Homebrew DS(i) Mode hacking progress thread

[EridiumMiner]

Thank you for your hard work!

 

[piratesephiroth]

Executing stuff from the SD card won't magically solve the problem, though. You'd still have to redirect all cart operations to the SD.

 

[Deleted User]

Executing stuff from the SD card won't magically solve the problem, though. You'd still have to redirect all cart operations to the SD.

That's what they're trying to do

 

[piratesephiroth]

That's what they're trying to do

I think it was Normatt who said it would be very diffcult if even possible and if it worked it would be slow.
Let's hope the DSi mode's faster CPU clock compensates for that.

 

[Deleted User]

I think it was Normatt who said it would be very diffcult if even possible and if it worked it would be slow.
Let's hope the DSi mode's faster CPU clock compensates for that.

Well, it's a start! Normatt actually helped them!

 

[cearp]

cool, so people talking before about the problem with save files and stuff, that won't be a problem now?
or, will it still be a problem, just that it was a problem that was far away, and now it's a problem we need to face? lol

(i remember reading something about twl not supporting all the save types that ds games need...?)

 

[intensje]

@Apache Thunder @ahezard

Spoiler: Off-Topic

Thank you so much for your contributions and for being AWESOME!! *Dances the off-topic happy dance!

does this mean we may be able to launch ds games without a card?

 

[cearp]

does this mean we may be able to launch ds games without a card?

Booting NTR games from SD is close at hand I think.

(possibly, yes)

 

[Apache Thunder]

I believe Normmatt has said it would be difficult to get games to run from SD in TWL mode as that's not the only thing you'd have to worry about. TWL mode uses different BIOS SWI functions so NTR games break. You'd have to fix that issue before you even get around to working out SD access.

But now we can do SD and arm9 clock boost from NTR mode so NTR games don't break. This makes things a lot easier to deal with. It's just a matter of someone actually trying to get a game to work from SD at this point. Arm7 is mostly idle in retail games from what I've heard so it may not be a big problem to redirect arm9 slot-1 reads to arm7 for SD reads. Saves can be handled the same way I think. Just have the games read from saves on SD.

akmenu is almost there already but akloader needs to be updated to pach games for SD. That part hasn't been done yet. ahezard has the source to akmenu and he gave me a build that access SD in NTR mode while still being able to access R4 and boot games from R4. Hopefully he'll put the source up for that on his github. It's seperate from the woodR4 forwarder he has up there at the moment.

There is one minor issue. The source of akmenu we do have is a bit dated. So akloader lacks some newer patches to make newer games. Newer builds of akmenu/akloader are closed source sadly. But maybe the patches could be RE'd and added to akloader. We do have the source to that so adding new patches wouldn't be a big issue.

 

[Mazamin]

Big news to report:

https://github.com/ahezard/twl_firm_patcher
Booting NTR games from SD is close at hand I think. (ahezard might not be the one that does it though, he seems interested in using this for other things)

Bit31 lockout patched out of dev launcher. Normmatt helped ahezard find it this morning. I confirmed SD access in NTR mode via modified WoodR4! I can copy files to and from R4 in NTR mode and still boot retail games off R4. This isn't all. All of SCFG appears to have been unlocked as a result, so other TWL hardware can be enabled in NTR mode. Like faster cpu clock speeds. I guess you could enable camera, but does anything even use that...

Not sure about ram though. May not be able to break out of the 4MB limit initially set by dev launcher for NTR mode with this.

Nothing launches from SD as of yet. But things look good. At least now we have a good starting point. Getting SD booting working in NTR mode will make things much easier as things are much more challenging if you were to try and boot an NTR game in TWL mode.

EDIT: Oops posted wrong link. Fixed that.

Thanks to @ahezard, our professional and silent developer(0 posts lol) , wish you best luck!

 

[RocketRobz]

Big news to report:

https://github.com/ahezard/twl_firm_patcher
Booting NTR games from SD is close at hand I think. (ahezard might not be the one that does it though, he seems interested in using this for other things)

Bit31 lockout patched out of dev launcher. Normmatt helped ahezard find it this morning. I confirmed SD access in NTR mode via modified WoodR4! I can copy files to and from R4 in NTR mode and still boot retail games off R4. This isn't all. All of SCFG appears to have been unlocked as a result, so other TWL hardware can be enabled in NTR mode. Like faster cpu clock speeds. I guess you could enable camera, but does anything even use that...

Not sure about ram though. May not be able to break out of the 4MB limit initially set by dev launcher for NTR mode with this.

Nothing launches from SD as of yet. But things look good. At least now we have a good starting point. Getting SD booting working in NTR mode will make things much easier as things are much more challenging if you were to try and boot an NTR game in TWL mode.

EDIT: Oops posted wrong link. Fixed that.

The patcher actually makes Metroid Prime Hunters prone to crashing. It makes 4 beeps, and then the screens go blank.

 

[sieroi]

Fascinating to see something promising come of this. The ability to play DSi-mode ROMs in DSi mode alone is a great prospect.

 

[Apache Thunder]

That's probably from the arm9 speed boost clock. I'd suspect that could cause problems with certain games. Maybe arm9 shouldn't be boosted unconditionally. Some games won't like it. Unless you booted the game vanilla? Not sure how it would cause it to break then...

 

[Deleted User]

That's probably from the arm9 speed boost clock. I'd suspect that could cause problems with certain games. Maybe arm9 shouldn't be boosted unconditionally. Some games won't like it. Unless you booted the game vanilla? Not sure how it would cause it to break then...

Perhaps you can create the option of booting faster or not

 

[Boured]

Big news to report:

https://github.com/ahezard/twl_firm_patcher
Booting NTR games from SD is close at hand I think. (ahezard might not be the one that does it though, he seems interested in using this for other things)

Bit31 lockout patched out of dev launcher. Normmatt helped ahezard find it this morning. I confirmed SD access in NTR mode via modified WoodR4! I can copy files to and from R4 in NTR mode and still boot retail games off R4. This isn't all. All of SCFG appears to have been unlocked as a result, so other TWL hardware can be enabled in NTR mode. Like faster cpu clock speeds. I guess you could enable camera, but does anything even use that...

Not sure about ram though. May not be able to break out of the 4MB limit initially set by dev launcher for NTR mode with this.

Nothing launches from SD as of yet. But things look good. At least now we have a good starting point. Getting SD booting working in NTR mode will make things much easier as things are much more challenging if you were to try and boot an NTR game in TWL mode.

EDIT: Oops posted wrong link. Fixed that.

So since you load it in TWL_FIRM mode when you get SD loading working, it will run perfectly on the O3DS?

 

[RocketRobz]

That's probably from the arm9 speed boost clock. I'd suspect that could cause problems with certain games. Maybe arm9 shouldn't be boosted unconditionally. Some games won't like it. Unless you booted the game vanilla? Not sure how it would cause it to break then...

Well, it's likely to crash in the USA version. Chances of crashing are very low in the EUR version.

 

[I_AM_L_FORCE]

Dang it! I just ordered a flashcart too... I joke, great works you guys. This is pretty much the last major thing to solve in 3DS hacking

 

[RocketRobz]

Perhaps you can create the option of booting faster or not

That's actually an option in mine and ahezard's forwarder templates.

 

[Ekaitz]

I did not think that would be a thing a day or another. It's nice to see that progresses have been made!
Playing DS games and DSi ones in DSi mode is kinda nice.

And for Pokémon fans... Every games from Red&Blue to ORAS (and soon, Sun and Moon) would be playable on a single device without any additional hardware. Great, isn't it?

 

[DeslotlCL]

This is actually great news! Wish you guys the best