On Jan 3, 11:19 pm, Charlie Springer <R...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Is anybody using the Nintendo DS as a non-game platform? It has an ARM7
and
> an ARM9 with two screens, one a ouch screen, plus wireless. I have been
> messing with free development tools in c and assembly. It would be fun
to use
> a full Forth running in the DS as host. A wireless laptop can be the
> "terminal."
>
> -- Charlie Springer
Charlie,
Others have done this with the GBA. I've been trying to find a link
for you (www.gbadev.org would be a good starting point to try and find
it), but there's a company that created a chip you could plug into the
GBA to then use it as a controller. Having the screen for output and
an ARM7TDMI made it very advantageous. And the GBA is very simple to
program. Doing the same on the DS I see as being much more useful
(WiFi + touch screen + 3D display capabilities, 2 processors, ARM9,
etc), but battery life won't be very good.
Licensing is a big issue here. There's been court cases on the
subject, but I don't remember how they turned out. I'm a professional
game developer, and I can tell you that Nintendo takes their consoles
and licensing *very* seriously. The bottom line is that all programs
require a special program at the start (copyright Nintendo) just to
boot, and that's where the licensing issues come up. Just food for
thought.
You may want to examine the emulators available (http://
www.desmume.com/ is very good) and independent scene for development
(http://www.dsdev.org/
is a decent place to start).
Hope this helps! If I find the hardware link I was looking for, I'll
post it here.
Jeff M.
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