DSx86 in DSi mode!

February 2nd, 2011, 01:20 Posted By: wraggster

Pate has posted more news concerning his Dos Emulator for the DS

This is a bit of an unscheduled blog post, but as my friend just lent me his Nintendo DSi, I decided to immediately test how DSx86 runs in the CycloDS iEvolution flash cart in DSi mode. The current (old) DSx86 version 0.23 does start fine, but the touchscreen does not work so it is pretty much useless. I believe CycloDS is working on a compatibility layer that might make it work, but my understanding is that making DSx86 run in DSi mode might simply need a recompilation with the latest libnds. Thus, I downloaded the latest libnds version and recompiled DSx86 with it. No errors when building the software, and indeed the brand new DSx86 version 0.24 does run fine in DSi mode!


The speed is about twice that of the "DSL mode" (as the CycloDS firmware calls the normal working mode). I'm not sure if this speed is yet enough to warrant adding 386-opcodes, but at least the smoother screen scaling features should work fine in DSi mode in the original (meaning non-DSTwo-specific) DSx86. I'll probably release the newly built DSx86 version 0.24 next weekend, so you can test that the latest libnds version did not break anything that used to work in 0.23 version. If/when you get the CycloDS iEvolution flash cart (or in case the DSi mode gets enabled in some other flash carts) you can then run DSx86 at double speed. The added performance will certainly help in some games that have been running too slowly in the current 0.23 version.

I doubt I will have time to add any enhancements (like the smooth scaling methods) by the next weekend yet, but I'll see if I can work on both DSx86 and DS2x86 side by side from now on, enhancing both of them simultaneously with new features.

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