The original R4 brand DS card

1.1) DS Card (Pic) A DS Card is an emulator device that can be used to play homebrew games on the Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite. It comes in the size of an original DS game cartridge and is inserted into the DS via the Slot-1 of the Nintendo DS console. There are many brands of DS card made by different manufacturers such as the R4,The original R4 brand DS card Articles DSTT, EDGE DS and many others. 1.2) DS card components For a DS card to work, it will need three component: The DS card itself, a micro SD / SDHC card and the DS card dragon303. The firmware is basically the software part of the system. It is a program that allows a DS card to run homebrew application on the Nintendo DS console. The DS card is basically the hardware part of the system. It contains the Integrated circuit (IC) and various other hardware component that allows the DS card the act as a physical adapter to interact with the Nintendo DS console.

The micro SD is the memory of the system where the firmware and homebrew appication are stored. It is basically the RAM and hard disk space of the system. The micro SD can come in 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB and 32GB. Micro SD for 4GB and above are known as micro SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity). 1.3) Getting a DS card to work The first step to get the DS card to work is to get the DS card firmware. This firmware may sometimes be provided in a disc but most likely nowadays to be available for download from the DS card manufacturers site or from the reseller site (like us -> NDS-Gear). The DS card firmware is usually in a .zip or a .rar file, which need to be unzipped (or unrar) using the WinZIP or WinRAR program. The next step is to transfer the unzipped DS card firmware and homebrew applications that you would want to play on the Nintendo DS console from the computer into the micro SD.

This made the R4DS cheaper, superior and very popular compare to other DS card on the market when it was released in early 2007. It was considered to be one of the best DS card when it first came out in 2007. Because of its popularity, many other manufacturers start making clone copies of the R4DS and also naming their product ‘R4’, giving rise to the 30+ brands of R4. The R4DS change its name to R4v2 (Revolution for DS Version 2) when it release a non-spring loaded version of the R4 card in late 2007. This was to get rid of spring mechanism failure which was quite common in the R4DS. Now only the non-spring version R4v2 is sold on the market. 2.2.2) R4v2 package The R4v2 package comes with the R4v2 DS card itself, a blue protective case to protect the R4v2 DS card, a USB-micro SD adapter and a disc which contains the R4v2 firmware. R4v2 firmware can also be downloaded from the manufacturer site. All this are contained inside a blackish green paper packaging box. The R4v2 package does not include the micro SD which must be purchase separately.