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DS Flash Equipment > GBA cart power draw?

#71652 - tepples - Mon Feb 13, 2006 9:51 pm

In this post, tetsujin wrote:
Still, it's nice with the larger DS that I can put in a GBA cart and forget it's there. It allows the cartridge to act as a port cover (though I notice the lite has its own port cover, right?)

Although people on That Other Site have been recommending to yank the GBA cart while the DS is running in order to extend battery life per charge. They seem to think that the GBA cart draws current when the DS is turned on even when the DS game isn't actively accessing it.
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Last edited by tepples on Tue Feb 14, 2006 6:32 am; edited 1 time in total

#71744 - chishm - Tue Feb 14, 2006 5:48 am

Well it appears that the GBA cart does recieve power even when not being accessed. Otherwise, things like the M3 and SC would go back to their uninitialised state if left for any period of time.
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#71750 - tepples - Tue Feb 14, 2006 6:30 am

Now the question is exactly how much current do they draw when idle. There's a difference between a 32 KB SRAM drawing a trickle charge from a watch battery and a 32 MB DRAM gulping down electricity like Yoshi gulps down enemies. I'd expect more complicated carts (WarioWare Twisted, M3, SC, etc.) to draw more than a simple official Game Pak even when neither the ROM nor the RAM is chip selected. Has anybody used an ammeter in series with the DS battery to determine how much power various pieces of SLOT-2 hardware draw?
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#86273 - ampz - Tue Jun 06, 2006 1:18 am

I measured the total power consumption of the GBA a few years ago. The difference when powering up the GBA with our without a game cart is very small.
Some flash carts may draw a little more.