Homebrew help moonshell wont load, think ds problem not card

[iwdesigns]

hi everyone, first post so b easy on me...

basically my daughters had a dsi for 3 weeks....long enough for her to break it! ...the problem i have is that moonshel, was working fine, and now isnt loading at all, the screen is getting stuck and asking me to load direct boot...

what ive done...

im a techie, so im no way useless in this area, so i already have scanned the net solidly for answers, i found these results, all ive tried...

reformat micro sd card (tried many times with diff formatters inc. the reccommended panasonic one)
tried new micro sd card
upgraded firmware on card dsitt
upgraded and downgraded the software on card
installed new moonshells numerous times
tried the direct boot nds file
tries alternative boot nds file

installed a few other supposed mp3 players but none wanted to play music!

it gets interesting here....
after i decided it would be easier to smash the thing up, i thought id try it in my sons dsi..... and everything loaded perfectly!!!
no probl;ems whatsoever

soooo.... the problem im lead to beleive is the actual dsi??

is there something accessed on the loadup of moonshell that accesses some internal memory ???

on the loadup screen it does say on top, loading somethin like EWAR mem?? into arm7internal memory , bottom screen shows direct boot message

i really am stumped on this.... if i can get a working mp3 play then ill hapily live without moonshell.... but fixing this would be great

any help apreciated
thanks

 

[DanTheManMS]

Wow. You've pretty much knocked out every troubleshooting step I would have suggested. You've done your research, and you're not lying when you say you're a "techie". I mean, I want to say "try the Panasonic formatt--dammit. Try a new microSD ca--dammit. Try a fresh Moonshell installa--dammit." And I would suggest possibly damaged hardware if it didn't work on your son's DSi.

I have absolutely no idea why it doesn't work in the one DSi and not the other. Perhaps there's a firmware difference on the DSi units themselves? My last suggestion, going back to the NES days, is to clean the contacts with a Q-tip and rubbing alcohol. I highly doubt it'll help anything, but like I said, you've already done everything else I would have normally suggested. I am confounded.

(just so ya know, the traditional DS contains an ARM9 at 66 MHz and an ARM7 at 33 Mhz that is underclocked to 16 MHz when in GBA mode. The ARM7, when in DS mode, is mostly controlled behind-the-scenes within DevKitARM, but with a program as old as Moonshell, it might have its own custom code there though I don't know for sure. Also, I kinda stopped following the hardware development around the DSi era, sorry)

-------- NEW REVELATION - this might help you -------------

EDIT: actually, that's one thing that I don't think you mentioned. Have you tried an older version of Moonshell, like 1.7x? It's not as good, but it served me well in highschool for playing mp3 files and older DPG encoded video files. Anything past 2.x gives me occasional troubles as well. If FileTrip doesn't have the setup program, I might still have it on my hard drive due to my packrat/hoarder nature.
EDIT 2: I took a quick search and unfortunately I do not have the 1.7x setup files. Sorry. If requested, I'll try to find the files on my old Supercard that I never really upgraded, but it'll be a terrible custom upload and I cannot guarantee that it'll work.

 

[iwdesigns]

hi, thanks for the reply!

i actually never thought of the old nes trick...i think ill give that a go.....but i dont think its the ds card, as i just tried another r4 card in the ds, and it wont load moonshell either! so im pretty sure its defo the dsi!
the old moonshell was in chinese....so its a good possibility shes changed somethin or deleted somethin not having a clue what she was doin..... but im unsure how moonshell works on files, and what files it allows access to other than media??

i will try a lower version of moonshell, as long as she can play mp3 then shes happy!
since my first post i have downloaded ds browser, which supposedly supports mp3..... it didnt work, the software reset everytime an mp3 started playing.

ive also tried the ipod one, dsorganise and a couple more....none of them played audio.
it seems the success of moonshell has discouraged coders from making mp3 based apps for the dsi! its just a problem theres no alternative when it breaks.

 

[DanTheManMS]

Huh. You've tried LMP-NG (the iPod clone) and it didn't work? And neither did DSOrganize? Wow.

Wait wait wait... that triggers an old memory here that may or may not help... Try going into the DSi options and disabling Wifi. I vaguely remember that doing so may help homebrew like DSOrganize. It may help for Moonshell and LMP-ng as well.

EDIT: the memory is very vague, so it might not be disabling Wifi that makes it work, and it might be some other option within the DSi settings. Search Google for "dsi dsorganize wifi" for more specifics. This actually makes more sense, as it's more likely that the DSi settings are different between the two devices than it is for the one device to be completely faulty.

 

[Another World]

have you formatted during each debug step? if you formatted once near the middle or the end then some steps would not have been tested properly. -- i only ask this because you didn't mention the order of operations, only that you did 1 thing or the other.

you never mentioned if audio is working at all on your daughter's dsi? can you hear any audio with either a retail game pack or perhaps just the dsi boot-up chime? if it audio works, can you hear sounds using both the speakers and headphones?

does the flash kit run any roms or homebrew with audio? please let us know so we can cross the kit itself off the debug list.

when you say that you installed a new copy of moonshell, did you simply drag/drop on files or did you run the .exe installer and build a new clean copy of moonshell?

when you said you got it working on your son's dsi, did you do so using the same kit, msd, and set-up that you are testing with on your daughter's dsi?

while testing, after a reformat, did you copy back all of the files? it is possible that one or more files are corrupted and causing moonshell to fail when it runs its initial "integrity" scan. if you did not do so, i would advise you to reformat the msd card using the panasonic formatter. put on a clean freshly downloaded copy of the kernel, and then a clean fresh install of moonshell. after that put on a freshly downloaded .mp3 file, and only 1 file. then test...

-another world

 

[avenir]

wtf, if you want to play just music, you can use https://github.com/Tomwi/SoundPlayerDS

There were MoonShell DSi-mply and XenoFile (Actually two years ago, XenoFile was the only music player known to support DSi mode)...

 

[iwdesigns]

hi.... another world (ace name, fave game ever!!! ) ...to answer your questions..

my daughters dsi, will not load moonshell,...i can take the whole card out, put it in my sons dsi, and everything works perfectly!
THEN
i can take my sons r4 card, put it in my daughters dsi, and it wont load moonshell.

so the issue has to be the dsi im sure
the sound on all roms works perfect, the sound on everything is fine. roms load as should, everything works as normal, apart from moonshell will no longer load on her ds!
ill have a look at googling the wifi thing, i can see that being plausable, as i know some r4 cards dont support wifi. it could cause an error.

and to confirm...i installed moonshell both via drag n drop, and also doing the proper install using all the software supplied from the official site. as i just mentioned tho...moonshel on the card works...just not on her dsi!

and to avenir..... im checking out your link now!