R4
http://bamboogaming.com/images/uploads/R4.jpg
Box Contents
* 1x R4 DS Card (in white shell)
* 1x Black replacement R4 shell (you may or may not get a replacement shell, the newer shipments do not come with them)
* Mini CD-ROM
* Micro SD USB Card Reader
* Dual DS card carrying case

-2nd generation storage device (no booting tool required)
-Flush fitting slot 1 card
-Uses MicroSD card, FAT16 or 32
-Supports any MicroSD card speed with no lag in game
-Supports Clean ROM, drag and drop. Works on any OS
-Built in NoPass
-Automatically detect save type
-Save directly to MicroSD card, not to onboard chip
-Supports Moonshell and other homebrew. Open I/O interface
-User friendly skinnable interface. Touchscreen or button operation
-Supports rumble pak and memory pak
-Supports the WiFi game, DS Rumble Pak, DS Browser
-Supports changes of the background of Operation Interface
-Supports 4-scale-lightness adjustment ( DS Lite only )
http://www.kicktrading.ca/images/r4ds.jpg

WARNING: THERE ARE FAKE R4 FLOATING AROUND OUT THERE.
http://gbatemp.net/up/boxs.jpghttp://gbatemp.net/up/cards.jpghttp://gbatemp.net/up/packs.jpg
Dont be fooled by the fakes, the fakes have some obvious differences.
1. The fakes have a Blue tab on the box, saying 2gb
2. The fakes have a silver 2GB on the card itself.
3. The R4 does not come a usb cable or a slot 2 cartridge.
Setting up your R4 flash card.
----------------------------------------------------
Step 1: Download the Latest Firmware for your flash cart.

http://www.r4ds.com/index-en.htm
The most current kernel as of 2007-2-10.
http://www.r4ds.com/soft/english/v1.06-English.zip

Step 2: Plug your micro sd into your micro sd usb card reader, plug the micro card reader into your computer.

Step 3: Click on my computer, and highlight your usb card reader it should show up as a new hard drive icon (the drive letter depends on how many devices you have installed)right click and select format, choose either fat or fat 32.

Step 4: Open the file you have copy all the files onto your micro sd.

Step 5: You are now ready to place games on your R4, download your rom backup, and open the file and extract the .nds file, the R4 does not support files that are zipped.

Step 6: You are now ready to play the ds roms you have just placed on your micro sd card, remove your micro sd card from your usb reader and plug it into your R4 and insert your R4 into your DS or DSL.

Using the R4.
http://www.r4ds.com/soft/english/sink-1.jpg
Game:
The first icon is the game icon,
this icon takes you to a directory/file listing of the contents on your micro SD card. You can go back to the main menu from here by pressing 'Start'. On the top screen is a list of the folders on your card, and below them, a list of all the .NDS files and their sizes.

When you launch a ROM file for the first time, the R4 will tell you that it can't find a .SAV file (save game data, and this is, assuming you haven't already copied across a .SAV file with the same filename as the .NDS) for the game and asks you if you would like it to auto-create the file for you before launching. You are given three options - 'OK, Cancel and Ignore'.

MULTIMEDIA:
The second icon is multimedia.
This starts moonshell a multimedia player.

Moonshell supports a wide variety of media files such as OGG, XMA, MP3, WAV and DGP.

To play Music files simply click on them, Moonshell can also play video files, but you will need to convert your existing videos files such as avi into DGP which the moonshell media player supports.

BOOT SLOT 2.

The third icon is the pass me function of your R4, you can load slot 2 flash carts, this allows the R4 to play gba games, browse the internet and use cheat codes on ds roms, that being said it is sold separately from the R4.
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Optional Extra information.

To Soft Reset.
(L+R+A+B+X+Y) or touch the soft reset button with R to switch on/off this function

Reading eBooks

Select the eBook in the game menu, and open it by pressing 'A' key or touching the icon.

It will ask whether to create a bookmark if it is the first running. Pressing 'A' key or touching the 'Confirm' button will create and then open the bookmark; Pressing 'B' key or touching the 'Cancel' button will not run the process; Pressing 'X' key or touching the 'Ignore' will open the eBook without creating the bookmark (The bookmark's function is invalid).

Press 'START' key to exit the eBook mode and back to the main menu.
Press 'SELECT' key can switch to the horizontal/vertical display.
Press the 'Up/Down' key can process the Row Up/ Row Down; Press the 'Left/Right' key can process the Page Up/Page Down.
Press 'A' key can open/close the intelligent-paragraph division function.
Press 'B' key to change the font (large, Medium, Small in rotation)
Press 'X' key to change the font color (27 color in rotation).
Press 'Y' key to change the row spacing (From 1-8 point space in rotation).
eBook support the DIY background:

Create 2 BMP files (256X192 pixels, 8 bit or 24 bit colors), name them to be “bckgrd_1.bmp” and “bckgrd_2.bmp”, and then save to the “_system_/eBook” directory of the TF card.

If the bookmark has been created, the features below will work:

Whenever you press the 'START' key to exit, it can memorize the location where you have read automatically, and it will go to the location directly next time while you open the eBook.

Press 'L' key to save the bookmark (3 positions available), press 'R' key to keep the previous bookmark (No any change).

Trimming Roms
DS roms can be made smaller so that you can fit more on your flash cart, most roms are actually smaller thent hey really are, they must be at least 16MB, 32MB, 64MB and 128MB etc... so they add on blank or trash data that is not needed for the rom to run.

R4 has made its own program to get rid of excess data.

R4DS ROM Trim Tool
Installation Guide
http://download.r4ds.com/soft/other/R4DS-ROM-Slimming.rar

There is a pop-up window displayed after running the software:
http://www.r4ds.com/soft/other/1-en_clip_image002.jpg
here are two textboxes, the top one for inputting the NDS/IDS game files, the '...' button can do a convenience browsing if you can't remember the file name and the path. Choose the correct input file type by clicking the pull-down menu according the ROM, which need to be trimmed. Please remember that .nds is extension of the NDS game and .ids is extension of the IDS.
http://www.r4ds.com/soft/other/1-en_clip_image004.jpg
http://www.r4ds.com/soft/other/1-en_clip_image006.jpg
The bottom textbox is for outputting the trimmed ROM's file (When you choose the input file, it will generate one automatically). You can change the output path if you need; default is the same as the input path. The '...' button can do a convenient location.
http://www.r4ds.com/soft/other/1-en_clip_image008.jpg
To start processing trim tool by clicking the 'Start' button once every thing is ready, a pop-up window will display the processing status.

You can see the difference between the trimmed ROM'S file and the original file, (0%-50% trims will be available according to the different ROMs.)
http://www.r4ds.com/soft/other/1-en_clip_image010.jpg
http://www.r4ds.com/soft/other/1-en_clip_image012.jpg
The Trimmed ROM can be copied and run on the SD/TF card directly!

Tips: The processing on the hard disk will be faster than processing on the SD/TF card as the hard disk has the higher read/write speed.

Replacing Skins.
Replacing the Skin.

There are 4 pictures at the directory “system/_system_”: logo.bmp 、 icons.bmp 、 bckgrd_1.bm and bckgrd_2.bmp. They are the background of the R4 operation interface; they can be changed to fit your style.

logo.bmp – Background of the Top Screen of R 4' s startup.
icons.bmp -- Background of the Bottom Screen of R 4' s Startup.
bckgrd_1.bmp -- Background of the Top Screen of R 4' s Explorer.
bckgrd_2.bmp -- Background of the Bottom Screen of R 4' s Explorer.

Note:

Do not change the picture's name;
Make sure the picture is .bmp format, 8-bit/24-bit;
Make sure the picture is 256*192 pixels.

After finishing process on the pictures, copy the “_system_” folder to the root directory of the CF card.

here is a background system folder so you can see what to do.

http://download.r4ds.com/soft/other/_system_.zip

you can use any photo you wish as long as you fit the parameters above.

USING ACTION REPLAY CHEAT CODE SYSTEM
Can the R4 use cheat codes on DS roms?

The answer is yes.

The R4 firmware 1.08 and above comes with cheat codes on selected games, simply click Y to go to the cheat code option screen.
If the game has cheat codes already supported a small box will appar on the bottom of the screen.
http://xs414.xs.to/xs414/07152/R4_cheat02.jpg
(sorry its in chinese, the red circled square simply says Press Y)
When you click Y on a cheat code enabled game as Shown in the picture above.

you will be sent to the cheat code list, mark which cheat codes you want and hit save.

http://xs414.xs.to/xs414/07152/R4_cheat03.jpg
(The top screen is the codes you want, the bottom screen in chinese says save selected cheat code selection, save and exit, quit, you will need to save the codes you want turned on, the R4 remembers your setting so whenever you start the rom now, it will have cheat codes enabled, to turn off press Y again and turn them off remembering to hit save)

List of supported Games.
http://www.r4ds.com/product-2-en.htm

By "dbgtdob"

thx for the great info. just a few ques, is there anyway to change the R4's language? mine is in mandarin and i cant read it. is there any good sites that u would recommend to download games for my NDS? thx

In order to change the language, you just have to download another firmware at the official site, and unpack it to your µSD card.

If it's in mandarin it means you bought the wrong one, there is also a US version of the R4. Which works pretty good.
The US version is Black. chinese version white.

Is it possible to play .mp4 files loaded in my TF/R4 for my NDSL?

Nope, you would have to convert it to .dpg first. It is easy and straightforward, you just need a program called batchDPG.

If it's in mandarin it means you bought the wrong one, there is also a US version of the R4. Which works pretty good.
The US version is Black. chinese version white.
The color of the R4 has more likely to do with the color versions of the DS. Speaking of which, I have a black R4 on a white DSL (><)

Did anyone manage to make Worms warfare 2 work on the R4?
Every version I tried had a problem with the Save file at booting :/

The color of the R4 has more likely to do with the color versions of the DS. Speaking of which, I have a black R4 on a white DSL (><)

Did anyone manage to make Worms warfare 2 work on the R4?
Every version I tried had a problem with the Save file at booting :/

use dslazy to patch worms and some of the new games

Thank you for the tip! I got it working, with some tweaking. I'll explain the method, since it could help if anyone is trying to get working a game this way.

1) Download DSlazy (it is attached).
2) With DSLazy, choose the ROM and click on "nds unpack"
3) In the archive I have attached to this message, you will find a file named arm7.bin.
You need to go to the dslazy\NDS_UNPACK folder and replace the arm7.bin with the one in the attachment.
4) Click on "nds packer", and it will generate you a working rom :)

Note: The arm7.bin I found on some sites didn't work with this game (frozen at boot with a blank screen). I extracted the one I attached from glory days 2, and it worked ;)

Cheers

Also known as the 'ARM7' patch. Not needed soon. A new firmware for the R4DS, 1.12 is expected to be out at the end of this week. Goto gbatemp.com for details.

The chinese R4 is no different from the english one. You can even use English firmware on it, if you so wish. Its not *that* hard to figure out what the chinese things mean.

hehe, maybe they'll fix the issue, but it's more gratifying to do it yourself, and they have always been somewhat late those releasing new kernels - I am bad at waiting ;)
Btw, it is gbatemp.net, the .com domain is a link farm

Thanks for the great post and all your efforts :)