Best Media Card? Advice needed :)

Subforum for discussion and help with ScummVM's Nintendo DS port

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manx182
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:56 am

Best Media Card? Advice needed :)

Post by manx182 »

Hey there,

I just bought a Games N Music from play.com but the spring was broken for the mini SD card, so I had to send it back. When I got it, I also realised that it can't load ScummVM. Devastated!

Now i'm in the market for a card that does all that the Max Media Dock (and the Games N music) did, but perhaps more.

Does supercard play .gba and .nds files as well as .mp3 and .avi or .mpeg?

I've been hearing about Moonshell aswell...what does that do?

What's the best one to get?

Cheers :)
chrisis
Posts: 150
Joined: Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:06 pm
Location: Austria

Yes, it does

Post by chrisis »

Hello manx,

yes, supercard (as far as I know all versions, although I only have Supercard CF, which isn't available anymore; supercard rumble and the slot 1 versions don't work with gba files, but nds works) should work with ScummVM and all other nds-homebrew files. The new beta-version of ScummVM should work with all cards, for which DLDI-drivers are available, you just have to patch it with DLDI before (see: http://chishm.drunkencoders.com/DLDI/index.html for infos how to use.)
I don't have experience with any other cards, but there is also a compatibility-list with recommended cards on agentq's scummvm-page at http://scummvm.drunkencoders.com for the official, stable version, just in case, you don't want to use the beta-version.

About moonshell: it's a media player, you can watch videos (must be converted to dpg before), listen to mp3s, view images, etc, it's a pretty nice program)

hope I could help a little bit, just excuse my bad English, it's not my native language :)
manx182
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:56 am

Post by manx182 »

Cheers for your help!

I think i'm going to try and get a supercard compactflash, since I have a spare 1GB card. Sounds absolutely wicked :)
manx182
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:56 am

Post by manx182 »

So, yeah, if I bought this:

http://www.supercardstore.com/sh/products/scarts/cf.php

Would I need a pass-key for it to work?
chrisis
Posts: 150
Joined: Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:06 pm
Location: Austria

Post by chrisis »

Just don't forget, for slot-2 devices you'll need either a passme-device, a nopass-device (recommended) or a flashed ds (also recommended) to run homebrew. Just saw, I didn't mention that in my post, but you probably knew that anyways ;-)
chrisis
Posts: 150
Joined: Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:06 pm
Location: Austria

Post by chrisis »

Ok, you just asked the question I did answer before you asked ;-). Well, yes, the passkey should work! Also one disadvantage of the Supercard CF is, that it sticks out of the Nintendo DS quiet a lot, especially on a DS lite...
manx182
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:56 am

Post by manx182 »

Oh ok, cheers!

Yeah, as you can see I just posted about that lol :)

Thanks!
manx182
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:56 am

Post by manx182 »

By the way, since most CF ones are sold out, are there any major differences between the supercard CF and supercard SD?
manx182
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:56 am

Post by manx182 »

Oh and sorry, whats the deal with this?:

http://www.ds-x.com/cgi-bin/dsx/engine. ... t-dsxtreme
chrisis
Posts: 150
Joined: Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:06 pm
Location: Austria

Post by chrisis »

Nowadays the compatibility of the SD-version should be (although I only know this from reading) about the same as the CF-Version, so I guess you should be ok by picking the Supercard SD.
About the DS-Extreme:

Pros:
Slot 1 - No NoPass/Passme required
Looks like a regular DS-Game

Cons:
No GBA-compatibility (doesn't work with any gba-homebrew!)
only 512 Megabytes (=4 GBit) of space, non-upgradeable (although there are some Slot1-devices now that use MicroSD-cards so this disadvantage is gone in these devices)
Compatibility isn't yet as good as with Slot2-devices (although with the introduction of DLDI, this disadvantage is mostly gone).

So, if you only want to use NDS-homebrew (like ScummVM) you should be ok with a Slot1-device (although, maybe you should look for one, that uses media-cards, 512 Megabytes isn't that much), if you also want to use GBA-homebrew you should stick with a slot2-device+NoPass
manx182
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:56 am

Post by manx182 »

Oh cheers :)

You can probably tell it's all new to me!
ascummyguy
Posts: 20
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2006 3:03 am

Post by ascummyguy »

Yeah, I'm just getting into it myself.

Personally, I got an R4 (Slot 1 DS cartridge) first, and expanded to a Supercard Lite (Slot 2 GBA card) later since some homebrew software for DS doesn't have DLDI support yet.

You could just get a Passme, but if you grab an R4 from dealextreme, they're only 30 bucks with shipping and you get a whole Slot-1 boot device with the Passme functionality.

For convenience I think a slot 1 is just awesome. But if you want some extra functionality a Slot 2 with a Passme-like device is great.
manx182
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:56 am

Post by manx182 »

Hmm, thats not a bad idea. I live in the UK, though, so trying to find something that doesn't cost me a bomb is a big part :(
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