Found one at one of our local national stores for $20. It's the old one which works best for me as the buttons are larger than the Lite and the DSi has no Advance slot. It was also really good timing as my PDA recently decided to die.

So it came with a couple games already in the unit. Some Point Blank or something or other and a Gameboy Advance cartridge loaded with 140 games (obviously bootleg).

So I would like to order a card so I can run homebrew software but I really don't know what to go with. The actual manufacturers of the individual cards all make theirs sound the best and opinions are so wildly varied on the big sites that who can tell. I've seen various cards from, I think, Acekard and M3... I have some links saved. Primarily I would like to run scummvm and some of the PDA like software out there. If I get smart enough I might try some SNES emulators so I can try playing some of my old games on it (I still have the SNES and cartridges for the games I'm interested in so I guess I meet the intent of not talking specifically about pirating games, if we still care about that).

So, my questions are:

For those of you with experience, what cards are you using and what would you recommend?

What type of adapter should I use for the type 2 (GA) slot to either expand storage or ram?

Should I mess with the Nintendo sold memory expansion that comes with the browser or does third party products render that obsolete?

By the way, games I have picked up since getting the DS are Top Spin 3 and Madden '09. I'm not big on sports games but about the only other options were figure skating and Naked Brothers games at the PX at Liberty. I ordered Ninja Gaiden and some part II of some Japanese surgery game of sorts from Amazon but they aren't here yet. Those two because they were cheap and well reviewed.

Don't even bother with the DS browser. It's absolutely useless and ridiculously slow.

I was more wondering if the RAM expansion it is bundled with was worth picking up. All of this stuff seems pretty inexpensive. I don't imagine that browsing on the DS would ever be very enjoyable, though.

On a side note, this is going to sound odd, but I'm wondering about this sentence. I haven't had to do any sort of traditional writing for a very long time and I know my grammar and spelling are continually degrading. Military writing is generally much different. Usually "bulletized", no pun intended. I was never very good at knowing the technical terminology and rules with regards to English but I always could tell right from wrong and construct good sentences.

So, in the above quoted sentence should I have used the word "does" or "do" and why.

It's "do". Because products is a plural.

If you are into strategy games, look for Advance Wars. I think Days of Ruin is the best for DS if you ignore the lame story they tried to push.

It serves no purpose except for the browser, unless you use DSLinux.

The DS browser requires it though. It's terrible. On the off chance it does load a page, and loads it correctly, it could take upwards of a minute or two.

Works ok for Twitter, but for anything else it's useless. Well GMail half-works (it loads in non-AJAX mode).

Of course CoolMatty hates Twitter so he wouldn't know this.

Anyways yeah it's useless. Trying to use Google Reader, for example, causes it to run out of memory before it even loads anything useful from the page.

The only useful expansion that I've seen for the GBA slot is the rumble pack, as a few games use it. Only the browser (and DSLinux) use the memory expansion.

Also that bootleg cart may already be a homebrew cart thing, be sure to check it out.

I don't do homebrew since no-one has made it easy enough yet, but here's some projects you should check out:
- DSLinux
- Mini vMac
- Quake DS
- Quake 2 DS
- ScummVM
- SylphAMP
- SylphIRC
- WabbitDS
- Wolfenstein 3D

I like strategy games so I will have to check that out.

I thought it was do. For some reason as I was typing I thought since I was referring to third party maybe it was does but as soon as I posted and read it it looked wrong. The reason I was thinking about it is because lately I've noticed that when a word that seems singular but is referring to a group of some sort it changes the verb so that the sentence sounds wrong even when it is gramatically correct.

So, it seems that some cards out there do a better job than others. I believe it was called DLDI, something some cards take care of and others don't requiring specific patches to run various homebrew.

SCRIBBLENAUTS IN SEPTEMBER.

Dear god do you need that game.

(google for post 217)

Wookie06: if you like other turn table strategies, check out disgaea

ScummVM and all of lucasarts old stuff.

That's what I'm planning on doing but I would like some advice on which card to use to load the software on, if anyone here has experience with that.

you mean like flash carts?

PM sent. Hope that helps you. Feel free to ask any questions.

and I PM'd the info because i dont think massassi is friendly on that subject of matter

I think they are fine on the subject as long as the subject is not specifically about illegal roms or illegal modifications. That's not what I'm interested in anyway. Yes, flash cart was the appropriate term and your PM is helpful. I'm curious what advantages you see for the product you recommend over some of the other commonly used carts.

I have tried running some stuff using my R4DS card, SNES emulators are fairly poor. The ones that do work, seem to have issues rendering various layers correctly. NES emulators are a little more effective.

there are some really great games for the DS though.

the one i specifically recommended for you to get has a continually updated website meaning that the software and cheat code database will be changing more often. also, this card doesn't use a a spring based slot to load your card in, so it reduces the chance of it breaking even less. all you have to do is slide it in and it'll work

plus this card is much cheaper than it was before. when i first bought it the thing was 50 dollars. now that the dsi carts came out, the prices have dropped

goddamnit. delete this post.