Hi everyone,<\/p>\n
A couple of weeks ago, I was feeling comfortable enough to release my next custom bios before 2016. Then I postponed the release date to February. Right now I cannot commit on a release before March. I am sorry about this but you have to understand that it is also frustrated for me! I have been working hard in the next version despite a busy schedule and substantial personal changes.<\/p>\n
The good point is that the version 1.032 is “feature complete” and is working properly. I introduced new features and cool customization options. I have only one thing that stops me from releasing my custom bios: the holly check.<\/p>\n
As you may know, at boot time the bios is copied from the chip to the RAM and the Holly controler performs some sort of a checksum to determine whether the bios is legit or not. If it is not, the GD-ROM drive is locked and ypu cannot play any game. So far I have been using code (bootstrap) from a beta naomi bios (a beta version The House of the dead 2) in which only a small part of the bios is checked, leaving the rest up for modifications (Thank dknute for the intel and MetalliC for the first implementation!) That is the way I validate my code on real hardware. Then I inject my patches in the retail bios and more or less bruteforce the Holly check. Right now I have to make the bios pass this check, this is the final step. You may ask “why not releasing the bios with the beta bootstrap?”. Well, here is the heck: this “beta” bios does not support the manual reset (read soft-reset) so you are not able to boot milcd and play with boot discs. I patched the beta bootstrap to handle the sof-reset but as It modifies to the data used by the Holly controller to unlock the drive (more precisely the G1 bus) I face the same issue again: the modified beta code has to be altered to pass the Holly validation. So here I am, trying to get lucky! It takes some times (that I will have next week) but I feel confident. I know that it is not because you change kb of data that this step is harder. I was already able to pass the check with a bios that had more 32kb of data different from the original bios. If by chance I can make the beta bootstrap code with the reset pass the Holly check, I will not have to bruteforce any other custom bios. It is definitely worth trying!<\/p>\n
In brief, cross your fingers and wait!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hi everyone, A couple of weeks ago, I was feeling comfortable enough to release my next custom bios before 2016. Then I postponed the release date to February. Right now I cannot commit on a release before March. I am sorry about this but you have to understand that it is also frustrated for me!…Continue reading<\/span>The wait is almost over!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.japanese-cake.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.japanese-cake.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.japanese-cake.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.japanese-cake.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.japanese-cake.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.japanese-cake.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"https:\/\/blog.japanese-cake.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.japanese-cake.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.japanese-cake.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.japanese-cake.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}