Supercard DSONE
From PHWiki
The Supercard DS(ONE), more commonly known as simply the Supercard DS or SCDS, is a Slot-1 solution that uses Micro SD / Transflash cards for storage, made by the SuperCard Team. Updates are maintained at sporadic rather than regular intervals, though this is the case with nearly every other slot-1 device.
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Features
While slightly less user-friendly than some other slot-1 devices, the Supercard DS has many powerful functions that can be utilized once one learns how to use them. Examples of such features include:
- Cheat system with support for Action Replay DS and Dipstar codes
- Slow-motion support
- The ability to enter the cheat menu mid-game to enable or disable specific cheats
- Real-time book capability, that is, the ability to reference a text file like a GameFAQs guide in the middle of the game with a button combination
- Real-time saving, the ability to save anywhere in a DS game. This feature is present only on the Supercard DS and CycloDS Evolution.
- Automatic DLDI patching for homebrew
- The ability to patch most homebrew to support soft-reset to the Supercard DS menu
- Multiple save files for the same game
- Can use in combination with non-Rumble slot-2 Supercards to run GBA files, use the Opera web browser, and migrate Pokemon from a GBA Pokemon game to Pokemon Diamond/Pearl via Pal Park
- Perfect Download Play compatibility when the appropriate patching option is checked
Menu
The Supercard DS menu is a modified version of Moonshell v1.41. This allows the user to playback media files directly from the SCDS menu. However, this version of Moonshell is outdated, and while it will work fine for most media files, for converted DPG videos it is recommended that the user manually install the latest version of Moonshell 1.71 and launch it from the SCDS menu before starting the DPG file. The menu itself has not been updated to 1.71 because Moonlight asked the Supercard team to stop modifying Moonshell for the menu.
The Supercard DS menu is based around button combinations. For instance, L+A swaps screens so you can manipulate the patch menu, which is opened with a different button combination. As another example, L+B starts a slot-2 cart in DS mode while R+B starts a slot-2 cart in GBA mode.
The SCDS menu has been known to be somewhat slow and laggy when scrolling through games. To remedy this, it's recommended that only small icons and list view are used (clarification needed?).
On-board Patching
Like most slot-1 devices, the Supercard DS patches games in memory before running them. Most devices do this transparently, without the end-user knowing about it, but the Supercard DS has a separate patch menu that serves to activate or disable the various features. It's recommended that the user run games in patch mode whenever possible. This patch menu is also used to activate cheats, Download Play compatibility, and more.
Important note: when the "Fix Downplay" option is checked to fix Download Play compatibility, cheats and real-time saving (and possibly other features as well) are disabled. Therefore, leave this option unchecked by default and only check it when needed.
MicroSD Card Speed
The Supercard DS works best with relatively fast microSD cards. In the past, it required extremely fast microSD cards in order to prevent games from freezing intermittently, but firmware updates have increased the tolerance for slower cards. A fast card is still recommended, but slower cards will be able to run the majority of the games, especially with Bliss's Tripple Loader DS that allows you to run the DSTT's menu, which reportedly allows games to run faster.
Saving
In the past, the Supercard DS held the current save file in a capacitor and wrote it to the Micro SD card upon the next bootup. However, sometimes the capacitors failed and the saves were lost. An OS update added a patch option to save directly to the microSD card, which should be checked at all times to prevent the aforementioned issue from occurring.
Cheats, Real-Time Book, and Slow-Motion
The cheat system is based around each game having an individual cheat code file, known as an SCC file (Supercard Cheat). The process involves copying the Action Replay DS cheat code into a text file, using a program to turn the text file into a CHT file, and another program to turn the CHT file into an SCC file which is then renamed to the name of your game and used. Another program can merge two SCC files together if needed. All the programs are available from the Supercard website. The "cht2supercardcheat" program requires the "unicode.fon" file in the same folder in order to run. Furthermore, this program can be used to turn a regular *.txt file (like those from GameFAQs) into a Supercard Book file (*.scb) which can then be accessed in-game for reference as a real-time guide. If you get a blank error message, again make sure "unicode.fon" is present, and also try forcing the character width of the text file to 80 characters before converting.
The slow-motion support is actually an extension of the cheat engine. There is a "slowmotion.scc" file which can be renamed to the name of the game or merged with an existing SCC file for the game. As the file is not available from the Supercard site, here is a mirror] to both the slowmotion.scc file and slowmotion.cht file.
SCCheats
SCCheats is a website dedicated to making cheats easy to use on the SCDS. They pre-convert as many codes as they can find to SCC format for you, and they also offer tutorials and instructions on how to make your own. Highly recommended for all SCDS owners who wish to use cheats.
Bliss's Tripple Loader Program
Using Bliss's "Tripple Loader" program (spelling is correct), one can run three separate menus on the Supercard DS: the original SCDS menu, the DSTT's menu, and an alternate menu for the DSTT known as Y's Loader. Users have confirmed that this helps out with games that run too slowly on their slow microSD cards (for instance, the opening video of Castlevanie: Portrait of Ruin) and also allows one to use the cheat database of the DSTT rather than the SCDS's cheat system. However, when running the DSTT menu, the SCDS-specific features like slow-motion and real-time saving are disabled. One can also run the Supercard DS menu on the DSTT, but commercial games will not launch this way.
Integration With Slot-2 Supercards
With a slot-2 Supercard installed, you can do several advanced functions.
GBA Gaming
You can launch a *.gba file directly from the SCDS menu, which will then load itself into the slot-2 Supercard's RAM and launched. However, you cannot save with this method, so it's not really all that useful.
Opera DS Web Browser
Select the appropriate patch option in the patch menu before launching a clean Opera DS rom to let the SCDS use the slot-2 Supercard as RAM so the browser can function.
Pokemon Migration
You can migrate Pokemon over from a GBA Pokemon game to Pokemon Diamond and Pearl via Pal Park. First, put the clean *.gba rom and its save file on your slot-1 microSD card (don't use a GBA rom patched with the Supercard patcher). Load the rom to slot-2 with GBA Union activated, and then launch the Diamond/Pearl game. Note that you may need to convert your GBA save file to 128 KB in size if it isn't already. You should then be able to migrate. As a bonus, the GBA save file is never actually modified so you can still keep them in the GBA game after migration.
This information was taken from this SCDev post.
Past issues
The original versions of the Supercard DS were fairly buggy and had some hardware issues. For instance, the white sticker on front merely covered up a bare PCB that could be visible if the sticker was damaged. In addition, many users have had issues with save files being lost until the patch option was added to save directly to the microSD card.
As of October 2007, an SDHC-enabled version of the Supercard DS has been available, allowing users to use Micro-SDHC cards. A special SDHC version of the firmware is available that parallels the non-SDHC version, and the firmwares are not interchangeable.
See Also
Links
- Official site
- Unofficial dev site - mostly useful for its forums
- SCCheats
