Second (and I hope last) part of this article ...
Last week, I spend half a day in getting rid of spam messages via my homepage contact form.
And, it seems to work well 
So today, I spent another half a day in getting rid of spam messages via this blog's comments 
So I removed bullshit advertisement messages scattered on my blogs comments, and tried captcha plugin for PluXml (= my blog's CMS).
And unfortunately, image based captcha plugin doesn't seem to work well, because it blocks ALL comments ... very efficient spam filter 
So I added a simple additional test when posting comments. Hope you will solve it ... or not in the case you are a robot
Extra : I spend the other half a day in testing Saturn cartridge with custom USB dev cart connected to my laptop and Open Logic Sniffer and JTAG (ByteBlaster on my desktop's Parallel Port, because I don't have enough budget to buy a USB Blaster ^^; ) around my Saturn 
Here is a snapshot of signals when it finally worked :
Can you guess what it is about ?
Read more No more spam ? "I'll be back" edition
After making some cleanup in my development folders, I found an old archive file
It is dated 2007 June 20, and contains a very early version of ietx2, which is an adaptation of yeti3D engine to Saturn.
At that time, I was using a PentiumIV processor and 80GB IDE hard disk in order to run sh-elf-gcc provided by SaturnOrbit ... very nostalgic times ... but I definitely prefer nowadays for Saturn development
Iso file can be found >>> here <<<.
(No, there are no sources available, because I didn't kept archives of sources at that time.)
Please don't waste a CD-R for this. You can try on yabause, or just look at screenshot and say "hey, very ugly stuff" however.
ietx2 beta screenshot : not enough time to draw last quads in VDP1 list, hence the garbage on foreground.
ietx2 beta screenshot : example of incorrect rendering when quads coordinates exceed 16 bits range.Present version
You can find current version (ietx2) and sources of my Yeti3D adaptation
here (dated 2011 April 19).
Also, there are videos of ietx2 available below. Click on the links to display them on youtube.
Future (?) version
I'm still maintaining sources of ietx2.
I renamed project name to ietx3 (yeah, I'm not very original when choosing project names
), and now use a lite version of Yeti3D PRO engine ... "lite" means original, minus a lot of features, in order to keep a decent frame rate, and fitting to Saturn resources.
You can find some videos (binaries are not released, sorry) on my youtube channel :
Read more Nostalgia time : ietx2 old (buggy) beta iso for download
From last week, I'm receiving many spam messages via my contact form .
I have other things to do than reading and deleting this bullshit, so I added two confirmation fields in the contact form :
- Email address confirmation.
- Turing test, not very difficult to solve, but let's see how smart nowadays AIs are
I didn't added captcha, because :
- It's a waste of time
- Personally, I sometimes can't solve them 
- It relies on external site and/or waste resources on homepage server side, and I don't like this.
So, dear spambots, I don't thank you for wasting my time in reading your so important messages, and spending half a day in adding security in my mail form. Hope this is the last time I waste my time for you
Read more No more spam messages via my contact form ?
I made many fixes to my flasher utility. (Old article available here , even older article available here)
Changelog :
- Tested on around 30 Action Replay cartridges. It was working fine for all known flash chips.
- Ask for confirmation before returning to multiplayer screen.
- Return back to initial screen in the case user don't want to go to multiplayer screen.
- Retrieve and display chips IDs when firmware selection menu is displaying.
- Fixed erase/flash operations for AT29C010 flash chips.
- Minor fix about text display.
- Fix for BFBF/1010 flash chips.
- In the case Action Replay flash chips is supected, display disclaimer
before flashing as a typical Action Replay flash device (SST29EE).
- Refresh vendor/device IDs display during error/disclaimer message display
in the case flash is not recognized.
- Major changes in menu related routines.
- Added key auto repeat feature : holding Up/Down button should scroll automatically now.
- Added erase verification test.
- If erase/write verification test failed, display informations about failure.
- Use FRT-based delay during flash write/erase.
- Changed highlight color in menus.
- Change color of vendor/device strings according to chips flashability.
- Hopeless : red
- Maybe OK : yellow
- Recognized : green
In short, it now has nearly the same compatibility as legacy arflash/Atlas utility, while being SGL-free (it doesn't uses Sega libraries), compatible with newer flash chips, embedding several firmwares in a same executable file, etc, etc.
In the case this flasher is not compatible with your Action Replay (it may happen, I don't decide about future revisions of Action Replay cartridges), please let me know in this article's comments or by email .
However, please note that I don't plan to add new features to this utility. New features were added during beta testing phase, and I really thanks beta testers for this.
Some screenshots from beta testers :
BFBF/1212 flash chip, now recognized as SST/Greenliant type.
Picture provided by gameofyou1.
0101/2020 flash chips : everything is working fine, as in the previous version of the flasher utility.
Picture provided by TabajaraLabs.
Weird 53BF/4707 flash chips : one chip is recognized as typical BF/07 (SST), while the other doesn't returns its vendor/device IDs.
As you can see on PCB picture, flash chips on right side are different, so that they return different vendor/device IDs.
Pictures provided by A Murder Of Crows.
1F1F/D5D5 flash chips : pictures before and after I fix the Flasher utility.It (finally) works on latest version Pictures provided by Sonic Dreamcaster.
BFBF/1010 flash chips : according to datasheet, theses flash chips have twice more memory than usual chips (total 256KB -> 512KB).However, a look at cartridge PCB between C6 capacitor and bottom-right flash chip shows that most significant address bit is grounded, so only 256KB can be addressed from Saturn ... what a pity 
Pictures provided by SaturnAR and Zorlon.
You can download Flasher utility and its source code here : flasher_arp_20150326.7z → http://ppcenter.webou.net/pskai/ 
Disclaimer #1 : You will loose your cartridge backup data after flashing it.
Disclaimer #2 : I'm not responsible in the case I brick your cartridge and/or damage your Saturn.
Note : I didn't made PseudoSaturn firmware. All thanks about PseudoSaturn firmware must go to CyberwarriorX.
Read more Saturn cartridge firmware flasher utility : major (final ?) update
Today was a nostalgia day : I uploaded program to my good old TI-89 via "$4 parallel link cable" I made around 15 years ago, when I was high school student
My TI-89 and its "$4 parallel cable", still working
First, I wanted to use my 7 years old desktop PC with parallel printer port available ... but it stopped to work after 2 minutes of usage. However heavy washing of CPU fan (yeah, "washing" : I put it in the water, then used my hair dryer to dry it) solved this 
I then tried to install TILP program, but I was lost in installing GTK (
), and link related DLLs ... a real nightmare, and it didn't worked too ... (Sorry Lionel and other TILP authors ! Your soft is great, but its installer is a real piece of crap)
So I tried even older W32Tran8x, a program made under Win9x era.
Except DlPortIo that needed to be updated to work under Windows7, everything worked fine !!!
The simpler the better 
I will try to keep this way of thinking when creating Saturn programs or cartridges
Edit : I successfully installed GTC, an oncalc C compiler. Thank you Pollux (GTC author) for your great work
It's funny to program on a machine where sizeof(int) equals 2.
Read more Long time without using my TI89
