Hacking Firmware

[CheatingSoi]

Why does each DS firmware happend to have a different color screen when you pull out the cartridge in pictochat?

 

[aerowalk]

to indicate firmware version ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS_h...0000002-QINU.7F

 

[CheatingSoi]

No, I mean i know it indicates the firmware version. But why does it happen to show this when You pull out the cart in pictochat?

 

[krazykirk]

Well I guess each verson of the firmware handles the ejection of the card differently, for example in the earlier firmwares, pictochat freezes, but in the newer versons the colour changes.

If you're wondering why pictochat crashes when you take the cart out, I'm not sure, but the DS does freeze if you're in any aspect of the DS interface. It probably has something to do with the firmware checking that there a card in the drive. So maybe it's like a computer in like if you plug a usb into the computer, start to transfer the file and take it out, it freaks out. But then again, the DS shouldn't be accessing the game card while pictochat is running, as it doesn't need to, and it also works without any card in the slot.

It's probably some random unintentional thing nintendo put in?

 

[DanTheManMS]

Perhaps it's something Nintendo purposefully added in to make it easier to tell which batch a returned DS came from. Useful for repairwork perhaps.

 

[xcalibur]

Perhaps it's something Nintendo purposefully added in to make it easier to tell which batch a returned DS came from. Useful for repairwork perhaps.

Or it was just something which was never intended but people found this out by accident.

 

[DarkAura]

What I don't understand is why there are different firmwares. Like between the phat and lite there is a difference between weight and stuff, but within each model I can't see how they can be different. I mean, aren't they all the same? And if this is a noob question, slap me cuz I must not be thinking. So tired, yet I still must go tempin'...

 

[Ferrariman]

They changed the firmware to stop Passme, which is dead now.

 

[Psyfira]

Anti piracy measures sound like a good guess. Maybe the DS crashing was an pre-emptive attempt to stop something like a swap magic technique being used to play pirated games in slot 1. I don't know what kind of checks the DS does in it's boot sequence but we know there's something there that verifies the cart is official to the system, they needed to stop someone sticking a fake cart in after that check. (edit: I don't know how slot 1 carts get around that but it took them over a year to figure it out). What they didn't predict was the passme booting DS code from slot 2 instead, which completely by-passes the need to change the cartridge in slot 1.

When you think about it that way it makes sense, but I stress that is all a complete guess. Someone who knows a little more about the hardware might be able to clean up the facts.

 

[DanTheManMS]

My guess is that they merely used different firmwares to indicate various hardware changes. For instance, firmware 5 marked the DS Phats that were using new internal Lite-like parts (hence why v5 or above is needed to gain brightness controls on the Phat using FlashMe). As for the anti-piracy thing, firmware version 4 did manage to block the original PassMe and Wifime, but I'm not sure if that was intentional or not.

 

[CheatingSoi]

Some of it could have to do with just fixing little bugs or something then i guess.