Pico Loader

Pico Loader is a homebrew and retail DS(i) rom loader supporting a variety of platforms (see below).

Features

• Supports both homebrew and retail DS(i) roms
• Supports DSiWare and redirects NAND to the flashcard SD card (acting as "emunand", see below for how to setup)
• Supports DS roms with an encrypted secure area if a DS arm7 bios is present at /_pico/biosnds7.rom
• Supports a wide range of platforms, including popular flashcards and the DSpico
• Built-in patches for DS Protect
• Fast loading

Note that Pico Loader can currently not run retail roms from the DSi SD card. Homebrew is supported, however.

Return to loader is also currently not supported yet.

Supported platforms

Caution

Using the wrong platform could damage your flashcard!

Note that there can be some game compatibility differences between different platforms.

PICO_PLATFORM	Description	DMA
ACE3DS	Ace3DS+, Gateway 3DS (blue), r4isdhc.com.cn carts, r4isdhc.hk carts 2020+, various derivatives	✅
AK2	Acekard 2, 2.1, 2i, r4ids.cn, various derivatives	❌
AKRPG	Acekard RPG SD card	❌
DSPICO	DSpico	✅
DSTT	DSTT, SuperCard DSONE SDHC, r4isdhc.com carts 2014+, r4i-sdhc.com carts, various derivatives	❌
G003	M3i Zero (GMP-Z003)	✅
ISNITRO	Supports the IS-NITRO-EMULATOR through agb semihosting.	❌
M3DS	M3 DS Real, M3i Zero, iTouchDS, r4rts.com, r4isdhc.com RTS (black)	❌
MELONDS	Melon DS support for testing purposes only.	❌
R4	Original R4DS (non-SDHC), M3 DS Simply	❌
R4iDSN	r4idsn.com	❌
SUPERCARD	SuperCard (Slot-2 flashcart)	❌

The DMA column indicates whether DMA card reads are implemented for the platform . Without DMA card reads, some games can have cache related issues.
Note that there are still SDK versions and variants for which Pico Loader does not yet support DMA card reads.

Setup & Configuration

We recommend using WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), or MSYS2 to compile this repository. The steps provided will assume you already have one of those environments set up.

1. Install BlocksDS
2. Install .NET 9.0 for your system (note: this link points to the instructions for Ubuntu, but links for most OS'es are available on the same page)

Compiling

1. Run make
   • By default this compiles for the DSpico platform. To specify a different platform use make PICO_PLATFORM=PLATFORM, for example make PICO_PLATFORM=R4. See the table above for the supported platforms.
2. To use Pico Loader, create a _pico folder in the root of your flashcard SD card and copy the following files to it:
   • picoLoader7.bin
   • picoLoader9.bin (the version for your platform)
   • aplist.bin (generated in the data folder of the repo)
   • savelist.bin (generated in the data folder of the repo)

Emunand

When running DSiWare, Pico Loader redirects NAND to the flashcard SD card. This requires the following files and folders, obtained from a DSi nand dump, in the root of your flashcard SD card:

• photo - The photo partition of nand will be redirected to this folder
• shared1
  • TWLCFG0.dat
  • TWLCFG1.dat
• shared2
  • launcher
    • wrap.bin
• sys
  • log
    • product.log
    • shop.log
    • sysmenu.log
  • cert.sys
  • dev.kp
  • HWID.sgn
  • HWINFO_N.dat
  • HWINFO_S.dat
  • TWLFontTable.dat

How to use Pico Loader from homebrew

On the arm9:

1. Map VRAM blocks A, B, C and D to LCDC
2. Load picoLoader9.bin to 0x06800000 (VRAM A and B)
3. Load picoLoader7.bin to 0x06840000 (VRAM C and D)
4. Setup the header of picoLoader7 to specify what should be loaded. See pload_header7_t in include/picoLoader7.h.
   • Caution: VRAM does not support byte writes!
5. Disable irqs and dma
6. Ensure the cache is flushed
7. Map VRAM C and D to arm7
8. Request the arm7 to boot into picoLoader7
   • Arm7: Disable sound, irqs and dma and jump to the entryPoint specified in the picoLoader7 header. Note that after mapping the VRAM to arm7, it appears at 0x06000000 on the arm7 side.
9. Arm9 jump to 0x06800000

Note that vram must be executable on the arm9.

License

This project is licensed under the Zlib license. For details, see LICENSE.txt.

Additional licenses may apply to the project. For details, see the license directory.

Contributors

• @Gericom
• @lifehackerhansol
• @Dartz150
• @XLuma
• @edo9300
• @Tcm0
• @RocketRobz