Two weeks after I acquired my latest gizmo, a Nintendo DS, the hacking kit arrived in the mail. I already had a 2GB Micro SD compatible with the SuperCard Lite, ready to go with Romloader and DSLinux.

I was a bit surprised when I opened the package as I finally realised what I ordered. The SuperCard Lite and the NinjaPass were fine, but I didn't get the X9 MicroSD reader, but a cheap looking flimsy one. The SuperCard works with MiniSD - something in my collection of portable memory I havent got yet.

With a preconfigured MicroSD card, two fresh 2GB Kingston MicroSDs, two Slot 2 booting devices, one Passkey (SuperKey) and a Slot 1 booting device (NinjaPass) I was ready to start testing and tasting delicious DS homebrew.

As yet, I have to figure out how to format the new MicroSDs. With an adapter I can use them in my cameras, and the cameras transfer the content okay, but there seems to be no proper filesystem on the card. Attached with the MicroSD reader I cannot see card nor format it via DiskUtil.

Finally I found the formatting option on my digital videocam, and again, the Finder offers to initialise an unreadable media, but DiskUtil gives only input/output with every formatting option.

Next try will be with the good old Ixus. Unfortunatly the Ixus doesn't mount its memory as disk but interacts with iPhoto, which limits the file upload opportunity. The Ixus software might be able to handle file transfers, but it only formats to 1gb. Let's see what will happen. Nuffing. Great.

No loader found is NinjaPass Response, let's see what happens once I put the loader via the videocam mount onto it... If this sounds a bit complicated, that's exactly how I think about it, and I course the inventors of the raw file format and such.

So I put the latest loader and a DSOrganise Version from their website on it, and now into the ninjapass.... Wicked. And stupid me. Or not? I can start into the Ninjapass, but DSOrganise just hangs about.

Let's see what the moonshell will do. Victory is mine!!!!!! The default speed setting is x4, I changed it to x3, and DSOrganise booted up fine. I will still try to format the card into something readable by the MicroSD reader and the Mac, it's less cumbersome than firing the camera up each time I want to tranfer files.

It's a bit strange that I can't set the default speed for the MicroSD card, I always have to manually set it to the right speed. However, even my first DSLinux kernel started up (woohoo!!!), although I can't log in right now (what's the default password again?).

So the happy homebrew session can begin, and customizing of the moonshell for example....

Absolutely awesome. The DS turns out to be a little wonder. I can even choose between running stuff from the NinjaPass or the supercard lite... means I can sell the superpass/supercard bundle to someone :) And the patched version of DSOrganise locates easily three APs in reach. I still have to figure out how to connect to the web, so far I had no luck.


The most important things to remember for me now:

• L/R and down start the slot-2 supercard lite (woohoo!!!)
• Homebrew needs to be patched with the NinjaPass
• GameSave is after reboot