Shabadage said:
Arno said:
Shabadage said:
Arno said:
Shabadage said:
Well it lacks the ARM7 (The GBA core). There have been reports that the DSi is now running an ARM9 (The normal DS processor) and an ARM11 (We think, we haven't identified it yet). We know that ARM7 has to be emulated somehow, being a major component of the DS. The question becomes if they are emulating the full GBA mode, or only the DS instruction set on the ARM7.
I'm actually pretty sure that it still has the ARM7, and just a beefed up ARM9.
The old GB/GBC chipsets were getting expensive, so they cut them out of the design and emulated their functions (Within the GBA architecture, not it's GB/GBC functions) with a more powerful chip.
Everything else you said made sense. But, with the micro and the DS, the way that the GBAs played GB/GBC games was with a switch in the slot (pressed when the corners of the old game paks hit it) so that it cut some processor power. This mechanism was too large to fit in the micro or the DS, and
that's why they cut support.
Even if it is new hardware, if Nintendo's planning to give us GBA games on VC, they probably have a way of emulating the hardware.
Err, that's off. That switched just controlled which processor got the power. It was literally a tiny switch with a few Motherboard leads running off of it.
Shabadage, please, please, please, stop talking so much out of your ass.
About GBA and GBC: The switch you're talking about is not a "power switch" but a switch that the CPU can read and then acitvely decide which mode to enter. What's the difference? The switch can be in either position, and still the CPU can be in either mode. If you press the switch when in GBA mode, the GBA doesn't always go into GBC mode. And you can enter GBC mode from software. I've disassembled the GBA BIOS and found that piece of code. I've written a GBA program that enters GBC mode through software. I've closely investigated the behaviour of the GBA related to this switch. I know that it works.
Furthermore, the GBC mode exists even on the GB Micro! If you run the code that starts GBC mode, even the GB Micro will enter it. It's a bit glitchy in some ways, but it works well enough to prove that the GBC core is still in the GB Micro. However, the Micro doesn't contain the voltage regulator used to get 5 V for the external interfaces.
In general, two (or more) CPU's can be etched on chip. A CPU is nothing but a collection of logic gates, and as long as they all fit on the same silicon substrate, nothing stops anyone from having several CPU's on the same substrate. ( =in the same chip) So just because there's just one CPU chip on the DSi doesn't mean there can't be two CPU's on there.
About DSi and bunnie: Nothing suggests that the ARM7 would've been removed, and nothing suggests that the DSi is using an ARM11. That is a rumour that people picked up from Bunnie's blog. He even points this out in the comment section. (
This comment)
Wow…it’s amazing to see how rumors spread on the internet. I can’t overemphasize the point that my post is entirely *speculative*; attributing the reduced battery life to a faster CPU as a fact is overstating my post by quite a bit. I wrote it in a hotel room after playing around with the device for about half an hour.
I've heard from somewhere else (A believable source) that the CPU is in fact clocked at 166 MHz, which would suggest that it has a double speed mode, much like GBC has a special GBC mode with double clock speed compared to the original Gameboy, and some extra features. And still, nothing suggests that the ARM7 was removed. No matter how you look at it, emulating an ARM CPU would be slow and error prone. Not to mention the costs for redesigning the peripheral hardware to the lack of the ARM7.
About DSi and a GBA mode: This should be easy to test. There are instructions
here on how to enter GBA mode. (4000301h) A small piece of code could be written to test this. If someone has a DSi with a working flashcart, they could try it out today!
Download
this and run it. If the GBA startup screen shows up, then we know for a fact that the DSi can run theoretically run GBA code in some shape or form.