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[MukiEX]

I'm not sure if either one of these improvements are technically possible, and I wonder if they would have already been implemented if they were...

1. RAM disable. This would be good for DS titles that don't really need the RAM, where I'd rather have the extra battery life from the ram being turned off/downclocked significantly, as it doesn't do anything.

2. Partial RAM load. Essentially, part of a DS title would be set to be moved to RAM when patched. This would probably elimintate slowdown in games, but might require more behind-the-scenes horsepower than the Supercard has.

Examples : 1. Store the level data in Tony Hawk in RAM, and the only time the SD card is accessed is for music data. Better than trimming! =3 2. Store the FMV sequence for Castlevania in RAM. Only time RAM is used.

It'd be a tricky thing (watching out for access addresses and redirecting as needed), and I'm not sure if it'd be possible in either patching or the firmware itself, but if the only problem was it not coming to mind, I figured I'd throw that out there.

Once again, no clue if either one is actually possible to implement.

[Critical_Impact]

I thought all titles had to use the ram because either you have the whole game loading into the ram or it steams part of the game into the ram then into the nds ram

[sneef]

i thought with a .dsq patched rom, only a little bit of code gets loaded into supercard's sdram...  like bootstrap code to start off the streaming process (from sd/cf).. but that's just what i thought. i have no idea.

[m2pt5]

i thought with a .dsq patched rom, only a little bit of code gets loaded into supercard's sdram...  like bootstrap code to start off the streaming process (from sd/cf).. but that's just what i thought. i have no idea.

When you run a DS game, either from a real DS card or from a Supercard .dsq, the ARM7 and ARM9 binaries are loaded into the DS's onboard RAM and executed. All other resources are streamed from the game card or flash card as needed. This is why the .dsq format works and loads quickly, and why the Mario Kart track hack works. (What happens is that a modified binary is loaded into memory, which then uses the assets on the original DS cart. This is why you can pull out the Supercard after the game loads.)

[Haoie]

Compare that to GBA, which had to load what I seem to recall was the entire game into mem [which would explain the vastly longer load times].

[Blight]

whoa, problem... If you start a ds game you see a tiny bit loading in the ram, so disabling it won't work.
and splitting is probably too difficult...