ROM Hack Improved Nintendo DS Browser patch

[Xleet]

Heres a pic
http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/946/imgp0418ea9.jpg
Its a slightly newer version that has a calender Im trying to position right but everything else is the same.

 

[ComplicatioN]

Pics would be good

 

[litium]

Yeah, it's really cool what you can do. If you have some HTML, CSS, knowledge. You could do some cool things. Even a feed reader or a "index" for the GBATEMP forum. When i've got more free time i'll do a good ammount of patches

 

[RupeeClock]

I got the rom running on my CycloDS, after patching an unpatched rom.
But with the official expansion, or the EZ Flash 3in1, it would complain of no memory inserted and shutdown.

Unpatched rom has no problem with either.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

Heres a pic
http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/946/imgp0418ea9.jpg
Its a slightly newer version that has a calender Im trying to position right but everything else is the same.
Nice how you actually did it. I was gonna a while ago, but gave up when my PC died..

Yeah, it's really cool what you can do. If you have some HTML, CSS, knowledge. You could do some cool things. Even a feed reader or a "index" for the GBATEMP forum. When i've got more free time i'll do a good ammount of patches

Why would you wanna do that, do you KNOW how long it takes just to load the GBAtemp homepage on the browser?
And also the browser needs serious updating, maybe some new features.


QUOTE(RupeeClock @ Dec 14 2008, 07:15 PM)

I got the rom running on my CycloDS, after patching an unpatched rom.
But with the official expansion, or the EZ Flash 3in1, it would complain of no memory inserted and shutdown.

Unpatched rom has no problem with either.

Thats cause the patch is based off an original copy of the rom. It means that if you want it to work perfectly, you have to extract his modifications, and insert them into your copy.

Nice work, and I wish you luck with further modifications... just a request. Could you please make a list of all the files inside the rom? (directories too)
I'm gonna hopefully add some new features (like we need) like flash (maybe... thats the hardest) and also integrate the basic coding of fasterfox.
Even a password saving sys and an external file launcher...
If I have time.

 

[Xleet]

I dont see what good all the files would do they are all .Dat and Bins that show up as boxes in notepad. What do you mean list all the files?

 

[Narin]

Nice work, and I wish you luck with further modifications... just a request. Could you please make a list of all the files inside the rom? (directories too)
I'm gonna hopefully add some new features (like we need) like flash (maybe... thats the hardest) and also integrate the basic coding of fasterfox.
Even a password saving sys and an external file launcher...
If I have time.

Fasterfox is a Firefox Extension and the only thing it does is let you tweak settings in Firefox which you can do using about:config but they give you a GUI for it. It doesn't do anything to speed up the browser itself, just change some settings that you can do yourself. This will not work in the DS Browser as theres no about:config or settings you can change.

Also a external file launcher will not be possible as well as the DS Browser is an official Nintendo DS application. It was meant to run from a DS game cart that had no access to a file system. It doesn't have DLDI support nor any way to access a MicroSD card. It would be more feasible to write a new browser from scratch if you want file system access.

Also the DS browser isn't open source, its compiled code that runs under ARM processors. So hacking the game would require skilled programmers with knowledge in ASM code and ARM processors. Even someone like a password saving interface won't be easy as it will most likely require a few thousand lines of ASM code to do.

All this patch currently does is modify a plain text HTML file and some PNG images withn the NDS file which is very simple to do (Compared to adding in *new* features) as all it requires is unpacking the NDS file and repacking it with the changes.

At any rate, what slows down th DS is that unlike most browsers on the PC, it doesn't handle multi-threaded requests. So it can only do one thing at a time. Most browsers are able to set up multiple HTTP pipes so it can retrieve the main HTML and all the associated files such as images, etc all at the same time which increases browsing speed. The Nintendo DS can only retrieve one file at a time, so it downloads the HTMl, parses it and then downloads each image one afteranother. Also due to the DS having low processor power, it can not handle high speed downloads so the DS is limited at the speed at which it can download which also slows things down.

Also another thing that slows DS Browser down is the RAM expansion pack. The official RAM expansion pack and the RAM is the EZ 3 in 1 is very slow. So when the DS browser downloads and image to store it and then retrieve it from the RAM, it slows things down quite a bit. Though there is a solution for this to increase the rendering time in DS browser by 10-50% by overclocking the RAM. Its possible to overclock the RAM in the EZ 3 in 1 to speed things up quite a bit. While it won't be blazingly fast, it will be a lot faster than before its overclocked.

How to overclock it? Theres a Nintendo DS homebrew app called memtestARM that lets you test the DS memory and many SLOT 2 RAM expansions as well as to modify the clock speeds of a few of them, inclding the EZ 3 in 1. I overclocked my EZ 3 in 1 and had no problems with it and noticed an increase in speed using the DS Browser and homebrew that uses the RAM.

 

[HoTsHoT89]

Narin, memtestARM does not allow you to set the speeds of your SLOT-2 expansion pak. It does mention there in its options menu, but it is only capable of testing out the overclocked speed, but not set it. It has to be set in the program which will take advantage of the faster RAM, such as the port of Quake 2 to the DS. I'm not sure if this is a specific tweak for the EZFlash 3 in 1 as I'm having a M3 MiniSD v3 here, so do correct me if I had made a mistake.

Also, it doesn't really change the clock speeds, but the clock timings instead. It is mentioned in the program itself.