is for homebrew and all the goodie goodie stuff that is what M3 manufacturers claim it to be. The way I see it, its a way to overcome the restrictions Nintendo has put on such a lovely platform. If M3 is to overcome those barriers why do the manufacturers erect unnecessary and often irritating barriers. So what would we require? PassMe_M3too? M3 is doing exactly what SONY does with those silly PSP firmware upgrades.
WHY on FKING earth do they have language constraints? You cannot update the firmware from Chinese to English. That is great, because I cannot read Chinese.
Now I wonder if my decision was right or not.
Is this the case with supercard too? If it is not, I am going to buy their card immediately, dump my M3 and tell any prospective M3 buyers to think what they are doing.
My belief is that we use M3 for homebrew dev. I am trying to start working on my little apps. If things like region lock keep me from understanding what is written on the screen (press Start to update the frimware and A to skip. Read that in Chinese) for a flashcart that I bought, I do not see a point in buying M3. Infact to find out exactly what was being said, I had to take the help of a friend. Decrypting 1000 yrs of chinese language. That was what it was. Even now there is no respite. I know of a hacked firmware to put a v16 English firmware on the M3. Is that what I need to do? 'Paying' for buying M3?

-- End of rant --

Seriously, I would like to ask M3 to think about what they are doing and if they are not going to fix this, its just a matter of time before I spend that 50+ USD extra to buy an alternative (incase it exists).

I must apologise if this was an inconvenience to anyone, it just got onto my nerves.

#87302 - outphase - Tue Jun 13, 2006 5:03 am

you need passme to boot out of the gba slot with DS code (games + homebrew). you need the firmware upgrades to INCREASE functionality and game compatibility. the m3 team cannot predict if their current setup will run games from the future. this is different from Sony's firmware because Sony locked out kernel mode but added a few "perks" along the way. and why are you complaining that your Chinese M3 is in Chinese? go online, buy an English one.

btw, supercard also has firmware updates to fool around with.

with all that said, i'm a proud owner of a M3 miniSD

#87306 - Critical_Impact - Tue Jun 13, 2006 6:41 am

Is the hardware so different that they wont allow upgrading from Chinese to English, seems a bit silly to me

#87350 - Lynx - Tue Jun 13, 2006 3:06 pm

But, you also can't complain about it either. That would be like me buying a european car and being upset because the steering wheel is on the wrong side.
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#87369 - bafio - Tue Jun 13, 2006 4:29 pm

Lynx wrote:
But, you also can't complain about it either. That would be like me buying a european car and being upset because the steering wheel is on the wrong side.


(offtopic)

I think there is a misspelling here, you actually mean the right side?
Or with european you mean British or Irish?
:D

Bafio

#87420 - HyperHacker - Tue Jun 13, 2006 9:23 pm

He makes a good point. I can't imagine the hardware being so different that the English firmware won't work on the Chinese version, so why shouldn't he be able to flash it to English?

I never did understand region coding, especially when it's on something "shady" like this. >_>
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#87438 - OrR - Tue Jun 13, 2006 11:38 pm

I think there is a protection that prevents you from putting the English menu on it because apparantly the English version can be sold for more money. I also read that this protection has been broken. Don't know details though, sorry.

#87450 - Materialist - Wed Jun 14, 2006 12:04 am

It is possible to flash different language firmware on the M3.
There is a patcher.
Google for it. Im to drunk to do it for you :D
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Last edited by Materialist on Wed Jun 14, 2006 12:13 am; edited 1 time in total

#87453 - The_DDub - Wed Jun 14, 2006 12:09 am

Most likely the reason is COST. The firmware chips must be too expensive to buy a big enough chip to hold all the charsets from the diffn't regions, so they buy a smaller chip with enough mem to hold only the charsets from each region and offer it that way.

Anyways, post your whacky opinions below! :)
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#87490 - tepples - Wed Jun 14, 2006 3:58 am

So if the Latin glyphs use less flash space than the Chinese glyphs, why can't one replace the Chinese firmware with Latin firmware, other than artificial market segmentation?
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#87510 - Sektor - Wed Jun 14, 2006 5:30 am

The only reason there is protection from flashing english firmware to chinese M3 is so they can sell the english version for more money. Many companies have been using region locks for years, it sucks but you either crack it or live with it. Even in chinese it's simple to use.
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