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DS development > Maximum Size of DS card

#34333 - dagamer34 - Tue Jan 18, 2005 4:00 am

Guys, I am having a bit of trouble trying to explain to these people clearly the maximum size of the DS card. Some people seem to think that the minimum a DS card can hold is 128 MegaBYTES with games reaching well into 2 Gigabits.

I thought it was that the least a DS card could hold was 64 Megabits and at most, for now, 1 Gigabit. Anyone want to tell me otherwise?

By the way, I am going to use this info and post it in this thread, so if you want to post here, feel free.

http://forums.warppipe.com/viewtopic.php?t=14617&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
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Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(

#34339 - TJ - Tue Jan 18, 2005 5:17 am

The smallest card out now is 128MB. And since the games on these cards are usually much smaller than that, we can assume that 128MB is the minimum, since if they could have used a cheaper/smaller card, you can be sure they would have.

The largest card out right now is 256MB.

Nobody knows the maximum limit for the cards.

#34340 - dagamer34 - Tue Jan 18, 2005 6:41 am

TJ wrote:
The smallest card out now is 128MB. And since the games on these cards are usually much smaller than that, we can assume that 128MB is the minimum, since if they could have used a cheaper/smaller card, you can be sure they would have.

The largest card out right now is 256MB.

Nobody knows the maximum limit for the cards.


Are you sure it's 128 Megabytes? Because that would be quite a bit of space compared to the N64 era...
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Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(

#34341 - slurrey - Tue Jan 18, 2005 6:59 am

Well I'm guessing with the advancements in chip storage lately it's cheaper to put more data in there than in the N64 days :P
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#34343 - TJ - Tue Jan 18, 2005 8:08 am

Yes, they are 128MB.

Here is a scan of the Metroid demo PCB:

[img]http://www.dslinux.org/forums/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=17[/img]

You can see the model number MX23L12808, which you can lookup on the Macronix site:

http://www.mxic.com.tw/QuickPlace/hq/PageLibrary48256D9D002BA613.nsf/h_Index/4F52F27D6B3FE64248256ECB002F27D2/?OpenDocument

Incidentally, the search isn't needed, since the capacity is actually in the model number MX23L12808.

#34377 - wombatman - Tue Jan 18, 2005 6:38 pm

http://www.mxic.com.tw/QuickPlace/hq/PageLibrary48256D9D002BA613.nsf/h_6057FA6682A90C3948256DCE0052D2D3/893711AFCF05076F48256DCE001F1331/$File/MX23L12813-1.4.pdf

it states it is 128 M bits. Future posts should remember Mb = megabits and MB = megabytes.

Nintendo did mention that the current max is 128 MB but that could theoretically be improved.

#34381 - mtg101 - Tue Jan 18, 2005 7:50 pm

wombatman wrote:

it states it is 128 M bits. Future posts should remember Mb = megabits and MB = megabytes.


And for pedants like myself, let's not forget that "mega" means one million. Traditionally computer terminology has abused the small difference between 1000 and 1024, using "kilo" to mean 1024; as in 1KB "==" 1024 bytes.

Thankfully in 1998 the pedants had had enough and approved some new terminology: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html. So we now have Kibibytes (KiB, 1024 bytes) and Mebibytes (MiB, 1024 KiB).

So now you know why your 20GB hard drive has only 18.6GiB of storage on it :)
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#34391 - Lynx - Tue Jan 18, 2005 11:08 pm

Quote:
So now you know why your 20GB hard drive has only 18.6GiB of storage on it :)


Actually, there could be multiple reasons for the difference. One being formatting. Your system has to keep track of the data on the drive, so even if you actually had a 20GB (20 x 1024MB) HD, after formatting it, there would be less usable space on the drive.

Second being the advertising department. Leave out the fact that is "sounds" better for the advertising department if they label a HD 20GB instead of the actual 19.53GB that it actually may be. Keep in mind that most advertising departments are not computer "savy" to begin with. They probably don't even realize that 1 MB or GB is 1024, not 1000.

#34403 - TJ - Wed Jan 19, 2005 12:47 am

wombatman wrote:
http://www.mxic.com.tw/QuickPlace/hq/PageLibrary48256D9D002BA613.nsf/h_6057FA6682A90C3948256DCE0052D2D3/893711AFCF05076F48256DCE001F1331/$File/MX23L12813-1.4.pdf

it states it is 128 M bits. Future posts should remember Mb = megabits and MB = megabytes.

Nintendo did mention that the current max is 128 MB but that could theoretically be improved.


That is not the same Mask ROM. The ROMs in the DS cards are specifically manufactured for Nintendo, and all attempts to get their spec sheets from Macronix have failed, since they are not able to reveal their specific design due to an agreement with Nintendo.

#34408 - ras - Wed Jan 19, 2005 2:56 am

Most DS games out today use the 128MegaByte cards, altough I've heard that Asphalt uses a 256MegaByte card(anyone can confirm?).

I think I saw in some interview that Nintendo say that they can make 1024MegaByte cards if they want...

#34415 - netdroid9 - Wed Jan 19, 2005 4:00 am

You can make a 7 million GiB cart with a 7 million GiB rom and a few chips to extend the max size.

#34431 - rapso - Wed Jan 19, 2005 11:03 am

netdroid9 wrote:
You can make a 7 million GiB cart with a 7 million GiB rom and a few chips to extend the max size.

yes, so the questions shouldn't be how big the max romsize could be, but how big is the adressspace of the cardrige-interface of the NDS.

more than 4GB

greets
rapso