Aw, man! I saw your unedited post and was going to wish you luck with seeing how the product was now, but given this, I still might steer you away from this Max Media company...

I didn't know it was replaced already...
Thus I would again recommend the DS-Xtreme. 4Gb (512MB) isn't that bad.

Wait, it's 4Gb? I thought it was 4GB based on all of the descriptions I saw - or was that just the first Max Media product?

@Kerm: The Datel one is 4GB (4096MB), the DS-Xtreme is marketed as 4Gb (512MB) - http://www.ds-x.com/cgi-bin/dsx/engine.pl?page=product-dsxtreme

OK, I'm going to try to get my parents to order the other stuff that actually works.

Liazon, I need your clarification, please. I have a regular Nintendo DS (most likely the first version because I got it almost right after it came out). I definitely need "Passcard 3", right?

Next, I need a supercard. "Supercard MiniSD" would work, right?

Should I get "USB Reader for SD/MMC" or "USB Reader for CF (CompactFlash)" for my memory card reader? Is this used to send programs from my computer to the supercard or memory card?

As for a memorycard, isn't that covered by "Supercard MiniSD"?


If I were to buy, say, the "GBAMP v2 (GBA Movie Player)" and a compact flash card, would I even need the stuff above?

as far as I can tell, passcard3 is always needed to get the DS to run DS code from the GBA slot. The only exception is probably that new product that goes into the DS slot.

Supercard MiniSD will hold a miniSD card, but it won't come with one. You'll need to buy a miniSD card separately. Your card reader should be a miniSD card reader.

As for GBAMP, I'm not sure if it works for DS, but according to . wiki it does.

The wikipedia article on DS homebrew answers a lot of questions.

If you don't have a GBA, my recommendation is to wait for the DS-Xtreme products to be "perfected" and get one of those later. It's pretty good right now, and it can be your very own 4gb USB storage device.

If you do have a GBA, I'd get a 1st generation device that works for both GBA and DS. You can learn a lot about NDS programming from programming just NDS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS_running_tools outlines other methods, but I prefer the non-firmware modifying ones, only because I don't want to.

you can also ask people @ #dscoders on the efnet.net server, or #dsdev on the blitzed.org server

After doing three hours of research on this today, I think I have a much better understanding of what's going on than before. As of now, I was thinking about getting Passcard 3 (it turns out that you pretty much have to have it), the M3 Perfect CF Movie Player, the USB Reader for CF, and a compact flash card. The CF doesn't have to be designed specifically for the DS, correct? From what I've read, it seems that any CF will work as long as it fits into the movie player. (I can get a 1 GB CF at Office Depot on sale tommorrow for like $30.) Would there be any benefit to paying $5 extra for a high-speed CF? I'd guess no.

As for the DS-Xtreme, I might get that later once I get more into DS programming. Right now I'm just concerned about getting started.

And I would guess that I could probably do GBA homebrew too (even though I don't have a GBA) because the DS is backwards-compatible?

Thanks a lot for your help, Liazon.

Edit: Now I'm leaning toward the DS-Xtreme. Everything I've read about it has been positive, though I didn't like the cheap 4Gb trick.
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/first-grope-dsxtreme-nintendo-ds-media-enhancer-207963.php
What do you guys think? The DS-Xtreme is a little steep ($125), but by the time I buy all the other homebrew stuff, it comes out to be about the same price.

That DS-Extreme clearly states on its info page that you don't need to use a passme with it...

I've been trying not to become a DS-X fanboy (even though I haven't started DS progging yet) but I can't. DS-X is the future. It is the simplest DS player out. The price may not be right, but it will obviously drop soon.
Go Xtreme. Or if another slot-1-only product with more than 4Gb comes out in the next few weeks go with that.

No problem MDR

Like I said Radical Pi, depends on what you want. For me, I don't have a DS, but I do have a GBA so the Xtreme would basically be no use for me. However, the 1 slot solution can definitely be the cheaper solution later on.

I ordered the DS Xtreme. It's gonna be awesome .

I finally got around to downloading Devkitpro because my DS-Xtreme should be arriving in the next couple of days. Anyway, it came with Programmers Notepad 2 and I can't get it to compile anything. When I select "make", it says "> Failed to create process: The system cannot find the file specified."

I already have Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 on my computer. Does it matter what compiler I use? And if I use my own compiler, how do I set it up so that it works with Devkitpro?

It matters very much what compiler you use. It has to be able to output DS code (for whatever CPU it has - which most definitely is not x86, which is all M$'s compilers support as far as I know) My guess is that it is using some variant of GCC in cygwin (or similar)

read the devkitpro readme/manual - stop being so lazy

--> http://www.devkitpro.org/setup.shtml <--

it's commandline, you use it similarly to how you use a z80 ASM assembler

open a DOS prompt and go to the folder of your project and type in make projectname and iirc that does the trick. read the manual for more details because that will become very important when you start using both THUMB and ARM code in a single project.

edit: programmer's notepad 2 is just a nice version of notepad made by open source guys to give syntax shading and simlar. it'd kinda like crimson editor. the "make" button actually needs to be given an instruction iirc, so you'll have to configure it somehow.

and if I'm not on in the near future, Merry Christmas everyone!

Thanks for your help, guys. I re-installed everything, being sure to follow the directions more closely (it seems that last time I had spaces in some of the directory names, which apparently you can't do), and I got an example to compile properly using the DOS. Now I'll see if I can get some code from the tutorials to compile...

Edit: Everything is going great. I'm using PAlib and these tutorials if anyone else is interested in DS programming:
http://palib.info/wiki/doku.php?id=homepage

OMG! Only 10 hrs. til Christmas! But it looks like my DS-Xtreme won't be here until at least Tuesday .