Hacking What simple thing could lead to DS emulation?

[Thee_BaBs]

DS's only have 4mb of ram. The old 3DS has 128 mb of ram and 6mb of VRAM

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N3DS has 2 GB RAM: 128 MB FCRAM, 4 MB VRAM

New 3DS has 256 mb of FCRAM and 10 MB of VRAM

 

[Roboman]

DS's only have 4mb of ram. The old 3DS has 128 mb of ram and 6mb of VRAM

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N3DS has 2 GB RAM: 128 MB FCRAM, 4 MB VRAM

O.o
With so much ram maybe the N3ds can use the arm 11 to listen to the cart bus and reply appropriately like a cart would, using ram to store the rom.

 

[koim]

N3DS has 2 GB RAM: 128 MB FCRAM, 4 MB VRAM

hum... no. That ~2gb thing is the nand's space, not the ram.

 

[Deleted User]

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[Deleted User]

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[dubbz82]

Plus the games only need ~ 4mb of ram

This is still overlooking the fact that DS games are explicitly designed to work with a cartridge slot...so okay, we somehow work out how to load the game into RAM, and then we also work out how to allow TWL to access all of the systems RAM...we're still sitting back at square one with the games still trying to communicate with the cart slot.

 

[astronautlevel]

Plus the games only need ~ 4mb of ram

GBA virtual console works by loading the entire game into RAM and emulating a SLOT-2 using that. A similar method would require us to load the entire DS game into RAM and emulate a SLOT-1, which won't work for a lot of games, even on the n3ds, simply because there's not enough RAM. Even so, we didn't get GBA virtual console until Nintendo released it, in which case we figured out simply how to get it to load other roms. Unless Nintendo releases something it's unlikely to happen.

This topic has been beaten to death hundreds of times on these forums. This thread is really pointless.

 

[Billy Acuña]

How works the MIOS on Wii y comparation of the TWL on 3DS?
If I'm not wrong, the MIOS tries to read from the DVD lector like TWL (NTR exactly) tries to read from the Slot-1, right?

 

[astronautlevel]

How works the MIOS on Wii y comparation of the TWL on 3DS?
If I'm not wrong, the MIOS tries to read from the DVD lector like TWL (NTR exactly) tries to read from the Slot-1, right?

Unfortunately, I know very little about Wii hacking.

I was going to edit my post to address the issue with idea number 7, but I'll post it here:

DSi homebrew was already made to load files from the SD card. However, nds retail roms load their data from the Slot-1. It is incredibly difficult to change how it would load its files without the source.

 

[Deleted User]

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[astronautlevel]

Apache Thunder said we should start from there because he was able to get a similar result with another operation. He thought we could MOD the HBMenu

As I stated, a fundamental problem with this is that DS games are programmed to load games from Slot-1, not from the SD. It is nearly impossible to change how they load files without the source code to the rom. No amount of mods to the HBMenu can change that.

Even creating a fake partition will do nothing unless we can have the NDS roms themselves load files from that partition. NDS roms load files directly from Slot-1, not from anywhere else, and we can't emulate that hardware without loading the entire ROM into the RAM, and I've already stated the problems with that.

Even so, we'd need Nintendo to release something for that, which I doubt they'll do because they've already proven DSiWare recompilation is a suitable way to release DS games, and the 3DS already has a physical slot-1.

 

[frosty5689]

It does not only require 4 MB of RAM to load NDS ROM into memory. We need a little bit more than the size of the ROM. Why? Because TWLfirm doesn't know what the heck is sdcard so it will be simplest to redirect all request to read slot1 by twlfirm to some region of memory on the 3ds firmware syscall that interact with twlfirm. Assuming there is any, from the way the 3ds have to reboot to play nds games, there doesnt seem to be anything left of 3ds firmware once twlfirm starts.

 

[astronautlevel]

It does not only require 4 MB of RAM to load NDS ROM into memory. We need a little bit more than the size of the ROM. Why? Because TWLfirm doesn't know what the heck is sdcard so it will be simplest to redirect all request to read slot1 by twlfirm to some region of memory on the 3ds firmware syscall that interact with twlfirm. Assuming there is any, from the way the 3ds have to reboot to play nds games, there doesnt seem to be anything left of 3ds firmware once twlfirm starts.

This is precisely the problem. The n3ds doesn't have enough ram to even hold some nds games. Even so, we have no method to emulate TWL Slot-1 without Nintendo releasing something.

 

[Deleted User]

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[astronautlevel]

How about this?:

We would need to ADD a CIA that brings you to a menu and you can select which game you want- then reboots into a different partition on the SD card (like EmuNAND) that is a virtual copy of TWL_Firm that redirects all saves and access to the extra partition and has the game loading

Easier said than done. WAY easier said than done. How do you plan on redirecting all the calls to Slot-1, without the source of the NDS rom?

 

[Deleted User]

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[astronautlevel]

Maybe the extra partition COULD be slot-1

By the way, here's that NDS menu working:

There is a hardware Slot-1 on the 3ds. NDS menu already loaded stuff from the NAND though

 

[Deleted User]

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[James310]

"3ds have native ds emulation" How can something be native and emulated cause you cant have both, the problem is ds is running natively and we have almost little control with it, this year lots of progress been made to being able to use it, it's even possible to run the dsi homebrew channel now from the 3ds homemenu
Edit: it autocorrect everything :/

 

[astronautlevel]

"3ds have native ds emulation" How can something be native and emulated cause you cant have both, the problem is ds is running natively and we have almost little control with it, this year it's of progress been don't to control it and use it, it's even possible to run the dsi homebrew channel now from the 3ds homemenu

The DSi had an SD card slot though. We've been able to get DSiWare running fine. DS never had an SD card slot though which is why we've made almost no progress.

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Spoiler: A good old Diagram!

View attachment 43701

All my previous complaints still stand.

Slot-1 is NOT a partition in TWL_FIRM, it is a physical cartridge slot on the 3ds.