Homebrew How do I add more DSiWare games with No$gba 3.0?

ReyVGM

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I have no$gba 3.0, all the bios files, a "DSi-1.mmc" found online, and DSiWare games in .nds format. I can load any DSiWare game just fine if I set no$gba to load them as regular ROMs, however, you won't be able to save and many games will have graphical issues.

The "DSi-1.mmc" found online already includes some DSiWare games, and those games included work just fine. However, when I try to load another DSiWare ROM, I get an error message. I learned the error is because I'm trying to load a DSiWare (digital) game through the cartridge slot, which is supposed to be for physical games.

So, is there any way to add more DSiWare games to the "DSi-1.mmc" I already have without using a real system, or a way to add more games to the menu with No$gba?

I do not have access to a DSi or a hacked one to dump my own NAND with a different set of games. So any help or suggestion would be appreciated.
 

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The most promising and easy way would be using the virtual SD (DSI-1.SD) in NO$GBA.
From our PM discussion you already know the problems with this method. It's really unfortunate that ninfs does not work for you as well – for the idea of adding DSiWare right to DSI-1.MMC

No$GBA comes with a 128MB virtual SD containing only the MBR partition table and a single empty FAT16 formatted partition.
  • I’ve added .nds files (DSiWare) to this virtual SD and was able to start them directly via unlaunch (their .pub save files must be already present for saving to work).
  • The complete HiyaCFW (SDNAND) works from this virtual SD so I guess adding DSiWare is possible like explained in various tutorials.



Now to the problem:


This 128MB file is far too small, especially with HiyaCFW/SDNAND on it. I tried various other sizes with FAT16 and FAT32 formatted partitions and No$GBA behaves erratically. The following happened:
  • The emulator crashed instead loading unlaunch Filemenu
  • Filemenu shows no SD titles despite DSiWare and/or SDNAND is present
  • Filemenu shows titles – but some have garbage names and do not work. HiyaCFW/SDNAND did not load.
I even made a raw copy from my real 8GB SD from the DSi that is working with unlaunch Filemenu on the real hardware like a charm. Result: garbage names.

Even if unlaunch in the emulator shows weird behavior: Loading Launcher from SysNAND works in any case and the Nintendo software has no problem accessing the (big) virtual SDs. I can copy legit DSiWare titles to SD, open blocks are shown correctly…

=================
Why does unlaunch not work correctly with any other file than the 128MB that comes with the emulator?
Am I doing something wrong here or is this an emulation issue?

Has anybody an idea how to get HiyaCFW/SDNAND with DSiWare working on a bigger virtual SD?
=================
 
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edo9300

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=================
Why does unlaunch not work correctly with any other file than the 128MB that comes with the emulator?
Am I doing something wrong here or is this an emulation issue?

Has anybody an idea how to get HiyaCFW/SDNAND with DSiWare working on a bigger virtual SD?
=================
No$gba+unlaunch work fine with other SD images, I'm currently using a raw dump of my 4gb one. This is an empty 2gb image made by another user, if you want to try it out https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/332693506520776704/559496421842223104/DSi-1.zip
It also correctly works with hiya (not that that's very useful on an emulator)
 

KleinesSinchen

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No$gba+unlaunch work fine with other SD images, I'm currently using a raw dump of my 4gb one. This is an empty 2gb image made by another user, if you want to try it out https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/332693506520776704/559496421842223104/DSi-1.zip
It also correctly works with hiya (not that that's very useful on an emulator)
Wow! Fantastic. Thank you very much!

This 2GB image does work after copying my files there.

I still do not understand why it failed for me so often:
  • 512MB raw copy of old SD
  • 8GB raw copy of my perfectly working SD from actual DSi – this SD is in use every day and has no issues and checked with F3.
  • Various files (different sizes) I have created with truncate, fdisk, mkfs.vfat
Countless tries with FAT16, FAT32, different cluster sizes… all bad. But this empty file you linked boots to HiyaCFW, TWiLight Menu++ works and my .nds DSiWare can be started.

What did I do wrong? I feel so VERY DUMB!
=========

@ReyVGM Seems a bigger virtual SD (hopefully) is the solution to your question after all.
Please try the image linked above, use HiyaCFW helper create an SDNAND and copy everything to the image mounted with OSFMount.

This assumes the DSI-1.MMC you have already has unlaunch because unlaunch is needed to boot into CFW.
 
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ReyVGM

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@ReyVGM Seems a bigger virtual SD (hopefully) is the solution to your question after all.
Please try the image linked above, use HiyaCFW helper create an SDNAND and copy everything to the image mounted with OSFMount.

This assumes the DSI-1.MMC you have already has unlaunch because unlaunch is needed to boot into CFW.

Could you give me step-by-step instructions like you've wonderfully done before? I do not know if the DSI-1.MMC has unlaunch or not since it wasn't done by me. The one I have is the only DSI-1.MMC that's floating around the internet.
 

KleinesSinchen

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Could you give me step-by-step instructions like you've wonderfully done before? I do not know if the DSI-1.MMC has unlaunch or not since it wasn't done by me. The one I have is the only DSI-1.MMC that's floating around the internet.
  • Does it show the “Health and Safety” warning screen each time starting up?
  • When in “Launcher” do you hear background music and sound effects when going left and right through the entries?
Unlaunch disables all this. With unlaunch: No H&S screen, no music, no sounds.

Recent versions (1.8+) of unlaunch have the Filemenu that can be opened by holding (A)+(B) when turning on the DSi. On the emulator I had the most success when pushing those two buttons simultaneously a few times while select some ROM to get the emulation started. Holding the buttons did not work very well.

The best (my opinion) for emulator use is to configure unlaunch so that holding no button simply loads Filemenu.

Example config:
1 Hotkey.png


TWiLight Menu loads a lot of stuff each boot.
2 TWL options.png
2 TWL options b.png


If you don’t have unlaunch and have to start from the beginning your detailed step-by-step guide to install unlaunch and HiyaCFW and/or TWiLight Menu++ is:
https://dsi.cfw.guide/

"Hacking" the virtual DSi like a real one.

Whenever you putting something on the SD is mentioned you mount the virtual DSI-1.SD from @edo9300 ’s post above with OSFMount and do the steps there. NAND backup does not make much sense in the emulator because you already have the image. You can skip this.
I didn’t try myself and hope the Memory Pit exploit works as expected. If the camera app has never been used on this NAND it may start a pointless tutorial which hopefully can be completed.
  • Adding DSiWare for TWiLight Menu++ is just putting the .nds files on the virtual SD.
  • For adding DSiWare to HiyaCFW/SDNAND maybe some of the methods mentioned here can be used.
The only DSi NAND image I could find when searching for a nice “DSi emulation setup” already came with a lot of DSiWare installed – but no unlaunch.

Good luck!
 
Last edited by KleinesSinchen,

ReyVGM

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  • Does it show the “Health and Safety” warning screen each time starting up?
  • When in “Launcher” do you hear background music and sound effects when going left and right through the entries?
Unlaunch disables all this. With unlaunch: No H&S screen, no music, no sounds.

Recent versions (1.8+) of unlaunch have the Filemenu that can be opened by holding (A)+(B) when turning on the DSi. On the emulator I had the most success when pushing those two buttons simultaneously a few times while select some ROM to get the emulation started. Holding the buttons did not work very well.

The best (my opinion) for emulator use is to configure unlaunch so that holding no button simply loads Filemenu.

====
I plan to add some pictures to this post tomorrow – have to go to sleep now.
====


If you don’t have unlaunch and have to start from the beginning your detailed step-by-step guide to install unlaunch and HiyaCFW and/or TWiLight Menu++ is:
https://dsi.cfw.guide/

"Hacking" the virtual DSi like a real one.

Whenever you putting something on the SD is mentioned you mount the virtual DSI-1.SD from @edo9300 ’s post above with OSFMount and do the steps there. NAND backup does not make much sense in the emulator because you already have the image. You can skip this.
I didn’t try myself and hope the Memory Pit exploit works as expected. If the camera app has never been used on this NAND it may start a pointless tutorial which hopefully can be completed.
  • Adding DSiWare for TWiLight Menu++ is just putting the .nds files on the virtual SD.
  • For adding DSiWare to HiyaCFW/SDNAND maybe some of the methods mentioned here can be used.
The only DSi NAND image I could find when searching for a nice “DSi emulation setup” already came with a lot of DSiWare installed – but no unlaunch.

Good luck!

A million thanks. I followed the steps on that guide (and skipped the NAND steps). I installed everything and I was able to add the DSiware games. I chose TWiLight Menu++ since it seemed to be the easiest one (drag and drop into the NDS folder).

I have a few questions:

1) Any way for those added games to appear on the DSi's own menu or do I have to use TWiLight Menu++'s own menu?

2) Any way of showing more than 40 games on the list? Or do I have to add and delete if I want to test the whole DSiware library?
 
Last edited by ReyVGM,

KleinesSinchen

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The installer can be directly booted up as game, there's no need to perform the exploit
You make me feel even more dumb. I surely did no expect the unlaunch installer to work from “cartridge” and did not even bother trying this because https://dsibrew.org/wiki/DSi_exploits says carts have neither SD nor NAND access. I expected the emulator to just show the same behavior and have unlaunch.dsi throw an error when booted as “retail game cart”.
Confirmed working.

A million thanks. I followed the steps on that guide (and skipped the NAND steps). I installed everything and I was able to add the DSiware games. I chose TWiLight Menu++ since it seemed to be the easiest one (drag and drop into the NDS folder).
I have a few questions:
1) Any way for those added games to appear on the DSi's own menu or do I have to use TWiLight Menu++'s own menu?
2) Any way of showing more than 40 games on the list? Or do I have to add and delete if I want to test the whole DSiware library?
Finally!
1) Adding them to SDNAND is more work than drag+drop. Have a look at here.
2) If there are more than 40 ROMs in one folder TWiLight Menu++ splits the folder into pages. Use (L) and (R) switch pages.

If you are using that many DSiWares better stick with TWiLight Menu++. The Nintendo Launcher has a hard limit of 40 games and errors out if more are installed. This would be a constant adding and removing.
Boot time can be vastly improved by disabling any splashes, intros… in the options.
 

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You make me feel even more dumb. I surely did no expect the unlaunch installer to work from “cartridge” and did not even bother trying this because https://dsibrew.org/wiki/DSi_exploits says carts have neither SD nor NAND access. I expected the emulator to just show the same behavior and have unlaunch.dsi throw an error when booted as “retail game cart”.
Confirmed working.


Finally!
1) Adding them to SDNAND is more work than drag+drop. Have a look at here.
2) If there are more than 40 ROMs in one folder TWiLight Menu++ splits the folder into pages. Use (L) and (R) switch pages.

If you are using that many DSiWares better stick with TWiLight Menu++. The Nintendo Launcher has a hard limit of 40 games and errors out if more are installed. This would be a constant adding and removing.
Boot time can be vastly improved by disabling any splashes, intros… in the options.

Thanks a billion for all the help and info. Maybe one day in the future I'll hack a real DSi and add some of the best DSiware games using that method. I doubt there are going to be more than 40 interesting games.
But for now, I want to have them all to take screenshots of the games.
 

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EDIT, 2/4/2020: Whoa, only a day after writing this comment, I got it all to work!! For anyone who wants to give it a try, I've similarly uploaded my setup (w/ TWiLightMenu++, HiyaCFW & its TitleManager) where that other setup can be found. : ) I've linked it in the Reviews section on the original uploader's page. At the end of the post, I'll edit in what I had to do to fix it all...

EDIT, 3/1/2021: Just learned a whole bunch of stuff while trying to replicate my success with melonDS. Go here to find out all about that!

---

THE ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

It is a SERIOUS bit of relief to know you actually got this working, @ReyVGM. I've been trying for months here, and still no luck, hahaha. Which is hilarious, since all I'm trying to do is run Mighty Milky Way. If you could, I'd really like a little talking-through how this worked!

I'm pretty sure we're both using the same easy-to-Google NAND dump as our base (and of course, updated to the newest no$gba from there), so that's why I really want to ask you, haha!

First off, how'd you install Unlaunch? Was it just opening up the DSI rom like any other game, launching it on the menu, etc.? Or did you take another route?

Second, what SD did you use, and did you mount them with OSFMount, as documented? OSFMount isn't working so well for me. I've downloaded the newest version, and whenever I try to unmount any SD file, it never, ever can lock it before dismounting. (What settings did you change when mounting? Were they much more than unchecking Read-only and such?) If I use the SD card that's provided in the original no$gba installation, all my files have garbage-text titles with lots of ▯ symbols. If I try to launch the garbage-text "boot.nds" in there, it crashes my system, with the error "Undefined opcode - with no debug vector defined". If I use the SD card provided by @edo9300 in this thread, then the moment I dismount, all the files disappear from it, and the SD card's empty again.

I AM using Boot Camp with Windows 10 on a MacBook, so... maybe that has something to do with these woes? Unsure, but sure could use your help. Thank you so much, ahead of time!

---

MY SOLUTION: So, guess I'll answer my own questions, haha! Step-by-step, here's what I did...

1) Downloaded the initial pre-made set-up that's floating around the Internet & replaced the older version of no$gba inside of it with the newest (v3.00).

2) For my own peace of mind (and to make navigating later easier), I deleted all the pre-installed games from the initial set-up.

3) Downloaded Unlaunch, opened it up just like a normal game, launched it from the DSi Menu, installed, powered down.

4) Downloaded HiyaCFW Helper & the newest version of 7-Zip along with it.

5) Here's where it gets screwy-- I'm going to guess the newest OSFMount works perfectly fine for Windows users, but as I mentioned, I'm running Windows 10 on Bootcamp. And OSFMount really doesn't seem to like that. So I did something HILARIOUS. I downloaded OSFMount v1.5.1015 (32-bit) from this website and installed it onto a Windows XP machine running in VirtualBox on my Windows 10 on Bootcamp. Which sounds idiotic, I know, but it COMPLETELY WORKED. No more disappearing files or the inability to lock the SD file when dismounting (just as long as all folders are closed when you hit Dismount). (JUNE 2020 UPDATE: VirtualBox on Mac OS X has finally been fixed, so I don't have to run Windows on Windows, hahaha. Was fun while it was necessary.)

6) In lieu of mounting a fake SD through OSFMount on the Windows 10 side, I plugged in a real honest-to-goodness empty SD card into my computer, then ran HiyaCFW Helper. You don't pick a .bin file for the NAND, you change its search selection to "All Files" and select DSi-1.mmc from your no$gba folder. Then I had it dump onto the SD card I had plugged in (it took longer than expected), then after it finally did it all correctly, I just copied off the SD card into another folder for safe-keepsies.

7) On-top of that, I downloaded Title Manager for HiyaCFW as well as some other DSiWare ROMs I wanted to install. I put all those files into one folder called "dsi" and placed it in the folder with all the other HiyaCFW Helper-created stuff, in the root directory.

8) I downloaded @edo9300's amazing 2GB FAT32 (it's the only one I've found that was FAT32 instead of FAT16) SD card from this thread.

9) Then, in the Windows XP VirtualBox machine, I mounted this SD card file using OSFMount. The only settings I changed was unchecking read-only-- that was all I had to do. Then I dragged all those files (the HiyaCFW Helper stuff + the Title Manager/ROMs stuff) into the mounted SD card, then dismounted (successfully, for the first time).

10) After that, I put this SD card file back into my no$gba folder, relaunched no$gba, opening the Unlaunch ROM (any DSi game would trigger the right menu, as clarification).

11) After it booted to the newly installed Unlaunch menu, I selected OPTIONS, then NO BUTTON, then scrolled down through my list of apps down to hiyaCFW (If you don't delete all the installed games, it's going to take a while to scroll all the way down to it), selected that, then finally selected Save & Exit and quit out.

12) After opening up no$gba again and loading up a DSi ROM, the HiyaCFW settings screen came on, and I didn't want to leave any splash screens, so I left it all as-was & pressed Start.

13) Once there, I unwrapped the newly installed TWiLight++ Menu app, opened that (as a warning: sometimes, it just doesn't load correctly-- just close & open again and it should be just fine), then proceeded to the next screen by selecting the -> arrow.

14) From there, I went to the "dsi" folder I'd created earlier, then launched the Title Manager app. Then I selected Install, navigated to the "dsi" folder, selected the game I wanted to install, then selected Install. (I can't say I know the difference between Install & Install System Title, but Install seems to have been the right choice.)

15) After that, I exited TWiLight++ by pressing A on its menu, and whaddyaknow-- waiting for me was the games I'd installed, ready to be unwrapped! FINALLY, I MAY PLAY MIGHTY MILKY WAY. (As a bit of a sidenote on that, I found that Mighty Milky Way doesn't work past the menu screen if I play it on TWiLight++ instead of installing it? Maybe that's just me.)

Hope this helps somebody else, although I somehow doubt there are many Bootcamp users 'round these parts?
 
Last edited by HomeStarRunnerTron,

RoxWubba1

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Hi, I installed HomeStarRunnerTron's setup from archive.org, updated no$gba to v3.01 and tried to get a Steamworld Tower Defense rom (.nds file) to run but I couldn't manage to do it. Am I doing something wrong?

At first I tried simply booting the cartridge from the regular launcher, hiyaCFW, TWM++ and unlaunch. All of them show the image and name properly so I can tell it recognizes the game. It either crashes the emulator with an error or just shows a black screen with no audio.

I then tried getting GodMode9i to work so I could rip the cartridge without having to mount the image file (don't want to mess with OSFMount). In the end I couldn't do that (probably due to issue no. 53 on the gm9i github repo) so I mounted the image from a Linux VM, got gm9i onto the image and then installed it using the title manager to make it launch properly (though it still only works when I navigate to the title file from TWM++ or run it as a cartridge from the stock launcher, not as a cartridge or as a title from hiyaCFW).

I then used gm9i to rip the Steamworld cartridge and installed it with the title manager (I thought installing it would make it run, since the setup post mentioned it worked for the Might games). Now I can launch it from hiyaCFW, unlaunch or TWM++ (by navigating to the title's directory and opening the game file).
These options all crash the emulator with various errors (for the hiya it's "the rom-image has crashed", for the rest it's "undefined opcode - with no debug vector defined").
Interestingly enough, when I launch it from TWM++ it does briefly show a screen where it creates a public save before crashing.
(Note: the same happens when I directly use TWM++ to run the nds file I ripped using gm9i, as opposed to launching the installed title's file in /titles/whatever/whatever/content/)
Even more interestingly, the Mighty games work just fine, and when I googled yesterday I did find Steamworld TD listed as having good (if not perfect, can't remember) compatibility on some list (I think it was on this forum?).

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Did anyone manage to get this game running and/or is anyone interested in trying?

I'm running Windows 10 BTW, I don't think it's relevant but just in case.

Thanks in advance.
 

HomeStarRunnerTron

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I just installed Steamworld Tower Defense and had zero problems either installing it as a System Title and playing it, or playing it from inside TWiLight++ Menu! Maybe it's just because you didn't use OSFMount? Honestly, these .SD files just seem stubborn as all get-out. Even if you think things are correctly copied onto it, they're secretly not being read correctly at all by the system. I'm going to send you a PM! ^_^
 

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