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Archive for June, 2006

PicoDriveDS 0.1.4

with 54 comments

PicoDriveDS 0.1.4 is up! This is mostly a minor bugfix/enhancement release while I continue work on the new renderer. Changes:

  • Fixed bug where R could scroll past end of file list
  • Switched to unified builds, now one build should work for all SD/CF carts (thanks WinterMute)
  • Added NeoFlash MK2/MK3 support (thanks WinterMute)
  • Changed it so that pressing Select again without choosing a file will resume emulation

Get it here.

Written by ryanfb

June 22nd, 2006 at 8:35 pm

Posted in Coding, Homebrew, NDS

PicoDriveDS 0.1.3

with 7 comments

PicoDriveDS 0.1.3 is up! Changes:

  • Added long filename support
  • Added support for going up a directory by pressing B
  • Added support for skipping ahead/back 5 files at a time with R/L
  • Added automatic save/load SRAM support

Files are the same place as before or you can use the handy new release directories to be sure.

The SRAM feature is not the same thing as savestates. Basically it emulates a Genesis cart’s internal Save RAM, and whenever the SRAM is written to it writes out (romname).srm. When you load a game, it looks to see if that SRAM file is there and loads it if so.

Written by ryanfb

June 13th, 2006 at 6:15 pm

Posted in Coding, Homebrew, NDS

PicoDriveDS 0.1.2

with one comment

Since my last post about PicoDriveDS, 0.1.2 has been released. Changes:

  • Switched from Cyclone 0.0080 to Reesy’s Cyclone 0.0084
  • Switched from software scaling to hardware scaling
  • Added three scale modes: Stretch, Aspect, and 1:1
  • Cycle through scale modes with L
  • Position the window in 1:1 mode by holding R and using the D-Pad
  • Added soft reset (press select, takes you back to the ROM list)
  • Added NDS banner information (shows up in WMB)

The links without version numbers will always point to the latest version, although I’m going to start making backup copies of each version in case people ever want an old one for some reason.

Built against SaTa’s modified FAT libraries from REIN (SD users probably want this):

Built against chishm’s FAT libraries with just CF enabled:

Written by ryanfb

June 10th, 2006 at 9:36 pm

Posted in Coding, Homebrew, NDS

Building a FAT file image for NDS Homebrew

with 4 comments

While working on PicoDriveDS, I figured it would be easier to test if I used WMB instead of swapping SD cards all the time. I set up WMB, but much to my dismay, it didn’t appear to work correctly with my SCSD – the program would start, but it couldn’t read the files or directories. Due to testing by other people, I knew the CF version worked fine this way, but I didn’t have a CF cartridge to use. I did, however, have a 256Mbit GBA cart, and chishm’s FAT library has a driver called FCSR which can access a FAT image stored on a normal flash cart. The problem is finding instructions for how to build this properly. Here’s how I did it:

dd if=/dev/zero of=fat.img bs=512 count=32000
sudo losetup /dev/loop0 fat.img
sudo mkdosfs -F16 /dev/loop0
sudo losetup -d /dev/loop0

Now you can mount fat.img to your favorite mountpoint, copy files to it, then unmount. After that, what you have to do is open it up in a hex editor, go to offset 0×100 (nothing should be there, don’t worry), and insert the string “FCSR Chishm FAT”, ensuring it is null-terminated. For write support, following this null-terminated string should be the start sectors for 4 SRAM overlays, then followed by each of their sizes (I have not tested this). If you just want a filesystem on the cart so you can access it over WMB (like me), you can flash the image to a cart now. Otherwise, any rom you wish to use should be padded so that the image will be aligned on a multiple of 512 bytes, then prepended to the image.

Written by ryanfb

June 10th, 2006 at 9:24 pm

Posted in Coding, Homebrew, Linux, NDS

PicoDriveDS – Genesis Emulator Port for Nintendo DS

with 5 comments

Ported this over the weekend, I think it’s in a state now where some people will be able to use it. Initial reports are that it has issues running on CF-based carts, I only have a SuperCard SD to test with so I haven’t been able to debug it on CF to see what’s going on.

Built against SaTa’s modified FAT libraries from REIN (SD users probably want this):

Built against chishm’s FAT libraries with just CF enabled:

Copy it to your media, then copy over the Genesis ROMs you want to play (it should be able to play ROMs with .BIN, .GEN, and .SMD extensions). There’s no sound, but since it uses the Cyclone 68k core which is optimized for ARM it runs well for the most part. Scaling is done in-software right now so the downscale isn’t as fast or good as it could be. There’s no double buffering yet so you might see tearing on some games. Y/B/A are A/B/C.

Screenshots:

Video:

Written by ryanfb

June 7th, 2006 at 12:13 am

Posted in Coding, Homebrew, NDS