Curly

Having seen many posts and received PM’s regarding the R4, I thought I’d bring some information together in one place.

There are other variants of the R4 card, i.e. the M3 simply, the G6 and the DS one.
As the R4's are usually cheaper and appear to be more popular I’m going to concentrate on this, although the concept is similar on the other cards.

Some members ask if the DS can be “hacked” or “chipped”. The basic answer to this is there is no need to, as when used with an R4 they can play downloaded games without the need to make any alterations to the DS’s firmware. This is also very easy to do, as I shall attempt to explain.

To play downloaded games ( called roms ) on the DS you’ll need 2 things.
An R4 and a micro sd memory card. The manufacturers of the R4 claim that it will support memory cards up to 4Gb. Having read posts reporting problems with using such cards, I personally stick with 2Gb cards.
A 2Gb card will hold around 50 roms ( depending on size of each rom ) and the system folders.
The R4 is basically an adaptor which will allow the micro sd card to be plugged into slot 1 on the DS. The R4 fits flush inside the DS just the same as a standard game would.
The micro sd card then has a small operating system on it so that the DS can play the roms. The system files come with the R4 on a small cd or the latest files can be found here. http://www.r4ds.com/download-en.htm
The system files are dragged and dropped into the root of the micro sd card, followed by the roms.

Many members ask where to get the roms from. The download sites are too many to mention ( plus it’s a grey area whether I’m allowed to post links to them here ) so my advice is to go on google and type nds roms.
The roms are listed by using a file number and then the game title. The file number is standard across the many download sites so if one isn’t downloading try a different site. The roms are usually in rar or zip format so it’s a good idea to have winrar on your pc to unrar them.
After downloading your rom, unrar it to a new folder on your pc ( called DS Games or something ). You should end up with a file with a .nds file type. This is then simply copied over to the root of the micro sd card, i.e. don’t put it in another folder on the sd card.
Your micro sd should look something like this when all the games are on.
Ignore the .sav files in the screenshot for now.

Screenshot here.

Now put the micro sd card in the R4 making sure to get it the right way round.
Put the R4 in the DS and turn it on. You will see the health and safety warning screen and then 3 options, 1 - boot from R4, 2 – multimedia and 3 – boot from slot 2 for GBA games.
Tapping the first icon will boot to the R4 so you can play your roms. These are listed on the top screen in alphabetical order. At the top of the screen you will also see the total number of roms on the R4.
Pressing the left fire button at this stage changes the screen brightness.
Pressing the right fire button changes the reset mode. If you see the R in a green circle top right of the bottom screen, you will be able to soft reset during a game back to the main R4 boot screen. If the symbol is red the only way is to turn the power off.
To do a soft reset, press the left fire, right fire, X, Y, A and B all at the same time.
To play a game, use the down button to scroll through the list of roms and the A button to select it. If this is the first time you’ve played the game, you are given the option to create a .sav save file on the R4. These save files are 512kb each, so care must be taken to leave sufficient room on the micro sd card when loading the rom .nds files.

Enjoy


Curly

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Texbox

Great post, I was thinking about getting one of these DS things, Only good game I have seen is thoes brain teaser things what other AAA games are out?

Curly

Took ages typing that

Just do a search for a rom site m8
Google nds roms as said above and look for one run by "Mr Dash"
There are about 1800 to choose from lol

Curly

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mullo

Fair play to you Curly Id say your fingers were hurting after that thanks mate.

HappyH

Yip, thanks for that Curly. Should help cut down any confusion for anybody investing in an R4.
Cheers.

garyb

Great post Cur1y.. makes it easy to print out and give to the young uns......

reeygeezer

If you google R4DS there is a youtube entry for setting it all up. Helped me alot.

cracker666

Thats stricted not true they can and have been "hacked" see flashme previously used for the older slot 2 cards to be used without the passme device, but as the slot 1 R4DS's donot need passme the need isnt there.

http://www.dspassme.com/FlashMe.shtml

http://www.natrium42.com/

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Munkey

Thanks for the info Curly I never knew it would be this easy.

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Curly

I take onboard your comments and have edited my post accordingly m8.

Curly

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