Homebrew DS(i) Mode hacking progress thread

[Jacklack3]

Looking at your avatar once this is possible you should make

BAtools.

Get it? cuz his name is billy a(something i forgot) and you get the first letters and...

ok im done now.

 

[froggestspirit]

IIRC, there is issues with injecting .nds games with the ways they save.
Also, I'm not sure if making a Nintendon't type thing would be too easy. Yes, 3DS has updated processors, but I'm sure the I/O registers are completely different, and I'm not sure how emulating them would be. Look at Nintendo's own attempt to run GBA in 3DS mode...

But get this to work, and I'll never have to touch my DS lite again

 

[Hiccup]

[...]But get this to work[...]

I hope you aren't implying that there is work in progress for this.

 

[Supster131]

I hope you aren't implying that there is work in progress for this.

I think he meant, "if" it ever worked.

 

[TheNerdWIzard]

IIRC, there is issues with injecting .nds games with the ways they save.
Also, I'm not sure if making a Nintendon't type thing would be too easy. Yes, 3DS has updated processors, but I'm sure the I/O registers are completely different, and I'm not sure how emulating them would be. Look at Nintendo's own attempt to run GBA in 3DS mode...

But get this to work, and I'll never have to touch my DS lite again

GBA games run is GBA mode, not 3DS mode. The 3DS has the GBA firm that GBA games run under.

 

[TuxSH]

Yet even if we achieve compelete TWL_FIRM control one day, launching backups would still be a pain due to how they work (as they use cartridges i/o ports)...

 

[TheNerdWIzard]

@TuxSH I love your tool. I backed up all my saves last night. I was also able to get a save to load in desmume. People had said this wouldn't be possible, yet here it is. This is the start of something magical.

Edit: Except Pokemon HeartGold because I can't find it.

 

[dark_samus3]

Yet even if we achieve compelete TWL_FIRM control one day, launching backups would still be a pain due to how they work (as they use cartridges i/o ports)...

So, more out of curiosity than anything, didn't the GBA do the same thing? AGB_FIRM has to have some sort of setup around this so why couldn't we just do what they did? I understand DS games can be quite a bit bigger than GBA games but how did they set it up so the GBA reads from other registers? I guess they could just load the whole ROM into RAM since it's relatively small... Interesting to see if it's even possible really

 

[Billy Acuña]

So, more out of curiosity than anything, didn't the GBA do the same thing? AGB_FIRM has to have some sort of setup around this so why couldn't we just do what they did? I understand DS games can be quite a bit bigger than GBA games but how did they set it up so the GBA reads from other registers? I guess they could just load the whole ROM into RAM since it's relatively small... Interesting to see if it's even possible really

Well, GBA backups reads from SD,, DS backups can only be read from TWL Card,, we can read DSiWare from the SD, but DSiWare and NDS backups doesn't work as the same, we cannot get DS injection with the current TWL_FIRM.

 

[dark_samus3]

Well, GBA backups reads from SD,, DS backups can only be read from TWL Card,, we can read DSiWare from the SD, but DSiWare and NDS backups doesn't work as the same, we cannot get DS injection with the current TWL_FIRM.

Given that the GBA hardware is built into the 3DS there had to be some sort of redirection being done, the same way DS games can't be loaded from SD GBA games can't be DIRECTLY loaded without a ton of patching, so there has to be something somewhere that makes it possible.

No offense but at the very least do your research before posting

 

[Ryccardo]

So, more out of curiosity than anything, didn't the GBA do the same thing? [...] I guess they could just load the whole ROM into RAM since it's relatively small... Interesting to see if it's even possible really

It's possible, so much that it's actually being done!

It would also be interesting to see how the only downloadable DS game (something from Advance Wars, as a Club Nintendo prize in Japan only) was done. The most widely accepted theory is that the game (which originally wasn't dual mode) was recompiled for DSi!

 

[phalk]

Me thinks the easiest way would be to some homebrew to send the data directly to TWL_FIRM.
This would need two things:

- A way to access TWL_FIRM in 3DS userland mode. (would probably require arm9 or arm11 kernel access, not sure)
- A signature patched TWL_FIRM to load unsigned data.

 

[Billy Acuña]

Me thinks the easiest way would be to some homebrew to send the data directly to TWL_FIRM.
This would need two things:

- A way to access TWL_FIRM in 3DS userland mode. (would probably require arm9 or arm11 kernel access, not sure)
- A signature patched TWL_FIRM to load unsigned data.

ARM9 code requires kernel, and we alreally run unsigned data on TWL_FIRM thanks to rxTools patches, but it doesn't mean that we can run DS backups with it because DSiWare and NDS doesn't work as the same.

 

[Apache Thunder]

Arm7 not accessible from CTR mode. Arm7 is important for TWL software and it uses memory shared by Arm9. This obviously means you can't use it at all while in CTR mode. (because Arm9 only runs one process and that's Process9).

So you'd have to translate a lot of TWL instructions to work on Arm11 where CTR mode software work on. Good luck with that.

 

[Ryccardo]

Well, DSi homebrews are a nice starting point, considering that on paper DS ones can be ported...

...do they even exist?

 

[Supster131]

Come on Nintendo Release some DS games on the eShop, make our life easier.

(It'll probably never happen though)

 

[dark_samus3]

Well, DSi homebrews are a nice starting point, considering that on paper DS ones can be ported...

...do they even exist?

Yeah, sodokuhax, biggest loser exploit, among others

 

[Ryccardo]

Yeah, DSi games have been exploited and thanks to nand editing using those exploits is easier than ever, but I haven't really heard of DSi homebrew to use with those

 

[dark_samus3]

Come on Nintendo Release some DS games on the eShop, make our life easier.

(It'll probably never happen though)

If they were planning to do that they'd have integrated an NTR_FIRM (NTR being the original DS codename) they basically took away any tools we might need to use do exactly what everyone is trying to do... Possibly because of technical limitation or because they just wanted to make our life harder

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Yeah, DSi games have been exploited and thanks to nand editing using those exploits is easier than ever, but I haven't really heard of DSi homebrew to use with those

Well there were homebrews made to take advantage of it... With little modification I believe it was easy to port DS applications

 

[Supster131]

If they were planning to do that they'd have integrated an NTR_FIRM (NTR being the original DS codename) they basically took away any tools we might need to use do exactly what everyone is trying to do... Possibly because of technical limitation or because they just wanted to make our life harder

Most likely the latter. Something like that would make Nintendo money for essentially doing nothing. That or (at least I think they are) DS games are still being sold at decent prices (at some retailers), so they can't be bothered about it.