Hacking AKAIO 1.2 Released

[kai445]

DMA will only work on AKRPG, but I will probably port it to the AK2 4.07 engine AKAIO uses. the 4.08 engine does DMA patching but they are keeping that engine private atleast for now. I have yet to even add the DMA mode to AKAIO.

Thank you very much for supporting the AK2. Your firmware is the best

 

[FADE5303]

Would it be possible to make AKAIO recognize DS phat? I'd like to adjust the brightness(on/off) in the GUI itself without going to the DS main menu...

Others, nice work!

 

[TechnoShaman]

Anybody notice that aurelio has got zip compression working on the ds.
Looks like it's open source to.
That would be pretty cool to integrate into AKAIO.

It Be nice to have an option to keep all your game's in zip format,
then when you select a game it automatically unzips
a duplicate to play.
then when your done (or when you restart) trashes the duplicate.

I wouldn't mind the wait. If it meant i could carry more game's on the go.

Here's a link to his blog

Again thanks' to the developer's
can't wait for 1.3

 

[cory1492]

You have no idea how slow unzipping even a 8M game would be on the DS, do you... try it in dsOS (or any other app that supports zip already on DS, like dsorganizer if I remember right) and see if the tiny size savings and possibility of such writes to erase your entire card is actually worth the wait (and the hours it would cost them to actually make room in memory around all the other stuff for such a large chunk of code.)

 

[TechnoShaman]

So it's not feasible, But if it was, it be cool.

 

[cory1492]

So it's not feasible, But if it was, it be cool.

What would be cool is if the DS were powerful enough to do stream compressed games like the PSP. But, it's not

 

[Normmatt]

So it's not feasible, But if it was, it be cool.

What would be cool is if the DS were powerful enough to do stream compressed games like the PSP. But, it's not

Compressed roms are impossible on the nds, simply because you never know where in the nds file the rom is going to read from, so you'd need to decompress the rom before loading it. this could be done but it seems pointless and wouldn't save much space. The PSP also has an underlying OS which handles part of the reading of compressed games.

 

[cory1492]

So it's not feasible, But if it was, it be cool.

What would be cool is if the DS were powerful enough to do stream compressed games like the PSP. But, it's not

Compressed roms are impossible on the nds, simply because you never know where in the nds file the rom is going to read from, so you'd need to decompress the rom before loading it. this could be done but it seems pointless and wouldn't save much space. The PSP also has an underlying OS which handles part of the reading of compressed games.

The same is the case for PSP, which is why the iso is compressed into frames - decompressing a frame to get the exact offset instead of decompressing and scanning an entire stream file for the proper data (of course, it has the memory to handle frame data caching and UMD is really quite slow to begin with so data waits aren't a big deal.)

In the DS's case, the "underlying OS" is the nitroFS accessors (libs or bins provided by the manufacturer, not sure on which, also which in general is why compatibility updates for specific games are not all that common with current cards), which while they could well be patched to handle frame compressed data (just like they can be somewhat generically patched to read hard offsets on the GBA slot memory bus) I doubt there is much of the processor left to do such things (let alone the memory for the lib or cycles required in that processor's regions, though I'd guess technically bios/lz styled functions could be used on the frames.)

I haven't stared at it too hard, are dscardi accesses/transfers in official games done through arm7 work or do the games access the cards directly from arm9 (non-proscribed code)?

So yeah, nothing is impossible but the work required to make it happen in many cases does not justify the returns (especially where DS games would already generally use compression internally to cut the cost of ROM chips in the final carts.)

 

[Skydancer]

Found another little Bug/Issue in AK2 Firmware:

I hope i can explain it in English.

You have some roms:

Filename -> Internal Name
xms-spce -> Spore
xpa-nplu -> N+
sm-aege -> Age of Empires
2625_Viva -> Viva Pinata

When u use the Internal Name function the AK2 sorts only Filenames! But not the Internal Names!


Shows then like this:
Viva Pinata -> 2625_Viva
Age of Empires -> sm-aege
Spore -> xms-spce
N+ -> xpa-nplu

It is possible that the AK2 can sort both?
Cause i rename the Roms... (and Internal Name)
my Friend uses Original Rom Names (Filenames) and the Internal Roms function... looks horrible! Nothing is alphabetical.

 

[DaMummy]

yea if we could put the roms in alphabetical internal order, that would be tits!

 

[bollocks]

It's formatted with FAT 16 with 32K cluster size, but I've tried with FAT 32 with 32K cluster size and that doesn't work either.

I'm using AKAIO 1.2 and a Kingston Class 4 microSDHC (Taiwan).

You've the same model SDHC I have here then, try formatting it with panasonic SD formatter (link), I haven't had a single problem with my own when copying anything (big or small) and that is all I have ever used to format it (read the info at the top of that page I just linked to.)

omg i love you :o
ever since my sdhc corrupted and i reformatted it (using the windows formatter) the ak menu has taken wayy longer to load the files list than it used to (to the point that i had to split everything into more directories just to make it usable) and i never knew why.
but i just now formatted it with the panasonic formatter and its as fast as it ever was, if not faster. brilliant!

 

[Minox]

It's formatted with FAT 16 with 32K cluster size, but I've tried with FAT 32 with 32K cluster size and that doesn't work either.

I'm using AKAIO 1.2 and a Kingston Class 4 microSDHC (Taiwan).

You've the same model SDHC I have here then, try formatting it with panasonic SD formatter (link), I haven't had a single problem with my own when copying anything (big or small) and that is all I have ever used to format it (read the info at the top of that page I just linked to.)

The problem is solved now although Panasonic SD Formatter didn't help at all. After formatting it in my camera it started working perfectly again.

 

[cory1492]

Seems to me that some work still needs to be done in the AK's version of libfat or the AK dldi's (here's hoping that the problem isn't tied more to the AK hardware), glad you managed to get it going despite that though.

 

[PanzerWF]

Just curious, what's being worked on for the next AKAIO?

Unless it is some really big awesome fabulousness secret that will amaze us. In which case, tell me in a PM xD

 

[Normmatt]

There aren't any MAJOR features, but we are fixing bugs and adding new features. The biggest change will probably be the ability to change the font (now uses tahoma pt10 as default).

 

[Smiths]

And as of last week I'm actually employed (yay) so there's definitely less vodka on weekdays... it's been a good 8 months

I don't have any thing really in the latest builds since beta 2... that i am aware of. I know Normmatt has put stuff in and definitely has been doing some good "gelu'izing" to get everything up to date with the AKRPG Master's work (hence the font stuff)

My work was basically on the wifi plugin, which I have already released an update to once (though there have been some changes since that one, but nothing major).
Norm now has wifi, and he's able to help out on what I've labored over many drunken nights.

 

[PanzerWF]

There aren't any MAJOR features, but we are fixing bugs and adding new features. The biggest change will probably be the ability to change the font (now uses tahoma pt10 as default).
Oooh, sounds neat. Thanks for the reply.

QUOTE(Smiths @ Sep 20 2008, 07:18 PM) And as of last week I'm actually employed (yay) so there's definitely less vodka on weekdays... it's been a good 8 months

I don't have any thing really in the latest builds since beta 2... that i am aware of. I know Normmatt has put stuff in and definitely has been doing some good "gelu'izing" to get everything up to date with the AKRPG Master's work (hence the font stuff)

My work was basically on the wifi plugin, which I have already released an update to once (though there have been some changes since that one, but nothing major).
Norm now has wifi, and he's able to help out on what I've labored over many drunken nights.

8 months since you've been drunk on the job I bet

Thanks for the reply.

Also, is there any chance that a rename feature will be added in future versions?

 

[Normmatt]

There aren't any MAJOR features, but we are fixing bugs and adding new features. The biggest change will probably be the ability to change the font (now uses tahoma pt10 as default).
Oooh, sounds neat. Thanks for the reply.

QUOTE(Smiths @ Sep 20 2008, 07:18 PM) And as of last week I'm actually employed (yay) so there's definitely less vodka on weekdays... it's been a good 8 months

I don't have any thing really in the latest builds since beta 2... that i am aware of. I know Normmatt has put stuff in and definitely has been doing some good "gelu'izing" to get everything up to date with the AKRPG Master's work (hence the font stuff)

My work was basically on the wifi plugin, which I have already released an update to once (though there have been some changes since that one, but nothing major).
Norm now has wifi, and he's able to help out on what I've labored over many drunken nights.

8 months since you've been drunk on the job I bet

Thanks for the reply.

Also, is there any chance that a rename feature will be added in future versions?

It isn't likely to get implemented any time soon, the code for renaming files has been there since the beginning but we'd need to implement an on screen keyboard which would require a semi major if not major rewrite of the gui to implement properly, this is too much work for us to bother with at the moment.

Would anyone else be interested in me adding autoboot mode to the ak2 (like flashme where it boot straight into the flashcart instead of the health and safety window).

 

[VatoLoco]

Normmatt Posted Today, 01:40 AM
Would anyone else be interested in me adding autoboot mode to the ak2 (like flashme where it boot straight into the flashcart instead of the health and safety window).

Yes, that would be great. I've got mine soft-modded to auto-boot right now, but an AIO option would be a nice addition.



edit: I just noticed that you said AK2...will the auto-boot mode work on RPG as well?

 

[Normmatt]

Normmatt Posted Today, 01:40 AM
Would anyone else be interested in me adding autoboot mode to the ak2 (like flashme where it boot straight into the flashcart instead of the health and safety window).

Yes, that would be great. I've got mine soft-modded to auto-boot right now, but an AIO option would be a nice addition

The only problem is that it would require me to modify the boot rom of the AK2 which could essentially brick your AK2. Which makes me lean towards an exteneral program that would do it so that only people who know the risks will even attempt it.