melonDSi has been merged

melonDSi has been merged
Jun 2nd 2020, by Arisotura

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!

33 comments have been posted.

< #BlackLivesMatterBAAHAHAHAHAHAHHHH >

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Arisotura says:
Jun 7th 2020

the added code is mostly UI code (Qt shenanigans etc). it doesn't affect emulation performance.

Ammako says:
Jun 7th 2020

I didn't know people still used 50 MB hard drives nowadays.

MelonMan says:
Jun 10th 2020

You're not doing something wrong, i'm getting the error
"""
/home/mint/melonDS/src/frontend/qt_sdl/Platform.cpp: In function ‘void* Platform::Thread_Create(void (*)())’:
/home/mint/melonDS/src/frontend/qt_sdl/Platform.cpp:184:27: error: ‘create’ is not a member of ‘QThread’
QThread* t = QThread::create(func);
^~~~~~
"""
Also I don't know where you got that error from.

Generic aka RSDuck says:
Jun 10th 2020

> Also I don't know where you got that error from.

I might know. You need to use a compiler which supports gender as a more complex topic than muh genes. I really wonder who still ships those outdated compilers which aren't capable of doing so?

poudink says:
Jun 10th 2020

-redacted-
I'm, uh, pretty certain I never posted that. Must be an impersonator or something? whatever.

Arisotura says:
Jun 10th 2020

well that's likely that Clap Clap troll

Waligie says:
Jun 11th 2020

I hope we can make DSI emulation accuarate enough. Past attempts have been nothing but some dirty hacks from what i have seen (i could be horribly misinformed right now).

poudink says:
Jun 11th 2020

well the only alternative is no$gba and since it's not open source there's no way to know how hacky it is

Arisotura says:
Jun 12th 2020

some would believe that given the amazing documentation nocash provides, NO$GBA would be amazingly accurate... some testing shows that, infact, it's not. I don't know how truly accurate it is but it does take shortcuts.

not that melonDS is perfect, either. especially regarding DSi emulation.

I still want to emulate DSi wifi, among other things.

Antact says:
Jun 13th 2020

Hello , I'm new to this emulation thing ,so is there a way to emulate online multiplayer on a private server or even LAN multiplayer?

MelonMan says:
Jun 13th 2020

Antact, look at this.
https://melonds.kuribo64.net/board/thread.php?pid=1643

MelonMan says:
Jun 13th 2020

Also, if you're using a wireless connection and on Windows 10 this may help.
https://gbatemp.net/entry/16922/

MelonMan says:
Jun 14th 2020

Do the new AArch64 Github Action builds mean Raspberry Pi 2B v1.2/Pi 3/Pi 4 support?

Amnesia says:
Jun 14th 2020

Hello, sorry for the inconvenience again, is any new dependency necessary to compile melonDS?

Cool Beans says:
Jun 17th 2020

Ooh, I like where this is going!
Good job :D

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