Hacking Flashcart that works well with sleep mode?

[Root]

I used to use the sleep mode on my DS lite all the time. I'd play for 30-60 minutes a day, closing the lid for sleep mode in between play sessions, rarely actually powering off. I'd only have to charge the device every four or five days. It was beautiful.

Then I got an M3i Zero, and it would run the battery down to flashing red in only 8 or 10 hours of sleep mode. Ugly.

So: Is there a flashcart out there that works well with the DS lite in sleep mode? Five days might be hoping for too much, but is there one that can do 36-48 hours of sleep time? Is there one that can sleep similarly well for the 3DS?

 

[Rydian]

The problem is there's no actual sleep mode.

When you close the lid the DS tells the game to pause (and it's just assumed that games pause, they don't actually have to, look at DS-h for an example), then shuts the backlight off.

Usually the game pausing and then shutting the light off is enough to save battery, but flash carts need additional power because they have extra hardware, like a MicroSD and stuff.

 

[Root]

Thanks for the reply, Rydian. I had read several threads on similar topics, and had seen the DS-h thread. I understand the DS doesn't have a "true" sleep mode, but that's Nintendo's term for it, and that's how it effectively functions with a standard DS cartridge. Are there any flashcarts that do reasonably well with sleep mode?

 

[Sicklyboy]

Thanks for the reply, Rydian. I had read several threads on similar topics, and had seen the DS-h thread. I understand the DS doesn't have a "true" sleep mode, but that's Nintendo's term for it, and that's how it effectively functions with a standard DS cartridge. Are there any flashcarts that do reasonably well with sleep mode?

What Rydian is getting at is that "sleep mode" is dependent on the software that is running, not the cartridge itself; the software "goes to sleep", not the cartridge. So the software will be paused, but the cartridge will still be powered by the system so it can resume operations once the lid is reopened. Thus, as he said how flash carts have varying degrees of hardware on them that a typical cartridge wouldn't have - microSD I/O, on board CPU (to different degrees depending on the card) - they're going to inherently draw more power.

Your best bet is probably going to be to look for something with the most basic functionality it can have. A simple R4 1:1 clone, for example. I had an iTouchDS RTS back in the day for my Lite and my battery life was more or less fine, but that is a discontinued, deprecated, and overall crappy card. Something like the Supercard DSTWO, however, which has a fairly beefy on board CPU (all considered) is (arguably) going to draw more battery power. I can attest to this, as would many others here, but one person tested it so it's generally regarded as "disproven", despite any real world usage scenarios I could see on a day to day basis with my own console.

So again, you MIGHT see a little better battery life with something even simpler like an R4, but then again, you might not. However, they're definitely cheap enough to give it a shot at this point.

 

[Rydian]

DSTwo's CPU drops off when it's not being used. The real-time menus and such are actually patched into the DS ROM that's running, since they run on the DS-side (not the DSTwo's CPU). I've played official carts, carts with extra hardware (HeartGold with IR), an AK2i, an R4i Gold, and a DSTwo, and they all give about the same battery life on my DSi... when playing DS games.

When using the DSTwo's GBA and SNES emulation and other DSTwo-specific homebrew, yeah, there's a big battery life difference.