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Nintendo DS Modded to Play GB and GBC Carts 94
Steve E. writes "Apparently someone has made the first hardware mod to the Nintendo DS. An entry over at the Nintendo DS Livejournal Community gives detailed instructions on how to modify a DS to play legacy cartridges." From the post: "1. Disassemble your Nintendo DS. This step is fairly self explanatory, if you can't figure out how to take your DS apart, you should stop here."
Hoax. (Score:1)
I am suspicious... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I am suspicious... (Score:4, Informative)
It's likely though that after nintendo burns up their (presumable) back stock or order commitments of GBA CPU's that they will switch to a CPU that does not contain these extra elements and this modification may become impossible.
Re:I am suspicious... (Score:2)
How about a mod to get back the support for the GBA link cable games? That feature-death was a nasty one. Of course I'm being unrealistic - that's most likely impossible due to different architecture.
Adapters (Score:3, Informative)
Or they were planning on offerign some sort of stacked-cart like the old Game Genie as a "special offer" for legacy players - something very few will want, but might pay a lot for.
It has a history:
Re:Adapters (Score:2)
That's interesting. What games are known for this?
GBA Video (Score:2, Informative)
What games are known for [intentionally freezing on Game Boy Player]?
Not "games" per se [gba-video.com]. Unlike the PlayStation 2 and Xbox video game consoles, the GameCube cannot output Macrovision Video copy protection signals.
Re:GBA Video (Score:2)
Re:Adapters (Score:1)
It's about videotaping (Score:2)
I think [GBA Video titles freezing on Game Boy Player is] less about videotaping and more about publishing rights.
I suspected that too until I read this [nintendo.com]:
Unlike on the Xbox and PlayStation 2, there is no Macrovision chip in the GameCube.
Re:I am suspicious... (Score:2)
Voltage concerns (Score:1)
The Game Boy Z80 processor and Game Boy Game Paks also run at 5.0 volts rather than the 3.3 volts of the rest of the GBA's circuitry.
Re:I am suspicious... (Score:2)
Re:I am suspicious... (Score:1)
Re:rtfa? (Score:1)
Re:rtfa? (Score:2)
Re:rtfa? (Score:1)
This makes me happy! (Score:1)
This isn't the type of news that is gonna make me run out and buy a DS immediately, but it is enough for me to give it consideration next time I decide to spend over a hundreds bucks on a toy.
Re:This makes me happy! (Score:2)
Why don't you just wait for an emulator?
You may be out of luck for GBC games, but there is a rather good GB emulator (Goomba [webpersona.com]) that you can load onto a GBA flash cart with all your games. That is, unless Nintendo has done something to the DS to make it not read GBA flash carts.
Re:This makes me happy! (Score:3, Informative)
Nintendo DS reads GBA flash carts just fine, so Goomba works as well on a DS as on a GBA. Two caveats:
Re:This makes me happy! (Score:2, Funny)
WTF? Do you have a ceremonial hammer you smash your old consoles with whenever you get a new one? Is your SP going to vanish into thin air the moment you get your receipt for your DS from the store clerk? Or do people actually go through those "Trade in your old system and save $0.02!" deals at EB?
The DS isn't supposed to replace or compete with the GBA, it's supposed to be "something else."
Re:This makes me happy! (Score:1)
Do you have a ceremonial hammer you smash your old consoles with whenever you get a new one?
Maybe he just wants to bring only ONE console with him when he travels...
The DS isn't supposed to replace or compete with the GBA, it's supposed to be "something else."
Nonsense. That's what nintendo says. They're both mobile gaming platforms, therefore they compete. If I want one of these, I will decide for one of them. I won't buy both "completely different platforms". They are definitely competitors.
Re:This makes me happy! (Score:1)
*SMASH*
Re:This makes me happy! (Score:1)
It will be the only game ever played on that Gameboy Advance... You can tell me what you want, but Tetris hasn't been beaten in playability ever since it appeared on the Gameboy classic. A Gameboy DS would be useless for my mom.
Why?? (Score:1)
Sounds like another case of Y?BIC (why? because I Can) or DSOTAOS (Do Something Outrageous So I can appear on Slashdot)...
Re:Why?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why?? (Score:2)
As I said in another post, they probably plan on dropping the current GBA processor in the DS in favor of one without the vestigal Z80 stuff in a future hardware revision, so this modification may not continue to work until they run out of their current stock or order commitments on the chip.
Re:Why?? (Score:2)
Also, if they expect to build the GBA-SP for a while, it also makes sense to have one invent
Re:Why?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention the article also includes a tip on increasing the wifi range, which certainly seems useful regardless of if you are interested in GB/GBC games or not.
Sounds to me like another case of CBIMCAE (Complaining because I must complain about everything)
Re:Why?? (Score:1)
LJ Drama (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
because they've still got a shitload of SP units sitting on store shelves and people still need a reason to buy the SP (other than the low price point), I assume.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:1)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
um, spike666 here from #dsdev
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:1)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Fake crap (Score:2, Informative)
Joke? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Joke? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Joke? (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree that the post sounds suspicious, but I'd like to play devils advocate. The refutation sounds almost as suspicious as the orginal post.
> Well, grounding an already grounded wire and grounding the antenna isn't going to get you anywhere my friends.
That depends on the current involved and the c
Re:Joke? (Score:1)
That depends on the current involved and the capacity of the traces. The extra current drain might be required to handle running the cart at 5V instead of 3.3V.
HIGHLY unlikely -- even 5mil traces can handle enough current to take care of the return path for a 5V cartridge that is composed of a ROM and some memory decode logic. Not a nice way to ground a system but certainly workable.
I can't think of a good reason for grounding the antenna, but I can think of some plausible areas to investigate. Sin
Re:Cowardice (Score:2)
Re:Joke? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a NON-STORY and Zonk, the editor, should have some common sense beaten into him for posting it to the main page.
Bad News and Good News (Score:3, Informative)
The good news is, you can play GB and GBC games on a DS if you have a flash cart.
Re:Bad News and Good News (Score:2)
Re:Bad News and Good News (Score:2)
Its all code. It shouldn't be that difficult to write a gba rom that wraps gb(c) roms.
What I wonder is if you can programmically access the data in the GBA slot with the NDS game image.
If so it could open up a whole range of options for coolness. (Like an mp3 player NDS cartridge that uses GBA cartridges as disks.)
Re:Bad News and Good News (Score:2, Informative)
It shouldn't be that difficult to write a gba rom that wraps gb(c) roms.
There is such an emulator [webpersona.com] for Game Boy mono ROMs, but it doesn't support GBC-only (transparent plastic) titles.
(Like an mp3 player NDS cartridge that uses GBA cartridges as disks.)
If you just want to play music from a flash cart on your Nintendo DS, you don't need to go into DS mode. Get GSM Player [pineight.com], which works on anything that can play GBA flash carts, and fit 150 minutes of music on one 256 Mbit cart (or less if you have gam
Re:Bad News and Good News (Score:2)
Complete with Nintendo seal of approval.
They already came out with a basic movie episode player for the GBA (Mostly just pokemon episodes and such)
The Dual seat thing suggests to me a sort of data disk functionality like the memory cards for a PS2.
Re:Bad News and Good News (Score:1)
I'm talking offical game cartridge. Complete with Nintendo seal of approval.
So let me guess: You would never think of modding an Xbox, and you want to run only Windows and Microsoft-approved applications on your PC.
But if you insist, Yahoo! has the Reuters story about a music and movie adapter for GBA SP and Nintendo DS [yahoo.com].
Re:Bad News and Good News (Score:2)
Re:Bad News and Good News (Score:2)
Re:Bad News and Good News (Score:1)
Two solutions are being explored on dsdev.org forums [gbadev.org]:
Re:Bad News and Good News (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bad News and Good News (Score:1)
What's with the rush ? (Score:1)
Yet it got published on slashdot, apparently deemed worthy of it based only on a weblog entry by some random guy, and a few guy backing his assertions.
Even with a defective bullshit detector, the absence of any picture attempting to proving that it indeed worked should have been enough to warrant at least a little wait for some kind of proof before slashdotting this.
Now for a mandatory te
Re:What's with the rush ? (Score:2)
God Darnit.... (Score:2)
Re:Decidedly NOT fake. (Score:1)
Re:Decidedly NOT fake. (Score:1)
Indeed a hoax. (Score:2, Informative)
This is fake. Very fake. (Score:2)
If you're too lazy to read the debunking, here's the rundown. You have to break your serial number sticker to even get at the screws to open the DS, and the pictures don't show a broken sticker. As for the screenshots with Pokemon running, they're taken using an emulator called Goomba. You'll notice that the game supposively running on the DS isn't colorized even though the GBA automatically colorizes GB games. Goomba doesn't.
Mos