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?

  • Sami@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I have similar load times on my end on a New 3DS so I don’t think it’s your install

      • DarthBueller@lemmy.worldOP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        The various discussion threads around the internet talk about slow boot times from power on to Twilightmenu++ appearing, and how it is typically a symptom of the SD card either being slow or having a cluster size that Twilightmenu++ doesn’t like. But nobody (that I can see) mentions games taking a long time to load FROM twilightmenu++. Except @Sami.

    • DarthBueller@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      To be clear, you are saying games take a while to start after you select one, NOT that the menu system takes ages to show up from powering on the 3DS, correct? I don’t know enough about the particular softmods for DSi vs. 3DS to know if its like comparing apples and oranges.

      • Sami@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        On 3DS you have to launch Twilight Menu like an app and then launch a game from there but i think both take a bit longer than you’d expect with first time game launches being even longer.

  • Flicsmo@rammy.site
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    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@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • Flicsmo@rammy.site
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        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.