Hacking Bugs and Features in Next Acekard RPG

[golden]

From what i can see they are infact stored on the nand and writting to the sd/nand on next boot. though that process takes a little while to complete maybe i can do something to speed it up but i've got others thing i want to do before that.

Good luck with whatever you are doing. About speeding up the process, I think it is fast enough. It is one second or less for me usually for saving pokemon DP but I think the next step would be to take it out rather than speed it up.

 

[Normmatt]

That 'MAY' be possible as it seems to be writting to a sector of the nand if you can pass it the sector and address of the save file on either the nand or the sd it you possible write directly to the save file but doing that would be very dangerous as if you shutdown using a write you could screw up your nand or your sd.

 

[golden]

That 'MAY' be possible as it seems to be writting to a sector of the nand if you can pass it the sector and address of the save file on either the nand or the sd it you possible write directly to the save file but doing that would be very dangerous as if you shutdown using a write you could screw up your nand or your sd.

Perhaps that's the reason Acekard team didn't implement it?

 

[Normmatt]

I'd say so but i could be entirely wrong about this i haven't taken an in depth look but a quick look around.

 

[golden]

I'd say so but i could be entirely wrong about this i haven't taken an in depth look but a quick look around.

Well, by "screw up" what do you mean? Destroy for good or reformat? I am guessing reformat only but I don't know how the RPG works. >.>

 

[OSW]

I personally wouldn't bother messing with the save system. It's acceptable and fast for the method.

does it have a capacitor or somehting which stores the battery? or since you said "nand", does it have a seperate nand storage?

 

[golden]

I personally wouldn't bother messing with the save system. It's acceptable and fast for the method.

does it have a capacitor or somehting which stores the battery? or since you said "nand", does it have a seperate nand storage?

Yes, but doesn't it lose the save if it is not booted for a long time?

 

[Normmatt]

From what i can tell it shouldn't as it seems to stores it directly on the nand(internal memory).

 

[golden]

From what i can tell it shouldn't as it seems to stores it directly on the nand(internal memory).

Then what's the point? If you are playing games through nand why not just write it there instead of store it on the nand? Isn't it possible to change the storing routine on the nand to writing on the nand? Of course, this only would apply to nand stored games but still, it would be an improvement.

 

[Normmatt]

They dont provide the rom patching code so i really cant do much about that atm sorry.

 

[golden]

They dont provide the rom patching code so i really cant do much about that atm sorry.

You should try to contact the team. You never know, they might supply you with it unless it is like top secret or something. >.>

 

[OSW]

again, it doesn't really bother me, however i have a feeling they promised they would release the rom booting code too

Normmatt, do you have any idea if the RPG internal firmware (i don't know how to refer to it.... maybe bootloader?) is rewritable?

 

[Normmatt]

They dont provide the rom patching code so i really cant do much about that atm sorry.

You should try to contact the team. You never know, they might supply you with it unless it is like top secret or something. >.>



I'd assume it'd be secret as most flashcards patch code and releasing theres would allows others to copy their code to improve their card which isn't a good move on acekard's part.

QUOTE(OSW @ Jan 5 2008, 07:42 PM)again, it doesn't really bother me, however i have a feeling they promised they would release the rom booting code too

Normmatt, do you have any idea if the RPG internal firmware (i don't know how to refer to it.... maybe bootloader?) is rewritable?

I'm not too sure about the bootloader, why do you ask?

 

[golden]

I'd assume it'd be secret as most flashcards patch code and releasing theres would allows others to copy their code to improve their card which isn't a good move on acekard's part.

I'd assume the open source would give others enough information to implement the RPG's features one to their own cart. That's why if you notice, the RPG has no exclusive SOFTWARE features. It only has hardware exclusives which cannot be stolen if it is open source.

 

[Jaejae]

One of my biggest complaints with the loader is that it loads the folders as you open them, this takes a second or so, and I get impatient, and end up loading the first game in my list.
Perhaps if the folders were loaded at boot.
I have no idea how hard this would be to implement, but I presume it would be pretty hard.

 

[OSW]

i'm pretty sure most flashcards load folders when you click on them rather than analyse the whole flashcard before boot.

honestly i dont want to sacrifice boot time.

Keep the NDS files in any one folder under 15 and it loads pretty fast.

 

[TD-Linux]

I think we should fix file loading - we can make it load in the background, at least. Or give some moving indicator...

Not releasing their rom loader is kinda lame, as it has no advantages over any others...

How hard is it to load roms, BTW? Could we write our own patcher?

I want to be able to access the bootloader too. I wouldn't be suprised if it was accessible somehow over USB...

 

[Extreme Coder]

What is the use of being able to access the bootloader?

Don't you think we should form a Google Code/DejaVu/SourceForge/whatever project so that not everyone goes off developing his own branch of the firmware. I want to develop some things, for example text and image file viewing as a start to brush up on my coding skills

IMO, a neat feature we should add would be to replace the top screen with the calendar thingy on it, with an animated gif, which would change according to what you press

 

[golden]

What is the use of being able to access the bootloader?

Don't you think we should form a Google Code/DejaVu/SourceForge/whatever project so that not everyone goes off developing his own branch of the firmware. I want to develop some things, for example text and image file viewing as a start to brush up on my coding skills

IMO, a neat feature we should add would be to replace the top screen with the calendar thingy on it, with an animated gif, which would change according to what you press

Or animated gif images supported in skins!!! That would be awesome.

 

[Normmatt]

gif images wont be supported as they will need to be decoded and converted each time you load them which would slow down the menu greatly not to mention animations would slow that down once again.

I've been meaning to setup a svn for my custom firmware but my changes might make it into the next official release.