You and DS wins. - BlitzCoder.net

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Socoder -> Handheld Coding -> You and DS wins.
Fri, 04 Jan 2008, 01:14
power mousey	you win Jay. You and others here have convinced me about the Nintendo DS and homebrewing. Funny and ironic thing about it, I was at Der Wierschitznel ordering some chilli dogs, polish sandwich and large fries when all of sudden inspiration and information finally hit me concerning what you and others said about the Nintendo DS. I'm going to buy one at Target. And since I have a Target discount card too. yet, just a few quick questions: (1)are there any articles or links on the construction,operation and architecture of the Nintendo DS? I want and like to read and learn some of the hardware and operation of this marvelous and popular hand-held device. (2)what kind of microprocessor(s) does it contain? (3)Can I learn and write assembly language in this homebrew coding? If so, what kind? Is it some kind of Z-80 assembly language? I love the 6502 cpu and assembly language but I like even the Z-80 and its instruction set more. I did a lot of Z-80 assembly language many moons ago. (4)What bare essentials that I will need for homebrewing coding and also Nintendo DS emulation. All serious and honest. Thank you power Kent mousey
Fri, 04 Jan 2008, 03:00
spinal	There is a bunch of hardware info on the DS here. The main processors are Arm9 for main stuff, arm7 for sound+wifi+touchscreen. You can probably do assembly on the DS, I'm almost sure of it. But not know assembly myself, I never looked into it. Bare essentials - DevKitPro has the toolchain and whatnot, a lot of coders prefer to use only this. It has some libs for DS coding. Some coders however consider even this too much and will do thing the really hard way. PALib is a set of really useful functions for loading gfx and sound. As well as most other things you need. A few DS coders consider this cheating, but I'm not one of them. The way I see it, if someone has released tonnes of code to help people, I might as well get helped by it. You will also need either a god DS emulator (or all of them, as DS emulation is no where hear perfect) or a DS and flash cart. The market is currently flooded with DS flash carts. When buying one, have a good read on the net about it first to make sure homebrew compatibility is high for it. Some cards have great 'backup' compatibility but poor homebrew compatibility (which to me seems a poor choice legally). Jay will likely recommend the Datel "Games 'n' Music" card, I won't link to it, as I couldn't quickly google a site that did not sell piracy related junk. I would reccomend what ever card you feel is best after reading the reviews. I would suggest that slot-2 cards are really out dated and not much use anymore. Look for something that has good DLDI support, it is used to read the FAT/FAT32 file system used on many cards these days. Hope that helps you. -=-=- Check out my excellent homepage!
Fri, 04 Jan 2008, 03:23
Jayenkai	As above, but I'd like to suggest, as this is PM we're on about, that you might even like to try doing things without the help of PALib. You do seem to prefer working with the whole technical side of coding, and PALib is more of a helping hand, so in your case I imagine you'll have much more fun hacking away at all the screen registers and sprite memory stuff, and nasty internal things like that! PALib is just a shortcut, in the same way that Blitz lets us not deal with C++, and general Microsoft Bad Decisions!! If you head on over to GBADev.org's DS Dev section, I'm sure they'll help you figure out the whole assembly thing, if it is indeed do-able. I'm pretty sure it would be... I mean, why wouldn't it?! -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Fri, 04 Jan 2008, 03:50
power mousey	thank you Spinal and Jay. I have set aside a separate computer table for the starting tasks at hand. Just another computer,tv, and DVD player on it, but plenty of room nonetheless. You're right Jay, I want to start with some of the hardware and technical side of the Nintendo DS. Even the construction of the device and a little bit about the ARM 9 and 7 micropocessors too. So, with notebook and pencil in hand I will start with the first link Spinal gave me. Thank you all.