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DS development > Some statistics for you

#142336 - Jesse - Mon Oct 08, 2007 12:38 pm

Since the last update of my homebrew Colors! I've been saving some hardware info when people connect to the server to help me work out compability issues. I've currently recorded ~108 unique DS and I wanted to share the numbers.

Code:
Flashcard ID
R4TF - 64
GMTF - 11
SCSD - 7
CEVO - 5
NRIO - 4
M3SD - 4
SCLT - 4
SCDS - 3
g6fl - 2
EZ5S - 1
NJSD - 1
RPGB - 1
SCCF - 1

Console
NDS Lite - 87
NDS      - 18

Language
English  - 74
French   - 14
German   - 9
Spanish  - 5
Japanese - 3
Italian  - 3

Of course, this can't with any certainty be generalized to the homebrew users out there, since there can be other factors playing in (Colors! not working on some card, Colors! being non-proportionally popular/unpopular in some region).

Let me know if this type of info is interesting enough to make a habit of.
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#142339 - Mrshlee - Mon Oct 08, 2007 3:17 pm

Whos in the mood to debate the ethics of spyware in homebrew :)

Thats actually interesting.. Are people are upgrading to DS Lites or more people are simply interested in homebrew? Seems those DS Lite directed updates to dswifi were important..
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#142340 - DragonMinded - Mon Oct 08, 2007 3:31 pm

Your card statistics vaguely resemble mine, but the resounding idea is that R4 is by far the most popular card.

http://www.dragonminded.com/?inc=dsorganize/Homebrew%20Database for actual numbers.
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#142342 - edwdig - Mon Oct 08, 2007 4:30 pm

DragonMinded wrote:
Your card statistics vaguely resemble mine, but the resounding idea is that R4 is by far the most popular card.

http://www.dragonminded.com/?inc=dsorganize/Homebrew%20Database for actual numbers.


One thing I'm curious about. I've got a DS Xtreme, which for most homebrew apps manages to autopatch the DLDI driver during load. However, when it does that, the game in use never realizes I'm using it DS-X. It seems to think I've got whatever driver was originally in the app.

Do other cards have any similar behavior? I wonder how stuff like that effects the stats.

#142343 - Jesse - Mon Oct 08, 2007 4:42 pm

edwdig wrote:
Do other cards have any similar behavior? I wonder how stuff like that effects the stats.
I don't think autopatching disrupts the statitistics in any way, since the program is still "patched" after it has booted.

By the way, the R4TF tag includes both R4 Revolution and M3 Simply since they use the same DLDI driver.

DragonMinded wrote:
Your card statistics vaguely resemble mine, but the resounding idea is that R4 is by far the most popular card.
Ah. I didn't know of that page. That answers my question of the need of such statistics for the community. :)
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#142344 - Jesse - Mon Oct 08, 2007 4:47 pm

Mrshlee wrote:
Whos in the mood to debate the ethics of spyware in homebrew :)
I know. :/ Let me know if anyone thinks this is pushing it.

Mrshlee wrote:
Thats actually interesting.. Are people are upgrading to DS Lites or more people are simply interested in homebrew? Seems those DS Lite directed updates to dswifi were important..
I got a bit surprised with these numbers as well. Remember that the numbers can be skewed a bit becuase of the application used. Colors! works better on the DS Lite because of better touch-screens.
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#142348 - edwdig - Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:02 pm

Jesse wrote:
edwdig wrote:
Do other cards have any similar behavior? I wonder how stuff like that effects the stats.
I don't think autopatching disrupts the statitistics in any way, since the program is still "patched" after it has booted.


From testing a little more, the DSX seems to autopatch if there's already a DLDI driver included in the ROM, however, if the app reports what device its using, it seems to report the info from the original DLDI driver.

I see two possibilities: a) the DSX patches the code, but doesn't overwrite the section of the DLDI driver containing the identification string. b) the DSX patches in RAM, but most homebrew does the id by reading the DLDI info off the storage device rather than from RAM.

The DSX autopatching seems to fail if the app was distributed without any DLDI driver in the .nds file, requiring the user to manually patch.

I have no idea if cards other than the DSX do things similarly. But there's definitely potential for stat errors.

#142349 - Jesse - Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:12 pm

edwdig wrote:
The DSX autopatching seems to fail if the app was distributed without any DLDI driver in the .nds file, requiring the user to manually patch.

Really? So that also means that the non-patched Colors! I use in releases doesn't work on DSX without manual patching? I hate stuff like that. Would it be better to have releases patched to something different then? By the way, what is the Flashcard ID for DSX?
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Last edited by Jesse on Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:20 pm; edited 1 time in total

#142365 - tepples - Mon Oct 08, 2007 7:57 pm

I think a lot of people would feel safer using a network-enabled program that states a privacy policy than one that does not.
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#142368 - keldon - Mon Oct 08, 2007 8:02 pm

Does it really matter? It's not even private data and your PC browsers do it all the time!

#142369 - Lazy1 - Mon Oct 08, 2007 8:04 pm

Yeah, I don't see the big deal either.
I am surprised at the small amount of Supercard CF users though.

#142384 - NeX - Mon Oct 08, 2007 9:07 pm

Why? It's massive and Compact Flash is far from the best flash media.
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#142385 - Lazy1 - Mon Oct 08, 2007 9:11 pm

I'd rather have a slightly larger CF card than a tiny, losable, easily breakable SD or micro SD card.
But that's just me.

#142386 - NeX - Mon Oct 08, 2007 9:15 pm

Well, that's fine I suppose. Not that I've ever broken either a SD or MicroSD card. One even got dropped from a bike at speed.
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#142389 - chrisis - Mon Oct 08, 2007 9:54 pm

Well... I'm still using a SC CF. Though I got a DS Lite in the meantime and it sticks out pretty far, I'm still using it. I got it at a time, when it was, next to the GBAMP, pretty much the only solution with FAT-Write support (and mainly I bought it for ScummVM at the time and I wanted to play DOTT with speech).
It's still a sturdy design imho, since I never had any real problems running different homebrew programs on it... also it has built in RAM, so it's still pretty much useful for DSlinux.

So, as long as it doesn't stop working, I don't see many reasons to abandon my beloved Supercard CF at the moment :)

#142416 - josath - Tue Oct 09, 2007 12:23 am

Lazy1 wrote:
Yeah, I don't see the big deal either.
I am surprised at the small amount of Supercard CF users though.


They discontinued it some time ago, afaik

#142439 - HyperHacker - Tue Oct 09, 2007 5:23 am

Mrshlee wrote:
Thats actually interesting.. Are people are upgrading to DS Lites or more people are simply interested in homebrew? Seems those DS Lite directed updates to dswifi were important..
I was quite happy with the original DS (the Lite is nicer, but I didn't see it being worth the money), but the damn thing wore out (stylus wouldn't stay in, buttons were unresponsive, scratches on the screens, etc) to the extent that I had to get a new one. Figured it may as well be a Lite, especially since no stores sell Phat styli anymore. >_>

The Lite's holding up much better BTW.

Of course, I haven't used Colors (not an artist <_<) so I don't count toward your statistics. :-p
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#142492 - edwdig - Tue Oct 09, 2007 4:57 pm

Jesse wrote:
edwdig wrote:
The DSX autopatching seems to fail if the app was distributed without any DLDI driver in the .nds file, requiring the user to manually patch.

Really? So that also means that the non-patched Colors! I use in releases doesn't work on DSX without manual patching? I hate stuff like that. Would it be better to have releases patched to something different then? By the way, what is the Flashcard ID for DSX?


I just tested colors and it worked without manual patching. Now I'm out of ideas on why the autopatching only sometimes works.

I have no idea on the Flashcard ID though - any easy way to check it?