Doctor V64 Black Screen Connector Fix.

Just thought i'd post this , joinked from Anthroxes old backup unit site. Bung fucked up on the first production of the V64 connectors that sits inbetween the N64 and the V64, later models don't have this issue (I think).

Carrier beta released for Dreamcast by Bananabreak.

"I personally dumped this release myself using: Dreamcast (duh), BBA, SYSTEM-DISC 2, httpd-ack, Family Guy's pack, IsoBuster, HxD, Daemon Tools and last but not least the infamous Padus DiscJuggler.

As for changes to the final game I cannot say for sure but look at it this way: this build is at least 6 months before the game hit the shelves in Japan. Also there are 678 files totalling 134 Mb in this release, but 632 files at 846 Mb in the retail release. One thing is for certain: things are different!

This is the first Bananabreak release. Bananabreak are a group of Beta owners looking to release discs anonymously so I am serving as the public face (even if it is like a slapped arse!), but if there any thanks the anonymous members deserve them too!"

Grab it here: http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=492482&postcount=1

I guess we can look forward to a few more beta releases this year, specially looking forward to playing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzUIePPcKls %d~~ *prays to dreamcast gods*.

iQue Player Manual.

I saw that my blog had gotten some google hits from people trying to find the ique manual so here it is!, thanks to whoever photographed the pages and posted them on the old dextrose site.

Pokemon Mini 17 ROM multi flash cart.

MrBlinky from the Pokemon Mini dev team has posted a video of his new revision of the old Pokemon Mini flash cart which is able to store more or less every game released for this little thing.

http://www.pokemon-mini.net/

King of the Monsters 2 prototype on Ebay (Neogeo MVS).

Real or fake?:).

http://cgi.ebay.com/Rare-Prototype-Proto-NEO-GEO-MVS-King-Monsters-2-/330556714742

FBA Bank Panic WIP for Sega Saturn.

Another wild FBA port for Sega Saturn by VBT , this time it's Bank Panic :).

http://segaxtreme.net/community/topic/17139-fbas-bank-panic-wip/

I'm gonna nag him and see if we can get a lightgun game ported over so I can dust off mine ;).

Jovis - N64 Scener 1974 - 2010.

I recently found out that Jovis has passed away, sadly it's almost gone a year since it happened so it's a bit late but that's how it is when you don't know peoples real names on the internet and they just disappear one day and you just think they got a new job and got too busy to visit the local dev channels.

Jovis was one of the key people in the N64 scene back in the day, he made the Jovis Bootemu for Doctor V64/Z64/CD64 and he released the first N64 crack for Star Fox 64.

Keep rocking in N64 heaven dude!

Jeffrey Foale AKA Jovis 1974 - 2010.

64DD launch in Japan.

Just some pictures from the 64DD launch in Japan that I found in the dextrose n64 archive , no idea where they're originally from but couldn't spot them in a quick google pictures search.

The Archive Team WON: Google is going to migrate Google Videos to Youtube!.

"Last week we sent an email to Google Video users letting them know we would be ending playbacks of Google Videos on April 29 and providing instructions on how to download videos currently hosted on the platform. Since then we’ve received feedback from you about making the migration off of Google Video easier. We work every day to make sure you have a great user experience and should have done better. Based on your feedback, here’s what we’re doing to fix things.

Google Video users can rest assured that they won't be losing any of their content and we are eliminating the April 29 deadline. We will be working to automatically migrate your Google Videos to YouTube. In the meantime, your videos hosted on Google Video will remain accessible on the web and existing links to Google Videos will remain accessible. If you want to migrate to YouTube now"

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/04/update-on-google-video-finding-easier.html

Thanks to the good people of The Archive Team for saving the internet heritage!.

What the hell, Google Video is shutting down!.

Google Video is shutting down April 29, check out:
http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Google_Video
for how to rip videos from Google Video and help The Archive Team before the videos are gone!.


"Dear Google Video User,

Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re removing the remaining hosted content. We’ve always maintained that the strength of Google Video is its ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide.

On April 29, 2011, videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. We’ve added a Download button to the video status page, so you can download any video content you want to save. If you don’t want to download your content, you don’t need to do anything. (The Download feature will be disabled after May 13, 2011.)"

Simple C Peel / C Apple Peel / Coming Apple Peel / iSky TouchPhone (T166/T168/T188) & Yosion Peel 520 II Apple ipod Touch 4 Tutorial.

EDIT: Check the absolute bottom of this post for the Yosion Peel 520 II Apple ipod Touch 4 tutorial.


Here is a tutorial I compiled from various threads from the forum www.ipeels.com cause I wanted a simple tutorial that I can easily give to friends (and also cause the tutorial on www.coming.hk has been autotranslated which makes it somewhat confusing).

Thanks to everyone from the http://www.ipeels.com forum and coming.hk for all the information. This tutorial was originally posted by me here: http://www.ipeels.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=114&p=544#p544 so go there instead of leaving comments on my blog cause that's where all the Peel people hang.

This device which gives the iPod Touch iPhone capabilities has many different names but should essentially be the same thing:
C Peel / C Apple Peel / Coming Apple Peel / iSky TouchPhone and iSky Apple Peel 520 II.
If you see any errors then let me know.

This tutorial assumes that you have jailbroken your iPod Touch, if you haven’t done so then go do that and come back :).

1) Take out the SIM card from your old cellphone and insert it into your iSky Apple Peel II, don’t forget to turn off all PIN locks and whatever locks you might have on your card cause if you don’t then your iSky Apple Peel II will say that your card is ”Invalid SIM”. I have also heard that if you are out of reach from the a celluar transmitting area (like in a distant forest/desert) then it might say Invalid SIM also.

2) Now insert your iPod Touch into the iSky Apple Peel 520 II and start the iPod Touch up and install the following two programs in Cydia: ”Afc2add” and ”Mobile Substrate”.

3) Depending on which model you have, there are two different repositories for the iSky Apple Peel II software:

http://www.coming.hk/en/cydia = Foreign version, can not be used in China,some South East Asian countries and Brazil.

http://www.coming.hk/cydia = International version, can be used all over the world, except in Brazil.

mirror source: http://cydia.ipeels.com powered by http://www.myelebest.com

Add either one in Cydia -> Manage -> Sources -> Edit.

And download the iSky software corresponding to your iPod Touch firmware:

iSky OS 3.X for iPod Touch 3.12, 3.13, 3.2

iSky OS 4.X for iPod Touch 4.0.X,4.1.X, 4.2.X

There's no way to see which model you got on the iSky Apple Peel II itself but if you install the wrong version then it will say ”Country Error” inside Dial -> Settings -> About.

Peels sold from http://www.myelebest.com are international version.
Peels sold from http://www.cpeel.net are foreign version.
Peels sold directly from China are international version.

4) Once you have installed the software and rebooted the iPod Touch there should now be 4 icons available: Dial,SMS,GPRS and Radio.

5) Turn off the iPod Touch and then turn off the iSky Apple Peel II using the bottom silver button on the side, hold it down for about 4 seconds or so until you hear a soothing sound which is the sound it makes when it shuts down or powers up. To make sure the peel is off you can push the top silver button and see if it makes a dial tone sound, if it doesn't well then it's off :).

6) Now turn on the iSky Apple Peel II first (same silver button) then turn on the iPod Touch.

7) Wait 1 Minute.

8) Click on the Dial icon and go into Settings -> About -> Update to v3.6.

9) Once you see the screen with the Red Update button and a text that says ”Please Shutdown” hold down the bottom silver button on the side of the iSky Apple Peel for about 3 seconds, now wait 5 seconds after iSky Apple Peel II is powered off.

10) Click the Red Update button and you will see "Please hold down power key" on the iPod Touch's screen.

11) Hold down the iSky Apple Peel II power button and power it on, do not release the button until you see the screen saying ”Preparing,do not hold down the...” text on the screen.

12) After you have released the button you will hear a soothing/relaxing sound from the speaker and see how the percentage bar starts going up with a ticking noise, it takes about 5 minutes to reach 100%.

13) Now it’s done, click ”Yes” and power on your iSky Apple Peel II using the bottom silver button on the side.

14) Now if everything went well then you should be able to call somebody,make SMSes,surf the net using GPRS and listen to the radio (radio only works with earphones).

As a bonus you can add this repository to Cydia if you want themes and icons: http://cydia.myrepospace.com/itouch-phone/

---------------------------------------------------------
Yosion Peel 520 II Apple ipod Touch 4 Tutorial
---------------------------------------------------------


This model is much more straight forward:

1) Install the phone software by adding one of these to Cydia: www.yosion.net/cydia if you're in China (I think) and www.yosion.net/cydia2 if you're in the EU or Americas (worked for me and i'm in Europe.)

2) Install "Mobile Substrate" from Cydia (BigBoss has it i think.)

This next step requires you to be connected to the internet using wifi.

3) Click on the Phone icon that's on your dashboard now and go into settings, click on register and insert your IMEI code that's on sticker that's stuck on the front of your Peel shell. If for some reason you didn't get any sticker with a IMEI code then you'll have to contact yosion.net for a new code I guess!.

Done!.

Extra Info:

Worth of note is that there's a bug that occures sometimes when you click on register in which you just get kicked back to the dashboard, to fix this you have to install itunes and then run a program called i-funbox --> :http://www.i-funbox.com/

Once inside i-funbox go into Raw File System and delete the following files:

"/User/Documents/YosionSettings.plist"
"/User/Documents/recentcalldb.sql"

Now reboot once or twice and you should be able to register and then try and call somebody :).

As with the older models there are still alot of problems like umlauts (öåäü) not working so you'll have to write SMSes in turkish,german,nordic languages,hungarian etc without using those characters and the ones you'll receive will be garbled so that's pretty shitty if you like to SMS alot, go bother yosion to fix this!:).

64drive site is up.

The site for the new n64 flashcart "64drive" launched today, go check it out here http://64drive.retroactive.be

This is the ultimate killer n64 flashcart, I can already notice people selling away their z64/v64s cause they know the 64drive is on the way thus making these older units somewhat obsolete on the market :).

Amiga NYX prototype board on ebay.

"The Nyx was a stop-gap solution that would have provided a basic platform for OS development. Designed by Dave Haynie in 1992, the board is described as a 'kludge' to verify the AAA chipset and was based upon the A3000 architecture. The Nyx motherboard did not require a CPU, but contained a standard A3000 CPU module and (an estimated) '16 expensive, fast PAL devices'. In retrospect, Dave Haynie indicates that the same result could be produced using ' a modest CPLD or FPGA'. Only three are known to have existed"

http://cgi.ebay.com/Haynies-Garage-Nyx-AAA-Prototype-/130507479231?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e62da18bf
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/prototypes/nyx.html

Jerry Lawson 1940 – 2011.

Jerry Lawson the engineer behind the Fairchild Channel F has passed away, I hope hes in retro gaming heaven!.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Lawson_%28engineer%29

Floppydisk.com makes a 5.25 floppy disk car chassis as promotion :).

Very charming and obviously the promotion is very effective cause now it made me post it here :D.

Go buy some floppies: http://www.floppydisk.com/promo.html

Before 64DD there was Morita Shogi 64!.

(Connecting to a non-existent server, please wait...)

Morita Shogi is a long running series beginning on the PC88 up until today with Morita Shogi on the Iphone. The unique thing with Morita Shogi 64 is that it houses a very compact modem by 1998 standards and I guess it might have been slated for 64DD but canned in the last minute.

Only in Japan can a game like Shogi be so popular that they will manufacture a game cart for the N64 with a modem, one can only wonder if it was financially profitable since N64 carts were expensive to produce to begin with if compared to a PS1 disc.

I don't know how long the internet service lasted but it is today discontinued so you can't play online with it anymore *sniff*.

Thanks to Jrra for sacrificing his pennies by buying this,cracking it open and taking pictures of it for our enjoyment :).

Xbox 1 scene still kicking ass: xBermuda ported.

"This is a port for the Xbox1 of the Bermuda Syndrome interpreter done by Gregory Montoir (http://cyxdown.free.fr/bs/) and possible thanks the SDLx libs by lantus.

I have to say that this game is probably my favourite platformer of all times (far better IMHO than Another World or Flashback) and sadly it didn't get the recognition it deserved.

This program is a re-implementation of the engine used in the game Bermuda Syndrome made by Century Interactive and published by BMG in 1995. The original data files are required (retail or demo versions)."

Great to still see ports coming out for the ol' trusty xbox 1, if you're into xbox 1 then you will know where to grab it as usual:).

Source: http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=730194

Achieving Full-Motion Video on the Nintendo 64.

"Resident Evil 2 for the Nintendo 64 was the first game on a cartridge-based console system to deliver full-motion video. Angel Studios' team brought this two-CD game, comprising 1.2GB of data, to a single 64MB cartridge. A significant portion of this data was more than 15 minutes of cutscene video. Achieving this level of compression, meeting the stringent requirement of 30Hz playback, and delivering the best video quality possible was a considerable challenge.

To look at this challenge another way, let's put it into numerical perspective. The original rendered frames of the video sequences were 320x160 pixels at 24-bit color = 153,600 bytes/frame. On the Nintendo 64 Resident Evil 2's approximately 15 minutes of 30Hz video make a grand total of 15 x 60 x 30 x 153,600 = 4,147,200,000 bytes of uncompressed data. Our budget on the cartridge was 25,165,824 bytes, so I had to achieve a compression ratio of 165:1. Worse still, I had to share this modicum of cartridge real estate with the movie audio."

One of the most impressive ports in gaming history and luckily archive.org has saved the article where Todd Meynink talks about how they pulled it off: http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20080331015735/http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20001004/meynink_01.htm

Microcode: http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20080331033747/http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20001004/meynink_code.htm

sep00.zip "September 2000 archive. Contains Todd Meynink's color-space conversion microcode listing that helped him get FMV onto the N64, plus Lander's 3D paint application and source." -> http://www.gdmag.com/resources/code.htm

Bio Force Ape prototype released! (Not an April joke!).

Lost levels has released the prototype of the infamous Bio Force Ape and written an excellent article on the story behind it which you can read here: http://www.lostlevels.org/bio-force-ape/ the rom is available for download at the very bottom of the page.

Sega Model 3 emu released! (Not an April joke!).

"Supermodel was written by me, Bart Trzynadlowski. It is based on the original Supermodel effort by Ville Linde, Stefano Teso, and me from 2003. The present code is all-new except for the PowerPC emulator, which was written by Ville Linde. Development began in January 2011.

The aim of the Supermodel project is to develop an emulator that is both accurate and playable. As with virtually all arcade hardware, no public documentation for the Model 3 platform exists, therefore what is known so far has been painstakingly reverse engineered from scratch. There is still plenty left to figure out and the emphasis at this early phase of development is still toward accuracy rather than speed and usability."

Grab it here: http://www.trzy.org/Supermodel/Download.html

Currently no sound emulation.