Sep 10
Reading e-books on your Nintendo DS lite
This weekend I finally got around to getting my DS lite to read e-books. There are a few things you need in order to do this. First, you need something like a Max Media Dock or Datel’s Games and Music cartridge. Both are under $30. There are other cartridges such as a Supercard SD, Gameboy Advance Movie Player, R4 Multimedia card, etc. You will also need either an SD, Micro SD, or Compact Flash card depending on what kind of dock or cartridge you buy. Finally, you will need the e-book reader software from one of the homebrew sites. I’ll list all links at the end of this post. The process was rather easy once I found an how to guide on Pocket Gamer. This guide shows how to install DS Reader, but this guide will work for any NDS software. I found three readers available for the DS: Read More, DS Libris, and DS Reader.
So far DS reader is the most stable one I tried. There was no screen freezing and it is easy to navigate. DS reader recognizes txt files only and uses True Type Fonts. It comes with two included, but you can add your own. You can also choose to have either a white or black background, standard style or anti-aliased. Another thing I like about this software is that you can adjust your font size. Screen view settings include top, bottom, and both. Another choice is whether or not you want smart paragraphs. I would pick yes to avoid lines with only one word on it.
I also tried Read More and DS Libris. Both readers are portrait mode so you would hold the DS lite like a book and it displays two pages. I was impressed by these two programs since I felt like I had a regular book opened. The problem is that they didn’t work that well for me. First, Read More opens to an introduction of the program, but that’s as far as I got. Whenever I tried to get to the menu, the program would freeze. I searched some forums and there were others who shared my experience, but so far no answers. So I can not tell you if this application is customizable. Now for DS Libris. This is a new home brew and the author states that it may have many bugs. The program only lists the first eight files and only recognizes files in xht (XHTML) format. I tried to format some text using Word, but no luck. I may try it using Open Office. The program is also prone to fail on start up. It worked great for awhile and then it started to give error messages. From what I could tell there is no way to change any of the settings. Another problem worth mentioning is that I couldn’t find a way to exit out of any of the three reader programs. All I could do was turn off the DS.
Overall it was a nice experience reading on the DS, which has beautiful bright screens . I wouldn’t use it as my primary reader, but on trips it could be a nice diversion from gaming.
Links
Newbie Guide for DS lite
GBA Movie Player
Mini site for Datel’s Games and Music
Drivers to patch NDS files to work on Cartridge
DS Scene: A DS Homebrew site for downloads and user forum
Deal Extreme: E-store with cartridges, cases, etc
For Comic e-books: The author of the site is closing it soon
Golden Age Comics: Site for downloading copyright free golden age comics.
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