Some questions before I spend my money

[ECfan]

I just bought a DS a week ago, and was surprised when I read about all the neat homebrew programs that can be used with them.

Then things got confusing. (It's not too hard to confuse me!)

I don't know if I should get a slot 1 (M3 Perfect Simply) or slot 2 (M3 Perfect Lite).

So here are my questions about these two devices.

1. Are there gba emulators that can run off a slot 1 device?

2. Do slot 1 cards run NDS backups noticeably better than a Slot 2 with a passcard?

3. Which one is better if I want to watch movies/listen to music

4. I couldn't find a lot of apps for slot 1 cards, am I just looking in the wrong place, or is it just because they are new?

Thanks a bunch.

[DanTheManMS]

1. Are there gba emulators that can run off a slot 1 device?
Nope. The only way to run GBA binaries is to have some sort of slot-2 device.

However, there is an alternative if you want to use a slot-1 device: if you have a DS Lite, you can get a slot-1 device and the slot-2 "EZ-Flash 3-in-1 expansion pack" which sits in slot-2 and lets you have GBA functionality. You store the GBA binaries on your slot-1 microSD card and use a program on the DS itself to flash a single file to the slot-2 expansion pack. You can only have one or two games on the pack at a time, but you can have as many on the microSD card as you want. It's a fairly cheap solution that gives you the best of both worlds.


2. Do slot 1 cards run NDS backups noticeably better than a Slot 2 with a passcard?
Sorry, we can't answer this on DCemu.


3. Which one is better if I want to watch movies/listen to music
Both will work equally well.


4. I couldn't find a lot of apps for slot 1 cards, am I just looking in the wrong place, or is it just because they are new?
Most homebrew files will run fine on both slot-1 and slot-2 devices, so you usually don't see any homebrew that specifies what type of device to use it on. Older homebrew might work better on slot-2 devices though, but nearly all current homebrew will work fine on both. An example is NES DS - when used on a supported slot-2 device, you can load the .nes games directly off the card, while with a slot-1 device, you must package the NES games into the .nds file itself, and I'm not sure if saving support works then. DSLinux also works best with a slot-2 device with additional RAM it can use, though with the 3-in-1 expansion pack you do get some extra there, I think 8 MB at the moment.

[pt9087]

well explained!!! i would +rep but it got removed!

[ECfan]

Thanks for the reply! Sorry for asking a no-no question. I know better now :)

I think I've decided to go with this:

http://www.gamersection.ca/product_info.php?cPath=30_36&products_id=290