Hardware What is the rarest DS Flashcart?

[stanleyopar2000]

I've got a dstwo as well, and it's still kicking.

Mine is still working but barely holding together physically...what do I do??

 

[CeeDee]

Good luck trying to get your hands on one. You could ask one of the staff to see if they have any old stock still lying around, I doubt it, but its worth a shot perhaps.

The box:

Spoiler

Alright that's it, time to harass every staff member until I find one

 

[Todderbert]

A small collection of DS, and DSi Flashcarts. Not sure of rarity.

 

[SylverReZ]

A small collection of DS, and DSi Flashcarts. Not sure of rarity.

You're very lucky man.

Alright that's it, time to harass every staff member until I find one

That's one way to get banned. j/s

 

[SylverReZ]

View attachment 375713

The Acekard 2i on the top-right looks fake. The label is supposed to be holographic and not a still matt gray.

 

[Duo8]

I still have a bricked DSTwo, never figured out how to fix it.

 

[Janni9009]

I still have a bricked DSTwo, never figured out how to fix it.

You need a DS Phat/Lite, any other flashcart to run this tool (dstwo_load), and the latest firmware for the DSTWO. Place the tool and firmware on the root of your other flashcart's microSD, run the tool, swap to the DSTWO and follow the on-screen instructions.

 

[SylverReZ]

I still have a bricked DSTwo, never figured out how to fix it.

You are more likely to get an answer on /r/flashcards.

 

[Duo8]

You need a DS Phat/Lite, any other flashcart to run this tool (dstwo_load), and the latest firmware for the DSTWO. Place the tool and firmware on the root of your other flashcart's microSD, run the tool, swap to the DSTWO and follow the on-screen instructions.

Tried that years ago, didn't work. Maybe mine is too bricked for this to work lol.

 

[Pomegrenade]

The Acekard 2i on the top-right looks fake. The label is supposed to be holographic and not a still matt gray.

Good catch, it's a legit Acekard 2i, the sticker however got mangled over the years so I printed one and replaced it

 

[SylverReZ]

Good catch, it's a legit Acekard 2i, the sticker however got mangled over the years so I printed one and replaced it

Very neat.

 

[realtimesave]

I have a cyclods, a brand new original R4 from eons ago, and I have gbatemp branded supercard dstwo among other things. I have lots of DS carts.

 

[SylverReZ]

I have a cyclods, a brand new original R4 from eons ago, and I have gbatemp branded supercard dstwo among other things. I have lots of DS carts.

I have two DSTTs, a M3i Zero, M3 DS Real and a Acekard 2i (amongst others).

 

[GhostLatte]

Good luck trying to get your hands on one. You could ask one of the staff to see if they have any old stock still lying around, I doubt it, but its worth a shot perhaps.

The box:

I would commit unspeakable war crimes just to have this in my collection

 

[realtimesave]

yeah that's the supercard that I have.

 

[Apache Thunder]

These are the flashcarts I own. Of those the rarest ones I got are the DS Linker, DS-Xtreme and maybe the M3 DS Real.

I still have the packaging to 3 of these. Got the complete packaging to the DSXtreme and Acekard 2i and the inner label slip to the plastic thing for the R4. Have the packaging to the Max Media Dock too though I can't be assed to dig that out of somewhere deep in my bedroom. I forgot where I put it but I do recall still having it.

I recently acquired the DS Linker and DSTwo.

Of these I think the DS Linker is the oldest cart I have. It's a clone of the N-Card. I used to own that one many years go but sadly sold it. Really wish I didn't.

The N-Card and it's clones have surprisingly good game compatibility in the modern age. At least the few I've tried. Even boots modern SDK5 games. The only issue would be save compatibility perhaps and lack of antipiracy patches. That's a far cry from some of the older MicroSD based flashcarts. They have issues booting newer games.

DS-Xtreme's loader...sucks. Everything about that cart is somehow worse of them all. it's nand based cart like the N-card but it's crippled with slower access speeds and terrible game compatiblity. It seems like it could have been a decent card but the FPGA programming is likely it's weakness. The USB side of it can access the nand pretty quick which proves the FPGA is the bottle neck and it's using a ProAsic3 from what I recall which is no sloucher so it's just bad programming I think.

The DS Linker is a different beast. It seems pretty quick. The only weakness being the USB connection speed being rather poor due to GBA slot bottle neck. But aside from that it pretty much kicks the DSX's ass and can sorta keep up with the modern cards.

This is super surprising. The N-Card and it's clones are all the same hardware wise and predate the first R4s. They are some of the first standalone slot1 flashcarts to come about and yet somehow can boot some of the last games made. It's kinda impressive. It seems the FPGA is emulating the card reads. From the RE work me and lifehackerhansol has done so far seems to indicate this card is using emulated B7 card reads. FPGA is likely just setting the offset to zero for the start of the rom to be booted and emulating all the needed card read commands and the loader likely isn't patching the games that much aside from save related stuff perhaps. Ended up making it pretty future proof in the end.

Kinda wish the DSX team just stole the codebase from that. Might have made it the go to nand cart.

The only real con to owning a N-Card or one of it's clones is the DLDI support. They used the older 32KB DLDI spec. Don't let the nrio.dldi file that's out there fool you. As far as I can tell the one has never worked. Not on the newer homebrew anyways. I managed to dump the dldi that xmenu autopatches in and that's how I discovered they actually use the older spec for DLDI. Hopefully this will get sorted out soon and us DSi owners can transfer files and such to this cart via GM9i. I already managed to achieve that with DS-Xtreme.

Which reminds me I need to put out a fork of that so others can use it.

 

[Duo8]

Seems like everyone owned an AK2i at some point. I had one too.

 

[JaapDaniels]

@NathaanTFM prototype opensource card must be the rarest

 

[enarky]

Hey, are we posting out collections?I got a bunch of images of mine, I think the lose flash cart collection only misses the two DS X-treme cards and an Acekard 2i I got in the meantime. And a bunch of R4 clones, probably. Making an image of every single boxed card would take a while.

In terms of DS flash cards from what I can see of the desirable cards the iEvolution and iEdge cards seem to be rarely available, I'd love to add one to my collection, but I missed the only one I saw popping up in quite a while recently. DSTWO should be a dime a dozen, they're available often, but people seem to want ridiculous prices for that card. DSONE has nearly the same functionality besides a few emulators running on the cards processor and costs only a fraction of that.

The rarest flash card I own is not for the DS, but a combined Game Gear/Game Boy flash cart from CCL. Off topic for that thread, but that was one of my favorite finds after looking for it for years. My favorite is the Turbo GD 6M RAM adapter for the Famicom. Getting it and getting it to work was a wild ride.

 

[Shadow_The_Hedgehog82]

These are the flashcarts I own. Of those the rarest ones I got are the DS Linker, DS-Xtreme and maybe the M3 DS Real.

I still have the packaging to 3 of these. Got the complete packaging to the DSXtreme and Acekard 2i and the inner label slip to the plastic thing for the R4. Have the packaging to the Max Media Dock too though I can't be assed to dig that out of somewhere deep in my bedroom. I forgot where I put it but I do recall still having it.

I recently acquired the DS Linker and DSTwo.

Of these I think the DS Linker is the oldest cart I have. It's a clone of the N-Card. I used to own that one many years go but sadly sold it. Really wish I didn't.

The N-Card and it's clones have surprisingly good game compatibility in the modern age. At least the few I've tried. Even boots modern SDK5 games. The only issue would be save compatibility perhaps and lack of antipiracy patches. That's a far cry from some of the older MicroSD based flashcarts. They have issues booting newer games.

DS-Xtreme's loader...sucks. Everything about that cart is somehow worse of them all. it's nand based cart like the N-card but it's crippled with slower access speeds and terrible game compatiblity. It seems like it could have been a decent card but the FPGA programming is likely it's weakness. The USB side of it can access the nand pretty quick which proves the FPGA is the bottle neck and it's using a ProAsic3 from what I recall which is no sloucher so it's just bad programming I think.

The DS Linker is a different beast. It seems pretty quick. The only weakness being the USB connection speed being rather poor due to GBA slot bottle neck. But aside from that it pretty much kicks the DSX's ass and can sorta keep up with the modern cards.

This is super surprising. The N-Card and it's clones are all the same hardware wise and predate the first R4s. They are some of the first standalone slot1 flashcarts to come about and yet somehow can boot some of the last games made. It's kinda impressive. It seems the FPGA is emulating the card reads. From the RE work me and lifehackerhansol has done so far seems to indicate this card is using emulated B7 card reads. FPGA is likely just setting the offset to zero for the start of the rom to be booted and emulating all the needed card read commands and the loader likely isn't patching the games that much aside from save related stuff perhaps. Ended up making it pretty future proof in the end.

Kinda wish the DSX team just stole the codebase from that. Might have made it the go to nand cart.

The only real con to owning a N-Card or one of it's clones is the DLDI support. They used the older 32KB DLDI spec. Don't let the nrio.dldi file that's out there fool you. As far as I can tell the one has never worked. Not on the newer homebrew anyways. I managed to dump the dldi that xmenu autopatches in and that's how I discovered they actually use the older spec for DLDI. Hopefully this will get sorted out soon and us DSi owners can transfer files and such to this cart via GM9i. I already managed to achieve that with DS-Xtreme.

Which reminds me I need to put out a fork of that so others can use it.

awesome so many m3s lol