help finding a gba expansion pack

[drone17]

Hi, I have an R4DS and want to look for a slot-2 device that will work with it so i can play some gba games. The problem is I dont know which one is the best and which one is compatable with my R4.

I tried looking around and I found this M3DS Real gba expansion pack. Is that compatable? If so, would you recommend it?

Thanks in advance for your help

[DanTheManMS]

The M3 Real expansion pack won't work on anything other than the M3 Real as far as I know.

Normally I'd recommend the EZ-V 3in1 expansion pack, but it appears that they've started using different internal chips, so the homebrew loaders need to be updated to account for this change. Until that happens, only the EZ-V cart will work with the newer 3in1 units. The other option is the Ewin 2 expansion pack, though this has lower GBA compatibility.

[drone17]

i was looking at the ez flash and it seems that is the best to go with the R4. so would it be useless to order one now? how certain is it that theyve changed the hardware on them? should i just wait?

[DanTheManMS]

It was a semi-official forum where the news was made, and I've seen two users who have reported problems due to this already. However, from what I read earlier today it appears that cory1492 might have already updated the code to his loader application to account for the new hardware. Check the official EZ-Flash forums to verify this.

Rudolph is known to be an active developer, so I'd imagine he'll update his fairly quickly as well.

I'd suggest the 3in1, but I'd wait and see if the newer hardware becomes fully supported by the third-party loader apps before making the purchase.

[drone17]

alright, thanks, ill wait it out. i was looking around though, and do you think you can give me your opinion about which gba loader was better between rudolph's app or chuckstudios' app? i know it may not matter, but yeah, i'd like to know should i get my hands on an old version

[DanTheManMS]

I don't have a 3in1 myself, so I don't really know too much about the loaders. I like the idea of NDStation, but Rudolph's apparently has more features.

[drone17]

i see, well thanks a lot for your help. i really appreciate it

[Omega_2]

Would the 3-in-1 work on the old style DS? And is there a link for it? I'm stuck in the U.S.

[trugamer]

You would need to buy the expansion pack for the old style ds, there are two expansion packs available (the other one is for the lite obviously)

I found one at realhotstuff.com: http://www.realhotstuff.com/expansion-pack-size-p-212.html
but I'd shop around for the best deal

[Omega_2]

I'm no good at reading the megabit/megabyte, how much does it hold? Please give me an example.

[DanTheManMS]

There are 8 bits in a byte. The largest GBA games are 256 MBits, which is 32 MBytes, and this is the amount of NOR flash the 3in1 has. The 3in1 also contains 16 MBytes (128 MBits) of RAM which can also be used to launch smaller GBA games if you wish. RAM is much quicker to write to, but its contents are lost after you shut off the DS, so you must load the game to RAM every time you play (saves are handled separately). NOR flash is very slow to write to, but once you write to it, it acts just like a GBA cartridge and you don't need to overwrite it again. You could take it out and put it in a GBA and play the game if you wanted to.

Basically, RAM is good if you have a lot of games you play and swap out often. NOR is good if you want to play a single game extensively. The largest GBA games will only fit in NOR, everything else will work in both NOR and RAM.

[dwtechz]

EZ-FLASH 3 in 1 expansion recommend, which can perfect compatible with R4DS, ez-flash 3in1 pack, not only can play GBA game, also has Browser RAM expansion function and Rumble function.
you can see more detail info here http://www.digimartz.com/ezflash-3-in-1-expansion-pack-for-ezflash-v-p-209.html