I've been contemplating buying some means of DS pirating for a year or so now since I got mine. I'm generally disinterested in a lot of DS games, but I wonder if this is just because I'm a hardened PSP fanboy, or because I haven't tried any.

For the PSP, I always was keen to buy games, but once I started pirating them I wanted to own them that much more, so I'm kind of thinking the same might hold true for the DS.

What do you all think?

Exactly what "problems" do you mean?

Never had problems with my reader (except for Windows sometimes not being able to stop the device for some reason).

I'm gonna say that getting a flashcart will most likely not make you like DS games any more, but you'll be able easily try out games that might interest you for free and that in itself will pay for the cart fairly quickly.

It's been quite a while but I recall the included reader being really damn slow and so I canceled it. Or at least some of it. What I recall happening is that the stuff I'd sent or must have gotten fucked up somehow because I had to end up reformatting the sd card and redoing the firmware for the Cyclo. The games and applications I'd put on the card mysteriously disappeared during a boot up after I'd used the included card reader so I wasn't about to use it again. So yeah I've never used the included shit since. The stuff you get with the sd cards works great though even more so for the sdhc cards since their transfer is even faster. So yeah thumbs up to Cyclo for their flash cards but thumbs down for the included micro sd card reader.

Thanks for the responses guys. I won't be taking any chances with the included one then.

I figure I'll ask this here since I can't find a clear answer anywhere else.

Is it impossible to use the Pal Park of a legitimate Pokemon Diamond cart with a ROM of a GBA Pokemon game stored on a flash cart?

It doesn't seem likely, but I'd like to have confirmation before I stop pursuing this.

I don't see why not. You might need a 3-in-1 though and use the NOR flash, since it sounds like this would involve a hard reset.

Ah, I suppose I wouldn't be possible on a Slot-2 device, would it? I have an M3 Lite Perfect right now.

I was hoping for it to be able to see the slot-2 device as a real Pokemon game so that it could load the data from the device like the regular cart.

I believe there's a way to write a single game to a GBA flashcart in a manner similar to burning a disc image - that has worked for people from what I have read. I don't know the details, though, so I'm no help.

Yeah, there should be a way to "burn" a GBA game onto your M3 so that it acts like a normal GBA cart. I suggest checking the manual.

I've been using the microSD adapter that came with my Cyclo since I got it and haven't had any real problems with the moving data onto the card part.

I was having issues where it wouldn't load properly when I turned the DS on and the only way I could fix it was by reinstalling the firmware, but I eventually figured out it was a bad skin file that was causing it to screw up (rewriting the firmware would turn it off of "Random" for the theme), so I deleted all of my skins and haven't had a problem since.

Unfortunately, the M3 documentation isn't very good. And everywhere I see, it's about GBA/NDS linkage between two ROMS, which isn't what I'm trying to achieve here. I can't really apply that to my situation either because that situation requires you to patch both ROMS, which, I only have one.

The best way, as you said, would be to somehow "burn" a GBA game image to the flash cart, yet I don't see anywhere in the M3 manual to do so.

But I suppose I should actually get the national Pokedex to actually try out what I have before discrediting anything.

Do you have a GBA flash cart?

There are some carts with the so called "fast ROM" and "slow ROM", and the ones with slow rom, I think it is, let you flash the image and it stays there. This is the best bet I would assume you have at trying to accomplish what you're trying to do.

I wouldn't know which GBA flash carts have which ROM, but I'm pretty sure the 3-in-1 has both types. You'll probably want to research it.

Not sure if anyone's currently in the market for one, but Woot : One Day, One Deal (SM) has a 2GB Kingston MicroSD card with adapter for $5.99 + $5 shipping today. Shipping is the same for up to 3, so you can get 6 GB for $23.

Well, this is a bit of a piss-off. I got my CycloDS the other day, but I only had a 256mb microSD to go with it. So tonight, I picked up a Kingston 4gb microSDHC, and... well, the Cyclo USB adapter works fine with the 256mb card, as do both of my SD adapter cards. But NONE of them will read the 4gb card--the explorer window just freezes up until I remove the card. Any ideas?

Did the SDHC card come with it's own adapter? It might have something to do with it being microSDHC rather than microSD.

Or it could just be a faulty card.

It did come with an micro-to-SD adapter card, but it doesn't seem to read the microSD either. It'll read the 256mb card, though.

I tried them out in my RAZR phone, and the same thing comes up. However, when I plug it in with the 4gb card, it actually recognizes the device... just not the card. It tells me to 'Insert a memory card in drive x:'.

I put it in the CycloDS to test the 'faulty' theory--it reads the card, only it tells me that it hasn't been formatted as FAT16/FAT32. I'm wondering if a boot into Ubuntu or something [though I'd have to use a LiveCD] would make it work.

There is a lot of talk about past problems with MicroSD cards and ways to attempt to fix them. I just spent a good bit of time reading through some of it.

The second post has links to tools and software to try.

New firmware corrupting Micro-SD card. - Team Cyclops Forums

I tried that out too, it just locks up the formatter until I pull out the SD card. I've just concluded that my card reader isn't SDHC-compatible, and neither is the little USB transflas they included... Which is kind of stupid. In any case, I'm either going to return the card [and get the one with the USB transflash packaged with it... for $10 more] or just pick up an external card reader this week. We'll see what happens.

[edit] Now that you mention it, it very well could have been the firmware update... That's the first thing I did when I got the Cyclo, so I don't know. But the smaller 256mb card still works fine?

[another edit] Ahaha, I just saw this post:

So I put the card in the Cyclo's transflash reader and just slipped it in and out of a USB port a few times, and POOF! The red light came on. I'm happy that it works, even if I have to do that a few times to get it to go.

What the hell, I finally get my cyclods and the official page goes to shit :(

is good to buy Top Toy DS?it is compatibility with most DS games?

I was actually waiting until I got paid this month in order to buy one of these, and was going to ask you guys which card would be the biggest bang for my buck as I wanted to run GB/GBA roms as well as DS games... but I guess Nintendo decided to start their crusade right as I became interested in one.

:tpg:

Fuck.

Nah, this happens every once in a while...TC releases a new firmware, their bandwidth gets raped, site goes down. You can still get the latest stable and beta firmware at GBATemp. And honestly, if they were shut down right this moment, they'd still be better than any other card currently on the market in terms of features alone.

But yeah, waiting for the site to come back up would probably be a good idea, in case any technical problems crop up for you.

The TTDS is fine in terms of compatibility. You might have some problems with Band Bros. DX like everyone else, but other than that, it should work.

Thanks Dhsu for info

Hey Dhsu, TC's website is displaying an interesting message.

"This Account is suspended. Please contact the billing department regarding your account. billing @ katzglobal.com."

It could just be that they used up their bandwidth like you were saying.