Hacking Porting Android to 3DS?

[BORTZ]

Android is laggy and bloated, even on my $700 device. I can't imagine who horrible it would be on my 6 year old 3DS.

 

[dAVID_]

Regarding if the 3DS is powerful enough, I think the New 3DS could run Android since the first Android phone had a slightly weaker processer than the N3DS. RAM might be a problem.

 

[GerbilSoft]

The payload is limited to a few mb in size and only can jump to the actual 3DS OS afterwards as a cfw, which in itself isn't a cfw but merely a set of patches. With sighax none of this needs to happen since the 3DS recognises anything you throw as it with a valid signature, so you can replace the actual OS itself from the bottom up.

So what exactly do you think GodMode9 and Hourglass9 are?

A9LH takes advantage of an oversight in arm9loader to run its own code *instead* of the standard 3DS OS. It doesn't *run* the 3DS OS by itself.

 

[Halvorsen]

So what exactly do you think GodMode9 and Hourglass9 are?

A9LH takes advantage of an oversight in arm9loader. It doesn't *run* the 3DS OS by itself.

arm9 programs. This has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. You can't have an entire OS in arm9 mode.

...well you technically can. But no.

 

[GerbilSoft]

arm9 programs. This has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. You can't have an entire OS in arm9 mode.

...well you technically can. But no.

And they don't run in the 3DS OS. They're their own "mini OSes".

For Android, you'd have an ARM9 bootstrap that loads a Linux kernel to run on the ARM11. You'd need the same thing with Sighax, since the ARM11 can't access the eMMC or SD card directly

 

[Halvorsen]

And they don't run in the 3DS OS. They're their own "mini OSes".

For Android, you'd have an ARM9 bootstrap that loads a Linux kernel to run on the ARM11. You'd need the same thing with Sighax, since the ARM11 can't access the eMMC or SD card directly

I never said that arm9loaderhax runs in the 3DS OS. You may have inferred that due to my bad wording, sorry.

I only said it's only feasible to run the existing 3DS OS as a result of its limitations.

 

[GerbilSoft]

I never said that arm9loaderhax runs in the 3DS OS.

I only said it's only feasible to run the existing 3DS OS as a result of its limitations.

No, it's perfectly feasible to load other OSes. The only "limitation" is the size of the stages on eMMC. The payload on the SD card (or CTR-NAND partition) doesn't have those limitations.

In fact, this has already been done for standard GNU/Linux: https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-linux-for-the-3ds.407187/

 

[Halvorsen]

No, it's perfectly feasible to load other OSes. The only "limitation" is the size of the stages on eMMC. The payload on the SD card (or CTR-NAND partition) doesn't have those limitations.

In fact, this has already been done for standard GNU/Linux: https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-linux-for-the-3ds.407187/

The stages are a few kilobytes at most. And ctrnand/sd payload sizes do actually have size limitations, in fact one of the reasons a9lh 2.0 (released almost a year ago) exists is to futureproof itself for theoretically bigger (SD) payload sizes. IIRC, that limit is only a few mb.

 

[GerbilSoft]

The stages are a few kilobytes at most. And ctrnand/sd payload sizes do actually have size limitations, in fact one of the reasons a9lh 2.0 (released almost a year ago) exists is to futureproof itself for theoretically bigger (SD) payload sizes. IIRC, that limit is only a few mb.

Then what you do is you have a chainloader as the payload to load a larger kernel. Problem solved; no Sighax required.

EDIT: The "futureproofing" you're referring to was added in SafeA9LHInstaller v2.0.2 (and fixed in v2.0.3) to allow larger stage2 payloads on the eMMC (up to 563,712 bytes). That doesn't affect the size of arm9loaderhax.bin on the SD card or CTR-NAND partition.

 

[Halvorsen]

Then what you do is you have a chainloader as the payload to load a larger kernel. Problem solved; no Sighax required.

It works.

 

[jamespoo]

would be a good idea but the 3ds would need more ram and at best you would only get android 2.2 to run i bet and would be laggy

maybe somebody could run windows ce on it?

 

[APartOfMe]

would be a good idea but the 3ds would need more ram and at best you would only get android 2.2 to run i bet and would be laggy

maybe somebody could run windows ce on it?

A nearly 3 year old bump? That has to be some kind of record /s