supercard lite mini-review (very mini)

Thundrestrike · July 26, 2006, 04:54:13 PM

sticker came off my supercard CF so easy

rocky · July 26, 2006, 05:05:55 PM

Yea it comes off easy but if it does then you void your waranty from the store you bought it

darkuni · July 26, 2006, 05:45:59 PM

So did we get an answer on GBA games? I sure would like to take Yoshi for a spin ...

meangreenie · July 26, 2006, 06:07:51 PM

Nope not yet.

waiting....

satanduck · July 26, 2006, 06:21:16 PM

Well he is from Singapore and it is kinda like... 6:21 in the morning now... Maybe tomorrow guys

(unless he's been up all night playing GBA games...)

sneef · July 26, 2006, 06:32:10 PM

hey guys. just woke up. heh.. yes, it's 6:29, and yes, i fell asleep while playing GBA games. LOL

I tried a couple of problem games (mario world, etc..) and i may be imagining it, but it seemed to be slightly worse than my wife's supercard miniSD! In any case, it wasn't better. I patched with 'restart' enabled so it would have pre-fetch enabled.. but keep in mind that they were patched with the latest patcher, and my wife's roms were patched with an older patcher.. i'll have to do more accurate tests later after work today.

[edit] so far the most annoying thing is how difficult the supercard lite is to take out of the DS Lite's GBA slot. if you leave it in all the time, it's no big deal, and to answer that other question: it is easy to take the microSD in and out of the supercard Lite.

I'm just wondering if since the official launch isn't till friday, that maybe Romman has a firmware/patcher update waiting for that day? i hope scummvm works.. [/edit]

FifthE1ement · July 26, 2006, 06:47:59 PM

Hey sneef I have a good friend from the states living and working in China and he picked up the SuperCard Lite from a shop in his area. This was his review and it kinda looks like everything you are saying:

Using a white DSL, FlashMe, and a normal SanDisk microSD:
Same SuperCard SD/miniSD menu.
Same GBA compatibility and slowdown.
Fits flush with the DSL but is not glossy like the G6 Lite.
Stutters badly in the Castlevania test.
Slowdown in Animal Crossing and Tony Hawk.
SuperCard Lite is hard to put in and remove.
Very study plastic with front loading microSD.
Uses the same miniSD/SD SuperCard patcher software.

The moral of this review is stick with a 80X or higher rated microSD card! With even 60X there WILL be slowdown! Man I really thought the SuperCard team would have come through this time with better GBA, faster DS speed without high speed memory. I'll be sticking with DS Phat, SuperCard miniSD, PassCard3, and ATP ProMax 150X 2GB miniSD! I have no slowdown in Animal Crossing or in Tony Hawk, and my Castlevania test is flawless with perfect video and audio. Buy if you own a DSL and need a flush fitting solution then the SuperCard Lite is the way to go as its a Lite version of the SuperCard miniSD.

UPDATE: He justed tested it with the SanDisk Ultra II 60X and it still had slowdown but not nearly as bad as the regular SanDisk 12X microSD he had before.

FifthE1mement :nds:

_Mazza_ · July 26, 2006, 06:54:32 PM

Quote from: "sneef"hey guys. just woke up. heh.. yes, it's 6:29, and yes, i fell asleep while playing GBA games. LOL

I tried a couple of problem games (mario world, etc..) and i may be imagining it, but it seemed to be slightly worse than my wife's supercard miniSD! In any case, it wasn't better. I patched with 'restart' enabled so it would have pre-fetch enabled.. but keep in mind that they were patched with the latest patcher, and my wife's roms were patched with an older patcher.. i'll have to do more accurate tests later after work today.

[edit] so far the most annoying thing is how difficult the supercard lite is to take out of the DS Lite's GBA slot. if you leave it in all the time, it's no big deal, and to answer that other question: it is easy to take the microSD in and out of the supercard Lite.

I'm just wondering if since the official launch isn't till friday, that maybe Romman has a firmware/patcher update waiting for that day? i hope scummvm works.. [/edit]

I hope he has. If there is a new software that improves GBA capibility and speed it would be great.

I was thinking, if the Supercard Lite has better parts e.g faster ram then the old software wouldn't be able to take full advantage of it because it patches the roms for the older carts.

I'm hoping for a new GUI, the current supercard one looks terrible I wouldn't mind if it works in the same way. Just a list etc because it makes it easy and quick to load games but the buttons etc. are horribly designed compared to other flashcarts.

sneef · July 26, 2006, 06:55:17 PM

yeah.. i'm starting to wonder if that video floating around was a supercard lite playing something in moonshell. haha.. especially since the video ends with that supercard lite logo (on the DS screen)

anyway, I'm not giving up hope. it's a nice little cart, and I'm waiting till faster microSD cards come out.

_Mazza_ · July 26, 2006, 06:57:07 PM

I think that video was real but the last part was imposed on the video afterwards.

I'm still hoping though like you because ROMMan said it would be faster.

sneef · July 26, 2006, 07:08:31 PM

UPDATE: scummvm DS works the old GBA flashcart way. in other words, you have to get all the files below 30MB, and zip them uncompressed, and build the ds.gba rom with that (of course, rename with nds extension).

then you have to load into supercard lite's ram, and it does work. Too bad the new way using FAT access to the SD card is broken. I thought microSD used the exact same protocol as SD/miniSD? hmmm....

meangreenie · July 26, 2006, 07:11:04 PM

It does seem weird to have 'Faster' written all over the box and it ending up being exactly like all the other SC... with dependance on memory card speed and slow gba ram.

So maybe something is coming Friday ??

sneef · July 26, 2006, 07:48:19 PM

i hope so!

in any case, I'm pretty happy with it. I just had to get over the "faster" dissapointment. I am now using it with all the games that don't have slowdown (which is a lot, actually) and saving those other games for my g6.

It works great actually. And, after extensive shaving of the plastic, it isn't as hard to remove from my DSLite. seems they kind of forgot to make the plastic under the GBA pins (the outside of the cart, at the back of the GBA connector) a little bit thinner than the rest of the back of the cartridge. That was the main culprit. those silly guys. :razz:

rocky · July 26, 2006, 07:54:58 PM

What is the firmware that is on it? maybe they did make a new firmware and patcher but are going to release the patcher on friday

sneef · July 26, 2006, 08:01:13 PM

that's exactly what i was thinking. since it's officially released friday. firmware version was 1.62 when i received it.

interestingly enough, when running the service tests, after showing firmware v. 1.62, it said "hardware revision" followed by some random alphanumeric code (or something like that). maybe the future kernel update will have a micro-specific version, and that's why this hardware test has a hardware revision check?

I didnt notice that code when i used to do the L+R test on my old supercard SD/miniSD..