I'm confused! I've read a number of different tutorials and sources, each suggesting a number of different Homebrew solutions. I have a black DS lite, and would like to be able to download/run homebrew games on it, and possibly even develop some games for it. Is there a way I can do this without having to flash the firmware?

If so, what peripherals will I need to buy? If not: are there any companies that will flash my DS for me?

How so? I've been eyeballing WINSUNX to buy some DS development stuff for a while now. I'm interested in how the transaction went through and your experience buying from them.

Losing the epilepsy warning: priceless.

That really annoys me. Every time I fire up ye olde Wii I see the warning, and then the inevitable cascade of obscenity erupts from my lips as I curse Nintendo for cowtowing to the entitlement generation who demand a warning label on every single piece of equipment, no matter how mundane, they might lay their hands on. That warning needs a user-accessible disable flag.

If you somehow fail to realize that TVs and displays can potentially trigger epileptic seizures, you sure as hell will figure it out when your kid drops his/her controller and starts flopping around like a fish.

Ah yes. I never realized there was such a convoluted process just to get some money to them. Not only to I dislike ordering stuff online, I really dislike using paypal to do it. It also looks like shipping is pretty steep (if you don't order many things at once). I have heard from many people who ordered from winsunx with no problems, however. Hm. I guess it's all up to how much I really want one of these things to tinker around with (both passcard and sd/cf gba slot cart).

Wait a minute... You mean to tell me that... that's not normal to do?

Wow, sounds like lots of people have either a ds or a gp.

Who will be first to throw down in the A.cc hand-held hack?

So I'm the only one with a PSP ?

You're not alone there. I have one too.

This is true. With stuff like this - I'd rather walk into a brick and mortar store, honestly. I should have rephrased what I originally intended: I don't like putting credit card numbers or bank account numbers into any website, period. I need to get me one of those new (old?) fandangled card services where your carrier generates a one time use number that is magically linked to your account but doesn't work after the fact of the transaction. Something like that.

I'll still probably end up buying some stuff from good old Winsunx.

[Edit]
I forgot to ask this question, specifically: for those of you who are using Passcards and some GBA Slot to hold the media that you're actually running: what kind of software are you using to put the media onto the cart? Is it proprietary software, or anything that will transfer data onto the memory card that slides into the cart? I'm wary of first party software that does the actual data writing. I have a program like this for my EZFA (GBA flash cart) and it's not the best piece of software out there, unfortunately. It is also impossible to find, and thankfully I've made backups of it all over the place.

The cards just have to be FAT16 formatted, which is standard for all memory cards, cameras etc. up to 1 or 2GB

I've found the Supercard useless for playing rom dumps of either GBA or NDS, even with the supplied (and a different) patching program. I only finally confirmed my hardware was working when I found a torrent of a 'specially cracked for supercard' game.

Well, many of my problems were caused by my Trust 12-in-1 card reader, which silently corrupts files. I turned on 'Disable delayed writes', used 'Eject' and 'Safely Remove Drive', waited 5 minutes etc. in 98SE, XPsp0 and XPsp2. I even bought a new SD card, and tried formatting the old one (in 98SE for definitive FAT16) but that just wrecked it. I should try everything again with a different brand of card drive before I declare anything else as not working, I suppose I have a SmartPhone which can serve this purpose.

I think my Supercard is authentic, because the game I did eventually get working is 32MB, which needs complete compatability with a real SC because of how it bank-switches the top 16MB (The M3 is considered superior by some in this respect).

Another device worth mentioning is the GBA movie player. This is similar to a SC/M3 but with much less RAM (I think 4MB) and an MPEG decoder chip. This may appeal if you want to watch movies too, without re-encoding to something the DS can handle in software. I would consider this to be a luxury extra, rather than a serious homebrew kit, but it can be used.

Once your DS is flashed, you don't need any extra hardware at all to run as a wireless client. This limits you to the 4MB of internal RAM, which is just enough for a small Allegro game, by my calculations.

Bzzzzzt!

The SuperCard DS One has a MicroSD slot. It's the DS-X that doesn't. Though the DS-X has its own benefits (built in USB port, two "cpu"s, one little thing to handle the usb and something else, while a non-locked FPGA handles the card's OS, and can be used to do other things, ie: the company claims it can be programmed to emulate the DS's Arm9 and run at 233MHz).

Sorry, what costs 290$? I believe my DS Lite was all of 150 cad maybe. And even then, I didn't pay for it.

Sucks to be you doesn't it

140 GBP ~ 1900 SEK.
220 USD ~ 1500 SEK.

I call fucking shenanigans. It would actually be cheaper if I lived outside Europe.

Append: Even their order-summary-shipping-calculator thing agrees with this assessment. If I'm in Sweden, I get to pay 1803:- for one. If I'm in the US, the cost only comes to 1547:-.