Homebrew DSi DOES have GBA RAM

[Nepeta]

It's old, but I've read so many posts about people saying how the DSi doesn't have the GBA RAM or even enough RAM to emulate GBA, I just HAD to post this.

http://gizmodo.com/5181894/virtual-console...to-nintendo-dsi

"At a Japanese Club Nintendo event, Nintendo confirmed that a Virtual Console would be coming to the DSi in Japan, bringing Gameboy and Gameboy Advance titles with it."

 

[Soplox]

i knew it! it was obvious

 

[anaxs]

yeh i heard before that nintendo is planning to do that

 

[Da-Bomb1]

...yeah, the DSi may very well have the RAM to emulate games smaller than 16MB, but we don't exactly have a good way to get code running in DSi mode yet. And unless you do some very drastic stuff, you won't be able to play most GBA games with the 16MB of RAM anyway. ...geez.

 

[purplesludge]

It still only has 16mb and many gba games are 32 mb.

 

[Nepeta]

...yeah, the DSi may very well have the RAM to emulate games smaller than 16MB, but we don't exactly have a good way to get code running in DSi mode yet. And unless you do some very drastic stuff, you won't be able to play most GBA games with the 16MB of RAM anyway. ...geez.

But - The pokemon games are around 32 mbs, and I know for a fact the will want to re-release those

 

[Da-Bomb1]

No GBA games are bigger than 32MB. And where did this "fact" originate from? There is a possibility, yes, but I wouldn't go as far as to saying it's a definite fact. It would be possible for them to run them on the DSi, but chances are that they're gonna do some serious modifying to the ROM to make it stream better to the RAM. It wouldn't be too hard, but who knows if Nintendo would actually go that far? Chances are that they'll charge way too much for legacy GBA games...

 

[Technik]

Well thats good news

 

[DanTheManMS]

No GBA games are bigger than 32MB.

Technically some of the GBA Video carts are 64 MB (full-length movies like Shrek), but that's just nit-picking, heh. They use bankswitching to get larger than 32 MB, and because of this nobody has ever dumped these carts, at least to my knowledge.

 

[myuusmeow]

It still only has 16mb and many gba games are 32 mb.
I wouldn't say many but there are some, Kingdom Hearts CoM and Mother 3 are the only ones that come to mind atm.


QUOTE(Brian10122 @ Jul 31 2009, 08:49 PM) But - The pokemon games are around 32 mbs, and I know for a fact the will want to re-release those

Wrong. All of the GBA Pokemon games are 16 megabytes.

 

[SoLuckys]

he is maybe talking about the gba pokemon hacks (like pokemon genesis=32mb and some others that are a bit larger than 16 mb=pokemon platinum gba)

 

[myuusmeow]

he is maybe talking about the gba pokemon hacks (like pokemon genesis=32mb and some others that are a bit larger than 16 mb=pokemon platinum gba)

Maybe he is but Nintendo obviously is never gonna put those on the DSi.

 

[MakerNekoMizuki]

I thought the GBA had 32 KB of power

. Where are you getting 32 MB from? Filesize of games or something?

 

[worlok375]

Really the dsi really only has 32kb of power? Holy...

 

[SkotUK]

Quoted from nintendo.

"We have no current plans to launch a 'Virtual Console' for the Nintendo DSi."

 

[Veho]

Where are you getting 32 MB from? Filesize of games or something?

Short answer? Yes. To run GBA games in GBA mode you need the amount of RAM equal to the size of the game ROM. The explanation is long and technical.

The DSi may perform some memory juggling and serious Voodoo to run GBA games, so the RAM size wouldn't affect the maximum game size it can run. Maybe. We'll see.

 

[lincruste]

[...]
The DSi may perform some memory juggling and serious Voodoo to run GBA games, so the RAM size wouldn't affect the maximum game size it can run. Maybe. We'll see.

This voodoo stuff is usually called streaming.

 

[DanTheManMS]

...power is not measured in kilobytes. But that's beside the point.

The GBA has a 16 MHz processor and 256 KB of RAM. The reason we need 32 MB of RAM is because we need a single continuous block of space where we can store the rom itself, some place that's fast enough for the GBA to pull data from without it freezing. SD cards are too slow for this task, so RAM is commonly used instead, though NOR flash is also an alternative.

Streaming might work for 32 MB games, but it would cause some visible slowdowns I imagine. It's like running 4 MB games in SNEmulDS - the emulator has to juggle different parts of the ROM in its limited RAM, and this causes some slight pauses on occasion.

Of course, this entire topic is still all speculation.

 

[TM2-Megatron]

I know DSi flashcarts need to be pretty small (obviously, to fit in the slot-1 space), and no doubt it would increase the price of one considerably considering how physically small the RAM would have to be... but would it not be possible for a flashcart manufacturer to include 32MB of some type of RAM in the slot-1 card itself?

 

[granville]

The article in the top post was in itself, taken from a Japanese blog which stated that it got this information from a "Nintendo rep". The article also happens to be from March if you didn't notice. AND it was later debunked by Nintendo themselves as false. Whether the DSi has the power or not, it is irrelevant if the VC won't happen.