gbadev.org forum archive

THIS will push NDS dev, for sure: http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/conference2008fall/mov/ds.html?n10 :^D
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July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

hum, it looks like a DS, they've put DS on the video, but damn it seems our DS took steroids...

I bet the DSi won't accept most current homebrew cards. I'm still excited about it though. It would be awesome if they finally added WPA support to the wifi.
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Massif - It means mountain.

The SD slot is interesting.
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Nintendo DS homebrew on Wikipedia

I know how a new DS model could block all homebrew cards. I've explained it here nearly a year ago and recently on Slashdot.

Even non-users of homebrew might be disappointed. DSi appears not to be compatible with the following products that carry the Official Nintendo Seal:

GBA Game Paks
More than 33 percent completion in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl
Nintendo DS Browser powered by Opera
Face Training
Arkanoid
Guitar Hero

As for WPA support, that would probably require the chipset to have a virtual Wi-Fi chip connected to a real Wi-Fi chip through a virtual bridge, so that existing Game Cards that support only open and WEP networks can still work. I don't see that as worth the cost per unit, especially given that 26-digit WEP + MAC filtering is good enough to redirect virtually all wardrivers to your neighbor's open network.

But did Nintendo buy the DSi trademark from Destination Software Inc. (now called Zoo Games), publisher of budget games for GBA and DS?

And is the search on again for a SaveMe exploit that puts an SD loader into a game's 2 Mbit flash, much like Twilight Hack?
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-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

I hope you're wrong about the RSA part, tepples. But if I was Nintendo I'd be touching my nose right now :P

the RSA part is more than probable... will prolly go for a pandora...

Will the new console have more system RAM? I'm eagerly anticipating some internal system specs.

tepples wrote:

[list][*]More than 33 percent completion in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl

You could trade with someone who has a DS/lite.

tepples wrote:

[list][*]Nintendo DS Browser powered by Opera

It looks like there is a built in browser.

tepples wrote:

[list][*]Face Training

Who actually plays this?
I hear a producer a Nintendo appologied on his private mixi account after his company released this game.

-Brendan

From Software-side, the DSi is like a portable Wii Console, because DSi will include:

an integrated Internet Browser
a "Channel" System like Wii
a Music Player (probably for MP3 or AAC)
a Download Center/Shop for DS(i) Ware (like WiiWare), the Products are payed with Nintendo Points (same as Wii Points)
Face-morphing Software included (makes use of the Camera mentioned below)

Hardware (changes since DS Lite):

GBA Slot (Slot-2) removed, so DS Browser, Guitar Hero on Tour and DS-GBA-Linked Games are not compatible (DS Games with Link are supported, but compatible GBA Games can't be linked to the DS Games, like Pokemon Ranger+Pokemon Firered e.q.)
Front- and back-side Camera included (Front-Camera built into the hinge, Back-Camera built into the lower part on the back-side of the DSi)
WPA Encryption probably supported
Displays are a bit bigger than on DS Phat and DS Lite, but with same resolutions (2x 256x192)
SD Card Slot included for storing downloaded DS(i)Ware and your Music Files
Hardware Core (CPU(s), Audio, RAM e.q.): no informations

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Equipment:
Nintendo DS, GBAMP v2, SuperCard SD, SuperKey, Acekard 2i

What's the point of TWO cameras?

Also, the fact that they are going to be marketing downloadable games means the WiFi probably (read that, hopefully) doesn't have the 2Mb limit.
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NDS Homebrew Roms & Reviews

Lynx wrote:

What's the point of TWO cameras?

Also, the fact that they are going to be marketing downloadable games means the WiFi probably (read that, hopefully) doesn't have the 2Mb limit.

With the one inside the hinge, you can make photos of yourself, but this one have 0.3 MPixels, while the one on the backside is used to make photos of other people and things with ~3.0 MPixels.

I'm sure, that the WiFi Hardware of the DSi doesn't have the 2 MBit Limit. It's possible that it will throttle down automatically to 2MBit and switching to 802.11b Mode when playing "old" NDS Games over WiFi.
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Equipment:
Nintendo DS, GBAMP v2, SuperCard SD, SuperKey, Acekard 2i

jackman wrote:

With the one inside the hinge, you can make photos of yourself, but this one have 0.3 MPixels, while the one on the backside is used to make photos of other people and things with ~3.0 MPixels.

The 3.0MP figure is bothering me. It's a bit high for me to believe, but 0.3MP is completely worthless. At the same time, the sources I'm more apt to believe are reporting two 0.3MP cameras while others are reporting that the exterior one might be 3.0MP. If anyone has an official quote on the matter, I'd love to see it.
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- nanou

Lynx wrote:

What's the point of TWO cameras?

Well, it's got two screens, so why not two cameras?

...word is bondage...

MP does not mean image pixel resolution, lol!

@keldon

So far no one is arguing differently. The camera quality is important because of that. I'm not sure when additional resolution in the camera no longer makes a notable difference in the final image quality, but I have found that 3MP is where digital cameras begin to take pretty pictures at useful resolutions. (On that note, it's a shame that display hasn't been bumped up to 18bpp while they were at it, but that'd be too much hassle I suppose.)
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- nanou

I'm also confused about the camera - I believe the hinge camera takes VGA quality images. But the front camera I've seen listed as 0.3 MP on some sites & 3.0 MP on others. Quite a big difference. So which is it?!

According to Nintendo's own press release, the camera only has a resolution of 300,000 pixels:
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/conference2008fall/presen/e/02.html

That's 0.3MP. Although I think that's an estimate because it's also been reported that it takes pictures in 640x480 format. Multiply it out and you get 307,200 pixels. Mind you, this is still higher than the screens are capable of. So I think that the external camera is only 0.3MP and the internal one is the same or less. Besides, considering that the increase in price is only about $50 and there are 2 cameras on it, I doubt they would include a 3.0MP camera. It's not meant for high-quality images.

You got to take what some of those tech blogs say with a grain of salt. I saw some that had the screen sizes wrong. They went from 3" to 3.25", while some places were reporting 3.5" (typo, maybe?).
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nanou wrote:

@keldon

So far no one is arguing differently. The camera quality is important because of that. I'm not sure when additional resolution in the camera no longer makes a notable difference in the final image quality, but I have found that 3MP is where digital cameras begin to take pretty pictures at useful resolutions. (On that note, it's a shame that display hasn't been bumped up to 18bpp while they were at it, but that'd be too much hassle I suppose.)

The display is already at 18bpp, it is just difficult to access the extra 3 bits, but doable...

JanoSicek wrote:

The display is already at 18bpp, it is just difficult to access the extra 3 bits, but doable...

Yes, I was aware of that. Unfortunately the platform doesn't seem to be ready to accommodate higher modes. But it hardly matters since the cameras are almost certainly worthless (to me)--as a result color quality is not a big deal (except that it makes hue rotation look fugly.)
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- nanou

Both screens are indeed both 0.3 megapixels:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DSi

Not impressed with this 'upgrade' to be honest - it doesn't do anything that my current DSL won't handle and, worst of all, the battery life is inferior on the DSi. AND it doesn't look as nice due to the lack of the 'shiny' transparent cover.

Waste of effort Nintendo. D-

Where did you see the information on the battery life? I can't seem to find it.

I find it funny that the DSi is listed as yet another "third pillar" when the DS itself was supposedly one and not meant to replace the Game Boy. Then it did replace it (as far as I can tell). So will this then eventually replace the DS Lite and then another Game Boy get introduced down the line or will a DS successor take over?
_________________
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CycloDS Evolution (firmware 1.55 BETA 3) and EZFlash 3-in-1
Kingston SD-C02G JAPAN 2GB MicroSD
MoonShell 1.71, DSOrganize 3.1129, QuakeDS Pre3, ScummVM DS 0.11.1, Pocket Physics 0.6, OpenTyrian DS 0.3

MechaBouncer wrote:

Where did you see the information on the battery life? I can't seem to find it.

All taken from Nintendo's released figures (scroll down a bit for the battery life):

http://kotaku.com/5057883/lets-compare-the-ds-lite-and-the-dsi

Shame about the battery life going down. Coud Nintendo not just put a more powerful battery in the DSi so it's last just as long as a DSLite?

Liter wrote:

Both screens are indeed both 0.3 megapixels:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DSi

I'm not quite sold on that. When I first read the article, it read: "and a camera of indeterminate resolution on the outside of the shell", but what's there now doesn't contradict that, it just omits the "of indeterminate resolution" bit. Of course, no one will be surprised to find that they're both 0.3MP.

Quote:

Not impressed with this 'upgrade' to be honest - it doesn't do anything that my current DSL won't handle and, worst of all, the battery life is inferior on the DSi.

It's a bit early to judge. There is almost certainly something in the way of more processing power, and better WiFi (which is a bit weak on the current model tbh) and probably some RAM. Until we know exactly what these are it is really hard to compare since they could make no difference or all the difference in terms of capability. And (see the other thread) the battery life might not be as bad as it looks. Even if it is, assuming they're using the same battery, 0xtob points out that those extra hours are being put to some kind of use.
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- nanou

MechaBouncer wrote:

Where did you see the information on the battery life? I can't seem to find it.

I find it funny that the DSi is listed as yet another "third pillar" when the DS itself was supposedly one and not meant to replace the Game Boy. Then it did replace it (as far as I can tell). So will this then eventually replace the DS Lite and then another Game Boy get introduced down the line or will a DS successor take over?

The battery life of the DSi will be about -4 hours of the DSLite battery.

And the DSi will not be the successor of the DS, the real successor could be announced not before 2010. The DSi will be (at the moment) the second (not third, the GBA is no more supported by Nintendo) handheld system side-by-side with the DS(Lite).
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Equipment:
Nintendo DS, GBAMP v2, SuperCard SD, SuperKey, Acekard 2i

It'll be funny if we find out there is only one camera recording chip with two lenses.. Making it even more useless.

I honestly don't get it. I can see them trying to market for a "video phone" using the internal camera.. and I see theming going "well, everyone is going to want to be able to take pictures of stuff, if it has a camera" but.. it just seems like it would have been a better idea to put the camera at the top and allow it to twist for front/back pictures.

But, pretty much all cell phones have cameras in them already, and a lot of people already carry them around. We all know these cameras suck, so I can't imagine one on the DS would be any better... I don't think it's worth $10 more for the cameras. Now, if the WiFi is better.. that and the built in browser might be worth the $50 price increase
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NDS Homebrew Roms & Reviews

Ewww. The DSi is also region locked for DSi software:
http://www.dsfanboy.com/2008/10/06/nintendo-dsi-is-region-locked/

This does not bode well. Not one bit.
_________________
Cobalt/Black NDSL
CycloDS Evolution (firmware 1.55 BETA 3) and EZFlash 3-in-1
Kingston SD-C02G JAPAN 2GB MicroSD
MoonShell 1.71, DSOrganize 3.1129, QuakeDS Pre3, ScummVM DS 0.11.1, Pocket Physics 0.6, OpenTyrian DS 0.3

More RAM has been confirmed by Opera CEO:
http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/nintendos-dsi-will-have-more-ram-than-ds/?biz=1
CPU and WiFi upgrades also seem likely IMO, if they want it to be used for web browsing and image editing. Fairly interesting overall, and if it supports WPA I'll probably have to get it. The only drawback for me is if they do block existing homebrew carts, but someone will find a way around that.

Extra RAM was expected as soon as they said a web browser was built-in but it's good to have confirmation. I think it will have the same speed CPUs as the Lite. I'm not sure about WPA, if they added it, they should have mentioned it by now.

I'm surprised there's no hardware brightness control. It's annoying only being able to change it through software.
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GTAMP.com/DS

Well, they didn't mention the RAM, probably because most of the casual crowd wouldn't know what to make of whatever amount of RAM it has. They'd probably see something like 16MB RAM and think "wow, my computer has like 50 times as much RAM or something, this thing sucks" not realizing that even 16MB (just a random number) would be huge compared to 4MB in the DS, and for comparison just 2MB in the PSone. So I think WPA is still a possibility, since that's also similar to RAM in relative arcaneness for the casual crowd.

Apparently the Japanese website Impress Watch is saying it will support WPA/WPA2:
http://exophase.com/ds/nintendo-dsi-has-wpawpa2-support-8039.htm
http://av.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20081002/nintendo.htm

And is it just me, or does that look like yet ANOTHER power connector? It looks a bit narrow when I try comparing the size to my DS Lite. Dammit Nintendo, just make it mini USB already! Here's to hoping those larger L and R buttons are more durable.
_________________
Cobalt/Black NDSL
CycloDS Evolution (firmware 1.55 BETA 3) and EZFlash 3-in-1
Kingston SD-C02G JAPAN 2GB MicroSD
MoonShell 1.71, DSOrganize 3.1129, QuakeDS Pre3, ScummVM DS 0.11.1, Pocket Physics 0.6, OpenTyrian DS 0.3

MechaBouncer wrote:

Apparently the Japanese website Impress Watch is saying it will support WPA/WPA2

On Slashdot, several users have conjectured that WPA works in DSi mode but only WEP works in DS mode. I can't read Japanese to confirm or refute.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

That could be possible. Running it through Google's Japanese translator doesn't make it much clearer:

Quote:

Built-in wireless LAN will continue. Improved security features, WEP only, WPA/WPA2 support. Buffalo's "AOSS" and NEC Access "Wireless Easy Start" features, such as the setting. "DS software used for the communication speed is the same as a conventional, DSi in software for high-speed communications more available" (President Satoru Iwata).

_________________
Cobalt/Black NDSL
CycloDS Evolution (firmware 1.55 BETA 3) and EZFlash 3-in-1
Kingston SD-C02G JAPAN 2GB MicroSD
MoonShell 1.71, DSOrganize 3.1129, QuakeDS Pre3, ScummVM DS 0.11.1, Pocket Physics 0.6, OpenTyrian DS 0.3

A quick translation of what appears to be the relevant paragraph:

Quote:

無線LANも引き続き内蔵。

'Wireless LAN continues to be built in.

Quote:

セキュリティ機能が向上し、WEPだけでなく、WPA/WPA2もサポート。

Security features improved- not only is WEP supported, but WPA/WPA2 are as well.

Quote:

バッファローの「AOSS」やNECアクセステクニカの「らくらく無線スタート」などの設定機能も備えている。

Buffalo's "AOSS" and NEC's "Easy Wireless Start" configuration features are provided for.

Quote:

「DS用ソフトを使った際の通信速度は従来と同じだが、DSi用のソフトではさらに高速な通信が利用できる」

If DS software is used, the communication speed will be the same as it has always been, however DSi software can take advantage of a higher communication speed.'

Quote:

(岩田聡社長)という。

Says President Iwata Satoru.

sgeos wrote:

Quote:

セキュリティ機能が向上し、WEPだけでなく、WPA/WPA2もサポート。

Security features improved- not only is WEP supported, but WPA/WPA2 are as well.

Ah ha! The "not" seems to have been lost in the automatic translation. Although it still doesn't specifically say whether WPA/WPA2 will work with regular DS games or not. From this translation, it seems to imply that it will work, but be limited to the old transfer rates of the DS and DS Lite.

You know I wonder if the software cares about the network settings at all? Maybe it just internally uses an API that just tests to see if Configuration 1, 2, or 3 connects and then selects the first that does. Then all references thereafter go through the API and it does the work.

The only place where it might have a snag is accessing the settings in an old game. The DS's firmware only stored the settings, but not the menu, right? If I remember correctly, the menu was stored on the games themselves. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) So I wonder what will happen if you access those settings on a DSi? Hopefully Nintendo had the forethought of a hardware revision that would change the WiFi chip and left a way for it be be updated.
_________________
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CycloDS Evolution (firmware 1.55 BETA 3) and EZFlash 3-in-1
Kingston SD-C02G JAPAN 2GB MicroSD
MoonShell 1.71, DSOrganize 3.1129, QuakeDS Pre3, ScummVM DS 0.11.1, Pocket Physics 0.6, OpenTyrian DS 0.3

MechaBouncer wrote:

sgeos wrote:

Quote:

セキュリティ機能が向上し、WEPだけでなく、WPA/WPA2もサポート。

Security features improved- not only is WEP supported, but WPA/WPA2 are as well.

Ah ha! The "not" seems to have been lost in the automatic translation.

だけ means "only" and でなく means "not". も means "also".

MechaBouncer wrote:

Although it still doesn't specifically say whether WPA/WPA2 will work with regular DS games or not. From this translation, it seems to imply that it will work, but be limited to the old transfer rates of the DS and DS Lite.

My impression was the opposite. Although nothing was explicitly stated, my impression was that DS games will only have access to the systems present in the DS/Lite and will not be able to take advantage of the new capabilities of the DSi. You brought up some interesting points, and it would be nice if all DS software had access to the new security features.

Thanks for the info. I've been thinking about it a little bit more and realized that maybe I was wrong. While the DS devkits have APIs that do handle the work, it's still written for the old DS hardware. I was thinking of it in terms of an OS at first, but that still has drivers and other things that handle the hardware interface. I don't think the DS itself really has that much room in the firmware to handle that kind of abstraction of hardware, so it would probably still come down to the original SDK written with the original hardware in mind.

I guess it all comes down to how wireless connections are established on the DS. This seems like it would be the same for both official and homebrew games in that sense. However, I don't know how it's done in the WiFi library for connecting to a wireless access point. Is it something where the stored settings in the firmware can just be parsed to the hardware and it establishes the connection on its own, or is it fairly more involved than that? Yeah, I'm probably over-simplifying it, but it seems like this would answer the question.
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CycloDS Evolution (firmware 1.55 BETA 3) and EZFlash 3-in-1
Kingston SD-C02G JAPAN 2GB MicroSD
MoonShell 1.71, DSOrganize 3.1129, QuakeDS Pre3, ScummVM DS 0.11.1, Pocket Physics 0.6, OpenTyrian DS 0.3

sgeos wrote:

My impression was the opposite. Although nothing was explicitly stated, my impression was that DS games will only have access to the systems present in the DS/Lite and will not be able to take advantage of the new capabilities of the DSi. You brought up some interesting points, and it would be nice if all DS software had access to the new security features.

That would require to either have two seperate wifi systems in the DS or a very customized one that can be put into hardware limitation with no software command resetting it.

It's much more likely that because of the init routine build into existing wifi enabled games that the explicit set the transfer rates to 1 or 2mbit/s. (as REd by sgstair) and thus only a higher speed aware software that sets the correct speed identifier would be able to take advantage of the new speed limit.
Don't think the original arm7 bin probes for higher available speeds when they couldn't have expected more then 2 mbit/s
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Trying to bring more detail into understanding the wireless hardware

They could ignore the existing arm7 binary and just load their own with support for new hardware. Official developers aren't allowed to change arm7 code, there might be a few games with unique arm7 code but they could easily be detected.
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GTAMP.com/DS

The speculation also goes that there will be no arm7. The official DS library could be written in such a way that the communication with the arm7 is via the FIFO transfer register only (say) and that the arm7 end could be swapped out for a different black box that behaved the same from the arm9's pov. That'd be one in the eye for homebrew.

The wifi implementation would be "send this magic cookie to the arm7 and wait for the response", providing the new-WAP enabled "arm7/black box" connected the same and returned the expected magic cookie via the FIFO, the change would be transparent.

This also highlight's the need for a new libnds (and wintermute's foresight) with the IPC thing phased out so that when/if this happens the change over to the DSi won't be so shocking.

Quirky wrote:

The speculation also goes that there will be no arm7. The official DS library could be written in such a way that the communication with the arm7 is via the FIFO transfer register only (say) and that the arm7 end could be swapped out for a different black box that behaved the same from the arm9's pov.

The "IOS" software that runs on the Wii's Hollywood chip has a similar function. But how many versions of this black box exist in known authentic Game Cards and DS Download Play demos?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

Quirky wrote:

This also highlight's the need for a new libnds (and wintermute's foresight) with the IPC thing phased out so that when/if this happens the change over to the DSi won't be so shocking.

That's a good point. I'm a bit baffled that a new version isn't available yet. It's been expected RSN for quite a while and I'm a bit worried that the time it takes to release will be doubled if it's not released before the DSi comes out.

But this is no reason to complain. The new version is slated to address some important issues and that's most important. People are working on the odd utility library in the meantime, so overall the development trend seems healthy, if a bit slow.
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- nanou

iofthestorm wrote:

Well, they didn't mention the RAM, probably because most of the casual crowd wouldn't know what to make of whatever amount of RAM it has. They'd probably see something like 16MB RAM and think "wow, my computer has like 50 times as much RAM or something, this thing sucks" not realizing that even 16MB (just a random number) would be huge compared to 4MB in the DS, and for comparison just 2MB in the PSone. So I think WPA is still a possibility, since that's also similar to RAM in relative arcaneness for the casual crowd.

http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Operating_Systems_are_Less_Important_Opera/551-93947-580.html

According to this guy (the CEO of opera) it has more ram, however he also says it uses the ram more efficiently.

anyone heard whether or not high capacity SD cards will be supported?

I hate to say it, but if I'm limited to 2 GB of external storage, it's likely to be a deal breaker in my book. I like to carry lots of music around with me.

someone mentioned in an earlier post that they hoped for more durable shoulder buttons. I second that, for sure. my left shoulder button only works 1 in every 3 times pushed...
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-01011101001010101010 (frank)

Tockit wrote:

anyone heard whether or not high capacity SD cards will be supported?

I hate to say it, but if I'm limited to 2 GB of external storage, it's likely to be a deal breaker in my book. I like to carry lots of music around with me.

I know where you're coming from. I haven't heard anything in this way. They've demoed it with rather low capacity cards, but that's not a very good indicator.

Quote:

someone mentioned in an earlier post that they hoped for more durable shoulder buttons. I second that, for sure. my left shoulder button only works 1 in every 3 times pushed...

I've been wondering about this too and have paid attention to the photos. They did visibly change the shoulders somewhat, so there's hope they did that to enhance durability. I'm hoping they made the hinge more durable, too. My DSL has had a few encounters with hard places and there's no tension keeping the lid in position anymore.
_________________
- nanou

Well looks pretty cool - so I will buy 2x DSi...
Well will be possible to run homebrew games/apps from that SD-Card slot???

Matej wrote:

Well looks pretty cool - so I will buy 2x DSi...
Well will be possible to run homebrew games/apps from that SD-Card slot???

No. Its the same as for the DS: Unsigned Software will not be compatible with the DSi. Also Nintendo is going to publish a "Whitelist" and a "Blacklist" with allowed and blocked Software. These lists are then stored in the DSis internal Flash ROM and updated during WFC sessions.
_________________
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jackman wrote:

These lists are then stored in the DSis internal Flash ROM and updated during WFC sessions.

Where did you get that information, or is it speculation? Wii doesn't do a system update before WFC. In fact, as far as I can tell, the whole existence of a whitelist on the DSi is speculation.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

I think there is conspiracy in Nintendo, some people are trying to block homebrew software and others want homebrew software to work. I think there are other conspiracies in Nintendo, but the conspiracies are unlikely to be the reason why they made such bad choices when designing things.
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zzo38computer wrote:

I think there is conspiracy in Nintendo, some people are trying to block homebrew software and others want homebrew software to work.

Then perhaps Nintendo could have done it like Sony did with Linux on the PS3: let the unwashed masses into half of the system. Or like Apple with the iPhone or Microsoft with the Xbox 360: sell modchips by subscription.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

Or they should to do file loading limitations.

I mean:
original game - more than 100MB
Homebrew - Less than 50MB

:((

Last edited by Matej on Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:40 pm; edited 1 time in total

BTW that cameras could be used as ultra cheap motion sensor.
I mean small algorithm for analysis of camera screen scrolling -> sprites move right,left,up,down :D
I have seen some mobile games using this trick :P...
Any ideas???

PS: I hope somebody will do opensource SD-card loader for freeware and opensource homebrew stuff.
I don?t care about original games.I want to play homebrew games plus make music with some music apps on DSi.And maybe make some game on it too...at least graphics and music for it.That will be only reason for to buy that console.

Matej wrote:

Or they should to do file loading limitations.

I mean:
original game - more than 100MB
Homebrew - Less than 50MB

That won't prevent piracy. A copy of a game published by Nintendo can be smaller than 1/40 of a MB.

Now that Nintendo has stepped up the cat-and-mouse against homebrewers (see today's IOS changes), I just might stick with a slim PC and a Pandora PDA instead of trying to run homebrew on a Wii and DSi.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

What changes with the update? Does it prevent the Homebrew Channel from working entirely? I read mention that it prevents it from being newly installed. I hadn't installed it yet, but I also haven't even hooked it up in months. I was probably going to install it soon, if it still works.
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CycloDS Evolution (firmware 1.55 BETA 3) and EZFlash 3-in-1
Kingston SD-C02G JAPAN 2GB MicroSD
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@tepples:
I will wait and see... I mean when will be better situation I will buy black DSi and white one too.

I just came across this. So apparently the storage is SDHC, and WPA is present. They also list, not too surprisingly, the "Face Sensing Engine." The engine itself supports feature tracking which I think is pretty cool, but no telling if that's supported by the DSi (it's best done in hardware.)
_________________
- nanou

No news about the onboard RAM? :|

jackman wrote:

No. Its the same as for the DS: Unsigned Software will not be compatible with the DSi. Also Nintendo is going to publish a "Whitelist" and a "Blacklist" with allowed and blocked Software. These lists are then stored in the DSis internal Flash ROM and updated during WFC sessions.

Do you KNOW this, or are you speculating?

I'm speculating the facts of the White- and Blacklists, but I would be surprised if Big-N is not going to make it harder for unsigned software to be run on the DSi.
_________________
Equipment:
Nintendo DS, GBAMP v2, SuperCard SD, SuperKey, Acekard 2i

kusma wrote:

jackman wrote:

No. Its the same as for the DS: Unsigned Software will not be compatible with the DSi. Also Nintendo is going to publish a "Whitelist" and a "Blacklist" with allowed and blocked Software. These lists are then stored in the DSis internal Flash ROM and updated during WFC sessions.

Do you KNOW this, or are you speculating?

jackman wrote:

I'm speculating the facts of the White- and Blacklists, but I would be surprised if Big-N is not going to make it harder for unsigned software to be run on the DSi.

Apparently flashcarts tend to boot, but can't launch anything. That sounds wrong to me, but that's supposedly the news from China. Taken at face value, I'd say they failed to launch any warez for sure, but it sounds like homebrew should work in principle. It also contradicts the whitelist/blacklist theory.

Maybe they just have a (selective) feature lockout for unsigned code? That could be a boon to homebrew if it still leaves the system more or less fully functional. One of my impossible DS-related wishes has already been granted (Phantasy Star Zero), so this doesn't seem so unlikely to me at the moment. (Imagine--no need for flashcarts at all, SDHC, extra storage and extra RAM built in.)
_________________
- nanou

Info from Hong Kong

G6R
SCDS One
M3R
iTouch
FCard
NCard
CycloDS
R4
EZ5
M3DSS
U2DS

The above flashcarts were tested, none work. Some (like R4) didn't even show up on the main screen. Others show up, but when you click the icon all you get is a message saying "An error has occurred. Please turn off the power and read the instruction manual." The DSi definitely needs more hacking before we can use homebrew on it.

BTW, the DSi is still region free.
_________________
Nintendo DS homebrew on Wikipedia

That would make more sense--I can't imagine these guys testing it out on roms and then not bothering with homebrew. But if the report simply means that the DSi just recognized that there was a card in the slot but wouldn't boot the card at all, that's a lot more consistent.

So much for my hopes.
_________________
- nanou

Showing the card on the menu but erroring out when trying to boot it sounds like a whitelist. The DS Download Play client does the same if the signature is wrong; it shows up in the menu, but freezes booting.
_________________
I'm a PSP hacker now, but I still <3 DS.

i wonder if its fake or not:
http://www.dsfanboy.com/2008/11/04/dsi-hacked-already/

My bet is on the animated GIF theory...
_________________
"My boot, your face..." - Attributed to OOPMan, Emperor of Eroticon VI

You can find my NDS homebrew projects here...

My bet is the hole is fixable in a firmware update. :/
_________________
- nanou

any news on homebrew???

Well, no one seems able to answer this question: Will new DS games only run on the DSi? Or rather, will DSi games only run on the DSi? If so, then I can see them going all crazy with a new RSA encryption method and the mentioned whitelist.

If not however, and DSi games are planned to be able to somehow detect the DSi and use its new features, or detect that they are on an older DS and disable their new DSi features, then I have doubts about a new signing method.

What also needs to be answered is what to do (from a developer perspective) about games that don't need to use the new DSi's features, or games that are almost completed that were not developed with the DSi in mind. If it is a whitelist indeed, it would need to be constantly updated with "new" old DS games, or it would need to have some way to verify them. So if there is no automatic updating, it is very likely that a whitelist is not being used. There's also the possibility that Nintendo is simply blacklisting the homebrew carts, although that seems like it would be easily undone, and considering that they seem to be responding to wii homebrew quite effectively, odds are something more complex is at stake.

How does signing on old games work? I know its an RSA encryption key, but is it just for the header, or is it for the game as well? How does current homebrew spoof this signing process in slot-1 cards to make the unsigned code run? Its entirely possible that Nintendo can simply detect the current method of spoofing that signing system, and that there is subsequently a more simple fix for hombrewers.

I'm just worried that my old DS is not going to be able to play the new games. If I need the new DSi for Mario and Luigi 3, for example, I might be tempted. If not, I'm planning on sticking with my current DS phat until a homebrew solution is found.

And of course with any new console, there are already fakers. There has been at least one report of someone running unsigned code on the thing, so no telling how many minics will show up...

Does anyone have reports of any homebrew carts that actually do work? (Only 10 were mentioned in that report.) Also, do the Action Replay and other unofficial carts also fail to load? (I know nintendo blocked the GC action replay with a Wii update.)

with worry,
-thegamefreak0134
_________________
What if the hokey-pokey really is what it's all about?

[url=http:/www.darknovagames.com/index.php?action=recruit&clanid=1]Support Zeta on DarkNova![/url]

thegamefreak0134 wrote:

There's also the possibility that Nintendo is simply blacklisting the homebrew carts, although that seems like it would be easily undone, and considering that they seem to be responding to wii homebrew quite effectively, odds are something more complex is at stake.

By "effectively" did you mean ineffectively?

Quote:

How does signing on old games work? I know its an RSA encryption key, but is it just for the header, or is it for the game as well?

RSA on old games applies only to DS Download Play. The only crypto on existing DS games is a symmetric cipher on the cart bus and the second pass of symmetric cipher on the "secure area". The going hypothesis nowadays, based on the reported behavior of homebrew cards in a DSi (game starts to load then dies with an error) as well as the Wii IOS version system, is that it's an ARM7 whitelist.

Quote:

How does current homebrew spoof this signing process in slot-1 cards to make the unsigned code run?

GBATEK describes what is known about SLOT-1 boot process on DS and DS Lite, used by NoPass cards and SLOT-1 media adapters.

Quote:

I'm just worried that my old DS is not going to be able to play the new games.

You're right: you might need a Pandora or even a netbook to play new homebrew games ;-)
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

tinctu wrote:

any news on homebrew???

See here
_________________
Equipment:
Nintendo DS, GBAMP v2, SuperCard SD, SuperKey, Acekard 2i

jackman wrote:

tinctu wrote:

any news on homebrew???

See here

Ok... any "new" news?
Is there any concrete info about why the DSi doesn't want to run code from flashcards? I just saw a Youtube clip from a flashcard manufacturer where they said they could do it in a lab but it would be almost impossible to do it commercially.
Anybody know why? Or do we not talk about that here?
_________________
I probably suck, my not is a programmer.

FluBBa wrote:

Is there any concrete info about why the DSi doesn't want to run code from flashcards? I just saw a Youtube clip from a flashcard manufacturer where they said they could do it in a lab but it would be almost impossible to do it commercially.

Link to video?

Quote:

Anybody know why? Or do we not talk about that here?

So long as the point is to get homebrew running and not piracy we talk about it plenty. As to why: mostly speculation, although it's probably close to the truth. I'm really hoping that we can just go in through the SD slot and forget supporting the piracy business. (OTOH, I hope we can still use DSerial, etc.)

What bugs me is that there are no reports of anyone (aside from maybe Yasu) trying the image exploit. It sure would be nice to get a confirm/deny on that one.
_________________
- nanou

nanou wrote:

FluBBa wrote:

Is there any concrete info about why the DSi doesn't want to run code from flashcards? I just saw a Youtube clip from a flashcard manufacturer where they said they could do it in a lab but it would be almost impossible to do it commercially.

Link to video?

Well the video does contain piracy, not sure exactly what the rules on that would be (Feel free to delete post). Anyway, the card is the Acekard and it does show existing homebrew running (Moonshell)

link

bean_xp wrote:

Well the video does contain piracy, not sure exactly what the rules on that would be (Feel free to delete post). Anyway, the card is the Acekard and it does show existing homebrew running (Moonshell)

Ah, nothing spectacular. I just wanted to see if they showed whatever it was they had to do to get the thing booted, but the vid starts after that. The description mentions they have no access to the SD slot which supports the idea of DS vs. DSi modes.
_________________
- nanou

thegamefreak0134 wrote:

What also needs to be answered is what to do (from a developer perspective) about games that don't need to use the new DSi's features, or games that are almost completed that were not developed with the DSi in mind. If it is a whitelist indeed, it would need to be constantly updated with "new" old DS games, or it would need to have some way to verify them.

Whitelist all existing games, digitally sign all new ones.
_________________
I'm a PSP hacker now, but I still <3 DS.

I'm not really familiar with all this game signing verification, but even if they were to whitelist all the existing games, what about the new ones after the release of the DSi that are not specifically made for the DSi, but for the regular DS? In order for those to work, they'd have to work the same way that current DS games are verified, and couldn't work off of whatever does the verifying on the DSi, right?
_________________
DS - It's all about DiscoStew

DiscoStew wrote:

I'm not really familiar with all this game signing verification, but even if they were to whitelist all the existing games, what about the new ones after the release of the DSi that are not specifically made for the DSi, but for the regular DS?

Those would have authenticity information for both the DS and DSi.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

I am allowed to only tell you this: You guys will be amazed! :^)

Do not fear: your old games will still work and there will be new games that will also work on the NDS and NDSl.

And before you ask: yes, I do know things, which I will not tell without any publicly available reference. Sorry.
But as far as the hardware goes, it's still pretty much our friendly neighbourhood NDS. :^)
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

silent_code wrote:

I am allowed to only tell you this: You guys will be amazed! :^)

32 audio channels? Ping-pong loop support? ;) I would be amazed ;) lol :D

silent_code wrote:

I am allowed to only tell you this: You guys will be amazed! :^)

Do you mean NDS users will be amazed, or we as homebrewers and tinkerers will be amazed? There's a difference there. :P

Quote:

Do not fear: your old games will still work and there will be new games that will also work on the NDS and NDSl.

And before you ask: yes, I do know things, which I will not tell without any publicly available reference. Sorry.

Best kept that way so we as a community don't get a far more watchful eye looking down on us, or people like you who have the knowledge but are unable to share.

Quote:

But as far as the hardware goes, it's still pretty much our friendly neighbourhood NDS. :^)

So, we aren't expecting stuff like a faster CPU, or would that not fall under the same category? Sorry, that question sorta goes against what I said before, so you don't have to answer that one if it breaks the rule.
_________________
DS - It's all about DiscoStew

It's easy: Everybody will be amazed. (Especially Nintendo?) ;^D
Well, maybe not Sony, but what do I know?

I can see a bright future for this device, especially in the hands of talented homebrewers... well, as soon as it get's homebrew "enabled," that is. :^)

My aim is not to seed more confusion, I just want you people to relax. There's not much change, but there are some small and interesting differences, beyond a new WiFi chip, two cameras, more RAM and the removal of my beloved slot2 for the sweet little rumble pak.
Every homebrewer will virtually have to get one!

Btw: Although the battery has been "downgraded," the device runs slightly longer on it's 4/5 brightness setting than the NDSl on full brightness - both settings are roughly equally bright. :^)
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

I've read today on the Internet that "DSi has a 133 MHz CPU"... does somebody know if it is confirmed? And is it the 'same' ARM9?

I'd say it would be closer to that than what others have said in the past, only giving an argument that it would have a CPU speed of 266-533Mhz just because of what ARM9/11 processors were built as back in 2007.

From what I hear, there is enough of a hardware change made that has prevented Nintendo from letting a DS developer release their newest title because it works on the DS, but not the DSi.
_________________
DS - It's all about DiscoStew

DiscoStew wrote:

From what I hear, there is enough of a hardware change made that has prevented Nintendo from letting a DS developer release their newest title because it works on the DS, but not the DSi.

That happens all the time and has, generally speaking, very little to do with the DSi.
Developers have to follow internal protocolls in order to be able to publish officially licensed software. If a developer misses something, the software will be rejected, sometimes even only for using a deprecated and now unsupported version number of a library - even if that wouldn't change anything in the game itself. And this isn't about Nintendo only, I hear that's something "everybody" does in the console market.

So, that might be the case here as well. The developer might have done something that is unsupported and therefore, the title got rejected by the testing department. Right here, right now, we can't know any better, so, why bother going into details any more?

I don't think that says anything about the DSi, which is, as stated before and available "all over the net": fully backwards compatible ... minus slot 2.

sverx wrote:

I've read today on the Internet that "DSi has a 133 MHz CPU"... does somebody know if it is confirmed? And is it the 'same' ARM9?

Source, please?
You know, CPU clocking isn't everything, as the NDS' design had only a 33 MHz bus that was reducing the overall performance from what the CPU is able to deliver. Only when using TCM and the cache, one could yield the true power of the CPU.

I can see Wikipedia has some nice infos out. I wonder what the sources are? ;^)

Btw: I see a lot of false info regarding the cameras. People sometimes can mix up numbers and publish permutations and such...
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

silent_code wrote:

Only when using TCM and the cache, one could yield the true power of the CPU.

Would have been nice if the DSi not only came with a faster CPU, but more TCM/cache and better access times with the main RAM. :)
_________________
DS - It's all about DiscoStew

DiscoStew wrote:

Would have been nice if the DSi not only came with a faster CPU, but more TCM/cache and better access times with the main RAM. :)

Word, man.
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

silent_code wrote:

Source, please?

I've read it around, twice, but now I can't find again both of them, just this one: http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=26687832

(it's not I said "it is so", I said "i've read that"...)

I got the information, that the DSi will not support WPA/WPA2 Authentication for DS Software, only DSi Software will support them. So DS Games only use the old WEP Auth System.
_________________
Equipment:
Nintendo DS, GBAMP v2, SuperCard SD, SuperKey, Acekard 2i

That's what I have read around the web (Nintendo's page, which I have linked to in previous posts on the topic at hand), too. You know, there will be virtually no difference for NDS software on the DSi.

Again, Wikipedia has a quite good article about the DSi. :^)
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

Interesting. This furthers my theory that the DSi is the DS's Wii, and that Nintendo probably intends to keep it around much longer than most people imagine.

Good news for homebrew!
http://www.acekard.com/news.php#38

All we need now is a gbatek doc for the DSi ;)

Hi,

First post for me. Excuse my English : I'm French.

I bring you some confirmations of what it has been said here.

The DSi has its cpu [censored --MOD] and its RAM at [censored --MOD]. Wifi chipset, microphone and sound has been improved and [censored --MOD].
Now, It could be possible to build intresting 3D engine and at least, why not, shaders.

Another intresting facts is the softwares for DSi. Aparently, there's more than one type of softwares :
DS Software (works on all DSL / DSi)
[censored --MOD]
Exclusive Software ( will work on DSi only, region-locked).

But for now, Exclusive Game will be use for DSiWare, in the first time. I think when the DSi will be as selled as the DSL, Exclusive software will be apply for Packaged Game.

[Information that appears to have been leaked in violation of NDA has been redacted by MOD]

Last edited by Yokan on Wed Dec 03, 2008 9:45 pm; edited 1 time in total

ritz wrote:

Good news for homebrew!
http://www.acekard.com/news.php#38

All we need now is a gbatek doc for the DSi ;)

Good and Bad news imo. Good in that we can do homebrew on it soon. Bad because it allows continued piracy with the way it works. All I really wanted was to continue my own homebrew developments and run others' homebrew stuff without getting commercial games to run the same way, like from the SD slot on the side.

Yokan wrote:

Hi,

First post for me. Excuse my English : I'm French.

I bring you some confirmations of what it has been said here.

The DSi has its cpu [...]

Another intresting facts is the softwares for DSi. Aparently, there's [...]

But for now, Exclusive Game will be use for DSiWare, in the first time. I think when the DSi will be as selled as the DSL, Exclusive software will be apply for Packaged Game.

Don't ask for sources, even if I give them to you, you will be disappointed because you couldn't have an access to it ;)

As far as changes in the hardware, only the CPU and possibly the microphone were the two from your list that we did not know were confirmed changes. Still, if you got that unreleased information in the same manner as silent_code got it (who hasn't given us such exact information :P ), then you might be at risk. If I remember correctly, the DSi Wikipedia page "said" some time back that it had double the CPU speed, but checking recently, it has since been removed.

About the 3 styles of software, we knew about the 1st and 3rd. The 2nd is interesting, but not anything new that we haven't already seen in the past. Games for the Gameboy Color (and the Super Gameboy for the SNES to an extent) did something similar, allowing certain additions to be accessed on the new hardware while still being able to run those games on the older hardware, just without the kind of features that the newer hardware had. Still, I'm pretty sure that there were very strict limitations when allowing that kind of compatibility to work both ways.

I may be thinking too hard on the subject matter, and this sort of limitation may not be so "limited" with this generation of hardware.
_________________
DS - It's all about DiscoStew

You're right. Details about CPU Speed has been removed from the DSi's wikipedia page.
Perhaps I should edit my post ?

DiscoStew wrote:

As far as changes in the hardware, only the CPU and possibly the microphone were the two from your list that we did not know were confirmed changes. [...] If I remember correctly, the DSi Wikipedia page "said" some time back that it had double the CPU speed, but checking recently, it has since been removed.

It was there. The CPU info was probably removed for lack of a clear source. I did some poking around and found someone claiming some JP page was their source for the CPU speed but the page didn't have any numbers so I didn't really check it out too much.

DiscoStew wrote:

About the 3 styles of software, we knew about the 1st and 3rd. The 2nd is interesting, but not anything new that we haven't already seen in the past.

Actually, M3d10n mentioned #2 already.
_________________
- nanou

Yokan, if you just could cite some sources (links), that would help much, much more than just pure numbers.
This forum does not want to use any information that has possibly been leaked illegally, instead of obtaining it through legal reverse engeneering.

Please rethink your post and fill in some sources. Thanks.

Regarding the Acecard 2i: It's a pitty that the first thing they show using the card is pirate ROMs. Very sad panda.
And then, I'm very interested in how long it will take Nintendo to ban this card with a firmware update - are you ready for the catch up game?

PS: At the time of my last post the info was still there. Maybe you can check the article's history? I couldn't - although I haven't tried very hard. :^)
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

Last edited by silent_code on Wed Dec 03, 2008 11:17 pm; edited 1 time in total

Compatible software are quite a weird thing.
It means that this is a DS game (playable on any DS version and region) but with DSi specifics fonction avalaible only on a DSi coming from the same region of the game.
And this fonctions will not be replaced if you play on DSL.
But, yes, it's quite similar to the GameBoy Color, without the Region-Lock stuff.

Anyway, I can assure you that Exclusive Game for the DSi will be certainly (if dev play the game) more "next gen-like" than DSL soft.

Yokan wrote:

Anyway, I can assure you that Exclusive Game for the DSi will be certainly (if dev play the game) more "next gen-like" than DSL soft.

I would really like to know where that statement comes from. You obviously have some information I don't have... please elaborate, because as it stands, this tells us nothing. What does "next gen-like" mean?

Don't take this as an assault, though. :^)
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

Regarding the Acekard video... I saw 2 Castlevania games but aren't those DS games (not DSi), I didn't recognise any of the other games? So does the card only run DS games on the DSi and that's it?
Still no homebrew DSi applications?
_________________
I probably suck, my not is a programmer.

FluBBa wrote:

So does the card only run DS games on the DSi and that's it?
Still no homebrew DSi applications?

If the video is authentic, then it is able to run DS Homebrew.
Given that the DS/DSi Modes (as reported above: mixed mode) are not strictly seperated as it is for DS/GBA it would implicate to enable DSi homebrew
_________________
Trying to bring more detail into understanding the wireless hardware

ritz wrote:

Good news for homebrew!
http://www.acekard.com/news.php#38

All we need now is a gbatek doc for the DSi ;)

Acekard2i? They've given up on plain numeric versions and have started using imaginary numbers? :-p

Honestly I'm more interested in how they got it working than anything.
_________________
I'm a PSP hacker now, but I still <3 DS.

FluBBa wrote:

Still no homebrew DSi applications?

This is what bugs me. AK hasn't really said anything about whether it gives access to the DSi stuff, and my guess is that it doesn't. Some other team mentioned that they couldn't get access to the SD slot. It seems like it's still no farther ahead than the rumored image exploit as far as DSi functionality goes.
_________________
- nanou

At least I can get a DSi when it comes out and still fiddle with my homebrew. Maybe spend some time converting code to take advantage of some of the more obvious things like 4x the RAM, etc. In time, better support for the new hardware in the flashcart (or even homebrew SD) will emerge and, hopefully, low-level documentation on the new DSi features. Oh, and an updated emulator would be cool so I can continue coding during my lunch hours again :)

Baby steps.

Yokan wrote:

Now, It could be possible to build intresting 3D engine and at least, why not, shaders.

You mean software rendering? I don't know, still doesn't seem fast enough to get to 30fps with at least the same IQ provided by the 3D hardware.

Forget about shaders. Embrace the NDS. :^)

I think what Yokan meant was more like "stuff that is made with shaders on the PC and consoles and looks cool", but I'm just guessing. Also, I'm pretty sure that information is based on some misunderstanding. ;^)
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

While you most likely won't be able to make a 3D engine with quality and speed that surpasses the NDS's own hardware capabilities by it's CPU alone, it doesn't mean that you couldn't use that extra speed to deal with and improve the 3D data being sent to the hardware.
_________________
DS - It's all about DiscoStew

Better shading options would be really nice, but dual screen rendering at 60fps, higher poly count, more texture ram are all individually far more important to me. N's said nothing about better graphics so I'm assuming they left the 3D alone.
_________________
- nanou

DiscoStew wrote:

it doesn't mean that you couldn't use that extra speed to deal with and improve the 3D data being sent to the hardware.

That is certainly true, but then, it depends pretty much on a lot of other factors, too. E.g. if there's only 2k primitives that can be rendered and the bus is only so fast and the FIFO has only that many entries, a faster CPU won't hurt, but maybe besides faster skinning routines and maybe realtime shadow volume computations, you can't do much graphics wise.

Remember the GBC? It added color, two (or was it one?) digital sound channels and a twice as fast CPU, but did the games change a lot from the GB/GBp?

Simply said: There are other features I am looking forward to see used in homebrew, than just the plain CPU power and extended RAM. :^)

nanou wrote:

Better shading options would be really nice, but dual screen rendering at 60fps, higher poly count, more texture ram are all individually far more important to me. N's said nothing about better graphics so I'm assuming they left the 3D alone.

Yes. But, if they did that, they could have easily called it something else (Nintendo i maybe?) and made it the next distinct platform, instead of an update.
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

silent_code wrote:

Simply said: There are other features I am looking forward to see used in homebrew, than just the plain CPU power and extended RAM. :^)

I just want to say that I think I know what you're getting at.

Quote:

nanou wrote:

Better shading options would be really nice, but dual screen rendering at 60fps, higher poly count, more texture ram are all individually far more important to me. N's said nothing about better graphics so I'm assuming they left the 3D alone.

Yes. But, if they did that, they could have easily called it something else (Nintendo i maybe?) and made it the next distinct platform, instead of an update.

Yeah, I completely agree.
_________________
- nanou

silent_code wrote:

Remember the GBC? It added color, two (or was it one?) digital sound channels and a twice as fast CPU, but did the games change a lot from the GB/GBp?

Wasn't it GBA that added digital sound? I don't remember GBC having any extra sound capabilities. Anyway, Nintendo failed to repair the GB graphic hardware's biggest flaw: the higher background layer doesn't support transparency. If it had, it would have been immensely more useful. As it is, an opaque 256x256 second background layer on a 160x144 screen isn't good for much besides menus.
_________________
I'm a PSP hacker now, but I still <3 DS.

@ HyperHacker: Never played MortalKombat4 on the GBC? It had digital sound - which was awesome and awful at the same time! :^)
Also, I remember the ad brochure very well... good times. :^)
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

A faster CPU is totally useful, even if the 3D hardware remains the same, examples:

- Even if you respect the triangle limits, using most of it for skinned characters and still keeping 60fps is hard and leaves little time for anything else.
- There'd probably enough CPU time left for decoding OGG and running a complex 3D game at the same time.
- In-game voice chat.

Didn't Pokemon Yellow and Pinball both use "digital" sound, in that they played voices for Pikachu within the game? Those both worked on the original GB as well as the GBC, which leads me to believe that they used a trick with the third channel (for which you could specify your own waveform) rather than a new digital sound channel.

So, I really do think that digital sound wasn't truly added until the GBA days. Perhaps by the time the GBC had come out, they had just figured out how to do the trick to play recorded sound and decided to advertise it.

And yes, I did play MK4. For about 30 seconds. After which I had to stop to go puke on something.

[/offtopic]

-gamefreak
_________________
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@ thegamefreak0134: You are probably right. And yes, it looked ugly as every MK on any Nintendo handheld I've ever played. :^D
Those clever marketing devils really had me there! ;^)
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

Homebrew is blocked but they have found a few ways around it already. I suggested reverse engineering an offical game for it that was downloded from the DSi shop and using that to write a hombrew boot app that would boot homebrew games.

Also If you are intrested in the DSi goto my DSi forum:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/dsi-homebrew?hl=en&lnk=

and it dose have more RAM but not much more system RAM.
And the new web browser for it is supposed to be better than the old one and it is still made by Opera.

tepples wrote:

I know how a new DS model could block all homebrew cards. I've explained it here nearly a year ago and recently on Slashdot.

This guy got it bang on!, Although it is easy to bypass the RSA checks because you could just reverse engineer the bios/firmware to see what exactly it wants to see and trick it into seeing that.

wolfman775 wrote:

This guy got it bang on!, Although it is easy to bypass the RSA checks because you could just reverse engineer the bios/firmware to see what exactly it wants to see and trick it into seeing that.

Well not the RSA checks. If you trick it to see the whole valid RSA secured binary, it IS that binary, not your homebrew ;) (Edit: unless you are able to forge a collision, but then you have other interests :D)
_________________
Trying to bring more detail into understanding the wireless hardware

If Nintendo does the whitelist for 3000 games (i don't know the exact number ), let's say that the SHA-1 would fit since they are 160bit wide, and 160*3000 = 58,59375KB, so space it wouldn't be a real problem.
But you have 3000 SHA-1 don't you think that a preimage attack wouldn't be possible?

What is 3*10^3 against 2^160? ... the result is not below 2^160 / 2^12 (=4096) = 2^148
So it would not change anything for the real world.

But better not let it be sha-1, because this one is broken to a 2^63 attack. Putting the collision finding in range of the life-cycle of the DSi.
_________________
Trying to bring more detail into understanding the wireless hardware

has anyone dismantled this device yet?
_________________
If anyone needs a dragonball online email me @ aaronthejester@hotmail.com

I was just thinking about this some time ago.

Since the DSi has an SD slot, couldn't developers use that to their advantage if the games they create require more space than the DS cards can supply? Say, including an non-rewritable SD card that held some of the bigger assets like streamed audio and video, or even game data itself?
_________________
DS - It's all about DiscoStew

Well possible for sure. But that opens just another attack vector.
Dunno if N would allow this.

Imagine that you could cause buffer overflows to inject code or manipulated return addresses by copying and manipulating that data onto another sd card.
_________________
Trying to bring more detail into understanding the wireless hardware

Nope. Not "possible" in official world. Nintendo doesn't even allow downloadable content.
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

While it isn't quite an official statement, IGN states from developers that the system has more oomph, and not just from increased RAM...

http://ds.ign.com/articles/951/951086p1.html

IGN wrote:

And even if the Nintendo DS hardware doesn't have the right stuff, the Nintendo DSi system actually has a bit more "oomph" to it; according to developers who've been working closely with the updated handheld, the Nintendo DSi has a native mode that offers significantly more system memory and processing power than the Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite. This won't make existing DS games run any better, but if you toss away the idea of getting the game to work on the original DS and DS Lite, and simply move forward with a game that'll only work on DSi, then you can do bigger and better things with your code.

_________________
DS - It's all about DiscoStew

So, this is basically leaked info then? Do you know their source, does the article state it somewhere?
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

There's another article where Opera's business development manager, Phillip Gr?nvold, let slip that the DS only had a 133MHz CPU:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2338736,00.asp

This also coincides with what bushing said about the DSi running at half speed in a compatibility mode for original DS games (similar to how the DS and Wii run at a lower speed and disables all the extra hardware when running Gameboy and Gamecube games):
http://hackmii.com/2009/01/dsibrew/

The Wikipedia entry also states 133MHz and that it still has the ARM7 core (I suppose this is still possible since the original DS and DSL had both cores in a single chip):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DSi

Yeah, I know Wikipedia could be wrong, but so far this seems to correspond with what I've been reading elsewhere. I do hope it still has an ARM7 core.
_________________
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CycloDS Evolution (firmware 1.55 BETA 3) and EZFlash 3-in-1
Kingston SD-C02G JAPAN 2GB MicroSD
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silent_code wrote:

Nope. Not "possible" in official world. Nintendo doesn't even allow downloadable content.

Actually that's not true anymore. Several Wii Ware games (My Life as a King comes to mind) offer downloadable content. The content is stored as a save file in the Wii system memory, I haven't bothered to purchase any of it so I can't tell you more than that. With the success of the shop channel, I think Nintendo may be relaxing on the whole Internet thing in general.
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Oh, nice! Thanks for the info. :^)

If the ARM7 was gone, how would the compatibility mode work then?
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

maybe it is emulated then?
_________________
Website / Blog

Let the nds be with you.

hacker013 wrote:

maybe it is emulated then?

Sorry, but that's just absurd. Emulation requires a minimum of 5-10x the processing power of the CPU being emulated, and that would easily push that CPU's processing power over the 'supposed' 133Mhz ARM9 CPU. It's illogical to have the sub processor faster than the main processor. It's far more illogical for emulating anything within 1 generation of hardware, let alone the same generation of hardware.

Has there been anymore info related to it's guts?
_________________
DS - It's all about DiscoStew

Well that begs the question of whether GBA games used Thumb instructions. If so, the ARM9 could run those natively. Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on ARM architecture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#Thumb):

Quote:

Embedded hardware, such as the Game Boy Advance, typically have a small amount of RAM accessible with a full 32-bit datapath; the majority is accessed via a 16 bit or narrower secondary datapath. In this situation, it usually makes sense to compile Thumb code and hand-optimise a few of the most CPU-intensive sections using full 32-bit ARM instructions, placing these wider instructions into the 32-bit bus accessible memory.

The first processor with a Thumb instruction decoder was the ARM7TDMI. All ARM9 and later families, including XScale, have included a Thumb instruction decoder.

I also wonder if there is enough parity in the codebase between the ARM7 and ARM9 whether it would fully need to be emulated, or if most instructions could be remapped and use less CPU time.

Don't get me wrong, I really hope the ARM7 core is still in the DSi. It is still possible given that the previous DS versions had both cores in a single chip. But I don't think anyone really knows outside of Nintendo at this point. Anyone that does isn't letting on.

As for new information, I haven't seen any. These are the only teardowns I've seen besides Bunnie's:
http://insidetronics.blogspot.com/2008/11/new-nintendo-dsi-teardown.html
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20081112/161158/
_________________
Cobalt/Black NDSL
CycloDS Evolution (firmware 1.55 BETA 3) and EZFlash 3-in-1
Kingston SD-C02G JAPAN 2GB MicroSD
MoonShell 1.71, DSOrganize 3.1129, QuakeDS Pre3, ScummVM DS 0.11.1, Pocket Physics 0.6, OpenTyrian DS 0.3

I think it has already been mentioned, that commercial DS games use a common ARM7 binary, and use an interface to functions for sound and wifi on the ARM9. Couldn't it be the case that these functions are provided by other hardware now so the ARM7 binary is remapped by the DSi (or a new replacement binary is loaded from a segment of the firmware somehow?)

I keep seeing a lot about the processor and storage, but anybody found out anything about the video hardware? Surely the camera video encoding/decoding has some acceleration, they do some pretty fancy tricks in the demos.

Also, any speculation on the 3d hardware? It would be amazing if they finally brought the DS close to PSP level 3d graphics.

Synthetic wrote:

I keep seeing a lot about the processor and storage, but anybody found out anything about the video hardware? Surely the camera video encoding/decoding has some acceleration, they do some pretty fancy tricks in the demos.

Also, any speculation on the 3d hardware? It would be amazing if they finally brought the DS close to PSP level 3d graphics.

While it would be amazing, it would also be unrealistic. Nintendo not only has no need to do so, but the DSi is not considered "the" next generation Nintendo handheld. It's just a small update to the current handheld.

But, I don't see why they couldn't enhance current video capabilities at least a little. They did with the audio, the wifi, and possibly even the CPU, so why not the video hardware, like increased polygon/vertex RAM and the fillrate?
_________________
DS - It's all about DiscoStew

I think realistically, we might see improvements for the DSi that would not break backwards compatibility, like an increased poly count or fill rate. Even better, given increased RAM system wide, we might see an increase in VRAM available for textures. That said, I wouldn't expect anything major in the graphics department.

With the exception of the N64 (which was actually superior in the general 3D powerhouse department for its time, the PS1 had terrible 3D calculations) Nintendo seems to follow a theme of letting the code and the game designers make the graphics beautiful, rather than the hardware. Where Microsoft and Sony will both ensure that their hardware will have no trouble playing the games released and encourage their developers to take full advantage of that hardware, Nintendo seems to be content with keeping their hardware costs down, and encouraging their developers instead to make games that are *fun to play* and do *innovative things* rather than just looking pretty.

As far as I can tell, Nintendo is happily content with providing a system with enough power for most moderate graphics tasks, in the interest of keeping their hardware low cost for the end user. They won't skimp out to the point that games just look "last gen" in comparison, but they also don't seem to be trying to win any awards in their visuals department. After all, it's the gameplay people will talk about for years and years, not the graphics.

When it all comes down to it, I think this makes Nintendo consoles more impressive targets for developers looking to push the hardware, both commercially and in homebrew. It's a true example of well planned and executed code when a game comes out on the Wii that looks as amazing as the games on the other two, because it shows that the graphics designer knew exactly where to cut (and not) cut the corners and still get the visuals he wanted in the scenes. It makes it a bit more of an art form.

[/longrant]

tl;dr: I don't think Nintendo focuses on graphics very much for their consoles, so I don't think they will push the video hardware nearly as hard as other companies do.
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I'm not sure if this is old news or not, but this is the first "official" information I could find stating that the DSi still has an ARM7 core as well as an ARM9:
http://www.arm.com/markets/home_solutions/armpp/24807.html

It comes from ARM's own marketing pages used to show off products using their chips. One would think that they would have the right info. I found out about it because it was used as the source for the Wikipedia entry on the DSi's technical specifications:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DSi#Technical_specifications

This should help lay any remaining speculation to rest (if there was any).
_________________
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CycloDS Evolution (firmware 1.55 BETA 3) and EZFlash 3-in-1
Kingston SD-C02G JAPAN 2GB MicroSD
MoonShell 1.71, DSOrganize 3.1129, QuakeDS Pre3, ScummVM DS 0.11.1, Pocket Physics 0.6, OpenTyrian DS 0.3

I do believe that's the first confirmation we've seen here. Interesting, though, they refer to a third party teardown as the source of their information.
_________________
- nanou

Yeah, that looked odd to me too. Still, it's an ARM site. That's got to add credibility to it.
_________________
Cobalt/Black NDSL
CycloDS Evolution (firmware 1.55 BETA 3) and EZFlash 3-in-1
Kingston SD-C02G JAPAN 2GB MicroSD
MoonShell 1.71, DSOrganize 3.1129, QuakeDS Pre3, ScummVM DS 0.11.1, Pocket Physics 0.6, OpenTyrian DS 0.3

They probably are under NDA etc., so they can't "reveal" anything themselves. ;^)
_________________
July 5th 08: "Volumetric Shadow Demo" 1.6.0 (final) source released
June 5th 08: "Zombie NDS" WIP released!
It's all on my page, just click WWW below.

You know, I only had a passing interest in the DSi... that is until I read this:
http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/DSi/DSiWare/news.asp?c=15075

If this article is correct, it seems Nintendo is looking to combat Sony's PSP Minis initiative by opening up DSiWare to more indie developers. Nintendo still maintains control over pricing and royalty rates for app size, but it allows for smaller titles to be published for a much smaller price. For instance a 500 point game must be less than 20MB or the royalties will be higher. Considering a good amount of homebrew is usually only a few megabytes, this shouldn't be a problem for a lot of apps.

This could be a big step in the direction of actually giving homebrew developers a legitimate way to develop and distribute their apps for the DS. I just wonder if they are going to relax their restrictions on becoming licensed developers or not? Well, no matter what, I see this as good news. Just how good it is will remain to be seen.
_________________
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CycloDS Evolution (firmware 1.55 BETA 3) and EZFlash 3-in-1
Kingston SD-C02G JAPAN 2GB MicroSD
MoonShell 1.71, DSOrganize 3.1129, QuakeDS Pre3, ScummVM DS 0.11.1, Pocket Physics 0.6, OpenTyrian DS 0.3

It looks like market pressures are forcing them to do what I'd hoped they'd do. I read a different article about this, but they had the figure at 200MB, which I thought was a bit high. At that rate, who'd bother with the cost of carts?

I have a feeling there would be little to no relaxation of licensing requirements. It's not like they're going to go the App Store route.
_________________
- nanou

gbadev.org forum archive

DS Misc > DSi

#163430 - silent_code - Thu Oct 02, 2008 9:59 am

#163433 - elwing - Thu Oct 02, 2008 10:13 am

#163434 - Massif - Thu Oct 02, 2008 11:21 am

#163437 - felix123 - Thu Oct 02, 2008 12:35 pm

#163439 - tepples - Thu Oct 02, 2008 12:51 pm

#163444 - ritz - Thu Oct 02, 2008 2:34 pm

#163446 - elwing - Thu Oct 02, 2008 3:13 pm

#163453 - Plat Sajack - Thu Oct 02, 2008 6:08 pm

#163463 - sgeos - Thu Oct 02, 2008 7:58 pm

#163486 - jackman - Fri Oct 03, 2008 8:12 am

#163493 - Lynx - Fri Oct 03, 2008 2:45 pm

#163498 - jackman - Fri Oct 03, 2008 6:54 pm

#163506 - nanou - Fri Oct 03, 2008 9:08 pm

#163507 - Sweater Fish Deluxe - Fri Oct 03, 2008 9:22 pm

#163511 - keldon - Fri Oct 03, 2008 11:26 pm

#163515 - nanou - Sat Oct 04, 2008 1:04 am

#163517 - db73 - Sat Oct 04, 2008 1:22 am

#163519 - MechaBouncer - Sat Oct 04, 2008 1:44 am

#163536 - JanoSicek - Sat Oct 04, 2008 10:35 am

#163549 - nanou - Sat Oct 04, 2008 8:30 pm

#163573 - Liter - Sun Oct 05, 2008 2:30 pm

#163574 - MechaBouncer - Sun Oct 05, 2008 2:58 pm

#163575 - Liter - Sun Oct 05, 2008 3:15 pm

#163592 - db73 - Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:49 am

#163594 - nanou - Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:38 am

#163601 - jackman - Mon Oct 06, 2008 7:36 am

#163608 - Lynx - Mon Oct 06, 2008 2:38 pm

#163649 - MechaBouncer - Tue Oct 07, 2008 6:02 pm

#163698 - iofthestorm - Thu Oct 09, 2008 6:16 am

#163701 - Sektor - Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:27 am

#163742 - iofthestorm - Fri Oct 10, 2008 4:47 am

#163743 - MechaBouncer - Fri Oct 10, 2008 5:10 am

#163752 - tepples - Fri Oct 10, 2008 11:42 am

#163761 - MechaBouncer - Fri Oct 10, 2008 4:30 pm

#163766 - sgeos - Fri Oct 10, 2008 7:31 pm

#163769 - MechaBouncer - Fri Oct 10, 2008 8:01 pm

#163770 - sgeos - Fri Oct 10, 2008 8:12 pm

#163775 - MechaBouncer - Fri Oct 10, 2008 8:53 pm

#163776 - Maxxie - Fri Oct 10, 2008 8:54 pm

#163837 - Sektor - Mon Oct 13, 2008 12:31 pm

#163838 - Quirky - Mon Oct 13, 2008 12:55 pm

#163853 - tepples - Mon Oct 13, 2008 8:05 pm

#163874 - nanou - Tue Oct 14, 2008 4:45 am

#163889 - bean_xp - Tue Oct 14, 2008 2:50 pm

#164028 - Tockit - Sat Oct 18, 2008 11:21 pm

#164034 - nanou - Sun Oct 19, 2008 1:14 am

#164063 - Matej - Sun Oct 19, 2008 9:49 pm

#164067 - jackman - Mon Oct 20, 2008 5:44 am

#164081 - tepples - Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:52 pm

#164085 - zzo38computer - Mon Oct 20, 2008 3:26 pm

#164104 - tepples - Mon Oct 20, 2008 8:08 pm

#164211 - Matej - Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:24 pm

#164212 - Matej - Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:36 pm

#164225 - tepples - Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:06 pm

#164230 - MechaBouncer - Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:40 pm

#164248 - Matej - Fri Oct 24, 2008 11:46 am

#164409 - nanou - Thu Oct 30, 2008 9:38 pm

#164417 - sverx - Fri Oct 31, 2008 11:55 am

#164418 - kusma - Fri Oct 31, 2008 11:57 am

#164430 - jackman - Sat Nov 01, 2008 8:02 am

#164431 - nanou - Sat Nov 01, 2008 9:45 am

#164433 - felix123 - Sat Nov 01, 2008 11:11 am

#164436 - nanou - Sat Nov 01, 2008 11:59 am

#164446 - HyperHacker - Sun Nov 02, 2008 3:09 am

#164504 - theli - Tue Nov 04, 2008 7:04 pm

#164524 - OOPMan - Wed Nov 05, 2008 9:07 am

#164526 - nanou - Wed Nov 05, 2008 11:24 am

#164737 - tinctu - Sun Nov 16, 2008 11:45 pm

#164754 - thegamefreak0134 - Tue Nov 18, 2008 3:28 am

#164756 - tepples - Tue Nov 18, 2008 4:54 am

#164760 - jackman - Tue Nov 18, 2008 2:57 pm

#164767 - FluBBa - Wed Nov 19, 2008 10:29 am

#164768 - nanou - Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:13 am

#164769 - bean_xp - Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:54 am

#164776 - nanou - Thu Nov 20, 2008 2:00 am

#164809 - HyperHacker - Sat Nov 22, 2008 6:19 am

#164819 - DiscoStew - Sat Nov 22, 2008 8:56 pm

#164824 - tepples - Sun Nov 23, 2008 4:43 am