homebrew equipment for nds lite

[briannaplaysbassyea]

my brother got a ds lite for christmas. and i've been doing a lot of tech stuff for him so he can get the wifi connection from our router at home. then my brother asked if we could go on the internet on the ds. i looked into it, being the techie in the family, and i saw the ds browser. it looks good and all, but there's the lack of flash support and what not.

one. i read about this homebrew stuff. so i could in turn get a browser with flash support (perhaps) i apologize if this is related to emulators. two. i noticed some of the equipment for homebrewing is stuff i already have. such as sd cards and flash drives. but the other things like the flash kits, adapters, slot-1 this, slot-2 that, wires, cables, and bears oh my!

so my question is, after a lengthy intro: is it possible to make my own homebrew equipment with mini/regular sd cards, flash drives (usb), and destroyed and empty old gba game cartridges? yes its quite the project but could it be done, and can i see some links if possible? or should i just wait for some money to float my way to buy more appropriate equipment.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

Sorry, but it's a lot more complicated than that. You can't make your own DS homebrew devices. DS homebrew loaders require not only an SD/MicroSD controller but a boot ROM that the DS sees as a game. The DS has to see the loader device as a game and load the device's firmware (a program that usually displays a menu and has code for loading the homebrew programs into the DS's RAM). You'd need a special chip that speaks the "DS's language" and also can control a microSD. If you're looking for something on the cheap, I'd recommend Datel's Games n' Music (if they still make it). It's not the greatest loader out there, but it does its job, is available (or at least, was available) in retail stores, can't be used for game piracy, and is pretty cheap compared to most. It is a bit slow, so if you wanted to do video, probably not the best choice. I'd list others, but since the other devices I know of can be used for software piracy, I best not tell you them. Google can help you there.

As for a browser with Flash, not happening. Flash technology is:

1) Licensed by Adobe
2) Closed source
3) Demanding on CPU

Homebrew developers don't have the money to get a license, and even if they did, they don't have any corporate backing. Although I would gladly license to a homebrew developer, big companies only like to license to other big companies so they can have their big corporate playground full of other big corporations. Second, you can't just add Flash because you can't port the source code - it is closed source and only Adobe has the code. Last, my 624MHz PDA (uses a similar processor architecture to the DS) can barely do Flash video at full speed. The DS's 66MHz main CPU isn't going to cut it, even if it were licensed and open source, the DS just isn't beefy enough to crunch the numbers.

The DS browser is pretty much the top of the line as far as DS browsing goes. Sorry, but that's system limitations coming into play. I would still recommend homebrew though, lots of good non-emulator stuff (drawing apps, organizers, mp3 and video, DS Linux, small games, useful utilities, WiFi applications, and more) for DS and homebrew opens up a whole new world. Don't be put off that homebrew is all illegal piracy emulation and is all bad, there's a lot of good stuff to be found with it.

 

[briannaplaysbassyea]

thank you.


looks like i'll have to save my money up. :/

but the other info in your post was incredibly helpful. i want the browser but my brother would probably enjoy the homebrew mp3 players and other things.

some one told me that you could tear apart an old pokemon game wire in an sd card and make it a rom. i thought it sounded crazy but plausible. had to check with more correct information.

so again thank you. and it does put some relief in my heart that not all homebrew is illegal emulators. i'm a kid so my information isn't totally in order and i could misinterpret info. good thing there's places like this. so little nerdlets like me can get the right info. and more importantly not get thrown in jail!

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

Lol, good to know more people are interested in homebrew. There's probably some truth to the Pokemon-game-gone-SD-reader, but it is probably something that would require more work than it's worth (it would be a Slot 2 device, so right there you'd need a PassMe, which is a DS card containing software that redirects the DS's loading program to the GBA slot, where it can load DS software). The DS only natively loads DS software from the DS slot ("Slot 1") so to even consider loading from the GBA slot you'll at least need something in Slot 1 to point the DS's software in the right direction.