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Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - General Gaming - Nintendo Announces DS Lite and other goodies!
  
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PrincessPeach
Posts: 83/381
Originally posted by Colin
Lucky bastard. XD

Came out in Japan today and looks to have sold out. Me thinks Sony might have lost the war in Japan based on the past few months and overall demand. :\


Did you see the pics of queues over at IGN? elderly couples, students, girls, buisnessman, not just freaks and fanboys.

And I need a new DS in the next few months, my old wont last any longer...
Cynthia
Posts: 1739/5814		 Lucky bastard. XD

Came out in Japan today and looks to have sold out. Me thinks Sony might have lost the war in Japan based on the past few months and overall demand. :\
fabio
Posts: 531/2415
Originally posted by Clockworkz
I'm sorry if this was asked, but is there a set release date yet? I may be interested in this, since I kinda lost my DS (officers forum for those who care), and this may actually serve some purpose now.


All I know is that there is only a release date for Japan only, not for anywhere else. Sorry.
Clockworkz
Posts: 437/984		 I'm sorry if this was asked, but is there a set release date yet? I may be interested in this, since I kinda lost my DS (officers forum for those who care), and this may actually serve some purpose now.
Adamant
Posts: 60/281		 I'll just bump this to tell you that I tried the DS Lite today. Contacts who can get you into locked press conferences is something we all should have.

Anyway, the DS Lite is pretty sweet. It's very compact, the two parts it's made of fit much better together, it fits great in your average pocket, the shoulder buttons are a lot more "clicky" than on the regular DS (this is a good thing), and the backlight... oh God, the backlight. It's totally awesome. We got to test a regular DS at the same time, and the difference is just... three times the brightness of the original, or so. Holding the two models up against each other, the regular DS barely looks like it's emitting any light at all. It's great.

...still won't buy one, though. It's too expensive to warrant a buy when it's this similiar to the original. I could understand people buying a GBA SP, as the original GBA had an annoyingly dark screen, but this upgrade seems a lot less nessecary.

It's still really frickin' sweet, though.
HyperHacker
Posts: 1182/5072		 Not sure, but I did find out something interesting. Recent DSes use a different flash chip to store the firmware. The write-protection on this chip protects everything except the part that stores settings. So any DS units with this chip are effectively unbrickable, unless you permenantly disable the write protection which would be pretty damn stupid.
Originally posted by Skydude
I think there may have been another mini something somewhere

Pokémon Mini.
Cynthia
Posts: 1656/5814		 It's hard to get info about the iQue DS... do they actually sell carts for that one or is it the same flash system as the regular iQue?
Skydude
Posts: 180/2607		 I'm thinking that I'm probably going to have to get one of these, seeing as it'll fit my pattern of getting every other Nintendo portable released:

Gameboy - yes
Gameboy pocket - no
Gameboy color - yes
Gameboy Advance - no
Gameboy Advance SP - yes
Nintendo DS - no
Nintendo DS Lite - ???

I don't really count virtual boy...and I think there may have been another mini something somewhere, so I don't know how true this is...

But it does look cool.
HyperHacker
Posts: 1148/5072		 Most have 256K. The iQue DS sold in China has 512K.
Ailure
Posts: 850/2602		 Ah yes, I kind of confused firmware and BIOS there. It's not really the same thing...

Colin. I heard it was around a megabyte or so. Apart from the inbuilt firmware, the memory is used for saving WIFI preferences apparently and probably will have some other future use.
Cynthia
Posts: 1615/5814		 All 3 BIOSes have been dumped BTW and will be needed for DS emulation. And no, I don't have them or know where they are.

How much room does the firmware chip have? Obviously not much if Opera's going to have to go on its own card...
HyperHacker
Posts: 1143/5072		 Time for some funfun DS tech facts:
  • The DS has 3 BIOSes; one for ARM7, one for ARM9, and the GBA one. They're ROMs (embedded in the CPU core even) and can't be written to. These provide code that games can use for various things (decompression, math, sound etc) and initiailze the hardware at bootup.
  • The DS also has firmware, which is on some manner of flash ROM and can be written to. This contains the code that launches games and the startup menu and is thus essential for operation. A virus could indeed ruin the system by wiping this out.
  • The firmware chip has a safety feature; without poking something conductive in a hole under the battery cover, the first 64K (or 512 bytes on some units) can't be written to. Standard Nintendo firmware doesn't take advantage of this, but the hacked firmware FlashMe (which provides the ability to run homebrew and removes that crappy health warning) uses it. Code in this sector will immediately execute whatever program resides on the GBA cart without initializing anything if a certain key sequence is held at bootup; this program can then restore working firmware.
  • A DS bricker which overwrites the firmware does exist. However there's no way to just send malicious code to someone's DS, due to the RSA encryption/signing used. There are only two ways to run unsigned code on a DS, both of which exploit the poor design of the games' header 1 to trick the system into booting whatever code is on the GBA cart. (The idea being you put code on a flash cart.) Although you can do this wirelessly on most units (newer ones block it), it still only boots from the GBA cart, so you can't send actual code.2 (In short, the only way to get infected by it is to run it yourself.) Also, interesting fact; the bricker will be picked up by antivirus programs on a PC.


1. The header contains the addresses of the game's startup code. The DS jumps to these addresses once the game is loaded into memory. However, the addresses aren't part of the signed area, so they can be changed (to point to the GBA slot) without breaking the signature. Newer firmware won't allow them to point to the GBA slot; exploits get around this by pointing them to data within the game binary which happens to be the instruction to call an invalid SWI. This results in random data being executed; eventually, it jumps to an area in the GBA cart SRAM, which can contain some unsigned code.
2. Only true of stock DSes. FlashMe removes the RSA signature check in DS Download Play, so you can boot unsigned code without a GBA cart. However, you need such a cart (and to disable the firmware write protection) to install FlashMe anyway. Technically this means someone could broadcast a bricker and have it infect FlashMe users. However, since FlashMe also provides a quick and easy way to restore the firmware, it'd be fairly pointless.
Alastor
Posts: 3275/8204
Originally posted by Ailure
that code could be simple "Write random junk in the BIOS ROM".
I'm pretty sure ROM can't be written to. That's kinda the point, isn't it?
Cynthia
Posts: 1601/5814		 Well, they'll have the features in there that are needed. You know... bookmarks, maybe some pre-set buttons, options, history, etc. Depends how big the save type is for the card.
Ailure
Posts: 832/2602
Originally posted by TI-92+
1. No need for messy extensions; everything's right-in-the-box, no chance of some malfunctioning plugin fucking up the browser
2. Opera already has everything Firefox offers out-of-the-box and much more
3. With Firefox they'd probably have to pay everyone who made an extension it would use, given they would doubtfully add extension support and instead build them straight in to the system
4. Opera kicks fucking ass.
You do know that it's going to be a lightweight version of Opera that they're going to use? The DS dosen't have infinite memory exactly. I could see things such as mouse gestures working perfectly for the DS, but I could never get used to thoose on either browser. x.o

Besides, a gecko-based browser for DS probably would have a way diffrent name than "Firefox."

Trapster: While the chanche for a Virus would be low if Opera plays the cards right, then... well. If there's a exploit found in the browser to run binary code as the browser view a certain page, then that code could be simple "Write random junk in the BIOS ROM". And Voila, you're DS is bricked (as in... won't start at all). :/ There's no kind of protection between the software and the BIOS if I got it right so if Opera really messes it up, which they hopefully won't...

I wouldn't really care what browser I get on my DS, especially if it's only one. I probably don't get it though, if it would be released here as... there's no good unencrypted network here. Besides I have a nice laptop with a wireless card... though it's not as portable as the DS but it's probably better for longer sessions.
Cynthia
Posts: 1593/5814		 I doubt there'll be virii for the DS... if there ARE then they'll probably just affect Opera itself, not the DS. It would take a big, big security hole to cause something like that to happen, so you can be sure they'll test the hell out of it.
Ailure
Posts: 831/2602
Originally posted by Colin
I wouldn't want a clear system... probably gets stained easily compared to other surfaces. I prefer color, not clarity.
I have a clear version of the orginal GB.

And for being 11 years old, it's really not that stained or scratched up or anything.

Though, after you used GBA SP and such, that thing feel so heavy. xD
Alastor
Posts: 3260/8204		 Trojan Horses aren't viruses. I would have expected you especially to know that, Xk...
Xkeeper
Posts: 1480/5653		 To those saying that DS viruses won't be prominent, allow me to point you in the direction of pspbrick (and I do believe there was one for the DS, as well)
Zem
Posts: 863/1097
Originally posted by Keitaro
That's great and all....but does this mean now that people who have the older, original DS won't be able to browse the internet? I'm hoping there's going to be some sort of way to impliment the browser into the older system.

Says here it'll be sold as a card, not built into the new one.
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Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - General Gaming - Nintendo Announces DS Lite and other goodies!


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