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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."
0.3 megapixels is equivalent to a resolution of 640x480 pixels, which is twice the resolution of each individual Nintendo DS screen. The lower resolution CCD costs less, and the images are far easier to process in real-time with the DSi's limited resources.
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?
How in the fuck are pictures of the internals of an electronic device front-page worthy?
What? Get the fuck out.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's not a good comparison, as the Game Boy Advance was wildly different in capabilities from the Game Boy Color. Meanwhile the DS, DS Lite and DSi are essentially the same system.
There are a number of DS homebrew games I'd love to use, if I ever have the disposable income to spare on the adapters and cards. There's a painting app ( http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/about.php ) which looks neat, especially if you are traveling and want to sketch something, or just like to doodle. There are also some PDA-like programs which might be handy, though I don't know how I'd find them useful.
ScummVM ( http://scummvm.drunkencoders.com/ ) is a homebrew app to let you play old LucasArts games, as well as newer (free) games made for the Scumm interpreter. (Yes, one could pirate the old LucasArts games. The morality of playing a no longer published game on a newer platform is not something I wish to discuss. I don't plan to pirate it, if that's any consolation to you.) There are some free games, such as several from Revolution Software, that have been re-released from Amiga to Nintendo DS.
There are even e-book and comic reader homebrew apps for the DS... though I've not used them. (I prefer paper books.)
I'd get a lot more geek cred if I were part of the nintendo DS demo scene, but I'm not. (: However, I hope I have adequately debunked your claim that all we'd want to do is use it to run pirated games.
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.
That's not a good comparison, as the Game Boy Advance was wildly different in capabilities from the Game Boy Color. Meanwhile the DS, DS Lite and DSi are essentially the same system.
So it's true - Nintendo is developing better business sense with time!