Glossary

Glossary

A quick reference for the terms you will meet throughout this wiki.

Hardware

• Slot-1 — the top cartridge slot that holds DS games and flashcards.
• Slot-2 — the larger bottom slot on the DS and DS Lite that accepts Game Boy Advance cartridges and expansion packs.
• Flashcard — a slot-1 cartridge with a microSD reader inside, used to load files.
• NoPass — circuitry that lets a flashcard boot directly without a separate "passthrough" cartridge. Built into all modern cards.

Software

• Kernel — the menu firmware a flashcard loads from its microSD; it is the card's operating system.
• Homebrew — free, community-written software for the DS.
• .nds — the file format for a DS ROM, whether a homebrew app or a game backup.
• Emulator — software that imitates another console so its games run on the DS.

Cards and quality

• Clone — an unofficial copy of a popular card design; quality varies wildly.
• DSTwo — the SuperCard DSTwo, a premium card with its own onboard CPU for heavier emulation.

reference Keep this page handy as you read the model and flashcard sections.