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Nintendo DS Modded to Play GB and GBC Carts

Posted by Zonk on from the original-tetris-on-the-DS- dept.

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."

11 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I am suspicious... by GoRK · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Z80 CPU of the GB/GBC is basically built into the silicon of the GBA processor. It has really nothing to do with being a seperate chip of any sort. The modification works because the DS in "GBA Mode" is hardware identical to a GBA. The only other difference is that GB/GBC carts take 5V instead of 3V, which it appears is the main function of the jumper wires in this mod.

    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.

  2. Fake crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Just FYI it was deleted from a moderator of that community because it's bullcrap.

  3. Joke? by eikonoklastes · · Score: 5, Informative
    From livejournal.com
    I don't want to hear any more non-sense about DS being able to be modded to play GB/GBC games. This is nothing by krap. Why? Well, grounding an already grounded wire and grounding the antenna isn't going to get you anywhere my friends. the pictures where taken from http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3530. The voltages do not match between the DS/GBA and the GB/GBC. Remember how the GBA units had a physical switched that was pressed when you inserted a class game? This switch turned off the ARM7 CPU, turned on the Z80 CPU, upped the cart voltage from 3.3v to 5v, and changed the wiring configuration used on the link port. Grounding an already grounded pin on the cart and grounding the DS's antenna, how exactly will that accomplish all of this anyways? ITS NON-SENSE!!!
    1. Re:Joke? by eikonoklastes · · Score: 3, Informative

      Follow the thread...

  4. Bad News and Good News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    The bad news is this story is BS.

    The good news is, you can play GB and GBC games on a DS if you have a flash cart. ...And you can take that to the bank!

    1. Re:Bad News and Good News by tepples · · Score: 2, Informative

      It shouldn't be that difficult to write a gba rom that wraps gb(c) roms.

      There is such an emulator 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, 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 games on the same cart).

  5. Re:This makes me happy! by tepples · · 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:

    • Flash2Advance and EZFA flash carts are ordinarily written to through a cable connected to the GBA's link port. The GBA, GBA SP, and GameCube Game Boy Player have this port, but the DS doesn't. I'd suggest buying the EFA (Extreme Flash Advance), which is written to through a connector on the cart itself. if you want to run PocketNES and Goomba on a Nintendo DS.
    • There exists no publicly known way for GBA flash carts to access any DS specific features. This means you won't see SNES Advance ported to run natively on the DS any time soon.
  6. Adapters by tepples · · Score: 2, 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:

    • Sega Power Base Converter to play Master System games on Genesis/Mega Drive and a similar attachment to play Master System games on Game Gear.
    • Super Game Boy to play Game Boy games on Super NES/Super Famicom. A few Game Boy games even had enhancements specifically for Super Game Boy.
    • Game Boy Player to play almost all Game Boy, GBC, and GBA games on GameCube, but a few video-heavy GBA titles intentionally freeze on Game Boy Player because the publisher doesn't want people videotaping the FMVs.
  7. GBA Video by tepples · · Score: 2, Informative

    What games are known for [intentionally freezing on Game Boy Player]?

    Not "games" per se. Unlike the PlayStation 2 and Xbox video game consoles, the GameCube cannot output Macrovision Video copy protection signals.

  8. LJ Drama by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    it would appear that the community mod deleted the post. however, in the meantime, the original poster has submitted photos and a link where you can read the text of the original mod instructions, along with extra photos.

  9. Indeed a hoax. by Spykk · · Score: 2, Informative

    He came back with pictures after being accused of lying, but they have been debunked. Info avaialable here.