The rumors were true. Last night at their press conference in Japan, Nintendo announced an new Nintendo DS - the Nintendo DSi. As reported by Nekkei Net, the new DS will have bigger screens, it will playback music and, a first in Nintendo history, it will accept non-proprietary media, an SD card.

But the report wasn't entirely right. Instead of just one camera, the DSi will feature two, one on the hinge where the mic used to be, and one on the outside of the camera. These cameras will be capable of taking pictures of 640x480 resolution, which can be incorporated into some upcoming games. However, it isn't a total upgrade, and although there will be some DSi specific games, Nintendo says that most will be DS Lite games as well. 

One thing that will be DSi specific, however, is the new digital distribution service. Games and software will be offered for download for as cheap as free, although most will probably be priced between 200 and 1000 Nintendo Points ($2 and $10). One of the free apps that will be available from the start is a web browser, which might upset some fans who bought the Opera Browser. Nintendo is going to try hard to make sure that people use the service, and will be offering 1000 free Nintendo Points to anyone who purchases a DSi before Spring 2010. This may be an attempt to imitate the free pack-in game they offer with the Wii.

Unfortunately, the DSi will not feature a GBA slot as all previous models have, so if you want to play your old games, you are going to have to stick with your DS Lite. 

When will you be able to get your hands on one of these? Well, it's expected that Nintendo will announce their plans for America today at a media briefing, but those who are in Japan will be able to get them as soon as November, for ¥18,900 (which is about $179).

And so Nintendo just cut the crap and revealed a new DS redesign... we'd known it was coming for awhile, only thing was we weren't sure when. But in the last 7 days the rumour mills ran overtime stating that the Fall Conference would be when we'd see it. All rumours should always be taken with a grain of salt, but this time it delivered. That's right folks, Nintendo revealed the brand new DSi.

So did it deliver in all the rumoured areas? Yes. It has the camera, the mp3 playback capability and the SD slot. What has it lost? The GBA port. That's right. Suck it Guitar Hero On Tour players...

And it releases November 1st in Japan. Wow, really close. Tomorrow's press conference in America is expected to reveal the English release (at least we hope). It will retail for 18900 yen (US$179), which is a fair price. Hopefully the US price doesn't bump up (because I plan on importing)

With the SD card, the new DSi will feature a function called DSiWare (which I assume will be similar to WiIWare) which makes me hopeful for a GB, GBC and GBA VC style feature now it can use SD cards. It will even come with a built-in web browser (Opera) and the ability to manipulate images and such with the touch screen.

Sexy new DS to play with. I'll probably hold onto my original DSLite for the use of the GBA port. Since this new model has ditched it. There was other news at the conference like the revelation of Punch-Out!! Wii, but frankly I would have rathered Kid Icarus. Anyway, DSi for the win.

Here is a nifty comparison between the DSi and the DSLite.

I also went to a Japanese McDonalds for the first time and had some Shaka Shaka Chicken, it's not worth having again.

Ainda não tive uma oportunidade de fuçar de verdade no brinquedinho, primeiro porquê não é meu, e segundo que objetivo do comprador é ficar tendo "dor de cabeça" usá-lo para o objetivo que ele foi projetado ;-) De qualquer forma, estou disponibilizando algumas informações que obtive.

Especificações de Hardware

• CPU
  • ARM9 67Mhz (para o display touch screen)
  • ARM7 33Mhz processors
• Memory: 4MB
• Screens:
  • Upper Screen: A backlit, 3-inch, transmissive TFT color LCD with 256 x 192 pixel resolution and .24 mm dot pitch, capable of displaying 260,000 colors.
  • Lower Screen: The same as top but with transparent analog touch screen
• Wireless Communication:
  • 802.11
  • Nintendo's proprietary format
• Audio: Virtual surround sound, built-in stereo headphone / microphone jack
• Game cartridge slots: 1 DS slot, 1 Game Boy Advance / SP slot
• Size (closed): 133 millimeters (5.2 inches) wide, 73.9 millimeters (2.9 inches) long, 21.5 millimeters (0.85 inches) tall.
• Weight: (with DS cartridge installed) 9 oz.
• Power: Rechargeable lithium-ion battery, 6-10 hours continuous play depending on use per 4 hours recharging time

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Instalação

Nesse caso, a instalação foi feita através do R4, Revoltion for DS, assista o vídeo, que permite adicionar jogos e programas de maneira "fácil". O DSLinux é carregado como uma ROM de um jogo qualquer.

Algumas fotos

Como vocês podem ver, o teclado é uma idéia bem interessante, utilizando o recurso touch screen do dipositivo.

.................

Testei alguns aplicativos como o editor de textos vi, o sistema em algumas situações motrou-se instável, pelo menos a saída (fontes) no display, mas ainda não procurei saber os reais motivos. Mais fotos aqui.

dmesg

Linux version 2.6.14-hsc0ds (kineox@debian) (gcc version 4.0.4) #12 Wed Apr 2 13:01:10 CEST 2008
CPU: ARM946E [41009460] revision 0 (ARMvundefined/unknown)
Machine: Nintendo DS
Memory management: Non-Paged(unused/noMMU)
Ignoring unrecognised tag 0x00000000
On node 0 totalpages: 1024
DMA zone: 1024 pages, LIFO batch:1
Normal zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
CPU0: D VIVT write-back cache
CPU0: I cache: 8192 bytes, associativity 4, 32 byte lines, 64 sets
CPU0: D cache: 4096 bytes, associativity 4, 32 byte lines, 32 sets
Built 1 zonelists
Kernel command line: rootfstype=romfs
PID hash table entries: 32 (order: 5, 512 bytes)
Console: colour dummy device 80x30
Dentry cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: -1, 2048 bytes)
Memory: 4MB = 4MB total
Memory: 1928KB available (1258K code, 265K data, 108K init)
Calibrating delay loop... 33.38 BogoMIPS (lpj=166912)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512
NET: Registered protocol family 16
NDS FIFO driver
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.97 (double precision)
Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 64x32
fb0: Nintendo DS frame buffer device
fb1: Nintendo DS frame buffer device
Real Time Clock Driver v1.12
io scheduler noop registered
dldi: dldi1
NDS Wireless <bthaeler@aol.com>
uclinux[mtd]: RAM probe address=0x21985e4 size=0x76000
Creating 1 MTD partitions on "RAM":
0x00000000-0x00076000 : "ROMfs"
uclinux[mtd]: set ROMfs to be root filesystem
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
nds_ts: Driver version 0.0.1 loaded
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.10rc1 (Mon Sep 12 08:13:09 2005 UTC).
ALSA device list:
#0: Nintendo DS sound
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP route cache hash table entries: 64 (order: -4, 256 bytes)
TCP established hash table entries: 256 (order: -2, 1024 bytes)
TCP bind hash table entries: 256 (order: -2, 1024 bytes)
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 256 bind 256)
TCP reno registered
TCP bic registered
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
VFS: Mounted root (romfs filesystem) readonly.
Freeing init memory: 108K

Um fato que achei interessante

O Nintendo DS não tem uma unidade de gerenciamento de memória (da sigla em inglês, MMU), e tem apenas 4 MB de RAM. Para contornar essa limitação, tanto o kernel como o espaço do usuário (userspace) utilizam a técnica XIP (do inglês, execute in place) que permite executar o programa no mesmo local em que ele é armazenado; além de uma alocação de memória SLOB (que preza pela economia de espaço). Depois, surgiram expansões que ofereciam 32 MB adicionais. Contudo, adicionar suporte a essa RAM externa não foi trivial, pois o barramento do slot GBA (para expansão de memória) suporta apenas escritas de 16 bits e o sistema envia ao barramento apenas 8 bits, resultando sempre em pedaço com lixo na memória. Um desenvolvedor do DSLinux chamado Amadeus encontrou uma solução para o problema, que consiste na substituição da instrução "strb" (store byte) do assembly do processador ARM para a instrução "swpb" (swap byte). A instrução swpb primeiro lê o conteúdo do endereço requisitado, colocando na cache, então uma escrita de 8 bits é feita na cache. Mais tarde, quando a linha da cache for utilizada, uma escrita de 16 bits é efetuada, dessa forma eliminando as escritas de 8 bits no barramento. Amadeus também modificou o gerador de códigos para ARM do GCC para que as aplicações compiladas para o DSLinux agora possam usufruir das instruções swpb. A mudança no código-fonte do kernel deve ser feita através de um patch.

Conclusão

O Nintendo DS é um ótimo video game de mão, relativamente barato no mercado americano, e mais uma vez podemos provar a capacidade de adaptação do kernel do Linux nos mais variados dispositivos.

Links:

http://dslinux.org/

http://dslinux.org/amadeus/

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/dslite.ars

http://www.arm.com/markets/home_solutions/armpp/11961.html

http://www.tobw.net/dswiki/index.php?title=Ds_hardware

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSLinux

Ondertussen hebben we onze DSlite al een poosje en zijn we helemaal verknocht aan het ding. Het is ook boeiend om te zien hoeveel originele en vernieuwende dingen er voor de DS gemaakt worden. Ik ben vooral een fan van het touchscreen, die de spelletjes vaak een hele aparte dimensie geven :-)

Op deze website probeer ik jullie zo goed mogelijk te begeleiden om het maximum uit je DS te halen, van games tot leuke technische extraatjes (een rumble pack bv, of extra geheugen om te kunnen surfen met je spelletjesconsole)

Veel plezier met je DS(lite) !

They are all Japanese words! And also it really annoys me when people think I pronounce them properly when I can speak proper (though not very fluent anymore) Japanese!!

Just a couple of days ago, I was just telling my friend that it really annoys me that I now have to pronounce Karaoke as Ka-ree-okee and not Ka-ra-okeh just so people here can understand me! Argh! All the ang mohs like to say ka-ree-okee? WHY?? How/Where did they get the REE from the RA?

And Sake (the Japanese rice wine) is Sa-keh not Sa-kee! Argh! There was once my ex-boss and i had a conversation about Japan and I talked about sake and he gave me a blank look and he realised what i was talking about and said.. "Right, it's sa-kee".

Argh! No! You silly person! It's Sa-keh! Argh!

And it's Po-keh-mon not Po-Kee-Mon! Oh yeah, i had a friend who once told me he thought it was pronounced as POKE-MON as in .. poke you know? like in facebook? Poke? hahahahaha It was so funny!

Yeah speaking of Pokemon, I've recently started playing Pokemon Diamond on the DS lite because i've finished Hotel Dusk Room 215 (great game!). I didn't think much of it at first and boy am i so wrong! It's one of the best games ever! It's just so fun catching and training the Pokemon and to put them up against other Pokemon! I have about 20 or so now and sometimes it's so hard to choose which one i can put in my "pocket" because I like them all! hehe

And i like to give my Pokemon funny names.. well funny to me at least. I caught a Magikarp (it's a fish) which is one of the worse Pokemon in the game but anyway, i named it ASSAM as in Assam Pedas cos we've been cooking them a lot at home recently! hahaha and then I named A Combee (which is a bee) - Honey and a Zubat which is a bat - Batty Suarez (Ugly Betty!) and a Psyduck (which is a duck) - Peiking.. u know.. like Peiking Duck hahahaha  Oh yeah and a mean looking piece of rock, Geodude - Pebble hehehe and an Onix (snake which has a rock body) - Igneous.. u know.. like Igneous rock hehe. Oh yeah and my latest edition, a balloon Pokemon, Drifloon - Poppy! LOL!
I named the rest after the dogs and cats here and also after some members of my family. hehe

I think I won't be completing this game in a long time.. which is good because there are not much good DS games at the moment. I hate it when I run out of games to play...which means i'll be stuck with More Brain Training .. which is a really good game but there is only about 6 or 7 different trainings I can have in a day so it can get kinda boring.. especially on a 45min commute to work and back!

I get so excited playing it.. and annoyed when Mario falls down and die.. or get hit by those irritating creatures.. whatever they are called! I screamed when it happens... I get very noisy playing it... Sometimes I feel stressed too hahaha.. i don't know why..but I can feel my heart beating really fast! I'm now at world 2! So i think this game can last me the whole week..before i start work again!

Oh, i better spend some time with my Wii too... i've not played it for quite some time...