Homebrew GBA Emulation

[NES SNES V.B. N64 G.C. Wii WiiU]

I know it has been asked a million times before, but what actually stops it from being done, and is it possible that with the extra ram of the DSi and the common key hacked why can't hackers create an emulator? Even if there is a 16MB size limit to roms why can't it be done? And yes I know that a system has to be 10 times the power to decently emulate the second system, but just how many times more powerful is the DS over the GBA, surely I would think at least 5. And even if it is only 5 the GBA emulated the SNES with less than 10 times the power, even if it only runs at 10-20 fps.

 

[RchUncleSkeleton]

Because you touch yourself at night!

 

[leeday100196]

there is already a gba emulator, but its only for the SCDS2 so suck it in to all those other flashcarts!

 

[jurassicplayer]

Have you checked the specs? The DS is hellishly underpowered for doing anything...apart from playing DS games...most of which are shovelware...

 

[Rydian]

The ARM7 in the DS is actually the same processor the GBA uses, to the point that when you play a GBA game on your DS/Lite, it runs on that processor. The ARM9 that compliments it to form the DS is only like twice the clock speed. So you've got like, three times at max, and that's theoretical because dual-processing emulation is not easy.

There's severe bandwidth limits for slot-1 as well, the DS only has 4MB of RAM, and some of that will be taken up by the emulator's binaries itself. There will be a lot of swapping, and it will be constant and very slow.

We're not taking games running at 5FPS. We're talking 0.05FPS, and that's why nobody's bothered.

tl;dr: It doesn't work because the DS sucks.

It's a joke when it comes to processing power.

 

[NES SNES V.B. N64 G.C. Wii WiiU]

Okay, okay, but the DS has many of the GBA's parts, couldn't they be used to produce a working emulator, like the way the Wii runs Gamecube games.

 

[Rydian]

Okay, okay, but the DS has many of the GBA's parts, couldn't they be used to produce a working emulator, like the way the Wii runs Gamecube games.

That wouldn't be an emulator, that'd be running it natively (just like the wii does). This would involve the hardware, and it is possible and done every day with a slot-2 (GBA slot) flash cart.

For the same reason you can't just run GC games off USB on the Wii, you cannot run GBA games from the DS slot on the DS because that extra hardware does not exist in the old console and is thus shut off. While it is technically possible to turn it back on, the GC/GBA mode won't use it anyways.

Get a DSTwo to emulate, an older DS and a slot-2 to play natively, or you're not getting GBA ROMs on your DS.

 

[Keram]

I love it when people make smart and good explanations.

This thread should be stickied and just pointed to all the other people that just wont stop asking this question.
Or make a thread with a luring topic like "Get your GBA emulation here...", sticky it and in the start post, repeat the topic title with a big, fat, red NOT at the end of it and just giving it the same explanation why there will be no GBA emulation on slot 1 cards without any extra processing help like the DSTWO does.