CycloDS iEvolution: the first DSi mode flashcart!

[ThePowerOutage]

I didn't realise that slot 1 couldn't access the SD card. Maybe a custom DSiWare? (Though I doubt that will ever happen)

 

[doyama]

I didn't realise that slot 1 couldn't access the SD card. Maybe a custom DSiWare? (Though I doubt that will ever happen)

Well it means that you can't get rid of the SD card slot on the actual cart. However homebrew would still have access so you could have your ROMs on the cart, and your movies/mp3s on the internal SD slot. There might be some benefits to that. I'm not sure if there's any throughput limitation on reading data from slot-1, that would be alleviated by reading from the internal slot?

 

[raulpica]

I'm pretty sure that PSX and N64 are WAY out the DSi's league. I mean, look at the PSP, it's a powerhouse confronted to the DSi, and it can still barely do N64s simplest games. And PSX works so well on it only because it's using a HEAVILY optimized emu directly from Sony itself. The hardware it's theirs, it's obvious that they could manage something like that... but on DSi? Nah. Just look at the few homebrew PSX emulators available for PSP back then, and I guess you could have an estimate of what homebrew programmers can do on DSi... Really low framerates and cracking sound support

It can do quite a few non-simple games at full speed. Ex: Super Mario 64. It's progressing fast.

Not that much of a progress, it has been able to do Super Mario 64 since ages. Just like Mario Kart.
And btw, they're simple games, since they're launch games. Try emulating one of the latter-life N64 games, and you'll see it failing dismally.

 

[gumbyx84]

it currently has no commercial dsi rom support. you can't read/write from the sd after code as run from slot-1 (limitation of the hardware). they haven't unlocked the nand. dsi-ware hasn't been decrypted. so right now this is a cyclods that offers the potential of dsi homebrew (faster cpu clock, more ram, access to the camera).

is that worth $50? it will depend on what they do with homebrew. a movie player running in dsi mode would be pretty sweet. emulation has so much potential. the trick is, how do you get people to code those projects if you are only willing to offer them a $50 flash kit in return?

-another world Check TC's website. They are giving out free dev kits to developers. Just like SuperCard did. Also, TC never said it didn't work with DS commercial ROMs. If it has that feature, it is just like the DSTWO on launch.

As for your comment of that the iEvo can do "right now": When the DSTWO came out, it could do less then half the things SC team promised on launch. At least TC is being upfront with what the card will be able to do at launch.

i think they may be slightly paranoid about a law suit. =P i've been told that the card will ship blank and users will have to use that round device thing in the picture to flash the dsi exploit.May I ask where you heard this? Was it direct from TC?

QUOTE(Another World @ Dec 13 2010, 11:29 PM)

if they were smart they would already be paying homebrew devs to write new exclusive content or to port existing projects. launching with 20 exclusive homebrew projects would have been the right move. otherwise, your just buying this for its potential. for the same price you could pick up the scds2 and get snes emu, gba emu, mame emu, a video player, and more.

Where you this harsh on the DSTWO? Everyone bought the DSTWO on potential alone when it first launched. What makes the iEvo so different? Everyone buys tech (especially game tech) on its potential.

Can I ask what flash cart you currently use? I mean personally, as you use many for review purposes.

 

[Aurora Wright]

@Davi92

It would be hard to reverse engineer the System Menu, as that would be encrypted. Plus, once you start a game, the entire DSi system shuts down everything but that game and what it needs. When you start the game, the system menu no longer functions until a reset. That is how the DSi firmware was set up.

Yep, but someone earlier in this thread said that an "external developer" sold the common key to the team (I don't know if this is true). With it, they could easily have decrypted the contents from NUS.

 

[Dimensional]

@Davi92

It would be hard to reverse engineer the System Menu, as that would be encrypted. Plus, once you start a game, the entire DSi system shuts down everything but that game and what it needs. When you start the game, the system menu no longer functions until a reset. That is how the DSi firmware was set up.

Yep, but someone earlier in this thread said that an "external developer" sold the common key to the team (I don't know if this is true). With it, they could easily have decrypted the contents from NUS.

They said that might have happened, but the chances of it being true are slim.

But as I said before, it wouldn't be possible because once you start a game up, the System Menu shuts down. It only runs one thing at a time, and not with it running in the background.

 

[Aurora Wright]

@Davi92

It would be hard to reverse engineer the System Menu, as that would be encrypted. Plus, once you start a game, the entire DSi system shuts down everything but that game and what it needs. When you start the game, the system menu no longer functions until a reset. That is how the DSi firmware was set up.

Yep, but someone earlier in this thread said that an "external developer" sold the common key to the team (I don't know if this is true). With it, they could easily have decrypted the contents from NUS.

They said that might have happened, but the chances of it being true are slim.

But as I said before, it wouldn't be possible because once you start a game up, the System Menu shuts down. It only runs one thing at a time, and not with it running in the background.

If they have that key, they don't even need a DSi: they can get the System Menu (and the other titles with an available ticket) from the update servers (NUS) and decrypt it.

 

[Blaze163]

I'm pretty sure that PSX and N64 are WAY out the DSi's league. I mean, look at the PSP, it's a powerhouse confronted to the DSi, and it can still barely do N64s simplest games. And PSX works so well on it only because it's using a HEAVILY optimized emu directly from Sony itself. The hardware it's theirs, it's obvious that they could manage something like that... but on DSi? Nah. Just look at the few homebrew PSX emulators available for PSP back then, and I guess you could have an estimate of what homebrew programmers can do on DSi... Really low framerates and cracking sound support

It can do quite a few non-simple games at full speed. Ex: Super Mario 64. It's progressing fast.

Not that much of a progress, it has been able to do Super Mario 64 since ages. Just like Mario Kart.
And btw, they're simple games, since they're launch games. Try emulating one of the latter-life N64 games, and you'll see it failing dismally.

There's an N64 emulator? Sweet. Can it play Lylat Wars or is that too advanced for it?

Also, fascinating though it is to see DSi mode finally cracked, is it really worth it? The 3DS will be out within the next few months. And don't Team Cyclops have other work they should be doing right now? LIKE FIXING GOLDEN SUN?

 

[gumbyx84]

Also, fascinating though it is to see DSi mode finally cracked, is it really worth it? The 3DS will be out within the next few months. And don't Team Cyclops have other work they should be doing right now? LIKE FIXING GOLDEN SUN?

........

1. Pkmn Black and White still have AP issues on many cards. They will fix it when they can. Golden Sun has been out for what, a week or two? Give them time.
2. Yes the 3DS is coming out soon. Most of us (people in the very thread) have already said they will probably be keeping their DS and DSi even after the XL comes out. As someone said before, GBA flash carts didn't die as soon as the DS came out. If the iEvo allows for more advanced homebrew like we hope, that means more to me then having a 3DS flash cart.

 

[Rydian]

Where you this harsh on the DSTWO? Everyone bought the DSTWO on potential alone when it first launched. What makes the iEvo so different?The DSTwo came with the promise that they were developing custom homebrew for it themselves and an SDK, and those were released.

As AW said, there's no such promise from this team, which is why they're saying that would have been nice.

QUOTE(Blaze163 @ Dec 14 2010, 01:30 PM) There's an N64 emulator? Sweet. Can it play Lylat Wars or is that too advanced for it?

It plays it. I didn't try anything further than the training mode, but reports are the full game works (with slowdown). The emulator's updated about weekly.
http://forums.daedalusx64.com/

 

[heartgold]

Update from the site

14.12.2010
A quick clarification in relation to DSi mode for iEVO. Only USA and European consoles will be supported initially in the first iEVO firmware release shipped with the cart. Later firmware builds will support other regions, once our development team has completed the necessary stress testing. Please be assured that only a software firmware update is required, and no additional hardware or hardware revisions will be required to cater for these regions of consoles.

so they have the region locking codes built into the flashcart for each region?

And what's this, a software firmware update on the DS or the flashcart?

 

[Arm73]

Update from the site

14.12.2010
A quick clarification in relation to DSi mode for iEVO. Only USA and European consoles will be supported initially in the first iEVO firmware release shipped with the cart. Later firmware builds will support other regions, once our development team has completed the necessary stress testing. Please be assured that only a software firmware update is required, and no additional hardware or hardware revisions will be required to cater for these regions of consoles.

so they have the region locking codes built into the flashcart for each region?

And what's this, a software firmware update on the DS or the flashcart?

On the flashcart , naturally.

 

[heartgold]

Yes quite obviously, hoping it was the DS for something new and interesting

 

[WiiUBricker]

Update from the site

14.12.2010
A quick clarification in relation to DSi mode for iEVO. Only USA and European consoles will be supported initially in the first iEVO firmware release shipped with the cart. Later firmware builds will support other regions, once our development team has completed the necessary stress testing. Please be assured that only a software firmware update is required, and no additional hardware or hardware revisions will be required to cater for these regions of consoles.

I think that might be proof that TCs card really works on DSi mode and make use of the different system menus of each region, which means that they might are in possesion of the dsi-common-key in order to decrypt the system menus and analyse their contents.

 

[Aurora Wright]

Update from the site

14.12.2010
A quick clarification in relation to DSi mode for iEVO. Only USA and European consoles will be supported initially in the first iEVO firmware release shipped with the cart. Later firmware builds will support other regions, once our development team has completed the necessary stress testing. Please be assured that only a software firmware update is required, and no additional hardware or hardware revisions will be required to cater for these regions of consoles.

That disproves my "theory" (full DSi Enhanced game on the card which loads an hacked savegame on startup), since DSi Enhanced games are region locked, and you'd need a different "iEvo firmware" for each region.
This isn't the case, they support two regions with the same firmware (and soon the remaining one).
Maybe they're exploiting a flaw in the System Menu? (I hope not, a DSi update would fix it).

 

[gumbyx84]

Where you this harsh on the DSTWO? Everyone bought the DSTWO on potential alone when it first launched. What makes the iEvo so different?The DSTwo came with the promise that they were developing custom homebrew for it themselves and an SDK, and those were released.

As AW said, there's no such promise from this team, which is why they're saying that would have been nice.
SC made one app, the iReader. That app did not come out at launch. Emulation was a no show as well.
From the original DSTWO announcement post:

.......
Their newest cart, unsurprisingly named the Supercard DSTWO, will be a mash up between the original DSONE and the hardware that was found in the iPlayer multimedia player. It will of course be DSi compatible, but will most likely not have 'i' in the title, but that is subject to change. That means you're going to have a cart on your hands that can play both Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance games without any additional hardware. There will also be a SNES emulator, but we have not yet had the chance to see this in action.

..........

Here's the official feature list for the Supercard DSTWO:
Supercard Team

1. RealTime Functions: RealTime Save, RealTime Game Guide(txt,bmp,jpg) & RealTime Cheat. (More stable, more easy to use, cheat code compatible with R4 and TT now)
2. Multi Saves (Up to 4 slot), Easy to backup and restore saves.
4. Unlimited MicroSD storage space support. SDHC support. FAT or FAT32.
5. Multiple languages (English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Spanish)
6. Built-in GBA/SNES Emulator.
7. Action Slow Motion (4 levels,).
8. File Management System (Copy, Paste, Cut and Delete, long file name support).
9. eBook (BMP, JPEG, JPG, PNG, TIF, GIF, TXT, PDF).]

All the DSTWO fanboys were more then happy to wait as it was the best card ever made. All I am asking for is the same for the iEvo. They have just announced the product. While they haven't said anything about bundled apps, that doesn't mean it won't happen.

 

[Rydian]

SC made one app, the iReader. That app did not come out at launch. Emulation was a no show as well.

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=268969
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=264282
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=264118
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=264128
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=264088
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=261329
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=253135

Not only did they get released, they also got multiple updates (the SNES one getting some unofficial ones as well), and the team publicly released the SDK, but not before privately releasing it (along with some free DSTwo carts) to a few developers to make sure there would be special homebrew for it. The creator of DSx86 was one such person, and you can read about his progress in the blog on his site.
http://dsx86.patrickaalto.com/

Wherever you're getting your info from, it's quite out of date and I suggest you find another source. If your only source is the news post you quoted, check the fucking timestamp, it's over a year old.

 

[Uncle FEFL]

will be be $50-$60

or less
or more

Thanks Nostradamus.

 

[gumbyx84]

SC made one app, the iReader. That app did not come out at launch. Emulation was a no show as well.http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=268969
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=264282
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=264118
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=264128
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=264088
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=261329
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=253135

Not only did they get released, they also got multiple updates (the SNES one getting some unofficial ones as well), and the team publicly released the SDK, but not before privately releasing it (along with some free DSTwo carts) to a few developers to make sure there would be special homebrew for it. The crezator of DSx86 was one such person, and you can read about his progress in the blog on his site.
http://dsx86.patrickaalto.com/

Wherever you're getting your info from, it's quite out of date and I suggest you find another source. If your only source is the news post you quoted, check the fucking timestamp, it's over a year old.


1. I quoted that news post because it was the oldest, and assumed first, announcement of the DSTWO I could find. I did so to compare what SC Team announced to what TC has announced.
2. Yes those apps were released and have been updated. This was AFTER the DSTWO launched. That is the point I was trying to make. The DSTWO did not have any of this stuff at launch. Re-read my original statement:

SC made one app, the iReader. That app did not come out at launch. Emulation was a no show as well.

3. Did you read the post at TC's website where they said they were giving out dev kits to homebrew developers?
From CyclopDS.com

Team Cyclops will gladly supply legitimate Homebrew application coders with a free iEVO unit to aid development. We are offering a total of 50 pcs of the new iEVO cartridge for free to real Homebrew developers. The first 50 applicants will receive a unit for free before release (One unit per group/site). Please provide details of previous applications or DS programs you coded.

Actually read what people type and do your own damn research before you tell them off.

 

[Rydian]

What happened and what you and I both linked shows that what I've said is true.

Where you this harsh on the DSTWO? Everyone bought the DSTWO on potential alone when it first launched. What makes the iEvo so different?

The DSTwo came with the promise that they were developing custom homebrew for it themselves and an SDK, and those were released.

As AW said, there's no such promise from this team, which is why they're saying that would have been nice.

The DSTwo did not just have potential, it had promise for special homebrew.
This cart does not have promise, just potential.

That was AW's complaint.