673

(274 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

This might be a good idea to once again mention that I'm working on a flasher on my own, which will have features the existing "Polish student"  flasher doesn't.
The pirate cart probably needs special commands, to switch to a different ROM, which the flasher cannot give, as it only supports a standard MBC. These commands would normally be given by the menu ROM. My flasher could do this easily, of course. I think 12ianma's idea was to stick a big cap on the cartridge so it would retain the choice from the menu and then move the cartridge to the flasher.

It's strange that dumping the ROM gives Barbie and not the menu. Maybe the ROM starts with something that is the Barbie ROM with a small boot strap to select the menu ROM, which doesn't work after you've dumped the ROM and starts the actual Barbie ROM instead. The changes could also have to do with a completely non-standard memory controller. Would you mind sharing what you have dumped? And maybe if you want loan me the cartridge for experiments.

The soldered jumper is interesting. I'm thinking that the ROM might be a programmable memory, but probably one time programmable at best. If this is the case, the jumper might be for the programming voltage or a write pulse for the memory. Another thing it might be is a game selection, so that removing the solder turns it into a different multicart. (Cheaper to make a single mas ROM and use for different products.)

But where is it even connected? It seems to ust be a via, which is extended down a little on the bottom side. The solder blob is near a line which goes off to the /RD line (not /WR) but I think that's not even connected to the solder blob. So it seems to be connecting two points on the chip, unless one is a sneaky ground.

Edit: Also, don't be fooled by the flash manufacturer/chip ID values printed there. Those are just bytes read from the ROM. Normally, you would detect a flash chip by writing a certain command sequence to the flash chip and then read out the values at certain memory locations. This flasher is dumb and reads the values without making an effort to check whether they are actually from the flash chip or just bytes from the ROM. My flasher, that I mentioned above, does do this.

674

(20 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

You could if you wanted, but I'm interested in Windows 8 because I want to know specifically if the things I suggested above would work. Also, Linux 64-bit shouldn't be much different from Linux 32-bit since it's all open source and there are no driver signature issues on Linux.

675

(20 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

Bumping this like crazy. Could someone please try either of the things I was recommending to see if they make any difference?

You mean 256 kilobits, right, aka 32 kilobytes.

677

(84 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

00 39 is a different issue, that's when the Gameboy crashes. When the MM1134A fails, the SRAM chip is never instructed to output any data. This gives the value 1A or 2A repeated everywhere. This is the value of the opcode that is used to read from SRAM, which stays on the data bus because of bus capacitance. (The traces and metal parts in the connectors are acting as capacitors which store this value for a short period of time, but long enough for it to be picked up again.)

678

(10 replies, posted in General Discussion)

By Italian standards, the female form would be more like Maria. Yes, that body on the floor, that's that joke. I just killed it in cold blood. Also, stupid thread. Also also:

barbeque wrote:

edit: which mustache tho ?

If you look just slightly higher, you'll see a face with a large fake moustache.

679

(55 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Boy Without Batteries wrote:

OH YEAH, well my dad can drink a whole 24 pack of beer and then beat my mom

token wrote:

gay thread

Thsi thread would be so much better without these kind of replies. Oh yeah, remind me why I haven't sent this thread to the graveyard yet. tongue

680

(2 replies, posted in Trading Post)

Please keep thread titles descriptive. (Not just "wanted") I've edited the title to be overly descriptive.

681

(9 replies, posted in Rules & Announcements)

Should I waste some more time on this and list which bots are crawling the site too?

682

(9 replies, posted in Rules & Announcements)

You could click the chipmusic.org link in the breadcrumb. (Between the thread content and the reply field.) Or press the home button, if you're one of the people still using a computer with a keyboard.

683

(9 replies, posted in Rules & Announcements)

Because of this thread I made probably the most useless update to cm.o so far, but it might still some people's curiosity. There's a text below the list of users on the right side of the page. This used to show only the number of guests and and logged-in members. It now also bots and spammers.
Explanation of the categories:

Guests: Users that are not logged in and also don't fall into any of the below categories.

Members: Logged-in users.

Bots: Sessions reported as coming from bots. These are mostly legitimate search engine crawler bots. This includes a certain ChipMusicHeartBitsSpidy, btw. heart

Bot dupes: I noticed that some crawlers (especially Yandex. Edit: I mean Baidu...) created a lot requests from different IP addresses which created a lot of unused sessions, which would sometimes boost the guests numbers really high. Those are now sorted as duplicates.

Spammers: This indicates that a session has been blocked by one of the various automatic spam detection methods in place on cm.o.

A session can only be in one category at a time.

Now you know.

684

(31 replies, posted in General Discussion)

TSC wrote:

Sometimes I'll come here to kill a few minutes/read a few insightful posts. I then realize quite a few of these discussions are embarrassing, referential throwbacks to a certain other defunct message board I never cared about. Noticing I'm not logged in, I stay logged the fuck out.

hmm

685

(31 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Yep, trying to clear up the confusion with some rudimentary bot detection. Next project will be to add a count of the number of spammers as well. Maybe it will turn out the number of real guests is 0. tongue

686

(84 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

Alpine wrote:
Timbob wrote:


Nanoloop 1.0

Why does the cart say "SAM"?
Wouldn't it make more sense for it to say "Oliver" or something, seeing as that's the name of the guy who wrote it iirc.

He mostly likely bought those cartridge off of pirates. Getting a custom imprint costs money. Most likely the SAM is either the name of the company manufacturing the shells, or a distortion of game. Previous cartridges have said game, but Nintendo might have sent legal threats for even printing "game" on a pirate cartridge.

687

(8 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

It could be. You should probably be replacing it anyway, so...

688

(8 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

Do you hear the po-ling sound if you wait the time it normally takes for the logo to scroll down the screen? Can you adjust the contrast when the EMS cartridge is inserted, or does it always stay the same contrast?

My theory is that the PCB isn't properly seated inside the cartridge and shorts something out when inserted to a DMG. Open up the case and lift the PCB and put it back. Be careful when you lift the PCB, as it may be stuck down with double sided adhesive tape.

I'm also noting that that is an EMS 64M USB cartridge in a shell originally designed for the older EMS 32M cartridges.