Hacking What simple thing could lead to DS emulation?

[Deleted User]

Deleted

 

[astronautlevel]

The lesson of this is that no "simple" thing can lead to DS emulation. It would be a very complicated process requiring a lot of work by a lot of people, and even with a lot of time and effort it may not be possible.

 

[funnystory]

The lesson of this is that no "simple" thing can lead to DS emulation. It would be a very complicated process requiring a lot of work by a lot of people, and even with a lot of time and effort it may not be possible.

Even if it could be done an actual emulation would be buggy as hell,the r4 option can't be competed with IMO.

 

[Intronaut]

Maybe the extra partition COULD be slot-1

By the way, here's that NDS menu working:

Do you know where I can find the CIA of that NDS menu? I was looking in that iso site and I didn't found it

 

[RocketRobz]

Do you know where I can find the CIA of that NDS menu? I was looking in that iso site and I didn't found it

I think it's taken down by himself.

 

[Billy Acuña]

Sm4sh and MH4U on the o3ds reboot before hand to get more ram. Booting DS games would require a reboot anyway because that's how TWL_FIRM is loaded.

However, we still don't have enough RAM for that

 

[Intronaut]

@Apache Thunder Do you still have the NTR_FIRM in CIA format?

 

[dubbz82]

Even if it could be done an actual emulation would be buggy as hell,the r4 option can't be competed with IMO.

I raise you a dsTwo card?

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Hard for the average Joe/Jane, certainly. Hard for someone well educated in computing science, not at all.

Sorry, coming from someone who has both an associate's degree as well as a bachelor's degree in exactly this, and a few years in this field, I disagree.

 

[gamesquest1]

You guys make me chuckle and cringe all at the same time

 

[funnystory]

I raise you a dsTwo card?

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Sorry, coming from someone who has both an associate's degree as well as a bachelor's degree in exactly this, and a few years in this field, I disagree.

Exactly just because you have a degree in computer science does it make it any harder. I don't have the technicality information to explain why,but I used to run my own community and there were many skilled computer programmers in LUA,c++,java,html,visual basic,it still did not make things like this any easier. People fail to understand how much work goes into the applications that they use.They think they are hackers because they execute someone else's premade code.

 

[tony_2018]

I like how some make it sound so simple when its clearly not, I mean this would've been done by now don't you think?

 

[AtomSmasherMazionga]

it may be technically possible to convert .nds retail roms to a dsiware title, but the problem with this is that dsiware installs to system memory and therfore you could only have about 1-3 roms installed, and the fact that not enough seems to be known about how dsiware and dsi mode works. it may be best to code a sort of .cia converter, but that would probably require taking a .nds rom, converting and or spoofing it or the 3ds itself into thinking that the DS rom in question is actually a 3ds title, therefore theoretically bypassing any need for TWL_firm patching or any such nonsense. this method would also be a S*!t ton of unnecessary work, when simpler, more effective methods exist.

 

[Deleted-236924]

Back in the early days of DS scene, people ran DS roms off slot-2 flashcards. The roms required being patched before they could run off slot-2.

If the games themselves are programmed to read off slot-1, then it means, the roms were patched to redirect the read/write to slot-2, right into the flashcard's memory card.

How did the slot-2 flashcard rom patchers work? Do we even know? Or were all the rom patchers closed-source and only the old slot-2 flashcard makers know how it worked?
If we could figure out how to make that work, wouldn't we then be able to modify slot-1 read/writes to 3DS's SD card rather than slot-2?

And anyway, does TWL_FIRM differentiate between regular DS mode and true DSi-mode? As in, would it shut off access to SD card if running in regular DS mode? Because if it shuts off SD card access, no amount of rom patching will do anything, we would have to modify TWL_FIRM itself, and we've already established that many times.

 

[AtomSmasherMazionga]

Back in the early days of DS scene, people ran DS roms off slot-2 flashcards. The roms required being patched before they could run off slot-2.

If the games themselves are programmed to read off slot-1, then it means, the roms were patched to redirect the read/write to slot-2, right into the flashcard's memory card.

How did the slot-2 flashcard rom patchers work? Do we even know? Or were all the rom patchers closed-source and only the old slot-2 flashcard makers know how it worked?
If we could figure out how to make that work, wouldn't we then be able to modify slot-1 read/writes to 3DS's SD card rather than slot-2?

And anyway, does TWL_FIRM differentiate between regular DS mode and true DSi-mode? As in, would it shut off access to SD card if running in regular DS mode? Because if it shuts off SD card access, no amount of rom patching will do anything, we would have to modify TWL_FIRM itself, and we've already established that many times.

I think that's a very interesting theory. It's definitely possible. And this idea actually gives me an idea as well. Slot 2 on a DS was the GBA slot, so there may be a way to load Roms on a 3ds by, as you said, altering the read/writes of slot 1 to an SD. It may therefore, be possible to not need a modified TWL_FIRM at all, only a modified AGB_FIRM. if we reconstructed said flash carts on a software level, that is. If no solutions can be found from DSi mode, perhaps solutions exist in the GBA mode. Kind of like how for the longest time, PS Vita homebrew solutions existed in the PSP side of things. So perhaps something like this is possible with the 3ds.

 

[Deleted-236924]

AGB_FIRM has nothing to do with this, because that is only used to run in AGB mode. Slot-2 flashcards ran in NTR mode for playing NDS roms.

That, and roms patched for Slot-2 NDS mode cards are going to expect to read game data from slot-2. They'll be running under TWL_FIRM and expecting data from a non-existent slot-2

(To clarify, NTR mode doesn't exist on the 3DS per-se, but TWL_FIRM handles both NTR (original NDS) and TWL (DSi-enhanced and DSi-exclusive/DSiWare.))

Your solution would be to run NDS games in AGB mode, which... would not go very well.


So that brings us back to what I said. We could patch NDS roms back then to run them off slot-2 rather than slot-1, and I mentioned that, but I didn't really know any of the specifics.

I was reading this thread earlier, and in there, someone (TuxSH iirc my bad, it was Aurora Wright) covered this already. Basically, yes, we could patch NDS roms the same way we did back in the early NDS scene. The problem is, it was the flashcart makers who did the job, and I'm pretty sure they kept their methods secret, everything is closed source. Furthermore, we would have to figure out patches for every game individually, which would be such a big amount of work, we don't really have anything motivating us to do it, if we indeed did figure out how to do it. Flashcard makers had incentive enough, due to all the money they were making from selling their flashcards but us? It would be a -lot- of work ("a lot" is an understatement), for... very little gain.

 

[AtomSmasherMazionga]

Ah, I see what you mean now. the flash carts in question ran from the gba slot, but they ran off of ds mode. so then, these carts basically redirected the ds into loading roms from the gba slot? which would mean that they modified read/writes from the ds slot to the gba slot. ...which is what you've been stating all along. my question is, why not make this happen on a software level (i.e. an app) that would essentially be a rom loader? of course, this still presents the problem of actually launching the roms. so then we'd need to patch TWL_FIRM, and somehow incorporate into the patch the capability of launching NDS roms, which would then be launched from said loader. I'm no good at explaning things, so this may just sound like a load of waffle. sorry for that hope you understand what I'm trying to say.

 

[dubbz82]

Ah, I see what you mean now. the flash carts in question ran from the gba slot, but they ran off of ds mode. so then, these carts basically redirected the ds into loading roms from the gba slot? which would mean that they modified read/writes from the ds slot to the gba slot. ...which is what you've been stating all along. my question is, why not make this happen on a software level (i.e. an app) that would essentially be a rom loader? of course, this still presents the problem of actually launching the roms. so then we'd need to patch TWL_FIRM, and somehow incorporate into the patch the capability of launching NDS roms, which would then be launched from said loader. I'm no good at explaning things, so this may just sound like a load of waffle. sorry for that hope you understand what I'm trying to say.

Problem is you'd STILL need a passme type device in your cart slot...granted, I think I still have mine laying around somewhere, but that's not much better than an actual flash card (and probably significantly harder to locate these days). The system is still expecting data to be pushed through and read from the cart slot. It might be an interesting proof of concept if someone could get this going though (however i'm not sure if ANY of the passme type devices would even run in ds mode because of a lack of a banner)

 

[AtomSmasherMazionga]

Problem is you'd STILL need a passme type device in your cart slot...granted, I think I still have mine laying around somewhere, but that's not much better than an actual flash card (and probably significantly harder to locate these days). The system is still expecting data to be pushed through and read from the cart slot. It might be an interesting proof of concept if someone could get this going though (however i'm not sure if ANY of the passme type devices would even run in ds mode because of a lack of a banner)

Which is why it should be made as a 3ds homebrew (like an emulator is) where you would then load up your ROM and your ROM would load in DS mode but without the physical cart being present. It would simpler and easier to just convert the roms to .CIA and be done with it. A lot of cart only 3ds games have been converted to .CIA from people on "That ISO site" fire emblem fates special edition for example. that really ought to be done with NDS Roms somehow.

 

[Apache Thunder]

Well you could rewrite parts of TWL_FIRM to create a virtual slot-2 in FCRAM (perhaps on SD if possible. But it may not be fast enough) and create a simple passme NTR CIA that will load a rom to it and boot it. Booting DS game off slot-2 was what the pre slot-1 flashcarts use to do, so you could do that on a 3DS if you can find a way of mapping unused FCRAM for the virtual slot-2.

It's feasible. AGB_FIRM loads the game rom into FCRAM as well so the process would be similar.

You'd have to work out how you'd load the rom into FCRAM in the first place. NTR mode titles don't normally have SD access. FCRAM is limited (though you'd have a bit more wiggle room with n3DS), so it may not be the best method.

Not to mention the serious changes you'd have to do to TWL_FIRM to allow this. It would probably be less overhead for Arm7/Arm9 then trying to load the roms directly from SD.

But the problem is finding a way of unlocking the extra FCRAM space normally disabled in TWL/NTR mode.

Good luck with that.

 

[Deleted-236924]

Problem is you'd STILL need a passme type device in your cart slot...granted, I think I still have mine laying around somewhere, but that's not much better than an actual flash card (and probably significantly harder to locate these days). The system is still expecting data to be pushed through and read from the cart slot. It might be an interesting proof of concept if someone could get this going though (however i'm not sure if ANY of the passme type devices would even run in ds mode because of a lack of a banner)

Old ones required special hardware in slot-1 (the passme card), and really old ones even had a second cartridge slot on them (a la Action Replay/Gameshark) and required you to have a genuine DS game card inserted to run slot-2 in NDS mode.

But once you were booted into NDS mode, you didn't need anything at all in slot-1 anymore. You did however need to have a DS game cartridge inserted in order for sleep mode to work. You can use a genuine DS game cartridge for this, or there were Dummy Cards that were made specifically for flashme users who wanted to keep sleep mode functionality. Alternatively, passme-type devices themselves might also work, idk.

Now that I've typed all of this, I realized that you probably meant, running unmodified DS roms. Those would expect reads/writes to slot-1, yes. But if we were somehow able to patch NDS roms to read/write to SD card instead, we wouldn't need to have any DS cartridges in slot-1 for it to work.
Didn't feel like deleting my post after I realized that what I was saying probably wasn't relevant to what you were saying, so meh.