hacking – Confessions of a Tech Junkie

dslink updated again

Martin Korth got in touch to ask about dslink and requested a few improvements since he’s using it to help with research for the DSi updates in no$gba. I love his notes on the dsi exploit – “Cooking Coach is the best thing ever. This game allows you to make healthy food with dead animals – and, with wintermute’s exploit, it’s allowing to run homebrew code on the DSi” 🙂

I’ve improved the connection speed of dslink a bit by adjusting the way dswifi scans for access points at Martin’s suggestion & these changes are now in the latest dswifi release. Booting minimal a22i compiled nds files doesn’t work just yet but some of the official wmb demos kicking around do boot now when transferred via dslink. There’s no sound or touchscreen unfortunately – the touchscreen is handled differently in DSi mode so I’m not sure that’s fixable without some patching although the audio may just need enabling.

In the meantime, enjoy faster connections & more reliable booting of code with this version. When I get some more time I’ll look into initialising things properly so Martin’s code will boot as well. Pretty sure it’s mainly because the cache is disabled when the nds file is booted which causes issues when both arm7 & arm9 are running in ewram.

For those who’ve been badgering me for the source code I finally got around to tidying everything up & putting it on github. You’ll find the dslink code at https://github.com/devkitPro/dslink, the installer code at https://github.com/devkitPro/install-dsilink and the host application code is in the dstools repo at https://github.com/devkitPro/dstools/tree/master/src/dslink

Gateway 3DS flashcard bricking consoles.

I’ve just caught up with the disturbing news that Gateway have included code in their latest firmware which bricks 3DS consoles if their code has been modified. The company has implied that they’ve done this in response to the people cloning their cards and using modified binaries of Gateway code.

This is completely unacceptable behaviour – destroying expensive hardware in a fit of pique is far beyond any idea of a reasonable response and Gateway should face the consequences of their actions.

For that reason I call on all resellers to remove the Gateway 3DS from sale and return their stock for refund citing safety concerns. If you’re currently promoting the Gateway 3DS card in any way, including but not limited to reviews of the card, advertising places to buy the card, tutorials on how to use the card etc, please consider removing links which could potentially lead to purchases. Please stop promoting this company in any way.

I fully understand that you may be reluctant to do anything which may impact on your ability to make a living but the fact is that these cards are dangerous and will lead to the destruction of expensive hardware. The actions of this company are indefensible and I will not condone any justification for not protecting consumers from such unethical actions regardless of the ethics of their own behaviour.

I find the statements from the gaming press that users cannot force Gateway to be held responsible due to the legality of the devices to be completely reprehensible. Journalists should be seeking ways to help the victims of this unethical company, not rubbing salt in the wounds. I’m looking at you, Eurogamer, The Escapist, MCVUK and Nintendo Everything to name but a few.

Getting Xilinx ISE 14.7 Labtools to work on Windows 8

I recently picked up a Diligent CoolRunner-II™ Starter Board to help with a little project I have in mind to repurpose an old PassMe board I have from the early days of DS Homebrew. Unfortunately when I installed the Xilinx Labtools and tried to obtain a license the Xilinx License Manager (xlcm.exe) decided to crash on me.

After a bit of googling I found out that Xilinx don’t support Windows 8 (what’s that about? It’s really annoying) and although there were several workarounds listed none of them seemed to apply to my installation. I managed to fix it eventually though so I’ve documented the process in case it might be useful to others.

Rename <install location>\Xilinx\14.7\LabTools\LabTools\lib\nt64\libportability.dll to libportability.dll.orig
Rename <install location>\Xilinx\14.7\LabTools\common\lib\nt64\libportability.dll to libportability.dll.orig
Copy <install location>\Xilinx\14.7\LabTools\LabTools\lib\nt64\libportabilityNOSH.dll to <install location>\Xilinx\14.7\LabTools\LabTools\lib\nt64\libportability.dll
Copy <install location>\Xilinx\14.7\LabTools\LabTools\lib\nt64\libportabilityNOSH.dll to <install location>\Xilinx\14.7\LabTools\common\lib\nt64\libportability.dll

Hey presto – working Xilinx License Manager. I hope someone else finds this useful.