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DS Browser RIP

Started by A2hok, July 22, 2006, 10:39:40 AM

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socket

Well for one, the have official dev kits, etc.

Zap

Quote from: "trivoldus"
Quote from: "Evi1d33d"
Quote from: "DSlinux FAQ"But M3 and Supercard have a 32MB RAM extension! Can this be utilised by DSLinux?

Not really. The problem is that the GBA slot bus supports 16bit writes only (1 bit per wire). For 8bit writes, the byte is duplicated on the remaining 8 wires. That means if you write a byte to address x, the same byte suddenly appears at address x+1, overwriting what x+1 was previously. The developers refer to this as the "8-bit write problem". It should be obvious that this makes RAM extensions hooked to the GBA slot bus useless for anything but read-only use, such as XIP.

It is already been tried with DSlinux to extent its RAM limitation (part for its web browser) by using the SC card RAM but it seems impossible...

Wait... then how did the Nintendo's developers do it to the browser?

They used special gba cartrige, not supercard ;)

trivoldus

From what I understand the problem is in the GBA bus not what kind of cartridge it's using.  Anyway, if what the Admin says is right, then it's the LinuxDS' ignorant ( :D ) and not a hardware limitation, right?

And my view on this matter is that it's going to be very hard to emulate the Opera browser (don't beat me up if it's wrong, please :))
When you guys debating on using the internal RAM of the Supercard in place of the RAM cartridge the browser is using, you also have to take in account their speed differences.  Since wii don't know how fast the RAM cartridge is, I'll just going to assume that the write and read speed is as fast as a real GBA cartridge.  Now, if we use the internal RAM for the browser, then the read speed is obviously going to be inferior to the real RAM, thus even more slowdown when browsing (like scrolling up and down on a long page).  Now the writing part of the Supercard RAM;  it's going to be slow, since I don't think it is designed to read and write at the same time 2-3 years earlier for the GBA.
Well, there is another alternative that I can think of: using the SC/CF as storage.  It might help the writing part, depending on the speed of the medium.  But that is just a speculation since I don't actually know the writing speed of the internal RAM (my SD read speed is pretty slow so I can't really test the speed using the GBA's load time).  However, the read speed is going to suffer even more (I still remember that playing DS games in the RAM helped the load time even with a 133x Adata SD in some threads).
That sums up what I'm thinking right now, any opinion is appreciated (like ur post is too long man etc...)

Dudu.exe

Quote from: "trivoldus"From what I understand the problem is in the GBA bus not what kind of cartridge it's using.  Anyway, if what the Admin says is right, then it's the LinuxDS' ignorant ( :D ) and not a hardware limitation, right?

And my view on this matter is that it's going to be very hard to emulate the Opera browser (don't beat me up if it's wrong, please :))
When you guys debating on using the internal RAM of the Supercard in place of the RAM cartridge the browser is using, you also have to take in account their speed differences.  Since wii don't know how fast the RAM cartridge is, I'll just going to assume that the write and read speed is as fast as a real GBA cartridge.  Now, if we use the internal RAM for the browser, then the read speed is obviously going to be inferior to the real RAM, thus even more slowdown when browsing (like scrolling up and down on a long page).  Now the writing part of the Supercard RAM;  it's going to be slow, since I don't think it is designed to read and write at the same time 2-3 years earlier for the GBA.
Well, there is another alternative that I can think of: using the SC/CF as storage.  It might help the writing part, depending on the speed of the medium.  But that is just a speculation since I don't actually know the writing speed of the internal RAM (my SD read speed is pretty slow so I can't really test the speed using the GBA's load time).  However, the read speed is going to suffer even more (I still remember that playing DS games in the RAM helped the load time even with a 133x Adata SD in some threads).
That sums up what I'm thinking right now, any opinion is appreciated (like ur post is too long man etc...)

Opera ram was build for this.. M3 and Supercard not.. dont get false hopes!

Thundrestrike

but the M3 team is working on it....
so there is some hope i guess :)
size=24]▓☺▓[/size]
My modded DS

Evi1d33d

Here's a video of the DS Browser performs in real life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR2yfhBSvR0

The problem is that an average website will take about a full minute to load and CNN.com takes 3 minutes to load. So if we can get the RAM emulation working, it'll probably be even slower...  :x

Scor

Quote from: "Evi1d33d"Here's a video of the DS Browser performs in real life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR2yfhBSvR0

The problem is that an average website will take about a full minute to load and CNN.com takes 3 minutes to load. So if we can get the RAM emulation working, it'll probably be even slower...  :x
Depends on what is lagging the browser.

PharaohsVizier

Well i don't mind, I just want a web browser

AnalogMan

Now what would be funny (and extremely unlikely) is if someone converted the Opera ROM with the new Supercard Lite converter software and it worked. xP


AC:WW
=====
Code: 1289-1089-1950
Name: Sark
Town: Konoha
Fruit: All

trivoldus

OK guys, maybe I was wrong about the internal RAM could possibly hammering the emulation of the Opera browser.  Let's see... how much data is being transering when you browse a website, say, CNN.com?  I used Firefox and "Save as" the whole content; guess what, it's only about 1 Megabyte.  That's like less than 1 minute to load a GBA game at that size to the RAM.  So what makes the browser take up to 3 minutes to render CNN?  I thought of 2 possible answers: 1. The rendering power of the DS is low (like taking a dual core 200 MHz :D computer to browse the net) or 2. Wireless transfering rate of, also, the DS (you know how long it takes to send a demo).
Thus I think the emulation is definitely doable, even with a slower RAM (but if it doesn't support simultaneously read and write then....)

AnalogMan

Well, the broswer loads now with the latest software and firmware updates, but gives an error message. I'll be expirementing with it.


AC:WW
=====
Code: 1289-1089-1950
Name: Sark
Town: Konoha
Fruit: All

Thundrestrike

do you know how to hack the rom?
size=24]▓☺▓[/size]
My modded DS

AnalogMan

No, there's some ideas floating around about maybe redirecting RAM calls to the chip in the DS that handles the Download Play games (the chip that stores the game while you play it) to make it work on flash carts without RAM and also it may be faster.


AC:WW
=====
Code: 1289-1089-1950
Name: Sark
Town: Konoha
Fruit: All

Evi1d33d

Quote from: "AnalogMan"No, there's some ideas floating around about maybe redirecting RAM calls to the chip in the DS that handles the Download Play games (the chip that stores the game while you play it) to make it work on flash carts without RAM and also it may be faster.

if you mean the DS system ram then it's impossible because it only got 4MB of ram which is way too small to browse websites full of pictures. so far i really doubt if they ever gonna get the browser to work.

if you really wanna use a internet browser on your DS, then use the web browser(retawq) on the DSlinux. sure it doesnt view images but its better than setting here and pray for something thats impossible.

bitblt

It's possible CF/SD media could be used to page file RAM?  With large CF/SD media there would be plenty of extra room for cached HTML content.  Load latency might make browsing painfully slow?  I wouldn't hold your breath about a NDSB hack soon.

Just buy the NDSB when it's released in the US.  It should be about the same price as a regular DS game.  The extended RAM cart might be useful with homebrew in the future anyway.



The Opera interface works better than I expected. There are plenty of viewing options available. You can adjust the screen from 50%-150%. You can switch between split screen and dual screen viewing mode. Split screen mode provides an adjustable zoom window for close up viewing, and a macro view of the whole page on the second screen. You can't read text in macro view. You can swap macro and zoom screens with one click. If macro view is the touchscreen you can move the zoom window around with the stylus. If the zoom window is the touchcreen then you can grab the page and drag/scroll it around with the stylus. Dual screen viewing mode removes frames and displays plain HTML on both screens. This mode works better when trying to read long posts. You can just scroll up and down rather than have to move the zoom window back and forth. You can also turn off/on images with a single click. For text input you can use a touch keypad or use handwriting recognition. The handwriting recognition works surprisingly well and I was impressed because I have sloppy handwriting.[/img]