Homebrew GBA on DSi?

[Da-Bomb1]

So how big of difference is there in emulating super nes games compared to gameboy advance games? I've downloaded and used a fully functional snes emulator for all nintendo ds's. It does have it's faults, but the creator is constantly upgrading it. Only downside is that some games will never be playable simply because of hardware found only in certain cartriges.

...please, don't bump year-old threads. Read the date.

But to answer your question, the difference is just mainly that GBA games require more memory than the DS can offer. Currently the only way to run GBA roms on a DS is to use a slot-2 card. You can't run them on the DSi at all - the DSi's extra hardware features haven't been unlocked (at least, not in a way that us normal people can use) yet.

...but really, there should be a warning before people post in an old thread that tells them how old it is.

 

[DanTheManMS]

The fact that you can emulate the SNES on the GBA at close to full speed should tell you that the GBA is much more powerful than the SNES, and therefore much harder to emulate with limited system resources.

 

[Everdred]

Da-Bomb, this is the best stuff I came up with when I was looking for information on the subject. I had legitimate question and it was answered. Thanks for the info.

 

[koji2009]

whoops... should have checked the date before ranting

 

[MG4M3R]

In DSi's case, we don't have access to the full hardware. Once we do, there is absolutely no reason why the smaller GBA games couldn't be fully and (relatively) easily "emulated". Larger games (games that take up the full 16MB, and of course the 32MB) would take a lot more work... some sort of caching system would have to be used... similar to how the SNES emulator on regular DS works but having to deal with much more data. It'd probably lead to quite a few slowdowns on those larger games.

Why we just can't run the gba games from DSi internal memory or SD card. It looks fast enough.

 

[chrisman01]

here we go again... another argument over whether or not the DS/DSi can emulate the GBA

Shields up! All units, brace yourselves!

 

[koji2009]

It honestly depends on how fast the internal ram is with insequential random reads... If I had to venture a guess, I'd say it's not fast enough... but honestly I don't have the data to be sure. As for SD slot, it's definitely not fast enough. It's not about how much data can be streamed from the medium (IE MB/s), but how fast it can be launched (latency). We're talking about hundredths to maybe thousandths of a second here.

Even if you could read it fast enough off of the internal memory, it really wouldn't leave a whole lot of room for individual games.


Really, it all comes down to RAM is fast and most medium are slow. Flash is getting faster and cheaper all the time, but it's not to the point where it can match that quite yet. The only alternatives (and indeed what we were using for GB/C/A/SNES/NES/etc) was NOR which was incredibly expensive, and super slow to write.

 

[codalafin]

Nintendo has made the DSi able to play games through DSiware that have equal-size and larger files than GBA games. This means the DSi has the power to play all Gameboy games. Now that the Acekard2i is out, there will likely be a version of Virtual Boy that runs through the DSi like the one for Wii does. Team Twiizers will find a way to get a homebrew channel for DSi. They already have some forms of hacking on it! Soon after HBC on DSi there will likely be VBA on DSi.

 

[Da-Bomb1]

Nintendo has made the DSi able to play games through DSiware that have equal-size and larger files than GBA games. This means the DSi has the power to play all Gameboy games. Now that the Acekard2i is out, there will likely be a version of Virtual Boy that runs through the DSi like the one for Wii does. Team Twiizers will find a way to get a homebrew channel for DSi. They already have some forms of hacking on it! Soon after HBC on DSi there will likely be VBA on DSi.

...huh? When did Nintendo say that the DSi could play GBA games? Also, the DS's RAM still isn't enough to emulate the biggest ROMs...chances are that, if they ever do release GBA games on a sort of virtual console game, they'd specially program each one so it'll run on the DSi with the memory restraints. It won't be too hard for Nintendo to do on a case-by-case basis if they have the actual source code to work with.

...either way, this thread should be closed.

 

[vergilite]

Nintendo has made the DSi able to play games through DSiware that have equal-size and larger files than GBA games. This means the DSi has the power to play all Gameboy games. Now that the Acekard2i is out, there will likely be a version of Virtual Boy that runs through the DSi like the one for Wii does. Team Twiizers will find a way to get a homebrew channel for DSi. They already have some forms of hacking on it! Soon after HBC on DSi there will likely be VBA on DSi.

please sweet jesus say that you did not just state that because the DSI plays larger files it can play GBA games, n00b, it does not matter about the size of the file but more the requirements to run the said file WHICH THE DSI MAY OR MAY NOT LACK (i say may or may not as no one noes what the future holds and anything could happen)

p.s that hack from team twiizers was just showing how they were able to run custom code in DSI mode e.g. all new DSI features are available to use in a program e.g homebrew

 

[Da-Bomb1]

Nintendo has made the DSi able to play games through DSiware that have equal-size and larger files than GBA games. This means the DSi has the power to play all Gameboy games. Now that the Acekard2i is out, there will likely be a version of Virtual Boy that runs through the DSi like the one for Wii does. Team Twiizers will find a way to get a homebrew channel for DSi. They already have some forms of hacking on it! Soon after HBC on DSi there will likely be VBA on DSi.

please sweet jesus say that you did not just state that because the DSI plays larger files it can play GBA games, n00b, it does not matter about the size of the file but more the requirements to run the said file WHICH THE DSI MAY OR MAY NOT LACK (i say may or may not as no one noes what the future holds and anything could happen)

p.s that hack from team twiizers was just showing how they were able to run custom code in DSI mode e.g. all new DSI features are available to use in a program e.g homebrew

...well, the said 'requirements' is the amount of RAM available, really. Unless, of course, the DSi's new processor is different enough to make natively running GBA games impossible.

 

[koji2009]

Pointless post is pointless? There really wasn't a need to bump a 3 day old post to say that, the mods are well aware of this thread and probably left it open because one open discussion beats 10-15 locked topics about the same thing.

jjc: There actually hasn't been confirmation that FULL access to the DSi is available. There is a chance that the DSi has a third mode specifically for hybrid games or hybrid games may lock down portions of the device itself after starting if it's not being used.

All that has currently been confirmed is that full access to the 16MB of ram is available and we can assume it's safe that any features the game used (like camera) would be available this way as well.

 

[Da-Bomb1]

...somebody should sticky a thread called "DSi CANNOT EMULATE GBA. PERIOD."

 

[DarkLG]

Can't people just wait to see what team twiizers do ?

 

[Da-Bomb1]

Well, they're not gonna make an emulator themselves. Anyway, as it is right now, it's impossible to run GBA games on the DSi.

 

[jackdanielchan]

The DSi has the hardware to run GBA roms, whether or not that people will find out how to run GBA games is another question.

 

[pm_41]

Once Team Twiizers gets HBC on the DSi, then VBA will follow shortly.

 

[Da-Bomb1]

Well, it technically should have the hardware to run GBA games that are smaller than 16MB. Other than that, you'd probably have to do some pretty crazy stuff with the emulator to cut up the bigger ROMs into smaller pieces. Either way, it's pointless to talk about it now, since it's simply impossible as is.

 

[EpicPie]

In DSi's case, we don't have access to the full hardware. Once we do, there is absolutely no reason why the smaller GBA games couldn't be fully and (relatively) easily "emulated". Larger games (games that take up the full 16MB, and of course the 32MB) would take a lot more work... some sort of caching system would have to be used... similar to how the SNES emulator on regular DS works but having to deal with much more data. It'd probably lead to quite a few slowdowns on those larger games.

Why we just can't run the gba games from DSi internal memory or SD card. It looks fast enough.

No means no.

 

[GreenBanana]

Yeah, just look at Scurge Hive!