Passme, an add-on for the Nintendo DS handheld lets you play homebrew games and ROMs from the Internet; this functionality has been around for the DS’s main competitor, the Sony PSP, for some time now (though Sony keeps taking ill-starred countermeasures to keep users from installing their own software) and it’s nice to see the DS catching up. The “mod chip” only costs about $20, too.
PassMe is a device designed by Natrium42 based off of the first DS passthrough made by DarkFader using an FPGA dev kit. It redirects the DS to a GBA Flash cart, so you can run your own program (roms) on the Nintendo DS. For PassMe to work it requires the use of a commercial NDS cart (for authentication) and a GBA Flash cart to hold your DS programs.
PassMe gives you the ability to test your programs on the DS hardware, not just in an emulator and allows you to download demo’s from the internet and play them on your DS. Initially.
PassMe DID NOT work with Commercial ROM dumps, but only until Golden Sun Team (GST) released specially patched NDS roms that DO work with Pass Me and NeoFlash Magic Key (passme clone). Some sites that sell PassMe still say that commercial nds roms will not work with it just to get NINTENDO and theESA off their back.
(via Gizmodo)