Disassembling the US Nintendo DSi

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday iFixit tore apart the Nintendo DSi and found several internal upgrades from the outgoing DS Lite. It seems that an experienced hand can completely disassemble the DSi in less than ten minutes using standard tools, especially since the job does not require a tri-wing screwdriver. This should make repairing and tinkering with the DSi substantially easier. The DSi now includes two integrated cameras that, unfortunately, have only 0.3 megapixel resolution. This is certainly a bit underwhelming considering most mainstream phones have cameras of at least 1.3 megapixels. As for chips, Nintendo is using a Samsung MoviNAND integrated 256 MB Flash memory / MMC controller chip, as well as a custom ARM CPU + GPU is stamped with the revision code 'TWL.' The DSi's chips all had manufacture dates around September 2008, indicating that Nintendo has been stockpiling these devices for quite a while prior to the North American release."

Comments

Megapixel fetishism

[guspasho]

0.3 megapixel pictures are far easier to share and probably far easier for the ARM CPU to manipulate than 1.3 megapixel pictures. From a usability perspective the megapixel makes a lot more sense than trying to edit a much larger picture on such a small screen or trying to use such a small device to transmit the picture wirelessly to your friend's DSi.

Re:Megapixel fetishism

[drinkypoo]

The post was wrong. Well, that's my opinion anyway, but that's the obvious subtext when you make a subjective statement like that. Using a low-MP camera on the inside is fine because there's no need for anyone other than DSi users or the DSi itself to look at you with it. Putting such a pathetic one on the outside is pathetic because it eliminates many potential uses which demand a higher-megapixel camera. You can already subsample a camera sensor, so that you can treat a whatever-megapixel camera like a camera with some fraction of its actual number of pixels. Your response as almost as stupid as the kind of AC stuff I try to avoid rewarding, but since some people [read: you] didn't get it, I had to explain the whole thing.

Homebrew applications, etc

[kamelkev]

I'm really curious if the various mechanisms for running homebrew applications still work.

I have an R4 chip from my regular DS - my guess is they've closed up whatever hole was opened and a new method will be found, but has anyone tested this so far?

Re:Homebrew applications, etc

[tlhIngan]

I'm not wildly familiar with the issue; but my impression is that all the current DS methods were closed; but that Nintendo didn't make any real "progress", if you can call it that, toward building a hardcore lockdown hypervised mess, and that hacks are expected to appear in the fairly near future.

The DSi is more like the Wii in that respect - there are firmware updates available - heck, there's one when you open the box and try to get your free 1000 points!

So any holes found will be closed, and others reopened, until we get something like the Homebrew Channel for it. Just a big cat-and-mouse game, really.

I'd suggest getting one now with buggy firmware, and hope that someone will release a "Custom Firmware" for it a la the PSP... which is more likely to happen with buggy firmware early machines, than later ones.

Else, don't bother. Sony really needs to get their act together and make the PSP a more compelling system - the lack of PSP competition gives us stuff like the DSi... no real improvements. (Of course, one could say piracy is killing the PSP since very few people seem to be developing for it, and new releases for PSP are thinner and thinner...).

Re:0.3 Megapixels...

[Toonol]

Yes, I think the resolution makes sense for the DSi. Especially since I think it may figure into some game mechanics in the future; the cameras mounted on every Wiimote are only 320x240, I believe. They are IR sensitive, but I believe that all digital cameras are unless specific IR filters are installed. Does anybody know what the maximum frame rate is for obtaining images from the DSi cameras? Can it capture 30+ frames a second?

They're always perfect circles

[tepples]

Each side of the sensor bar has half a dozen infrared LEDs in a line. But have you ever noticed that the dots on the Wii Remote sensitivity screen are always perfect circles? The screen actually reads the four biggest blobs (X, Y, brightness) and draws them to the screen as circles with radius proportional to brightness. So you're not seeing the direct output of the 128x96 pixel* sensor in the Wii Remote but instead an interpretation of this info.

* The effective resolution is 1024x768 because the remote's firmware uses brightness and area information to refine the estimated position of the centroid of each blob to 1/8 pixel increments.

Just got one of these as a birthday gift

[Lord Bitman]

Can't wait for this to be (jailbroken? is that an applicable term?) opened up. As in, really, I can't wait, so I asked Nintendo how to become a developer "officially". Still waiting for a response, not expecting one.

Why do people lock down hardware? I definitely wouldn't have bought one myself without a clear path to being able to develop things for it :/