PoroCYon

Hi, you might know me from the 37C3 presentation about DSi hacking (which also led to the discovery of ntrboot on the DSi), adding GDB support to melonDS, various hardware reversing discoveries, etc.

The next step for DSi reverse-engineering would be figuring out the JTAG pinout, together with the 32MB RAM address line and the second cartridge slot. This knowledge would allow doing hardware debugging on (modified) retail units, and making custom ("BitBuilt-style") units which have two cartridge slots, and more RAM.

Reverse-engineering this would require analyzing an IS-TWL-DEBUGGER unit, by dumping the V850 JTAG controller firmware together with the bitstreams of the FPGAs (Virtex-5 and Altera MAX II), and taking X-ray images of the board to determine the remaining pinout questions. When all this is finished, I will publish documentation for everything I have discovered, together with design files (PCB + firmware) for an open hardware DSi debug system, and design files for an open hardware DSi capture card (since the IS-TWL-DEBUGGER also has that functionality anyway), using the same release and distribution model as the DSpico. If I receive more money than needed, I will also make a SNES debug unit (which would not need hardware research).