Hacking Gateway 3DS power consumption

Typhin

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As much as I'm getting fairly experienced with all of this stuff, I'm still quite new to the 3DS scene in general. The question I have, here, is do you still pick up game-specific street passes when carts aren't loaded? I'm assuming yes, since that seems to be how this all works, and I can't imagine the Gateway factor changing things, since it seems to be associated to your profile, but assuming makes an ass of you and me, as the saying goes.
Just like you can pick up street passes for retail games without having that card in the system, you still get street passes for games with the Gateway card removed or with roms unloaded. The title is registered to the system, and streetpass data is saved to the system SD card, so streetpass exchanges can happen with the game not present. The game then checks for and loads from the SD card, kinda like picking up mail from a mailbox.
 
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Ericss

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Press select and then B to "unload" the game.
That doesn't unmount the game. Well, it does, but then it re-mounts the ROM again. The only way I know of is selecting a ROM that gives a fragmentation error and then pressing B. And even then, you can't do that on a N3DS.

As crazy as that sounds there is valid argument with some electronics that the process of turning them Off/on is harder on them than just leaving them on. I will leave that up to the engineers to argue about however.
I would like to hear opinions by savvy people on this.
 

Ichii Giki

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That doesn't unmount the game. Well, it does, but then it re-mounts the ROM again. The only way I know of is selecting a ROM that gives a fragmentation error and then pressing B. And even then, you can't do that on a N3DS.

This totally unloads the rom on a Gateway system, including N3DS. I just confirmed by following these steps:

1. Boot into GW EmuNAND on N3DS (or O3DS). Cartridge slot on home menu should show empty.
2. Press Select and move the cursor to select a game, then press A. The game will load and display in the cartridge slot location on the home screen.
3. Press Select again, and once the GW multi-rom menu comes up, press B. This should close the multi-rom menu and there should no longer be any game displayed in the cartridge slot location on the home screen.

I'm not sure what you mean by "re-mounts the ROM again," but this is how it works for me and my battery seems to last pretty long this way.
 

Artemis-kun

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As crazy as that sounds there is valid argument with some electronics that the process of turning them Off/on is harder on them than just leaving them on. I will leave that up to the engineers to argue about however.
I would like to hear opinions by savvy people on this.
I'm an engineer by trade, and by nature, and I can confirm that this was once an issue, and still is depending on the type of electronic being used. Specifically, when you have things with moving parts, such as traditional hard disk drives or optical disc drives, the power cycle absolutely is harder on them than simply leaving these sorts of things running. However, in the current age of NANDs and flash-based memory and drives, the 'to power off or not to power off' argument is mostly moot. There are pluses and minuses to both sides of the fence, and whether you choose to be on one side or the other, there's no clear advantage, beyond not constantly draining your li-ion cells. That's about the only constant you want to avoid, but even then, it's no guarantee that 2 different cells on opposite sides of the fence of use will actually end up ahead of the other. It just seems to be, on average, keeping your charge above 60% tends to result in a longer lasting battery life.
 

Ericss

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This totally unloads the rom on a Gateway system, including N3DS. I just confirmed by following these steps:

1. Boot into GW EmuNAND on N3DS (or O3DS). Cartridge slot on home menu should show empty.
2. Press Select and move the cursor to select a game, then press A. The game will load and display in the cartridge slot location on the home screen.
3. Press Select again, and once the GW multi-rom menu comes up, press B. This should close the multi-rom menu and there should no longer be any game displayed in the cartridge slot location on the home screen.

I'm not sure what you mean by "re-mounts the ROM again," but this is how it works for me and my battery seems to last pretty long this way.
Whaaaat!? My N3DS hangs when I press B on the multirom menu, and my O3DS re-mounts the last game two seconds after I close the menu :unsure:

I'm an engineer by trade, and by nature, and I can confirm that this was once an issue, and still is depending on the type of electronic being used. Specifically, when you have things with moving parts, such as traditional hard disk drives or optical disc drives, the power cycle absolutely is harder on them than simply leaving these sorts of things running. However, in the current age of NANDs and flash-based memory and drives, the 'to power off or not to power off' argument is mostly moot. There are pluses and minuses to both sides of the fence, and whether you choose to be on one side or the other, there's no clear advantage, beyond not constantly draining your li-ion cells. That's about the only constant you want to avoid, but even then, it's no guarantee that 2 different cells on opposite sides of the fence of use will actually end up ahead of the other. It just seems to be, on average, keeping your charge above 60% tends to result in a longer lasting battery life.
Thank you! Such an elaborate explanation :yay:
 
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I know that the gateway will use more power because it has its own cpu inside.
I was wondering will the gateway consume more power if I play a CIA games while leaving the card inside? Will the gateway card be idle while playing CIA games or will it still use some juice?
It does for sure.
At first I was okay with it, a few times the GW card drained my battery dry, so I had to reenter EmuNAND - but that wasn't that much of a problem for me. But one time after this story, I charged the system back up, and launched my game, only to find that the savefile was corrupted. All the ROMS were okay though. So beware
 

xdarkmario

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Lol. You must not be an audiophile. My dad is and he and his audiophile buddies insist their equipment sounds like shit unless it has been on for at least two weeks. :rolleyes:

As crazy as that sounds there is valid argument with some electronics that the process of turning them Off/on is harder on them than just leaving them on. I will leave that up to the engineers to argue about however.

wow thats a interesting statement you got there. i haven't heard that (speaker Amps im assuming?) sound better after a extended amount of time powered on. ill have to look into that.

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

Came here to check if anyone was experiencing the same. Yay! not imagining things! I've been noticing with my N3ds and it was pissing me off. played for half an hour yesterday on a full charge. put it in sleep mode even using the power off button to get it to the grey screen. went to sleep and work, got home and it was turned off. tried turning it on only blinking red lights... that's like Iphone battery life... I'm going to try and unload the rom as suggested.
woh, no i think something is wrong with your N3ds. during the day time ill play for a while from the gateway cart then ill leave the house while leaving my game active and n3ds closed then ill return to it about 7 or so hours and maybe ill loose about 1-2 bars.
even last sunday i turned on my N3ds at 10:30 AM and left it in sleep mode (still with gateway in) to streetpass and at about at 6PM the battery had only dropped by 1 bar...
not to mention i also have a Supercard dstwo and ill play games with the Processor set to full 500+mhz and i still dont drop that fast (even though ds games usually dont take that much battery life)
 

apoptygma

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do people use AAA batteries in there 3ds's lol i always leave my gateway in all the time and i streetpass all day with the gateway still in and that only takes about 1-2 bars in 8 hours

playing from the gateway i get 5 or so hours straight WITH online.
i dont see a reason to worry about the gateway's power consumption.

I used to leave my gateway in and charge about once every 2 days, now I take it out and charge once a week. It makes a big difference.
 

Artemis-kun

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I used to leave my gateway in and charge about once every 2 days, now I take it out and charge once a week. It makes a big difference.
I'll agree with this, I'd been leaving games suspended/loaded in my Gateway all this time, and while it was only a single bar of battery that would drain through a day of being asleep, now that I keep games unloaded as suggested, I don't even lose a single bar per day. So, it seems the findings in this thread hold up well in practice, as well.
 
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tony_2018

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For some reason it seems like people want to be concern about everything.....don't want to lose game progress? Just save and turn off? Simple...THAT SIMPLE.
 

blaydes99

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Whaaaat!? My N3DS hangs when I press B on the multirom menu, and my O3DS re-mounts the last game two seconds after I close the menu :unsure:

Guys, if option 1 hangs your N3DS, then as I stated, use option #2: "2. Eject the gateway card and re-insert it when you are done playing."

This means that after you quit your game and are back in the home menu, physically eject the gateway card and then re-insert it. Close your N3DS or O3DS and it will sleep like a baby. :)
 
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BerserkLeon

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If the contacts are connected to the cart slot on the 3ds, power flows to it.
Er, let's put it this way. If the 3ds is on and the cart is in, the cart is 'ON'.
There should really be something to prevent drain like that, but there was never anything for DS and they probably didn't think about it, since no official cart would have its own CPU.

Also if you got the proper voltage... which is what, around 3 batteries? Some NiMH AAAs might last longer than the official battery. They usually have around 1000 mAh and the official is 1500 or so, no?
Though I'm no electronics wiz so I don't know if mAh would be cumulative or if it'd drain all at once, probably the latter. In which case some high-capacity AAs would get you better battery life than the official battery. (a quick google returned some Sanyo 2700 mAh AAs)
 

Artemis-kun

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So even if I am playing a .cia game, just leaving the Gateway card in drains the battery?
The card can be in the 3ds, so long as you do not have a ROM image loaded, it will not be active and draining the battery. I can confirm this behaviour with 100% confidence regardless of what anyone else may claim, as I have gone weeks now with ROMs loaded, as I was under the impression that you had to have a game loaded for streetpasses to pick up, and observed that I'd lose a bar from the gauge for a full day's sleeping, but now that I have been leaving images unloaded, I go multiple days before even a single bar of the gauge is used.
 

blaydes99

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If the contacts are connected to the cart slot on the 3ds, power flows to it. Er, let's put it this way. If the 3ds is on and the cart is in, the cart is 'ON'.
There should really be something to prevent drain like that, but there was never anything for DS and they probably didn't think about it, since no official cart would have its own CPU.

In electronics, power does not flow unless a circuit is completed/closed (unless you have a short). This is one of the very first basic concepts of electronics and electricity.

When a rom is not loaded, the power drain from the Gateway is virtually zero. When I'm not regularly gaming, I'll leave my N3DS in sleep mode with the Gateway cart inserted (no rom loaded) and it will go for weeks at a time before the light finally turns red, signifying that it needs a charge.

In other words, the N3DS sleeps just as long without the Gateway inserted as when the Gateway is inserted, with no rom loaded.
 

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