Acekard 2i running on Nintendo 3DS

[Laughing Stock]

I think they are full of crap...I believe they got it running fine, but IMO, they are not releasing it because wood is an AK2 clone....they don't wanna see wood-enabled R4's running on 3ds before US launch by borrowing any of their code. Bogarts!! lol

I don't think many R4s can even run on the DSi.

 

[SifJar]

That's odd. I was under the impression that the carts do not have a copy of a complete ROM. They only have snippets of a commercial ROM on them. The DS carts had very small snippets, while the DSi carts had about 1MB worth for the header and graphics which is why you see whatever icon you do in the DS menu. Since most carts just parrot a sequence during the boot process I don't think its necessary to have the entire ROM in there. I could be incorrect but if so I'd love to see a technical analysis of it. I think a lot of the 'full ROM' stuff came about because of the incorrectly named 'whitelisting' that was supposedly done which isn't the case.

Also they need to use an older game that uses the older SHA1 checksums in their 'whitelist' rather than the RSA sig that is used for later games. So that requirement somewhat limits what you can use as the icon.

I dunno, this is just what I read in one of the threads yesterday or the day before perhaps. And I thought there was a whitelist of all existing DS games when the DSi was launched. In fact, I was pretty certain there was mention of that on HackMii or somewhere like that.

The integrity checking is there to ensure that the cartridge booted is a genuine licensed game cartridge. There is a whitelist stored in the DSi’s NAND, that has an entry for every DS game released, consisting of multiple SHA1 (How these hashes are constructed exactly hasn’t been confirmed) checksums for the cart header, ARM9 binary and ARM7 binary.

from http://hackmii.com/2010/02/lawsuit-coming-in-3-2-1/

EDIT: From that same article, an explanation of how AR DSi works:

QUOTE

DSi console sends cart initialisation sequence
ARDSi cart determines it’s being ran on a DSi console and starts responding a fixed pattern on every read block request
Game’s header, ARM9 and ARM7 binary are loaded by the DSi menu and checked for integrity
Integrity checks pass since all data is 1:1 compared to the original ROM
Game starts running, parsing filename and file allocation tables of filesystem on cartridge
Game loads overlay 0×01 to 0x020BBF00
Game does more stuff and eventually branches to code inside loaded overlay @ 0x020BBFE8
The initial 0xE8 bytes of the datel payload are inifite-loop opcodes, entrypoint right behind it, payload gets executed
Payload sends secret F005000000000000 (Not so secret anymore now, huh?) cart command to put cartridge in secondary mode
Payload uses normal 0xB7 read commands to read the header, ARM9 binary and ARM7 binary respectively
Some IPC magic is done to capture execution of the ARM7 cpu
Finally a softreset SVC/SWI is issued to execute the newly loaded ARM9 code

Not full ROM, but header and ARM7 and ARM9 binaries are all in there (about 1MB of an apparently 8MB game), along with a hacked "filesystem overlay" (not quite what I said before, but fairly similar I believe).

 

[doyama]

The whitelist is for previous games. From some specific point they put in RSA sigs into the games instead so they don't need to be added to the whitelist. So you have a kind of pre-RSA sig games which are in the whitelist, and post where all games (DS/DSi) games use the RSA sig. So it's not a whitelist of 'everything' just of a subset of games (albeit a large one)

I was only taking exception to the full rom being on there, since it sort of perpetuates the incorrect notion of how the 'whitelist' really works. Especially in light of that horrible PCMag article that claimed they 'modified' the whitelist. Which has now lead people to say they just need to change the ROM used or other such nonsense.

Hopefully hackmii will do another analysis once the exploit is more widely released. Though I suspect it's merely a small variant on the existing exploit process.

 

[CompC]

Yes! Just what I was waiting for.

 

[lordrand11]

I didn't see the Acekard 2i logo on the cartridge. It just said Acekard i is that a new design?

Lol, I would suggest you to buy some glasses....

You sir are quite right. lol. The light bouncing offa the sticker kinda threw me off. I didn't see the number 2 in the background on it.

 

[leeday100196]

Wow, I hope the Supercard team gets wind of this! Hopefully within the week they will release their compatibility patch announcement so that their dedicated followers like me can have hope! Personally though, I hope that 3DS mode isn't cracked until perhaps September/October... that way we have a lot of good games out etc. and we can finally emulate it!!

 

[Vigilante]

Now the only thing I am waiting for is a 3DS flashcart

 

[tinymonkeyt]

YES. AWESOME.

 

[mechadylan]

Excellent news! I wish they would have shown akAIO booting up instead, but official AK fw is good enough for now.

 

[Arras]

So essentially they just used a different game that did not have the special checks yet? Doesn't that mean Ninty CAN special check all of those games, it's just a huge amount of work?

 

[Moonshine]

But, since the 3DS is region-locked, does it mean that only japanese games work in DS Mode? That seems to be the case in this video, but I'm just checking.

 

[Nollog]

But, since the 3DS is region-locked, does it mean that only japanese games work in DS Mode? That seems to be the case in this video, but I'm just checking.

DS isn't region locked.
Dsi and 3DS are.
Short answer: No.

They're going to put out an Acekard3 then?
They'll claim it's "buggy" and "needs new or bigger bootstrap".

 

[Rydian]

They're going to put out an Acekard3 then?
They'll claim it's "buggy" and "needs new or bigger bootstrap".

Considering the AK2.1 doesn't have the proper bootloader requirements to be used on a DSi so the 2i came out and was then updated freely for 1.4 and 1.4.1 if they did release an Acekard 3 it'd be because they needed to. The Acekard team may be a flash cart team, but they're not like the many R4 clones that don't have an updateable bootloader at all and count on customers purchasing a new card each time.

 

[lenselijer]

Alex Rider: Stormbreaker works fine on the 3ds, they havent changed a thing

proof here: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjQ2Njk5MTQw.html

 

[JoyConG]

I have a question about the resolution.. will we be able to stretch the DS games to fit the 3DS display? Kind of like GBA SP with game boy games

 

[Deleted User]

This could be a clever Ninty ploy to block all flashcarts with their may update- maybe they knew THIS would happen. But the wily AK team are waiting after may because they're clever :3

 

[Rydian]

I have a question about the resolution.. will we be able to stretch the DS games to fit the 3DS display? Kind of like GBA SP with game boy games

Somewhat. The top screen stretches, but maintains a 4:3 aspect ratio, meaning there's still black bars on the sides.

 

[SifJar]

So essentially they just used a different game that did not have the special checks yet? Doesn't that mean Ninty CAN special check all of those games, it's just a huge amount of work?

Pretty much. But I doubt it's a HUGE amount of work for Nintendo. They just dump the bootloader, reconstruct the ROM and look in the file system for edited or different files. Then they add the addresses of those files to the list of addresses to check. Probably takes a day or two max.

And using a different game without checks is the exact same way flash card companies bypassed the 1.4.1 update.

 

[JPhantom]

and the reason why nintendo can't check all the roms is the amount of space required to store the checksums right? maybe they'll do that with the next 3ds revision

 

[AlanJohn]

As I said before...

Nintendo is just waiting and then when the update will come out they will take them down 1 by 1.