Nintendo DS
From MobileRead
The Nintendo DS and DS Lite are portable video game consoles but they can also be used to read eBooks.
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[edit] Hardware Specs
Screens: Two separate 3" TFT LCD, resolution of 256 x 192 pixels, dimensions of 62 x 46 mm and 77 mm diagonal (2 7/16" horiz. x 1 13/16" vert. and 3" diagonally), and a dot pitch of 0.24 mm. The gap between the screens is approximately 21 mm, equivalent to about 92 "hidden" lines. The lowermost display of the Nintendo DS is overlaid with a resistive touchscreen, which registers pressure from one point on the screen at a time, averaging multiple points of contact if necessary. Some readers can take advantage of the dual screens to display a book like environment.
Differences in the DS Lite over the original DS: Brighter, more durable top and bottom LCD screens, with four levels of brightness.
The newest product is the DSi which adds two cameras (one inside and one outside) and a sound system (speakers and mic). It also supports WiFi and a local wireless mode (between DSi units). An SD card is supported to store the images. Sound supports AAC only. Built in software for images and sound manipulation.
[edit] Getting Started
The Moon Books Project is dedicated to bringing classic literature, comics, and films freely and legally to users of the nintendo ds game console.
This review was recently posted, If you’ve got a DS Lite, you’ve got an e-reader and mentions all the things you need to get started reading ebooks on the Nintendo DS.
You don't even need to "hack" your unit; just get a R4 (Revolution for DS) cartridge and a MicroSD card and your set!
[edit] Homebrew (ebook) Apps
An excellent 'shell' for the Nintendo DS is the Moon Shell 1.71 with DPGTools 13. Use it for all the books, comics and movies found on The Moon Books Project website. Requires free registration to download any files, though.
The ReadMore Alpha homebrew software, with an 8pt font, and holding the screen in portrait mode (i.e. taller vertically) makes a good reading experience. The Nintendo DS Lite is best suited/more comfortable for portrait mode and even feels like you are holding a book. It won't replace my ebook reader, but is a nice alternative.
But the best software is DSOrganize (homebrew) which has a nice built-in text reader (landscape only) as well as a web browser capable of surfing the MobileRead.com website (it even displays avatars and smilies and allows you to download to the MicroSD card!).
Another excellent ebook reader is DSLibris by Ray Haleblian. It supports the xhtml standard allowing for books to contain bold, italic and underline styles and other html functions (not images yet). Interestingly it does not support just reading plain text files, meaning conversion through OpenOffice or another tool is necessary. It is also the only app that works on a Nintendo DSi with the new System 1.4 to my knowledge. The latest versions of this program includes ePUB support. It can be downloaded at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndslibris/
[edit] Available eBooks
The Moon Books Projects archived books consist primarily of text files from Project Gutenberg (minus legal preambles).
The file for each Author/Category listed contains multiple texts in a .zip. As of July 2008, the most popular ones (all with over 500 downloads) are as follows:
Archived Books EBOOK AUTHOR/CATEGORY ZIP SIZE D/L's RATING/TIMES =========================================================== Aesop 235.52 kb 821 Not rated Albert Einstein 79.35 kb 1071 Not rated Alexandre Dumas 5.57 mb 652 Not rated Arthur Conan Doyle 3.01 mb 1368 Not rated Atlantis Collection 472.84 kb 508 Not rated Beowulf 61.26 kb 986 Not rated Bram Stoker 938.06 kb 889 Not rated Brothers Grimm 875.81 kb 955 Not rated Charles Dickens 341.54 kb 554 10/1 Dante 272.36 kb 941 Not rated Edgar Allan Poe 1009.66 kb 1313 Not rated Franz Kafka (English) 208.12 kb 630 Not rated H. G. Wells 3.08 mb 4995 10/1 H. P. Lovecraft 1.16 mb 1838 7/3 Homer 781.51 kb 748 Not rated Jules Verne 1.91 mb 1020 10/1 Leonardo Da Vinci 553.74 kb 864 Not rated Lewis Carroll 341.83 kb 733 Not rated Magic and Illusion Collection 797.04 kb 673 Not rated Mark Twain 3.74 mb 996 Not rated Miyamoto Musashi 56.96 kb 704 Not rated Philosophy Collection 620.51 kb 911 Not rated Reference - Computing 2.16 mb 654 Not rated Reference - Sexuality 234.02 kb 857 Not rated Readers Encyclopedia 2.91 mb 503 Not rated Websters Unabridged Dictionary 10.78 mb 977 Not rated Sun Tzu 24.51 kb 782 Not rated William Shakespeare 2.92 mb 744 10/1
They even have old comic books like:
Comics COMIC SIZE D/L's =========================================================== 9 Comics - Miscellaneous 190.71 mb 816 6 Comics - NYC 2123 44.44 mb 2254 85 Comics - Heroes 140.73 mb 74686
It seems that this idea is quite popular or maybe is just a novel idea that warrants a "look-see".
And talk about keeping up with the times, they even have the freely distributable ebooks by Cory Doctorow, science fiction books on the DS:
A Place so Foreign Craphound Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom Eastern Standard Tribe EBooks, Neither E nor Books Home Again Home Again Return to Pleasure Island Shadow of the Mothaship Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town Super Man And The Bug Out Overclocked
[edit] Links
- Mobileread forum thread: DS Lite as an ebook reader.
- Nintendo web site
