Just for fun, I enabled the lower CPU speed of DS mode (67Mhz vs 133Mhz) and the results were not impressive. Almost no game I tried ran at full speed - you might be able to play Adventure or Sky Diver with a bit of slowdown but almost nothing else will run right. StellaDS really is more like StellaDSi - it needs the extra CPU speed to be of any real playability.
Honestly, I've no idea how to do that. From my hour of Google-ing it seems this build should work on flashcarts as well as on SD cards but I tried to load it on my R4i clone card (those $10 jobs) and it didn't work (error -4). I don't see anything obvious in the build that I would change to make it work for flashcarts.Hi @wavemotion thank you for your work
For NDS Lite users, can we expect a version of StellaDS compatible with an expansion pak like the EZ Flash 3 in 1?
You have to load it with either nds-hb-menu, or TWiLight Menu++ (yes, this works on flashcards as well).Honestly, I've no idea how to do that. From my hour of Google-ing it seems this build should work on flashcarts as well as on SD cards but I tried to load it on my R4i clone card (those $10 jobs) and it didn't work (error -4). I don't see anything obvious in the build that I would change to make it work for flashcarts.
If anyone more knowledgeable has a clue for me to follow, I'm all ears!
Oh wow - you're famous!You have to load it with either nds-hb-menu, or TWiLight Menu++ (yes, this works on flashcards as well).
Okay, thanks to Robz suggestion, I was able to put nds-hb-menu on my flashcart (was just a matter of copying the folder and then placing BOOT.NDS in the root of the SD card). Booted into the normal R4i clone menu and then launched BOOT.NDS and then StellaDS.NDS
The results were spectacularly bad. The games are emulated and you can clearly see/hear them running but the graphics are a mess. I suspect this is because of some of the DMA tricks I did for the build - it requires that the CPU be able to finish processing the memory copy into VRAM before it comes back around to re-writing that memory. The DSi with it's twice-fast CPU can do it... the DS-LITE and earlier cannot. I'm sure someone more clever than I am (not hard!) can find a way to make it fast and work on older hardware - but given how stunningly cheap a DSi is these days (US$40) it's really a powerhouse of classic gaming and worth seeking out.
It's probably time for a re-branding of StellaDS to StellaDSi with new readme and splash screen...
Thank you for this. It always confused me how emulating such an old system could have any slowdown.
Okay, uploaded 1.1i here: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/StellaDS
This build will check whether we are in DSi mode and if not, will slow down the DMA copy so that it works again on older DS-LITE (and, presumably, DS-PHAT) hardware. I have a DS-LITE but not older...
I'm also re-branding. I don't know if I'm allowed to do it on moral grounds - but there are all kinds of versions floating around out there... 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and some 1.0s are newer than 1.2s
So I'm going to bump up to revision 2.0 soon and call this "PHEONIX EDITION" because, well, I'm over 100 hours tweaking this thing and that's my compensation
View attachment 236380
Okay, thanks to Robz suggestion, I was able to put nds-hb-menu on my flashcart (was just a matter of copying the folder and then placing BOOT.NDS in the root of the SD card). Booted into the normal R4i clone menu and then launched BOOT.NDS and then StellaDS.NDS
The results were spectacularly bad. The games are emulated and you can clearly see/hear them running but the graphics are a mess. I suspect this is because of some of the DMA tricks I did for the build - it requires that the CPU be able to finish processing the memory copy into VRAM before it comes back around to re-writing that memory. The DSi with it's twice-fast CPU can do it... the DS-LITE and earlier cannot. I'm sure someone more clever than I am (not hard!) can find a way to make it fast and work on older hardware - but given how stunningly cheap a DSi is these days (US$40) it's really a powerhouse of classic gaming and worth seeking out.
It's probably time for a re-branding of StellaDS to StellaDSi with new readme and splash screen...