VISA payments are now online! Please checkout as normal with a VISA credit/debit card. See our blog post here. Thank you for your patience! :)

DS Card Setup Guide

For those of us who are slightly less tech-savvy, we've made an instruction booklet teaching you how to set up your new DS adapter! You can read it here or download it for your own reference. If you download it, the guide requires Adobe Acrobat (or some way to read .PDF files) to run, which is normally on most computers. If not, you can download Adobe Acrobat Reader for free from the Adobe website. Download the NDS-Gear Card Setup Guide (367kB)

The NDS-Gear Guide to Setting Up Our DS Cards

1. Your New DS Adapter

2. Installing the Software on Your DS Adapter

1. Your New DS Adapter

What Can It Do / What Do I Need?

Your DS adapter has arrived in the post, and you're ready to start enjoying the benefits your new adapter can provide! You can do a variety of things with your new DS adapter, including:

Your new DS card

The potential things you can do with your DS adapter are much longer than this list, and we hope you enjoy squeezing that extra value out of your Nintendo DS / DS Lite / DSi / DSi XL / 3DS console!

With almost every DS adapter, there is a slot in the back of the adapter into which you must insert a Micro-SD card. The Micro-SD card is the actual memory that stores all your applications and data, while the adapter (and basic software) is simply telling your console how to read it.

Due to the massive number of different things that can be used with DS adapters all over the world, NDS-Gear are unable to personally provide support for software beyond the initial set-up explained in this document. However, if we can help, we will always try, so never hesitate to e-mail us!

Note about movies: DPG format actually stands for nDs-mPeG. More information can be found on the Wikipedia page for this video format, right here. Please note that NDS-Gear cannot provide support for non-standard DS adapter software.

Looking After Your DS Card

You should treat your Nintendo DS adapter just like any other piece of electronic equipment. It is small and therefore fragile, it's definitely not good to get wet, and it should ideally be kept in a case or inside your console at all times.

The back of a DS card

Your Micro-SD card is even smaller than your DS adapter, and should always be kept in a known place to avoid losing it. Please keep it within your adapter or inside a case in a safe place at all times.

The contacts between the Micro-SD card & the DS adapter, and between the DS adapter & the DS console, are incredibly important. These contacts are what allow the DS adapter to work. Please keep them clean at all times, and give the slots (in the DS and in the adapter) a regular blow of air to remove any dust that may have settled there.

2. Installing the Software on Your DS Card

Formatting Your Micro-SD Card

The first step towards running applications and viewing media on your DS adapter, is formatting your Micro-SD card. You need to format your Micro-SD card to either FAT16 or FAT32 file formats. To do this in Windows, just follow these few simple steps.

Once you plug your Micro-SD card into your computer (via a USB adapter, or a regular SD adapter, or a multi-card reader - your choice!), it should show up in "My Computer". Right click the drive, and choose "Format�". You will see the following screen:

Formatting the Micro-SD card - Format screen

Make sure FAT16 or FAT32 are selected under "File System". Uncheck the box that says "Quick Format", and click "Start". You will be presented with the following warning dialog box:

Formatting the Micro-SD card - Warning box

Simply select "OK" to start formatting your Micro-SD card. When formatting is complete, you should see the following confirmation box:

Formatting the Micro-SD card - Format complete

Once formatting is complete, your Micro-SD card is ready to have the relevant software installed on it! But first, you need to make sure you have downloaded the correct software.

Remember: always safely remove your hardware by:

Safely Remove Hardware

The "Safely Remove Hardware" button, with the green tick.

Downloading the Correct Software

Note: NDS-Gear can only offer software support for DS adapters that are sold by NDS-Gear. Any adapter not bought from NDS-Gear (even if the name is the same) could require different software, owing to different/fake versions of DS adapters and so forth.

If you have bought your DS adapter from NDS-Gear, you can simply download your software through the NDS-Gear website, in the Support/Download section.

Please make sure you have the correct software for the name of your DS adapter, because other versions will NOT work! (i.e. R4 SDHC software will not work on other R4 cards, EDGE software will not work on EZFlash Vi cards, etc.) All current cards will have an updated version of their software hosted on NDS-Gear's website.

The software available through the NDS-Gear website (and most manufacturers as well) will come in a .ZIP file. This is a file format which compresses lots of files to keep them in a smaller space. To install them on your Micro-SD card, you will need to "unzip" them using software. If you need help with this, read on to find out how to do this with WinZIP, a popular piece of software used for unzipping files.

Installing and Using WinZIP

This section explains how to use WinZIP to unzip .ZIP files, to install relevant software on your DS adapter. Most DS software and games come in either .ZIP or .RAR files. These are files that function similar to vacuum seal bags for clothes - they 'pack' other files inside of them and try to make them smaller.

For .RAR files, you will need to use a similar software called WinRAR which can be downloaded from http://www.rarlab.com. However, NDS-Gear only uses .ZIP files because WinZIP tends to be slightly more user friendly - so we'll focus on using WinZIP here.

To obtain WinZIP, please visit the WinZIP website at HUhttp://www.winzip.comUH. Go to the download section, where you should see the option to download an evaluation version of the latest iteration of WinZIP, as shown in the screenshot below.

WinZIP Website

Click "Download Evaluation" or the equivalent download link, and save the file that attempts to download, onto your computer. Once it has been saved, run the file directly when prompted or double-click on its icon. You will then be greeted with the following screen:

Installing WinZIP

If you see such a security window, click "Run". WinZIP should then install onto your computer.

Note: WinZIP may ask you if you wish to install the Google Toolbar onto your computer during installation. This is NOT required for installing software on your DS adapter, so feel free to decline this if you want.

Opening and Installing the Software

Once downloaded, any .ZIP files you have on your computer (including those available from the NDS-Gear website) will now appear as a WinZIP icon. You can see that in our example with the EDGE software below.

EDGE DS .ZIP File

Upon opening the .ZIP file, you should see all the files contained inside.

Inside the EDGE DS .ZIP file

Do not simply drag and drop everything inside onto your computer just yet. There are many files here, but some of them go inside other folders and have a particular structure.

Instead of dragging and dropping, select "Extract" from the top bar. You can then choose where to extract all the files to. In this case, we will extract all the files onto the desktop. Make sure the "Use folder names" checkbox is ticked as this will make sure the files go into the correct folders when you extract them.

Check the 'use folder names' option

Once extracted, you can see the folder structure looks similar to this (it will look different for each type of adapter, the example below is for the EDGE DS adapter).

The files once unzipped in their original folder structure

Transfer the files to your Micro-SD card, and your DS adapter should now boot up when everything is put into your DS console!

For any more questions - feel free to contact us!