R4i

So I *THEORETICALLY* could have bought an R4i in Shenzhen, China. Shenzhen has a high-tech district, Huaqiang Bei, that sells computers, parts, all sorts of electronics and I got a couple chances to explore it. I could have spent days there... there is so much to see! Computers of all types, but my targets were more of the handheld variety; namely PSP, DS & MP3 players/ PMP (personal media players)

I came across a bit of PSP stuff. There was one small alcove that sold PSP stuff, I asked, "how much" and the owner says, "which model: 1000, 2000, 3000..." the prices were a bit better than they are here, though these are Asian PSPs; 1/2/3003 I believe..... in this cramped little alcove the owner's attention was focused on a customer's PSP-3000, he kept trying to load a TIFF image, and would take the battery out & restart the PSP when it wouldn't crash. Obviously trying to activate some sort of exploit. But I'll talk more about the PSP in another post.

This is about the R4i for DS/DS Lite/DSi. It's entirely possible that I *COULD HAVE* bought one in Huaqiang Bei, at a little nook, where I *THEORETICALLY* haggled (with a lot of help from a Mandarin-speaking friend) a price of Y230 RMB for both the R4 & a 8GB Kingston Micro SD card. That's a bit over $30.00 CAD.

It's really more for novelty that I *HYPOTHETICALLY COULD HAVE* purchased this thing... one of my techy goals in China-- after all, this is where this stuff comes from, right? I don't know a lot about the Homebrew scene, but it does seem interesting.

The R4i is a way to play media like mp3 files or video (needs to be a specific codec) but its most common use is probably to play back up DS games stored on microSD card. *IF* I were to have bought one, I *might* say that it does this very well. It is interesting how small DS game files are, many seem to be only about 32MB!

*IN THEORY* The R4i makes playing a DS Lite very convenient-- having a significant part of your library accessible on one cart *COULD BE* really sweet. I have no idea how real it is though, there are a LOT of fakes in China.... but for $30.00, I guess it's worth the risk.

I really missed my DS Lite while I was away, I left it at home,and took the PSPgo because it does so much more. So I've been playing my DS Lite a lot the last few days.



later
don