Can't make R6 Gold/silver work?

[spinal]

It has came to my attention that some of the people who purchased one of the R6 Gold or Silver cards, are using flashcards for the first time. So here is a quick guide for those who are unsure about how to get them working properly.

First you will need to set up your MicroSD card, also called TF (Trans Flash) card. First download the R6 firmware, this may have came on a cd in the R6 package, but it may not have. Either way, you can download the latest version from the Neoflash forum, there is a selection of R6 compatable software (including the latest firmware) here and all of the previous versions of the firmware can be found here.
Unzip the software to the root of the TF/MicroSD card, there should be a moonshell folder and application (moonshell-r6.nds) this is a very popular media player to the NintendoDS, it is not vital to the function of the R6 range, but it is a good thing to have for playing mp3's or dpg movies. Also you will see _boot_ds.nds, which it the actual menu for the R6 and something similar to 'r6boot-2.0070-selfburn_for R6.nds', this is the bootstrap for the R6 card.

You are now ready to test out the R6, when you boot up your DS, you should see a list of all of the files on your TF/MicroSD card, at this point, it is recommended that you run r6boot-2.0070-selfburn_for R6.nds as it will ensure that your R6 will work with a wide range of TF/MicroSD cards.

WARNING! never switch off or reset your DS while the r6boot-2.0070-selfburn_for R6.nds is running, you will risk damaging your R6 card and you may need a second flash card to repair it.

You are now ready to add your games to the card, there are load of homebrew websites, offering thousands of free home-made games for the Nintendo DS. Unfortunately I can not, for many legal reasons tell you where to get commercial games from, as downloading commercial games is illegal (even if you own the original cart) and in a lot of countries it is also illegal to make your own backups directly from the carts you own. That being said, once you have obtained the games, put them onto your card, be sure that they have a .nds extension on the filename, if they do not, they might be compressed (e.g. .zip or .rar) you should use a compression program to extract the .ndss file(s) from the .zip. A lot of people recommend using winrar or winzip for doing that.

Now boot up your DS, you should be presented again with a list of files on your card. Just select the game you want to load and press 'A'. Currently there is more than one hardware revision of the R6 Gold/Silver, and we can not guarantee that every version of the menu will work with every R6 card. IF you find that you can not load commercial games with the current version of the menu, you can try earlier versions, they might work a bit better. The Neo team are working on this problem, so there will some a time when the latest menu will work on all versions of the R6 card, please be patient.

If anyone has any other [constructive] advice, please feel free to post it in this thread.

[MagNet]

Nice but I can not run the selfburn .nds file from the R6 menu, as applies to many other homebrew apps. It says "Save file not found, erasing" and it's stuck.

[spinal]

in this case, I would try (in order of ease) -

1. Rename the selfboot file to _boot_ds.nds , this will replace the menu and should run as soon as the card boots. remember to replace this with the genuine _boot_ds.nds file after thet task is completed though.

2. Use a different loader to load the selfboot file. I suggest my own DSision, just rename the dsision.nds to _boot_ds.nds. (i think you need to patch the dsision .nds with dldi before using it this way).

3. Use a different card for loading the selfburn nds file and swap to the R6 when it askes you to press 'A'

I hope that helps.

[MagNet]

I tried using another card (CycloDS) but the selfburn says the CRC check is wrong or something, I guess it's because I've mixed the selfburn from an older version with the most recent menu which has no selfburn included. But anyway what's it for actually? Will it help with homebrew booting? 'Cause I can boot commercial roms fine but homebrew doesn't work too well.

[spinal]

I think its to help the card support more microsd cards. If your card is working fine, i would just leave if for now, until dr neo says it does something new and important.

can you give a couple of examples of homebrew that doesn't work?

What I have done with mine, is use DSision as the main menu, but have the r6menu renamed, so i can load it from dsision if i need it.
DSision is based on chishm's loader, so it auto patches dldi and has extremely high homebrew compatibility.

[MagNet]

I think its to help the card support more microsd cards. If your card is working fine, i would just leave if for now, until dr neo says it does something new and important.

can you give a couple of examples of homebrew that doesn't work?

What I have done with mine, is use DSision as the main menu, but have the r6menu renamed, so i can load it from dsision if i need it.
DSision is based on chishm's loader, so it auto patches dldi and has extremely high homebrew compatibility.

I guess I'll do that too, one instance of not working homebrew is, try guessing, DSision... from what I've tried (not too many) only Pocket Physics worked, Quake 2 and Marbleman did not. Some silly save problem but I don't need any bloody save files for homebrew, it's using proper files with through FAT anyway.

EDIT:
Ok, it works this way. It would be nice if you added an option to have at least one quick shortcut, touchable or something, to a specified rom. In my case it would be the original R6 menu, just so I can quickly switch.

[spinal]

The latest version (in the neoflash 2008 competition) has shortcuts along the top of the screen, there are up to eight of them. You can set the files they point to in the .ini file.

Neoflash version of DSision

[MagNet]

The latest version (in the neoflash 2008 competition) has shortcuts along the top of the screen, there are up to eight of them. You can set the files they point to in the .ini file.

Neoflash version of DSision

Hm, I thought it did but I thought the latest version would be on your site and that one doesn't. Heh, update your webby man!

The older version looks nicer... and doesn't have that annoying long NeoFlash splash , but since you've released the sources one can make as many edits as needed

[mbabauer]

I ran the r6boot-2.0070-selfburn_for R6.nds R4 Revolution and everything seemed to work fine.  However, when I try to boot off the card, which does have the _boot.nds on it, I get a blue screen w/ 3 Korean characters on it.  Since I don't speak Korean, I have no idea what they say, but my guess is that its something to the effect of "no card inserted".  I am using a PQI 2gb card.  I did download the English version of the menu, but for some reason the error messages are in Korean.

Can anyone confirm what these three characters mean, or even better how to fix it?  I have a card stamped MAGICKEY 6 GOLD 23G, which I am under the understanding is one of the "older" cards.

[spinal]

 The file needed is _boot_ds.nds, not _boot.nds, that might just be a typo on your part, but maybe its the problem. Also, this happens to me sometimes, when it does, I un-click and click the card in and out a couple of times, it usually works after that.

[Stormbringer]

I have a R6 Gold (with acelerometer and gyro)

spinal, if I use DSision, I was able to run homebrew aplication with motion support?


plus: Since version .829, no firmware work to me... There´s a chance to neoteam make firmwares compatible with both " hardware revisions" of R6 Gold?

[spinal]

I think all motion supporting games work fine with the R6, although some that were made before the R6 was designed might not.
As for the firmware, Dr Neo has told me that they will make it work on earlier hardware versions, but I do not know when that will be.

[MagicCardHunter]

Spinal, your information is really good, but you no buy a "MAGICKEY6GOLD 23G", I think this is FAKE version.



Your question is answered in this thread. It has been answered many times before, please be patient, the Neo team knows that there is a problem with some of the versions of the card, but wanting something done does not make it easier to do. -[Spinal]-

[noob-Jojo]

How do you save?

[spinal]

saving is done automatically by the cart as it has hardware saving. When load a game, it should say on the screen that it is backing up the previous save.