Dragon Ball Kai - The war with Majin Buu is over

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : etc, Mylife Tags : dragon ball, kai, cancer
So 3 weeks ago, Buu was defeated by Goku, and last week Goku and Uub left Budokai in order to start training ...

Dragon Ball Kai is finally over ... I especially appreciate during Buu's death when it is said something like "he disappeared, and didn't left any cell behind", because I felt my cancer was completely cured (until the last malignant cell) at that time

Dragon Ball Super will start from this Sunday ! Toriyama-sensei, please bring us new adventures and dreams !!!

BTW, I saw Dragon Ball Battle of Gods on DVD, and it was cool
My comments :
 - I felt that Toriyama was behind this, because it was about eating foods from the beginning to the end
 - Not born yet Pan is already considered as a Sayajin ... it is strange that it didn't led to debate about pro/con abortion in Europe/USA


Last (technical) comment : I prepared an HDD in order to record Dragon Ball Super on it, and discovered that it isn't possible to copy recorded videos from one HDD to another ?!?
So, NO thanks to :
 - Sharp, for making such ugly user interface ... you didn't thought it would be cool to allow multiple selection when deleting recorded movies ?
 - Sony, and other companies from "Entertainment Industry", for restricting copy on recorded media from TV.

Ah, everything was simpler during video cassette tape era ...

Read more Dragon Ball Kai - The war with Majin Buu is over

Iso/Cue "loader" works on real hardware :]

Written by cafealpha no comments
(For more informations, you can also read this old article.)

I finally had time to use my Saturn, and I could verify that iso/cue "loader" works on real hardware !
Of course it works well when reading from RomFs, and it works also well when reading file from SD card

data/images/20150626_iso_loader.tb.jpg
My test environment ... sorry for the mess
(Micro SD card is located on top-left of the cartridge)

I lost some time to understand why data transfer from SD card was slower than expected, but finally understand why : some debug/whatever delay routine was called when accessing cartridge registers ...
Just putting some #if 0 around this delay code solved the "problem" ^^;

Read more Iso/Cue "loader" works on real hardware :]

Old project release : JWPds

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : PPCenter, etc, Programming, Mylife Tags : bigN, homebrew, japanese
Last day, I was digging in my HDD, and found an unreleased project !

Project name was JWPds, and about Japanese words/kanjis translation tool running on Nintendo DS.
data/images/20150609_jwpds_radic.tb.jpg
Looking for the meaning of 絵 kanji on my DS :
bottom screen allows kanji input and
kanji meaning is displayed on top screen.


data/images/20150610_jpwce_radic.tb.png
Looking for the meaning of 絵 kanji on my PC with JWPce.
(JWPce is not my project, it is just for comparison with JWPds)

Project is unfinished, because developing things on DS took more time than expected, and also because I learned enough Japanese, hence didn't needed to develop/use this application any more

Stable binaries and latest (not stable) sources are available, so please have fun with them

For more informations, download links, screenshots, etc, please have a look in the project page .

If you have any message, etc to send to me, don't hesitate to post a comment to this article

PS for DS fans lost here, and wanting leave a comment : comments require a Turing test asking for my favorite game console, and it's not DS
Please have a look in my blog in order to solve this test (If you are an human, it won't be difficult ).

PPS to Saturn fans here : don't worry, I don't plan to shift to DS homebrew development !
The console I like to debug on is and will always be Saturn

Read more Old project release : JWPds

Toying with my good old Nintendo DS lite ...

Written by cafealpha 4 comments
Classified in : etc, Programming, Mylife Tags : bigN, homebrew, cartridge
From yesterday, I suddenly wanted to turn my DS into a MP3 player, so that I can listen my favorite music while I drive my car
Of course, there are other options in order to listen music in my car :
 - GPS navigation unit can read MP3 from SD card, but don't support SDHC ... and my wife (sharing the same GPS unit) doesn't like my music
 - My android smartphone can read mp3 but ... I don't like android, and the more I put mp3 in my phone, the longer it takes to boot ...
 - My gp2x wiz can read mp3, but takes a while to boot, and the ergonomics of its music player is not so good.

So I want to purchase a DsTwo cartridge for my DS, but it's out of stock everywhere. Is there somebody ready to sell his DsTwo cartridge to me ?
In advance, thank you

And no, I don't want other cheap cartridge, because I like the way to put a CPU into a DS cartridge, and publicly provide SDK in order to use it

Read more Toying with my good old Nintendo DS lite ...

Iso/Cue "loader" works :)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : etc, Saturn, Programming, Mylife Tags : saturn, iso, loader, firmware, beta
So I am making an enhanced version of Pseudo Saturn firmware.
And, as an extra feature of this firmware, I added an iso/cue "loader".
data/images/20150603_dr.evil.laser2.tb.jpg

Why the quotes around "loader" ? Because it doesn't emulates CD-block
So, it only loads few homebrew games, but it's enough for me, and I don't want to waste more time on adding CD block software emulator while better solutions (rhea, jhl's "mpeg" cart, etc) already exist.

As an other bonus, I also added RomFs support to my Saturn library
It is like romdiskfs that is widely used on linux, DS homebrew, etc, but it allows file compression, some other features, and ... is probably buggy because I coded it from scratch

(*) Virtual file system is not really new on Saturn homebrew scene, because Piratero already implemented one in libyaul a while ago


data/images/20150603_romfs_filelist.png
RomFs root folder contents. I will load sl_elf.iso file in the next paragraph.

So here is a capture of yabause running sl_elf.iso, after decompressing it from virtual file system stored in Flash memory.
sl_elf.iso is "satdemo" made by CharlesDoty, grabbed from SaturnOrbit's examples (Thank you Rockin'B for making SaturnOrbit ! After 10 years, it still have it installed on my laptop's hard disk ).

data/images/20150603_isocueloader.png
yabause running Saturn demo from iso file, near SatLink software I use in order to debug my Saturn programs.

Very big thanks to the yabause team ! I grabbed the iso/cue loading routines from yabause sources, and it was very easy to port them

Edit : I removed unused code (CD Block emulation routines, etc) from iso loader module, and .o size dropped from 74KB to 18KB oO

Edit (2015/06/26) : I tested this code on real hardware, and it works too ! Please see this article for more details.

Read more Iso/Cue "loader" works :)

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