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OffTopic > DS cart mods

#98737 - dshacker - Thu Aug 17, 2006 5:20 am

Well seeing the GBA cart modification that the led goes on when the power is on, well anyways, what about modifing any game cart for nds to support a led type thing when the ds is powered on when the carts inside of the ds. Now I don't know if there's a vcc on the nds cart, but I do know that there's the GND on it. So just solder to wires to the led, then solder the correct wires to the correct pins on the ds cart.
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Also, I'm currently building a usb part for my Metroid Prime hunters cart, the only last problem is that I need to know where a white wire from the usb cord goes to onto the NDS cart. If you know, please tell me as soon as possible.

#98766 - Dan2552 - Thu Aug 17, 2006 1:06 pm

not much space in DS cards...

#98772 - darkfader - Thu Aug 17, 2006 2:20 pm

What's the use? The DS already has a power LED. And it can even blink.

#98787 - HtheB - Thu Aug 17, 2006 4:36 pm

darkfader wrote:
What's the use? The DS already has a power LED. And it can even blink.
no, he will light up the ds CARD! :)

so it will be give light at the TOP of your DS :)

#98808 - dshacker - Thu Aug 17, 2006 6:59 pm

yes, that's what I mean, and my other project is to add usb support to a DS cart, in order for me to do this, I need to find where the white wire will go on the ds cart, I allready know where the black, red, and green wires go since I looked at the DS cart mod with the uart/spi bridge thing.

#98811 - tepples - Thu Aug 17, 2006 7:21 pm

As a USB host (to connect to a peripheral), or as a client (to connect to a PC)? Either way, you're probably going to have to put a USB controller chip on the DS card.
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#98818 - spinal_cord - Thu Aug 17, 2006 8:02 pm

can the controlling not be doen with software?
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#98833 - tepples - Thu Aug 17, 2006 9:25 pm

One of the things that a USB controller needs to do is convert between USB and DS data rates.
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#98841 - dshacker - Thu Aug 17, 2006 10:07 pm

tepples wrote:
As a USB host (to connect to a peripheral), or as a client (to connect to a PC)? Either way, you're probably going to have to put a USB controller chip on the DS card.
Yes well, I do have a Pololu usb adapter. I would just need to solder the the wires to the correct pins between the DS cart and the usb adapter, then connect the usb to my computer.

#98863 - zzo38computer - Fri Aug 18, 2006 2:33 am

HtheB wrote:
darkfader wrote:
What's the use? The DS already has a power LED. And it can even blink.
no, he will light up the ds CARD! :)

so it will be give light at the TOP of your DS :)


How can you see the light when the lid is open?
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#98904 - spinal_cord - Fri Aug 18, 2006 12:10 pm

Good point indeed, When I did my GBA card mode, I was using a semi-transparent GBA flash cart, it gave off a loverly blue glow from the bottom of the GBA-SP or NDS, but had little effect on the origional GBA because you couldn't see it.

I can't think of any good it would do to put an LED inside a DS cart, desides there probably being no space for one, it wouldn't show through the thigk grey plastic of the card, and if it did, you wouldn't see it for the top screen.

However, if this gets made, please post some photos of it. :)
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#98947 - Lynx - Fri Aug 18, 2006 5:23 pm

You'll need to add an external power supply if you want to make the DS a USB host so you can plug devices into it. The polulu will only make it a device, as it pulls power from the USB host.
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#98968 - spinal_cord - Fri Aug 18, 2006 8:06 pm

So does the DS not give enough power through the cart slot? would that be the main problem? (im not building anything myself, just curious).
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#98969 - tepples - Fri Aug 18, 2006 8:08 pm

In a broad sense, that is the part. The DS slot is designed for reading from a DS Game Card, which contains a ROM, an EEPROM, and a crypto circuit. The GBA slot is intended to power peripherals. USB needs 5.0 V, but the slots provide only 3.3 V, and only the GBA slot is large enough to fit the required transformer.
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#98974 - HtheB - Fri Aug 18, 2006 9:01 pm

natrium42 allready made a usb connector for the DS....

#98981 - dshacker - Fri Aug 18, 2006 9:54 pm

Lynx wrote:
You'll need to add an external power supply if you want to make the DS a USB host so you can plug devices into it. The polulu will only make it a device, as it pulls power from the USB host.


The only other problem is that I would need to find out where the green and white wires would go to on the Pololu device, so basicly, here's a picture that I drew of what the cart and the pololu device should be along with my battery pack.

Pic 1 - Here

Pic 2 -
Here

#98997 - Lynx - Fri Aug 18, 2006 11:51 pm

HtheB: that is a USB Device.

dshacker: Are you wanting to make a USB Device or USB host adapter for the DS? If you have the polulu module that Natrium42 used (same one I have, was something like $20) it is a device adapter. You only need to hook up 3 wires.. RX, TX, and GND.. that's it.
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#99016 - dshacker - Sat Aug 19, 2006 2:13 am

WEll I don't know yet, you see I want to make something like the DS-x cart so I could store homebrew on the cart by clearing out the data on the cart and if the driver comes out for the DS-X cart, then I could reprogram the device to store homebrew on it.

#99043 - Flood_of_SYNs - Sat Aug 19, 2006 6:06 am

Hope this helps.

Diagram copied from ..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#USB_signaling

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