Back home !

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Saturn, Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, home, saturn
Home sweet home !
There's no more hospital staff to prepare food or take care of my scars, shampoo, whatever, but returning back at home after around 6 weeks at hospital is nice

Today, I could get my hands on ICs for USB dev cart and Saturn dev stuff (Saturn, small TV, damaged proto carts, etc) that I put in a small storehouse before entering hospital.
Everything is still in cardboards/bags ... I shall tidy the apartment a little before to do some Saturn things ^^
Oh, and I finally could touch the new PCBs I ordered 3 weeks ago

Read more Back home !

Firmware restore utility for Saturn Memory Card Plus cartridge

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Saturn Tags : saturn, cartridge, memory, backup, restore, utility
First, let's introduce to you memory card plus :
data/images/20140817_memory_cards.tb.jpg
Black cartridge : Memory Card Plus
White cartridge : official memory card

Memory Card Plus looks like regular backup cartridge, but behaves differently : while regular backup cartridge provides memory on CS1 memory area, Memory Cart Plus have flash ROM chip mapped on CS0 memory area, as Action Replay does.
Consequently, Memory Card Plus boot before game on CDROM, and during this this time, it modifies some settings in order to make BIOS detecting this cartridge as a second backup memory device.

As Action Replay cartridges, it is possible to reflash Memory Card Plus, and in the case you would like to restore its firmware to its original state, I prepared a flasher utility containing my Memory Card Plus firmware I dumped 2 years ago (time flies ...).

You can download this utility >here<
(source code is included, please refer to readme.txt for installation instructions)
data/images/20140817_memcartplus_flasher.png
Flasher tool in action ... well reflash don't work under yabause,
but should work on real hardware.

As en extra, I let my old game saves with firmware itself ... please format cartridge from BIOS memory manager if you don't need them.
data/images/20140817_memcartplus_contents.png
Good old times I played Night Xmas and Shining Force 3

Remark 1 :
Flashing your Saturn cartridge will erase all the data on it, including your game backup data,
so use only after saving backup data to Saturn internal memory.

Remark 2 :
Memory Card Plus firmware is designed to work only with specific flash chips, so it
probably won't function correctly on other cartridge (Action Replay, USB dev cart, etc).

Disclaimer :
I'm not responsible of damages that this utility may cause to your game save data, Saturn cartridge or Saturn itself.

Please let me know if reflash worked (or not worked) in this article comments


Extra : I also made a diagnostic utility that displays flash chips ID without modifying flash memory contents. It can be downloaded here.
It can be useful when analyzing exotic cartridge, but not really useful with Memory Card Plus.

Read more Firmware restore utility for Saturn Memory Card Plus cartridge

Treatment report (2014/08/17)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report, shower
This weekend, I had my first "full" shower from hair to foot !
Until this time, I had my hair shampooed by nurse, in the same way that barber shampoo our hair, then had shower below shoulder by myself.
I still have an open scar near my ear, but nurses covered it with a special tape, so that I could freely pour water here.
One month without a real shower ... it was a real pleasure to clean freely my body

Oh, and last Friday, doctor said "according to latest blood analysis, you're about to completely recover from surgery/pus/whatever ... what day is fine next week in order to leave hospital ?"
Yeah ! I will be back to real world soon !!
In order to get the scar near my ear more or less cured, I will leave hospital on next Thursday.

Read more Treatment report (2014/08/17)

Treatment report (2014/08/14)

Written by cafealpha no comments
Classified in : Mylife Tags : cancer, mylife, english, treatment, report, meal, ensure
Today is anniversary day : one month after my surgery

And, it was also the day of my first meal ! I was waiting this day for one month !!
data/images/20140814_first_meal.tb.jpg
My first meal picture, similar as picture of in-flight meal

Everything is heavily mixed ... doctors say it might take time until I can start to eat more solid food.
I ate everything, except okayu (liquid rice) and tofu, not because I can't eat theses, but for taste reasons ...
Instead of okayu and tofu, I drank one ensure can

Read more Treatment report (2014/08/14)

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