iDeaS, a homebrew Nintendo DS emulator for Windows, has been given a brand new update that fixes a lot of bugs spotted in previous releases. It's not all about bugs, though, as there are also a couple of new features added to further enhance the emulator's functionality.


Download: iDeaS v1.0.3.0 beta

A new version is out for iDeaS, a DS emulator for Windows. This version has several new bug fixes and added support for 2D render plugin. Details in the full article.

Download:iDeaS v1.0.2.6

Developer Lino recently rolled out the latest bundled package of the DS emulator iDeaS. The new bundle includes the latest version of iDeaS, as well as an updated audio and Wi-Fi plugin. Please note that this entire release is considered as the program's beta version for Linux. For more information regarding this new release, check out our full article after the jump.

Download: iDeaS 1.0.2.5 + Audio PlugIn 1.0.1.1 + Wi-Fi PlugIn - Beta Versions for Linux

Here's one homebrew application for the hardcore DS developer - DS Debugger v0.11. As the name says, the app allows developers to interactively debug their applications running on a real Nintendo DS. Created by Simon Hall, the app initialises the network, connects to the PC-side stub and installs the breakpoint-catching code. A function needs to be added to a timer or into a main update loop which polls for commands from the PC-side stub. This picks up commands to add breakpoints or read memory from the PC. Without this function, breakpoints can't be set.

On the PC-side stub, a Java application translates the complex commands from the GNU debugger (GDB) into simple operations which the DS stub can execute. The Java stub relays messages from the DS to GDB when things like breakpoints or illegal memory accesses occur.

If you're new to this sort of thing, you really have to go over the readme file. It's a long read but you'd feel better after knowing how the app works. If you already know how it works and you're just rarin' to test the app, here's a list of what it can do:

• suspend the program at user-defined breakpoints
• step individual instructions, assuming the program has paused at a breakpoint
• step whole lines of source code
• inspect memory locations - and assuming a symbol table is present in the original ELF - variables and other structures can be read and their values can be changed
• inspect the state of all registers in the user ARM execution mode - including the program counter, link register, stack pointer and status register
• evaluate all types of ARM branch and condition instructions, allowing you to follow the execution of code properly in most circumstances
• It has a blacklist function, which defines which functions shouldn't be stepped into (when a b/bl/bx instruction is encountered). This is useful to prevent the debugger from stepping inside itself, or functions used by the debugger. If you do step into the debugger, it will probably get into an endless loop and hang.
• It can break on invalid memory access, signalling a SIGBUS message to the host debugger.
• It can break when an invalid instruction is executed - this signals a SIGILL message to the host debugger.
• Both these exceptions destroy the original instruction in memory, so if you read the original opcode back from DS memory you'll get the breakpoint stub opcode instead. To get the real opcode, disassemble the ELF instead. If there's demand for having the real opcode left in memory I'll make the changes required to fix this.
• with minimal work, it ought to be able to co-exist with applications which use sgstair's wireless library

Of course, as this is a work in progress app, there are things it can't do (the readme file has the complete list), but I'm pretty sure Simon is keen on releasing updates in the future.

Download: [Wireless Debugger v0.11 for DS]

Chris Double has released DSEmu 0.4.2 (Originally by Imran Nazar). Changes in this new release include:

? The interrupt registers have been split so a separate register is kept for the ARM7 and ARM9. Even though they have the same register address, each CPU actually has a different register. This affects IME, IE and IF. Interrupts were pretty much broken in the previous version of DSEmu without this fix.

? Added the 'ARM7 specific IWRAM' memory area from 0x03800000 with a size of 64K. Thanks to DSTek for providing this information. Previously only the 32K Shared IWRAM area at 0x03000000 was implemented and ARM7 binaries greater than 32K were crashing the emulator as well as trashing the shared IWRAM.

? A few signed/unsigned comparision issues was causing the emulator to enter infinite loops.

? The VCOUNT register is now a single register rather than having one per lcd screen. Demo's that checked for the VCOUNT being in the VBlank area would hang due to this never being updated. Unfortunately these demo's still run very very slowly due to the 'busy loop' polling this register. I hope to have this fixed in the next release.
The SWI values were wrong in the switch statement that handled these calls. This resulted in the wrong SWI call being made. The main result of this was the ARM7 code would do a 'halt' instead of an SWI Delay which meant any ndslib based code would have no ARM7 support.

? Fixed a problem with ARM7 interrupts meaning most IRQ code should work fine now.

? ndslib Console output would display incorrect characters. This has been fixed.

? With the exception of Space Invaders, all my demo programs run under this version of the emulator in some form or another. Sound doesn't play but the touch screen values are updated and directional keys are processed, etc.
Using 'animated step' in the debugger now updates the display. Previously no graphics would be displayed while stepping.

? Using 'debug run', followed by pausing, then stepping, would not work. The stepper would be broken from then on. Fixed.

You can get it in our Nintendo DS Download section here.

Chris Double has released an updated version of DSemu, the DS emulator for windows. Here is what Chris had to say about DSemu:

DSEmu is an open source Nintendo DS Emulator written by Imran Nazar and released under the BSD License. Unfortunately Imran hasn't been able to continue development of it and on the DSEmu forums he welcomed other people adding to it.

Although DSEmu is not very complete it does have at least two things going for it. The first is the source is available. And the second is it has a debugger and stepper built in. So you can step through the ARM7 and ARM9 disassembly which is quite useful.

I got the latest source and made a few changes to get it working with some demo programs. It has quite a few limitations still but being able to step through the code, examine the ARM registers, etc has prove quite educational to me. I've made that release, with source, available here for anyone who wants to use it.

You can get this file in our DS Download section here.