CyclopsDS Evolution

Guides for modding the DS
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sadalius
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CyclopsDS Evolution

Post by sadalius »

Robinhood's Playground's review of Team Cylcops CylcoDS Evolution

by: sadalius RH Admin Staff

I recently received a sample of Team Cyclops solution for the Nintendo DS and DS Lite. It's called the CycloDS Evolution. This is a slot1 device that has everything that is needed to play roms and homebrew built into it. It even has a space on the chip itself for it's operating system. Since I reviewed an R4 DS before, I'll compare the CycloDS to the R4. The R4 does not have any space on the chip itself for the operating system, instead you had to upload the software to your micro sd card. This is an improvement over the R4 as this allows you a little extra space on your micro sd card. The packaging is also much more impressive. It comes in a metal container like in the photo below.

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Inside the attractively designed container, you'll find that it's foam filled to protect its contents. You'll also find the CycloDS and a USB device to connect your micro SD card to your computer so that you can upload your roms, emulators and homebrew.
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The CycloDS looks just like a regular DS game cartridge. Much like the R4 DS and the M3 Simply. A lot of people have had trouble with their R4's and M3's where the micro SD card plugs into the device. They slide in until they click and are removed by pushing in the sd card and it pops back out. Seems the little spring that pushes the card back out gets weak and doesn't want to eject the card. The CycloDS simply slides in and pulls out to get around this.
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Putting the CycloDS to use is pretty straight forward. First, you need to format your micro SD card. The cycloDS, like the R4 and M3 support fat 16 and fat 32. But, unlike the R4 and M3, the CycloDS supports MicroSDHC which will allow for micro SD cards over 4 GB in size. The R4 and M3 only support up to 4 GB cards.

Once your card is formatted, it's time to get some roms. The CycloDS Evolution supports all clean ROMS and no patching is required. Once you have your roms , transfer them to your SD card. Also, grab any firmware updates from the cyclopsds.com website and transfer the extracted file to the root of your SD card. Current version is 1.3 beta, at the time of this writing. You might also want to get Moonshell for the CycloDS while your at the site too. Especially if you want to play mp3's and such.

Once you get everything transferred, put the SD card into the cycloDS, make sure to insert the card according to the diagram on the cycloDS, then insert the cycloDS into your Nintendo DS and power it on. When you power on your DS you'll have to tap the screen to get past the health warning to get to the main menu and CycloDS will show up as a DS game on the menu.
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Tap where it says CycloDS Evolution to load the operating system. If you put an update on the sd card, it will begin the update, make sure not to turn off your DS and that you have plenty of battery power before starting it up if you have an update on the card. Once your update is done, it will ask you to power off the DS, go ahead and do so and reboot and restart the CycloDS Evolution operating system. Once you do, it should come up to the main menu.
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You'll notice three icons on the touch screen. The one on the left will take you to a menu of your roms and files that are on the SD card. The icon in the middle will load moonshell if you put it on your sd card. The icon on the right will load the settings/MSC menu. This menu can be used to enable or disable such things as Enhanced Mode, Cheat Codes, LCD brightness, Language, booting from slot 2, etc. Enhanced Mode is a wonderful thing. This turns on an in game menu. To access it, from inside your game, press L+R+A+B+X+Y. You'll be presented with a menu that gives you choices such as return to menu, Adjust Brightness, Toggle Slow Motion, and return to game. It's a great set of features thats available while in game..

After tapping the left icon, you can see the ROMS/files list.
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All you have to do to start a game is to tap on the game that you want and away you go. The CycloDS Evolution has a built in cheat code engine that is compatible with action replay codes. When you start a game, if there are chat codes available in the database for that game, you'll be given the cheat code menu so you can select yes or no and then either select your cheat code or boot straight into the game. There is also an autoboot feature. When your at the menu and you want to play the last game that was played, just press the L button and it will load it. Team Cyclops also claims to have download and play working very well. I will be testing this feature out a lot!

Here is the official features list from Team Cyclops:

CycloDS Evolution Features

* Completely plug & play - no FlashMe, PassMe or PC software required
* 100% game compatibility, supports clean ROM's - works on any OS
* Full NDS download play support, including problem games such as Mario Kart DS
* Action Replay compatible cheat code engine, comes bundled with cheat codes for over 300 games!
* Uses MicroSD card, both FAT16 and FAT32 supported
* Supports the MicroSDHC specification, allowing for high capacity memory cards
* Save type is automatically detected, no need for a save type database
* Save directly to MicroSD rather than onboard flash
* User friendly, easily skinnable interface. Both touch screen and button operation supported
* Multi-lingual user interface
* "Enhanced Mode" which provides powerful, unique features during game play. Enhanced features are activated through an in-game menu. Enhanced mode features include:
o Adjust LCD brightness during game play (NDSLite only)
o SlowMotion mode which can be used to slow down game play to make fast paced action sequences easier to master
o Return to CycloDS Evolution Menu (aka soft reset)
o More features to come!
* Excellent homebrew compatibility thanks to the DLDI auto-patcher
* 2 megabytes of onboard flash memory which contains the CycloDS Evolution OS and will be utilised in the future to add exciting new features. A recovery mode is also included.
* Autoboot mode which when activated will directly boot into the last ROM or homebrew application executed
* Moonshell included to provide media playing functionality
* PassMe function (boot from slot 2)
* Supports rumble and memory expansions

One thing that I wish Team Cyclops would have incorporated into the CycloDS Evolution is booting straight to the menu like the R4 and M3 did. Every time the DS starts you have the health warning screen comes up. I have to admit that seeing the actual DS menu is OK because I had neglected to set the time properly on my DS since daylight savings had kicked in.

Final thoughts:

The cycloDS is a nice piece of hardware. Performed very well. It costs a little more than it's competitors, but I think its worth the extra 10 bucks to get something that will allow for more than 4 GB. You can get one from Divineo or Gamersection for around $55 bucks. Getting something with around 8 GB of space would allow someone to carry a complete library of games without ever having to change the micro SD card for another one.

The device is made of good quality material and seems to be very durable.

It's very easy to install, couldn't get much easier, just put it in the DS and that's that.

It's only available in white. I wish makers of these devices would realize that some people have different colored DS's and like having the option of matching their devices up in color. This doesn't hurt the function at all, but it would be nice to have one of these in black since I have a black DS.

Overall grading:

Ease of install ---- A+
Quality --------- A+
Durability -------- A+
Price ------------ B+
Color Options ---- B

Overall grade: A

I would like to thank Team Cylcops for arranging the sample that we received and also thank Divineo for providing the sample. Without such cooperation, we wouldn't be able to provide the insight and knowledge that we bring to our community. Without such knowledge, you surely wouldn't be able to make informed decisions on such devices. So with that said, we can highly recommend the CycloDS Evolution for anyone with a DS or DS lite that is thinking of getting something like this. Enough reading, now go and buy one!!
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CoFree
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Re: CyclopsDS Evolution

Post by CoFree »

Great job man thanks
"FIGHTING TYRANNY in a TECHNOLOGICAL NOTTINGHAM"
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