Hacking Brightness setting on DS Phat

[joepie91]

R4DS (and other sources) says that the set-display-brightness setting is only for the NDS Lite, but my Phat supports it as well o_o
How is this possible? (Might it be because I bought it when the Lite was out as well, and they updated the firmware/hardware?)

 

[Rod]

(Might it be because I bought it when the Lite was out as well, and they updated the firmware/hardware?)

Bingo. The later versions of the DS Phat had a different firmware (I think?) and had 4 different brightness settings. I heard once that those DS Phat has the white buttons, but I'm not sure of that.

I always wanted to trade my DS Lite for one of those, but never had the luck. Just out of curiosity, how good is the battery life on other settings?

 

[joepie91]

(Might it be because I bought it when the Lite was out as well, and they updated the firmware/hardware?)

Bingo. The later versions of the DS Phat had a different firmware (I think?) and had 4 different brightness settings. I heard once that those DS Phat has the white buttons, but I'm not sure of that.

I always wanted to trade my DS Lite for one of those, but never had the luck. Just out of curiosity, how good is the battery life on other settings?

Well, mine just has dark gray/darker gray buttons like every other phat

(I have a silver one btw)
I wasn't really planning on trading it away, in fact I am going to buy a new metallic blue casing, and a replacement touch screen (mine is broken, see my other thread) from DealExtreme.
I noticed one drawback of this newer version though. I have seen people here in the Netherlands with phats that had Dutch firmware, but mine only supports English and 5 other languages

Not that it's really a problem, since my English is decent enoguh

On the battery life, I noticed that the battery life is quite a bit longer when I set the brightness lower. DPG however drains the battery like hell, even on darkest brightness mode

For those interested about the buying details, I bought it from Dynabyte, a computer and games store chain here in the Netherlands. It was the regular DS+MarioKart package.

I didn't buy a lite on purpose. It was more expensive, and way too lightweight for my liking.

 

[bowlofspiders]

Do you possibly own an acekard?

 

[joepie91]

Do you possibly own an acekard?

Not yet, using a R4DS at the moment. One from an original batch btw, not a clone!

 

[bowlofspiders]

Do you possibly own an acekard?

Not yet, using a R4DS at the moment. One from an original batch btw, not a clone!

Sweet. Those are almost impossible to find anymore.

 

[joepie91]

Do you possibly own an acekard?

Not yet, using a R4DS at the moment. One from an original batch btw, not a clone!

Sweet. Those are almost impossible to find anymore.

I know, that's why I'm so happy with it

I have had it for like 2 years now

 

[FAST6191]

Others have got it more or less correct.
The later batches of the original DS use the same chip as the DS lite. The firmware used did not allow changing this, you can run flashme (version 7 release 2* should take care of it) to gain the ability however (note it has one fewer level than a DS lite).

*some explanation. Loopy/olimar (author of flashme) added support for the DS lite multiple brightness levels in a beta version released after V7 of flashme. A second release of V7 (made some time after the initial release) added detection code to detect the new backlight hardware. V8 is the current version though so you do not really need to know this.

 

[joepie91]

Others have got it more or less correct.
The later batches of the original DS use the same chip as the DS lite. The firmware used did not allow changing this, you can run flashme (version 7 release 2* should take care of it) to gain the ability however (note it has one fewer level than a DS lite).

*some explanation. Loopy/olimar (author of flashme) added support for the DS lite multiple brightness levels in a beta version released after V7 of flashme. A second release of V7 (made some time after the initial release) added detection code to detect the new backlight hardware. V8 is the current version though so you do not really need to know this.

But wait, DS Lite has 4 levels right? So does my phat. So as far as I know, it does not have a level fewer.