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DSi TwilightMenu++ nds-bootstrap - Game boot time? (self.retrogaming)

submitted 1 year ago by DarthBueller to c/retrogaming

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How long does it take for a properly working Nintendo DSi softmodded with Twilightmenu++/nds-bootstrap to load a game from the SD card? It seems to take nearly a minute to load a game for me. Everything works perfectly, it just seems to take a stupidly long time to get through the nds-bootstrap process (the first load of a game takes the longest, but subsequent loads of that game are only slightly faster).

Meanwhile I have a Nintendo DSlite with a flashcart that is wicked fast to start a game, but the power consumption of the thing in standby mode is out of control to the point that standby mode is essentially unuseable.

Is the trade-off really between stupidly long game loading times if using nds-bootstrap to start a game on the DSi but great power consumption, and wicked fast game loading but terrible battery life on a DSlite with a flashcart? Or is something wrong with my Twilightmenu++/NDS-bootstrap install?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The first time booting a rom takes a while, but after that it's only a few seconds for me. Maybe something to do with SD card formatting/specs?

[–] DarthBueller 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I counted it this time. First load (ever) of a game take 45 seconds or more. Subsequent loads of a game take around 20 seconds, before the first splash screen appears. I am using a modern SanDisk Ultra 64gb class 1 which was clean formatted FAT32 with 32k cluster size.

I updated twilight menu++ to the current version and there was no change.

One thing I can’t figure out is if I am using hiyaCFW or not and how this impacts speed. Been so long since I worried about the DSi I can’t remember what half of the stuff does. I have the hiya folder on my SD card, but I use twilightmenu. The ds-homebrew site’s description of hiyaCFW is confusing as fuck.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I timed my DSi; it varies a lot by game but the largest I tried (Pokemon Black 2) loaded in around 25 seconds on the first run, then loads in under 10 seconds on subsequent runs.

I recently started messing with my DSi again after a few years away from it, and you're definitely not alone in being confused by it all - I really have no idea what exactly I did to it. To refresh everything I ended up just wiping the SD card, then putting Twilightmenu on it. I can still boot into unlaunch so I must have modified the firmware / internal storage before, but I don't know if hiyaCFW is something that lives on there on the SD card.

Speaking of which, that's the same setup as my SD card, which is a 32gb Transcend. I can't seem to find my SD card reader to double check but I'm pretty sure of using 32k cluster size.

Might be worth mentioning, I have another DSi with a wildly different system boot time for no apparent reason. I set it up the exact same, but it takes 15+ seconds to boot vs the <5 of my main DSi, even when I swap SD cards. The only difference between them is that the one that takes a long time to boot is Japanese. Games take about the same time to boot so it doesn't seem directly related to your issue but who knows.