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DS Misc > Nintendo Adding Homebrew To Japanese Download Stations

#78872 - PhoenixSoft - Mon Apr 10, 2006 9:23 am

http://www.n-sider.com/newsview.php?type=story&storyid=1914

The gist of it is that Nintendo ran a game dev course in Japan, and is now releasing some of the games made by the students via download stations. If one of them had been smart enough to add a piece of code to jump to the GBA slot, we would have our signed homebrew loader! Anybody close enough to attend the next seminar? :p

#78894 - tepples - Mon Apr 10, 2006 1:37 pm

PhoenixSoft wrote:
http://www.n-sider.com/newsview.php?type=story&storyid=1914

The gist of it is that Nintendo ran a game dev course in Japan, and is now releasing some of the games made by the students via download stations. If one of them had been smart enough to add a piece of code to jump to the GBA slot

Would that even be possible? As I understand it, the code to jump to the GBA slot would have to be on the ARM7, and Nintendo develops all ARM7 binaries used by official NitroSDK programs.
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#78953 - caitsith2 - Mon Apr 10, 2006 9:22 pm

tepples wrote:
PhoenixSoft wrote:
http://www.n-sider.com/newsview.php?type=story&storyid=1914

The gist of it is that Nintendo ran a game dev course in Japan, and is now releasing some of the games made by the students via download stations. If one of them had been smart enough to add a piece of code to jump to the GBA slot

Would that even be possible? As I understand it, the code to jump to the GBA slot would have to be on the ARM7, and Nintendo develops all ARM7 binaries used by official NitroSDK programs.


Depends on if the ARM7 binary sits in main 4MB ram or not. A big thing there, is that the location of the ARM7 binary has to be known, the ARM9 binary will have to hijack control of the ARM7 by writing some replacement code at a known location.

The replacement code would do something to the effect of

Code:
Write IME_DISABLE to REG_IME;
Write 0 to 0x2000000; //Secure area has already been nuked anyways.
Wait till 0x2000000 = 1;
Write 2 to 0x2000000;
Jump to 0x8000000;


The Arm 9 code would effectively be
Code:
Write IME_DISABLE to REG_IME;
Write Arm 7 code to location 0x2000004;
Fill ARM7 binary memory range with jump to 0x2000004;
Wait till 0x2000000 = 0;
Write 1 to 0x2000000;
Wait till 0x2000000 = 2;
Write ARM9 Passme code to Passme location;
Jump to ARM9 passme code.


All of this assumes the ARM7 resides in Main ram, and PC currently located there.

Nintendo would most likely not allow this block of code to sneak into the development source in plain text. It will most likely need to be obfuscated.

#78976 - ssj4android - Mon Apr 10, 2006 11:11 pm

Do any of the demos have multiplayer? They could've snuck in code to run stuff via wireless. ;)
But I'm pretty sure Nintendo would have a good looking over everything before they signed it.

#79005 - Dudu.exe - Tue Apr 11, 2006 2:08 am

some of this games lookvery good.. if someone can download it for whould be amazing!
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#79054 - tssf - Tue Apr 11, 2006 7:20 am

This really isn't homebrew, I think the topic is slightly misleading. This is a development contest between college students, though it's using libraries and development kits by Nintendo, which wouldn't make this "homebrew" so much as it should be called "Amateur Developers."

Given that, kudos to Nintendo giving some of the future-developers of the industry some show-time.
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#79079 - Darkflame - Tue Apr 11, 2006 2:30 pm

Indeed.

I hope they do something similar for the revolution download too :)