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Honestly I think the GBA Movie player is a better deal that that($20 + CF card), although you need to either PassMe or FlashMe your DS to use Moonshell, which plays MP3s, JPEGs, and movies at full rez.

Anyhoo, I'm using a FlashMe DS and a GBA Movie player with MoonShell. The Datatel will probably be a bit easier to use, but it is more expensive.

Furthermore, most of the libraries needed to run the PSP are already included in the firmware stored in that big NVRAM

Including the ability to run unsigned binaries on PSP firmware 2.50 or newer? In PSP terms, the Nintendo DS firmware is still at 2.00 and has a very stable downgrader to 1.50, and games will never upgrade your firmware.

Why not buy the DS? Never buy the first edition of a Nintendo product

Except in the case of the Nintendo DS, future editions might block homebrew as collateral damage in the war against piracy. The encrypted nature of the DS card port compared to the GBA cart port means that you have to use malformed headers in order to get homebrew to run. The newest units currently sold in China (iQue DS) and Japan (red Nintendo DS) block the widespread versions of the "PassMe" and "WiFiMe" hacks used to get homebrew programs running on a DS. Though there is a new version of PassMe, it's not widely tested, homebrew games can't save with the new hack, and the DS downgrader isn't tested on the new firmware version yet. Just be glad that unlike PSP UMD games, DS card games don't force a firmware update.

you come out cheaper with the psp.

What about the time you spend waiting for a particular movie to come out on UMD Video? Currently the PSP has zero UMD Video titles rated G. It takes time to build up a library that comes close to approaching the DVD Video library in a given Region, and time is money.

as far as music is concerned unless you are talking about the pretty useless [for me anyway] ipod shuffle, you will have to shell out more than the PSP itself.

If you already have a GBA flash cart, you can use the GSM Player to put music on your GBA.

once you talk about emulators and homebrew, you will need a flashcart, or one of those awkward looking passthru devices for your ds. there goes the form factor right there.

And no, an F2A or EFA flash cart for GBA homebrew doesn't kill the form factor of the Nintendo DS any more than an official GBA game does. And for DS homebrew, once you've used the PassMe adapter once to flash your DS's firmware, you can keep the PassMe at home and load the DS homebrew from a GBA flash cart.

With a firmware update created by homebrewers that replaces the DS's ability to run GBA games with a new ability to run DS-mode code from the GBA slot.

Not really. What the FlashMe modification does is: implement a check whether a DS-binary is present on a cart in the GBA slot. If so, it points arm7 code execution to the binary; if not, it loads up the ordinary firmware with unaltered functionality (this includes playing GBA-games). Kinda nifty!

Yes, it will. Linux already works on the Gamecube and the Revolution will be backward-compatible.

"Backward compatibility" rarely works for 100% cases, especially when hardware-level hacking is taken into account. You need a hack to actually boot Linux on Game Cube. Whether this hack with work with the next console or not - it's yet to be seen but I don't hold your breath.

Yes, PSOLoad and SDLoad are both Windows-friendly tools. Also, devkitPPC is available for Windows using MSYS. You can get the latest version of devkitPPC here. (I posted it there since we couldn't access the Sourceforge repo at the time of release.) If you need some documentation, there is a Wiki project going on here for libOGC. The wiki is small right now, but we're working hard to get all of the lib functions documented. Any help with documentation is appreciated.

Also, about the SD-Adapter, you don't need a lot of hardware knowledge to make one. The SD to memory card adapter is a straight 1:1 connection, so all that is needed is to connect the SD-Card connector to the connections on a memory card board, and to cut the original memory card traces.

No. The GameCube reads no CDs/DVDs. There is no way to produce a GameCube compatible optical media using a CD/DVD burner.

So do I run homebrew code on the GameCube?

The PSOload method is the only way.

What do I need in order to run homebrew code?

A GameCube, any version of Phantasy Star Online, a Broadband Adapter, a memory card, and PSOload.

Do I need a modchip?

There are no modchips.

Will any of this disable the ability to play games?

No.

No. The GameCube reads no CDs/DVDs. There is no way to produce a GameCube compatible optical media using a CD/DVD burner.

So do I run homebrew code on the GameCube?

The PSOload method is the only way.

What do I need in order to run homebrew code?

A GameCube, any version of Phantasy Star Online, a Broadband Adapter, a memory card, and PSOload.

Do I need a modchip?

There are no modchips.

Will any of this disable the ability to play games?

No.

OK. Here's your GameCube. (Tepples hands Fnkmaster a black GameCube console.) Figure out how to program for it.

GCDev.com