melonDSi has been merged
melonDSi started last year as that clunky DSi experiment branch. Over time, it became more capable, but it still felt really crusty. It was basically stuck in DSi mode, hardcoded all around, didn't work that well, and was based off what became an increasingly obsolete version of melonDS as it was put on the backburner in favor of other fronts.

But that is past now.

I wanted to get it ready for the JIT merge, so I set to work. First off was merging recent melonDS into it, which went smoothly. It was a great sight to see the DSi menu come to life inside the new Qt UI.

Then, in a couple days, the SD/MMC issues were fixed, such that for example Flipnote can now save without softlocking. I then decided that would be a good base, and cleaned it up. Basically, I de-hardcoded it, allowing it to switch between DS and DSi modes, changing how DSi-mode assets are loaded, all that.

And now, there it is, DSi support is part of the master branch.

Couple notes on this:

* It was reworked to require less files. Namely, aeskeys.bin, initmem7/9.bin and boot2_7/9.bin are no longer required. However, it now requires 'augmented' BIOS dumps, the same ones that NO$GBA requires. I intend to provide an appropriate dumper.

* The location of the BIOS/firmware/NAND files can be configured.

* It is able to run both DSi and DS games from the menu. For some reason, some will fail to load, giving that error screen.

* Direct boot is not supported yet under DSi mode.

* The current DSi emulation is more or less a base. Cameras, DSP, new wifi, etc... aren't supported yet.

* There is a hack in place to bypass region locking.

* DS games loaded via the DSi menu run in more-or-less-DS mode. Right now, some details like clock switching or RAM size aren't supported. Most games seen to run fine under these conditions, but some may run into issues.

* If you want to try out DSi support, I recommend that you keep a backup of your NAND dump.

* Savestates are not yet supported.


Next up is the JIT merger, Generic will keep you informed about that!
Cool Beans says:
Jun 17th 2020
Does this mean that the pure DS part is more or less fully operational right now at the same level as Dsmume and the like? I'm fascinated by the upcoming changes vis a vis the DSi components, but I'm not sure if this is stuff to improve upon the base DS emulator or a completely different aspect.
rionix says:
Jun 18th 2020
thank you for your hard work
poudink says:
Jun 19th 2020
the pure DS part has been fully operational and in fact more accurate than desmume for quite a long time.
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