Arikado's Blog

WiiMednafen

2011-10-19T16:01:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to bring everyone's attention to raz0red's initial release of WiiMednafen : http://wiibrew.org/wiki/WiiMednafen . It's a multi-system emulator for Wii homebrew.

You may recall that Wiirtual Boy was a partial port of Mednafen to Wii which was written 95% by raz0red, optimized by Rypecha (the original author of mednafen) specifically for the Wii and had a few minor contributions made to it by yours truly.

Anyways, I've had nothing to do with WiiMednafen (I was offered the opportunity to work on porting it which I initially took up, but I never did anything since the project began when school resumed for me and I was just way too busy) but I think it's important that Wiirtual Boy fans switch to using WiiMednafen instead of Wiirutal Boy because WiiMednafen brings many new features and improvements to Wiirtual Boy.

Once again, kudos to raz0red for his fantastic work on WiiMednafen.

DOP-Mii v16 BETA

2011-07-06T18:43:00.000-07:00

A new version of devkitPPC and libogc was released a few days ago. According to the changelog it fixed bugs that Daco and I bitched about relentlessly which broke DOP-Mii and priiloader. This resulted in a lot of rewriting on both our parts (probably for the better though to be honest) to comply with the newer libogc. Unfortunately, DOP-Mii was still not perfect for everyone. I probably get at least one or two messages a week from someone reporting a crash and I usually can't distinguish if it's a rare case not being refused to be handled that exposes a libogc bug which I don't check for or if it's someone incorrectly using DOP-Mii.

Anyways, I'm really overtired so I'll stop blathering. If you can, please try out the BETA .dol linked to at the end of this post. Let me know if it fixes stuff for you, gives you new problems, or if nothing changes for you. Assuming that this fixes stuff (syscheck no longer crashes on my end) for everyone I can probably get rid of most if not all of the code I wrote in to not load certain IOSs with certain patches and then try another beta release ... and if that works then do an official release and then finally get back to adding features to DOP-Mii instead of fixing existing stuff.

As always thanks for your patience on this and for all of the support. I would've given up on this project a long time ago if it weren't for all the awesome people out there.

http://dop-mii.googlecode.com/files/boot.dol

Wiirtual Boy

2011-06-24T08:28:00.000-07:00

Nearly a year ago I announced I was going to work on porting the RealityBoy emulator to bring Virtual Boy games to be playable on the Wii. At the time, RealityBoy was the best Virtual Boy emulator as well as being the simplest to port in my opinion. It wasn't going to be easy; RealityBoy was based on the ALLEGRO library and it wasn't written with PowerPC nor big endian architecture in mind. For the most part it was going to have to be completely rewritten. In order to make my work better benefit the Wii homebrew development community I was able to (with the help of "DarkNation") bang out a simple port of ALLEGRO to Wii. Coupled with this and a lot of reworking on RealityBoy I was able to get emulation going but I was unable to receive any sort of sound or video output. I assumed this was because the ALLEGRO port was still rather incomplete. A lot of work lied ahead of me. And with school, work, and other personal pressures building up I had very little spare time to work on this.

Around this time, the mednafen emulator released a beta build which included virtual boy support. Mednafen contains arguably the most powerful, optimized emulators for each of the platforms it supports. Furthermore, mednafen is based upon SDL and OpenGL, the former of which we have a port for on the Wii and the latter of which can be easily rewritten as GX (the Wii's video hardware API). Ryphecha, the lead developer behind mednafen, actually contacted me personally to let me know. She really wanted me to drop my RealityBoy port and turn to mednafen (which had previously never even been looked at as a possibility to be ported to the Wii by anyone ever). I played with mednafen for a little bit. At the time I was so distracted by so many different things I didn't get very far beyond compiling the emulator on Linux and playing with the source to see how it works and what could be cut out for a port of only the VirtualBoy component to Wii.

Then a month ago, during my last week of finals, a developer named "raz0red" contacted me. Apparently I wasn't the one who had taken an interest in mednafen. raz0red had done what I had sought out to do by using mednafen to get Virtual Boy games running on the Wii. I accepted his offer to join forces and do a proper Virtual Boy emulator for the Wii. My work was mainly done in optimizing the emulated hardware (which, by the way, Ryphecha was infinitely helpful for by answering all my questions and even going so far as to send me some snippets of code). I really think the emulator turned out pretty well. It's not perfect, but it's about as close as we can possibly get.

Take a look:

Working on this emulator was a great experience and it taught me a lot. After a rather long hiatus it was great to finally start making progress with Wii homebrew software development again. This reminds me that I need to thank everyone for putting up with my "off and on" sprees of development and for supporting me through all of it.

If you haven't yet already, you can grab Wiirtual Boy here.

I've got more plans for this summer. I've had an infinitely popular shooter ported and running on Wii since October that I need to finally finish. I've also been toying with the idea of porting another part or all of mednafen to Wii (for fun, I have emulation of something else in it mostly working). Not to mention I have several old projects that need to be cleaned up and finished. As always, I'll keep my blog updated to the latest.

3DS Get

2011-03-27T13:42:00.000-07:00

I've had it for about two hours now. Initial impressions: 3D effect is not gimmicky and does not become less noticeable as the time you spend with a game wears on. I've yet to be given a head ache. Face Raiders is hilarious. Pilot Wings (the only game I purchased) is pretty "meh" so far. No data manager yet? No internet browser yet? Disappointing :( Digging the new stylus. AR Cards are incredible, looking forward to seeing more in the future. Mii QR codes seem to hold a lot of redundant data.

Regarding a hacking "scene": Nothing too interesting yet. But if you're a dev you may find it worthwhile to pop into #3dsdev on EFNET.

Everything

2011-03-24T19:28:00.000-07:00

So the last time I released anything was back towards the end of the December. Probably the last time I coded anything Wii related was about the middle of January. So it begs the question: Where have I been? And where am I going?

I actually never left. My blog and my repos have run a bit dry of updates but I've been on IRC the whole time and I've still been answering all of my e-mails and I've even checked into the forums once or twice when both of those fronts slowed down. I've just been too busy to do anything interesting enough worth noting here. So I'm sure the few of you that remain (the daily number of hits on my blog as lowered from almost 2,000 to less than 300 since December) deserve to know so I'll tell you.

The first semester was a joke for me so I really went out of my to do everything I could to get more out of my time here for the second semester. I'm working three jobs so I can pay for college now without taking out a loan. One of them is hourly computer lab proctoring for my campus, another system administration over the entire network for my campus, and the third is commercial Android software development. Aside from this I've also put a couple freeware apps on the Android Marketplace I developed just for fun. In regards to my actual academia I convinced my computer science department to let me jump into their third and fourth year courses. I've been studying embedded hardware development with PIC Microcontrollers, x86 and MIPS assembly, Java, C#, lisp, computer architecture, and much more. I've filled many holes in my knowledge as a developer and I'm a lot better as a developer now than I was in August. Between what I take in school and what I'm doing for work this semester I can't even begin to express how much I've learned.

My semester ends in May and I'm going to be out of work when that happens. I'm currently looking at applying for Google's Summer of Code 2011. If any mentors are reading this and would be interested in having me work under them then please contact me ( email: castlevania7689@yahoo.com ). I would be willing to try anything.

Whether or not I do find a job this summer I am going to return to coding for Wii. scanff and I talked two days ago for the first time since October. We reevaluated the state of DeSmuME and a port we were doing together. We plan to finish our port and work on improving DeSmuME this summer. As for nulldce, it's in far better hands than mine now (including those of some popular Wii homebrew developers). I've left the project because it's evolving so rapidly that I can't keep up with it. I was about 60% done rewriting the syscheck implementation for DOP-Mii in January. Finishing that off as soon as possible will be one of my very first priorities. DOOM needs to be released. Sound support is in. The next build has one bug in loading save files as a result. I'm pretty sure I know what it is. This is another top priority for me. I plan to try hacking HHeretic and HHeXen so you can strafe and turn at the same time. The engine wasn't built to allow this but hard can it be? No guarantees on this one though other than that I will try. A few people have asked me to look at my Powder Toy ports and see if I can give them a better resolution for Wii. I plan to take a shot at it. And above all else, some way, some how, I am going to finally achieve Virtual Boy emulation on the Wii before the summer is over. I promised this almost a year ago and I intend to finally live up to it (ironically, it also took me almost exactly a year to get DeSmuME working). I'm considering hacking it out of (SDL based) Mednafen rather than finish my port of ALLEGRO and RealityBoy though (ALLEGRO is really, really, really difficult to finish) and the latest build of Mednafen is really, really, really nice.

I'm picking up a 3DS this Sunday. I really don't have time to play with it nor the hardware available to dump anything to reverse. But if anything happens with it I'll be sure to at least write something for fun for it. It looks like an awesome little system and I can't wait to get my hands on it.

Also, you may not have noticed but I removed my donations awhile ago. This was prompted both by that I'm on a Wii hiatus and that I'm finally making enough money that not only can I afford school I have just enough extra too. So if I don't need it, why ask for it? If you've got the money, please donate to geohot or graf_chokolo who really do need it right now.

Things are going to continue to be quiet for a little while now. And I apologize in advance if this summer doesn't turn out to be quite as successful as I'm hoping it will be. But rest assured, whether it does or it doesn't, I'll still be here. I'll still live up to my plans one day. Thank you very, very much to everyone who has stuck with me for the three years I've been writing Wii homebrew software. And everyone who has stuck through my occasional idiocy and failed ambitions. This community made me who I am. I love this community and the work I have done for it. I will never abandon it.

Proper USB Storage and SD(HC) Handling in C for Wii Homebrew

2011-01-07T08:25:00.000-08:00

Handling File IO is another popular topic in Wii Hombrew for obvious reasons and one that I've spent a significant amount of time on. I'm going to use this post demonstrate proper initialization and deinitialization of SD(HC) and USB devices in C. There are in fact quite a few different ways to do it but I've refined my personal methodology over years of carefully tweaking it and testing it in many apps.

Read more »

How I Debug Wii Homebrew Crashes

2011-01-01T14:18:00.000-08:00

I get a lot of e-mails from people asking me how I debug Wii crashes in my Wii homebrew. After just responding to yet another one I figured it was time for a brief writeup. Before beginning though I want to make it clear that there are many methods that can be used to debug your Wii homebrew. Depending on the situation mine may not be the best for you. Mine is only useful for finding the cause of a crash.

I have a really poor TV that I can't clearly read crashes off of. In order to counter this I use a USB Gecko device which outputs crash information to a serial connection I form with it. This way I'm not doing any guesswork and I know my results will be accurate. However, if you have a TV which you can read text clearly off of, a USB Gecko is not required to debug homebrew using my methodology.
Read more »

Hackers vs Gamers

2010-12-29T14:49:00.000-08:00

Today's 27c3 PS3 Fail keynote revealed that fail0verflow (marcan, bushing, and svpe) have acquired SONY's private key they use to sign games through a mathematical calculation. This essentially means that the PS3 has been hacked forever, something that not even Wii hackers like myself can boast. The only way SONY can fix this problem is to change their private key. If they do that, all games and software signed with it (ie: everything) stops working. SONY is not going to change their private key obviously.

This has flamed up some interesting discussion among people. What it boils down to is fans of SONY and fans of homebrew and Linux unethically fighting a debate of ethics. I'm going to generalize it even more and call it a philosophical war of gamers versus hackers. This article is an editorial on which I am going to express my opinion on the debate. If you have no interest in listening to me blow off steam and bellow out hot air, don't skip past the break for more.
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DOP-Mii v15,WiiBrew Edition v15, and Library v1.3 Released

2010-12-27T20:47:00.000-08:00

Update: Some users were having issues which appear to be caused by me building the project incorrectly. I've re-uploaded the releases on Google Code which are now built correctly. If you were one of the majority whom had problems downloading from NUS, please go re-download DOP-Mii. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Some last minute testing delayed the release a day longer than I wished but at least I'm confident in it enough now to finally release it.

Here's the changelog:

[Main and WBE] Fixed a bug caused by libogc 1.8.5 causing syscheck to crash. This was fixed mostly by compiling under libogc 1.8.6 and so far no crashes from syscheck have been spotted by lukegb, myself, or several testers.
[All Builds] Fixed a bug caused by libogc 1.8.5 which disabled our Wiimote LED blinking.
[All Builds] Fixed a bug causing some SD/USB WAD installations to fail.

Now, if there are finally no more bugs, I can get back to working on expanding the list of features of DOP-Mii. If there are still a few lingering, let me know ASAP as usual as I finally have free time to fix them fast.

Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout

IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college. Christmas donation anyone? (:

Happy Holidays

2010-12-25T18:54:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to say happy holidays to everyone reading this. It's been an incredible year and as it comes to a close I realize that it's all of you that have made the year so incredible. With your support I've brought DeSmuME, Hexen/Heretic, and soooo many other projects to the Wii homebrew table this year as well as greatly improving projects I had already been working on. In the almost three years I've been working on Wii homebrew (wow, it's really been that long?) I've noticed that each year tends to be more productive and exciting than my last. I intend to uphold that tradition in 2011 :-)

I had hoped to release some things today but it's not working out due to a number of factors involving that I didn't think my holiday would be as busy as it turned out to be and that I'm trapped with a Wifi connection that keeps timing out preventing me from uploading binaries. Once the latter is resolved (tomorrow) you'll see a new release of DOP-Mii fixing it's biggest issues and (if time permits) at least one other thing followed by hopefully a few more things over the course of the next week in the spirit of 27c3 (wish I was going btw :-( ).

Happy Holidays to everyone, it's going to be a great new year.

Update Sporadia

2010-12-13T08:53:00.000-08:00

Well lets get this out the way first: I've become a bit of a busy dood lately. First semester of college will be over in a week (wasn't that rough, fairly pleasant overall but the last few weeks haven't left me with much free time). I'm working two jobs now. Neither is particularly well paying but I have to do what I have to do. I've noticed my uni has a lot of empty unused classrooms so I'm trying to convince them to let me use one as a "Hackerspace" ( http://hackerspaces.org ). So far they seem pretty on board with the idea but it's taking up a lot of my time trying to get it underway. Suffice to say: I have not had much time to work on my Wii projects which we all love.

But I'm also not content with leaving everyone in the dark on my projects (whats open source for after all?) so I'll run through some quick updates for each after the break.
Read more »

SuperTux 1.2 for Wii Released

2010-11-23T13:54:00.000-08:00

SuperTux is one of my favorite projects. It's seriously a great little game and it's been a joy to work on. I think this will probably be my last release of the application though, because I've finally finished it off as a complete port without anymore bugs in it.

Changelog:

Fixed USB Support for most (if not all) USB Devices
Updated CREDITS file in compliance with SuperTux
Miscellaneous little bug fixes and tweaks

Download: http://code.google.com/p/supertux-wii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/supertux-wii/source/checkout

IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

I've had a blast working on this game. I hope you will enjoy it.

If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.

DOP-Mii v14.2 , WiiBrew Edition v14.5, and Library v1.2 Released

2010-11-22T17:37:00.000-08:00

Well this is embarrassing. The awesome people who use DOP-Mii have found one more bug in the program. This time, it's again caused by libogc 1.8.5. DOP-Mii's lovely wiimote LED flashing code seems to crash about 3 out of every 5 times it's ran. So it's been (temporarily) disabled in all builds. I've uploaded new binaries of all the releases with the fix.

Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout

IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

Now we should finally be bug free. For real this time.

If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.

DOP-Mii v14.1 , WiiBrew Edition v14.4, and Library v1.1 Released

2010-11-22T14:22:00.000-08:00

So yesterday's three releases of my DOP-Mii program had a few bugs in them. Thanks to the extremely helpful people who use the program I was able to fix each issue and even add in a (sort of) new feature to DOP-Mii.

Here's the changelog:

[All Builds] Fixed a bug caused by libogc 1.8.5 causing network initialization to crash for some users (thank you yellowstar for your support)
[All Builds] Fixed a bug causing USB drives to not be mounted properly not allowing USB users to take advantage of DOP-Mii's config file
[All Builds] Added an additional path where the DOP-Mii config file may be loaded from ( /apps/DOP-Mii/DOP-Mii.cfg )
[Library] Renamed some global variables to something more appropriate for a library

After fixing these bugs I've worked closely with people using all the different versions of DOP-Mii and I am not aware of any more bugs which currently exist in the program.

Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout

IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.

DOP-Mii v14 Released

2010-11-21T11:42:00.000-08:00

Well, it didn't come out as soon as I wanted it to, but it's finally here. And it finally works on all Wiis.

The actual changelog is too long to write out so I'll just list the big changes:

Proper AHBPROT support which no longer limits user functionality but instead extends it
[Bugfix] You can now install an IOS that accepts fakesigning on all Wiis (you must have AHBPROT present though)
[Bugfix] No more crashes from system report
Compatible with libogc 1.8.5

I really worked my butt off getting back into DOP-Mii as the lead developer again and making the three simultaneous releases of it's branches today and I truly hope that everyone enjoys DOP-Mii.

Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout

IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.

DOP-Mii Library v1 Released

2010-11-21T09:11:00.000-08:00

I've been spending a great deal of time of lately analyzing DOP-Mii and thinking about the future of the program. It's grown to be so powerful I'm not even sure what it is anymore. The best description I can come up with for it is "DOP-Mii is a powerful system tool for your Wii which can do almost anything". DOP-Mii is never going to be truly finished, but I know it's going to need to take on a better form to continue to stay at the top.

Thinking about the future of DOP-Mii I looked at three things which seem to occur repeatedly:

1)I get a lot of e-mails from people saying how grateful they are for the program. Not only because of how they've modified their Wii's with it, but because of how they were able to use the source code to expand their own homebrew. I once even got an e-mail from someone claiming to be a licensed developer who used it to experiment with IOS to see how he could enhance his games and to develop external peripherals.

2)I get a lot of e-mails from people asking me to give DOP-Mii a nice, highly graphical GUI. I always neglect these requests because I feel I would be better spending my time continuing to expand DOP-Mii rather than make it graphical.

3)There are a lot of "Mods" of DOP-Mii floating around the net. Some are pretty neat (GUI enhancements, additional features) and others really suck (Like the ones based ones based on unstable builds that were written in C). Either way, I'm always happy to see people play with the source.

So about a couple weeks ago it finally occurred to me that next logical step would be to make a new branch of DOP-Mii. This new branch would remove the front-end (in other words our GUI) meanwhile keeping the powerful base code that powers every mod, every enhancement to every app, and too many other things to list here. It would be DOP-Mii compiled into a static library.

Now, developers have a powerful set of tools (I haven't even brought up yet how nice our USB Gecko or USB Storage drivers are) on hand at any time without any messy source code rearranging. And anyone interested in writing a new GUI for DOP-Mii should be able to do so much more easily with all of the existing GUI removed from the source. It's really a great situation for everyone.

I've gone through and carefully pruned and modified the library to make sure it's as useful and small as it can be without cutting out any features. This is only the first public release so there's bound to be a lot which can still be improved. Developers, I beg you to keep in touch and let me know about anything I can do to make the library as useful as possible.

Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout

IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.

DOP-Mii WiiBrew Edition v14.3 Released

2010-11-21T08:53:00.000-08:00

I've just released v14.3 of DOP-Mii WiiBrew Edition. For those who may not recall, DOP-Mii WiiBrew Edition is a stripped down version of DOP-Mii which does not contain any functionality relating to patching or installing patched IOSs.

In this release I've worked hard with lukegb (the primary maintainer of the WiiBrew Edition branch) to make sure that you don't need any magic libogc builds to compile the release, that everything is updated to what I use in the main build of DOP-Mii, and to squash every single bug in the program. Like the other versions of DOP-Mii, a lot of hard work went into this build and I hope everyone will appreciate it.

Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout

IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.

Instapaper Support for all Future Blog Posts

2010-11-12T17:19:00.000-08:00

Starting with this blog post all of my blog posts should have support for use with http://www.instapaper.com . This is a test post. I hope this works. Thank you for the help Xuzz. You are awesome!

West Released For XBOX Indie Games

2010-11-03T18:35:00.000-07:00

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/West/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585506c0

A very close real-life friend of mine who goes under the moniker WizardBertius has just released an RPG he created by himself entitled West for sale on the XBOX Indie Channel for only a mere dollar.

WizardBertius has spent an absolutely incredible amount of time working on this. Nearly a year in fact. You can watch his developer vlogs (video blogs) of the development of his game on his youtube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/bioniclebert

There's a short yet truly incredible trailer of the game in action here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dga0FonFyUE

Personally, it reminds me of 16-Bit RPGs - in particular a cross between Earthbound and Chrono Trigger. I haven't played it myself but I can promise you that there are far worse ways to spend a dollar than to play an awesome indie RPG meanwhile supporting a college undergrad.

Lastly, just so it's clear, I am not in any way involved in this project aside from being a personal friend of the developer.

And speaking of college it's kept me extremely busy lately and I'm really fighting to fulfill my programming promises before it slips too much later into November. lukegb has made progress with the main branch of DOP-Mii using some things I sent him and DeSmuME Wii is really, really, close to it's next release. Hopefully more on them soon.

Handful of Updates

2010-10-10T12:46:00.000-07:00

I know my last blog post got a few people interested in the specifics of what I've been up to lately so hopefully this post will answer all of those questions and more. I have some very exciting stuff to talk about :)

First on the list: I've finally gotten around to giving the main branch of DOP-Mii a true update so it should be working with all of the latest Nintendo updates. Also new: I've rewritten the boot2 install code with the help of lukegb to clear up a small controversy and updated the USB Storage code so that it is compatible with the new libogc 1.8.4. I haven't made an official release yet because I haven't put the new USB code through it's paces yet and because there are a few small changes and additions I still want to make but we are once again making progress. Sorry for the delay in getting around to it, I had handed off development duties to Lunatik and lukegb but they've both been very busy lately so it took some time for me to get back into development of it. Hopefully we should have a new official release of DOP-Mii by the end of the week.

Now onto DeSmuME Wii: Yes we are still working on it even though the SVN hasn't been very active lately. I've been working with Dancingninja to help him rewrite our 3D Renderer in pure GX (Wii video hardware calls). Even though it's not working completely yet, the speeds I am seeing now make Super Mario 64 DS and the Castlevanias more than playable. Hopefully they will remain at these speeds as the renderer is completed. Thank you very much for patience regarding this project. I would like it to have at least one major release by the time November hits.

Now onto nulldce: Nulldce is a version of the Nulldc dreamcast emulator designed to run on low power systems. About a year ago drkIIRaziel got it running on the Wii but never did anything with it beyond an initial port. A few chance IRC conversations about a week ago landed me the source code to it and I have been working very hard on it and have already made some progress. Some very well known emulator developers for Wii have recently signed on to work on it too. The project is progressing very nicely. Work now is being done towards getting it emulate accurately (getting all the colors right for example) and building a dynarec core.

Saving the best for last onto RealityBoy Wii: I promised back in August that I would get this running on the Wii eventually and as of today I'm closer than ever to finally fulfilling that promise. RealityBoy is written in ALLEGRO, a popular cross platform game programming library somewhat similar to SDL. Before developing Wii homebrew I was an ALLEGRO game programmer so I figured porting RealityBoy wouldn't be too hard. It's a painstaking, slow process but one that I've found to be rather enjoyable overall. I've done so much work toward this port that I decided I might as well just port ALLEGRO to Wii. I never considered actually 'putting my money where my mouth is' so to speak until just recently a gentleman named DarkNation was looking to port ALLEGRO to Wii so he could port his ALLEGRO based game to Wii. To make a long story short, we've each plugged in about 50 hours on the project and have some fruit to show from our labor: http://code.google.com/p/allegro-wii/ . There's a still a lot to do but the port is extremely functional. I believe it to be both my most difficult and my most important work yet. Anyone who can help out should get in touch immediately.

Lastly, before closing this post, I've gotten a few extremely generous donations this week and I wanted to say thank you. You all really help me out a lot more than you know and it truly means a great deal to me. I will be coding overtime for you all.

A Wii Homebrew Guide I can Recommend

2010-09-21T16:13:00.000-07:00

Hey all. Long time no post. I've been working my a$$ off on DeSmuME Wii, Reality Boy Wii, and most recently NullDCe for Wii. I've also been overhauling DOP-Mii (trying my hardest to get out a new release of the main branch this weekend) to take all of the cool new stuff from the WiiBrew version while keeping all the awesome patching support. Meanwhile I'm finding time to keep up with my college studies and to teach myself Python just for fun. Anyways, I'll be talking about all of this in the future. This post is about something I think is much more important.

I've always been extremely open about my e-mail address. It's castlevania7689@yahoo.com . I've always encouraged people to send me e-mails about anything and I try to respond in 12 hours. It gives me something to do (yay mobile devices) when I'm stuck in a boring situation without a computer near me (and sometimes people donate when I help them which is always awesome too).

The e-mail I always seem to get the most of is: "Tell me how to install and use the homebrew channel pl0x". I've always responded by sending out about five links saying read through these in order and you'll be good to go. Search around WiiBrew and HackMii for more information if you need additional help.

bg4545 aka Wiisixtyfour has now made an extremely easy to follow and completely comprehensive guide to installing and using the homebrew channel. This is the first guide I have read through that I can actually recommend to people instead of parts of 5 or 6 different guides. You can view the guide here:

http://wiisixtyfour.webs.com/WHG/WHG.htm

I believe you will also realize that it is currently the best guide out there to installing and using the homebrew channel and I hope you will recommend it to other people.

How to Bypass Updating to PS3 Firmware 3.42

2010-09-07T05:14:00.000-07:00

As you've probably heard, SONY has made a new firmware for their PS3 called firmware 3.42. THIS UPDATE BREAKS THE USB EXPLOIT FOR THE PS3 (for now at least). According to SONY, this update is mandatory if you want to use your PS3 online and access the PS3 store.

Well, turns out it's not mandatory after all.

Set 67.202.81.137 as your primary and secondary DNS on your PS3 you can still use your PS3 online without having to update. I had a couple friends test it on PSN and it worked - haven't heard if the Playstation Store also works but I would assume it does.

On the Status of PS3 Homebrew

2010-09-03T13:57:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this article to try to help clear up a few misconceptions about the current state of PS3 homebrew. This article is intended to be informative and unbiased. Please let me know if there are any problems with it.

Opening up the PS3 has been greatly desired by homebrewers and hackers everywhere. The PS3 is the most powerful video game console on the market today - arguably much more powerful than most computers you could go out and buy for twice the price. I won't dwell on this too much though, it would probably be a good idea to just see the hardware specs for yourself. With the ability to run unsigned (or "homebrew" or "home-made") code on the PS3, we would be able to use many powerful full speed emulators (it would probably even be possible to get Dolphin running decently on the PS3), play many ports of great games, and use lots of original games and software which takes advantage of the unique capabilities of the PS3 (Move anyone?). In short: PS3 homebrew would be awesome.

People have been working on hacking the PS3 to turn it into an open system ever since it was first released. For awhile, people had been using the PS3's OtherOS feature to use Linux to run unsigned code. However, the possibilities through Linux were very limited. Another way to run code was needed. Former hacker George Hotz took the first real steps toward realizing this when he was successful in using Linux to dump important information from the PS3 - the PS3 hypervisor (the software "kernel" which keeps the PS3 security running strong). Xorlorser wrote great plugins and scripts for the "hacker favorite" disassembler IDA Pro so that anyone could easily read the hypervisor in it's PowerPC assembly. Disane (aka Grojcig) recently wrote a great article on reversing the dumps to help people get started too.

Groups of PS3 hackers started to really surface after geohots' exploit. Everyone began looking into the PS3 hypervisor for bugs to help them dump more information or methods to easily execute unsigned code. Yours truly even spent some time doing this and helping people get set-up to do it. Like in any video game console homebrew scene though: Along with people making real progress on PS3 hacking, many people are also just trying to garner public attention for money (via excessive begging and ridiculous promises of course) claiming that they could really open up the PS3 if they got what they wanted. To that end, you should avoid the PS3 "hackers" Mathieulh, DemonHades, and approach most other people claiming they can hack the PS3 for your money with extreme caution. Hackers Xorlorser, Matt_P, phiren, Disane (aka Grojcig), bushing, subdub, AerialX, megazig, and a few others, collectively now called the "psgroove team" are all the real deal as far as people who can actually hack the PS3. Again, use caution if looking at someone asking for something so they can hack the PS3.

However, true PS3 homebrew finally came in an unexpected manner on August 18th, 2010: Ozmodhips revealed that they had in their hands a modchip called psjailbreak which when plugged into a USB port would allow people to run their own unsigned code. As a bonus, the modchip would ship with software enabling users to use make and run "backup" (ie: pirated) copies of games. The modchip also has an SDK freely available to anyone and everyone to write PS3 homebrew.

Several problems arose from the PSJailbreak modchip. 1)The development SDK offered is illegal and is mostly composed of code from SONY's official PS3 SDK. 2)SONY has already filed lawsuits against everyone selling the modchips making it impossible for retailers to ship them until the lawsuits are resolved. This has essentially stopped distribution of the chip. 3)Not necessarily a problem, but the modchip was way overpriced (in my opinion at least) and carries the risk of SONY blocking it in future firmware updates.

Merely days later, phiren and the rest of the "psgroove team" solved all these problems. They reversed the PSJailbreak modchip and released an open source version of it called PSGroove. By flashing PSGroove to a micro controller like one from the AT90USB family you can have a USB stick that does essentially the same thing as the PSJailbreak modchip (without the piracy features though). So finally, after the years of work by hackers, people can run homebrew on their PS3's. A completely legal homebrew SDK for the PS3 is currently under development so we should be seeing lots of PS3 homebrew once it's functional. I've personally got plans (despite not owning a PS3 or one of these USB microcontrollers yet -- donate plz :3 ) to work on a few ports with some people once it's done.

Now the PS3 homebrew "scene" is finally taking off lots of great stuff should be coming soon. Hopefully a software exploit will come about some day so people can more easily run unsigned code; However making a USB PSGroove device is not that bad of an alternative at all - you should check out rvlution.net if you need help.

WiiDoom 0.4.5 Released

2010-08-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

Back when I was working on Heretic and Hexen I was using the WiiDoom source code as inspiration for doing these ports. WiiDoom always had a number of little bugs with it so I fixed a lot of these while I was working with the source. My ports of Heretic and Hexen to the Wii came out so nice that I felt like going back to WiiDoom and finishing what I started by adding a lot of new features to the app as well. A lot of people really supported me doing this. Eventually, the WiiDoom team heard of what I was doing so they officially made me an owner of the project.

So now, here we are, with a new release of WiiDoom :-D

Here's what's new in this release:

Full SDHC Support
Full USB Support
Classic Controller Support
Gamecube Controller Support
Changed /prboom/ to /apps/wiidoom/data/
Various bugfixes and tweaks

Download WiiDoom 0.4.5: Google Code
Get the source code to WiiDoom 0.4.5: Google Code
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

If you'd like to donate money to me, please use the ChipIn widget on the upper right hand corner of this blog or follow this link: http://arikado.chipin.com/college-fund . Donations are used to help get me through college and are used to fund new projects. By adding a message to your donation, I promise to spend significant time working on whatever your message asks me to do.

Hexen Wii 0.5 Released

2010-08-28T05:37:00.000-07:00

A lot of people were really happy with how my port of Heretic to Wii turned out. Originally, I was trying to port Hexen but was beaten to by Hermes causing me to turn my attention to Heretic instead. I was asked if I would consider going back and finishing Hexen port because the existing Hexen port had a number of issues with it. So ... Well ... Here we are :)

Here's what you will find in my new Hexen port that you won't find in the other one:

Full USB Support
Support for the Hexen Expansion WAD: Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel (hexdd.wad)
Saving
A wiimote and nunchuk control scheme that uses the wiimote's IR
GC control scheme
Classic Controller control scheme

This port is at about the same stage of progress as my Heretic port so I'm calling this first release version 0.5. I hope you all enjoy this new project :)

Download Hexen Wii 0.5: Google Code
Get the source code to Hexen Wii 0.5: Google Code
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

If you'd like to donate money to me, please use the ChipIn widget on the upper right hand corner of this blog or follow this link: http://arikado.chipin.com/college-fund . Donations are used to help get me through college and are used to fund new projects. By adding a message to your donation, I promise to spend significant time working on whatever your message asks me to do.

Heretic Wii 0.5 Released

2010-08-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

I've been so busy lately that I missed posting the first release of Heretic Wii on my blog. I'll make up for it by extending this post a bit to talk about the project as well as a few other projects I'm working on.

When everyone first saw the Wii, one of the first things that came to mind was playing first person shooter games with it. Developers have given us great games such as Metroid Prime Trilogy and Call of Duty Modern Warfare Reflex which have shown that a first person shooter game on the Wii can in fact be superior (at least as far as the controls go) to the first person shooter games on other consoles. With Wii homebrew, this door of opportunity is opened even wider as homebrew developers such as myself are able to take old first person shooter games that everyone loves and modify their source code so that they can be played on Wii. Ports of Quake, DOOM, Wolfenstein 3D, and others have now shown us that the Wii controls are so precise that they can actually rival the keyboard and mouse. Furthermore, by playing these old games on a video-game console, users also find them easier to install and generally play them on a bigger screen with a better sound system.

To this end, Wii homebrew developers should take it upon themselves to bring every open-source first person shooter that they can to the Wii. I personally decided to contribute to this endeavor by porting Raven Software's Hexen to the Wii. Unfortunately, I got stuck while porting it and Hermes beat me to it. Using Hermes code to solve the problem I had, I was able to quickly port Raven Software's other popular shooter, Heretic, to Wii.

Since the initial port of Heretic to the Wii I have continued to add many features to it (all of which are not present in Hermes port of Hexen) that make up this new 0.5 release: Full USB Support, Classic Controller Support, GC Controller Support, and a Wiimote and Nunchuk control scheme which uses the Wiimotes IR.

My port of Heretic to Wii is now fully featured and truly a 'complete' port. In upcoming releases, I will expand the game by adding a cheat menu which allows enable and disable a variety of different cheats for the games. However, I am going to take a break from working on this project for a bit in order to pursue other projects. Right now I am looking into both doing an original port of the HHexen engine to Wii (I hate Hermes sound engine and control scheme) and porting an entirely new first person shooter to the Wii. But first, I have to give DOP-Mii a little attention to address some recent (non-harmful) complaints with it and expand it with more features (more on this later).

Download Heretic Wii 0.5: Google Code
Get the source code to Heretic Wii 0.5: Google Code
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

If you'd like to donate money to me, please use the ChipIn widget on the upper right hand corner of this blog or follow this link: http://arikado.chipin.com/college-fund . Donations are used to help get me through college and are used to fund new projects. By adding a message to your donation, I promise to spend significant time working on whatever your message asks me to do.

Powder Toy Wii and The Powder Toy Wii 0.1 Released

2010-08-17T09:16:00.000-07:00

Sorry I'm a bit late getting around to write about this. I've been extremely busy lately and I wanted to take some time to discuss my position on the projects.

Before I start though, I just want to point out that "Powder Toy" and "The Powder Toy" are two very different particle simulator programs. They have similar names and similar interfaces, but that's all that's similar between them. On the inside, they operate very differently and it is highly debatable regarding which of two is a better program.

I ported both of them to Wii as I was ~~begged~~ requested to do so in #wiihelp on EFNET. Overall, the code is rather simple so I made a little bit of a live show in the IRC channel by porting "Powder Toy" in five minutes and then "The Powder Toy" in three. I made SVN repositories for both of them on Google Code (I've found this to be the easiest way to maintain any piece of code) and released them shortly after.

As you can probably tell, this was a very quick and initial port of the applications. They are fully functional, but some features such as the zoom function and internet functions were cut out as a result. Furthermore, the resolution and scaling isn't adapted to the Wii so everything appears rather small and squished. Still though, the programs work and you can have a decent amount of fun them.

Compared to other projects I'm working on, these programs (so far at least) aren't very popular and to be honest I'm not too interested in them myself. However, there are a significant amount of people who really enjoy and appreciate them so I will continue to work on them. Where I'm going with this though is that I'm pressed for time and probably won't get around to improving them for a while. So if there's someone out there who wants to work on them and improve them, please get in touch and I'll gladly add you to the SVN.

Download Powder Toy Wii 0.1: Google Code
Get the source to Powder Toy Wii 0.1: Google Code
Download The Powder Toy Wii 0.1: Google Code
Get the source to The Powder Toy Wii 0.1: Google Code
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

If you'd like to donate money to me, please use the ChipIn widget on the upper right hand corner of this blog or follow this link: http://arikado.chipin.com/college-fund . Donations are used to help get me through college and are used to fund new projects. By adding a message to your donation, I promise to spend significant time working on whatever your message asks me to do.

General Update - Priority Readjustment

2010-08-11T13:22:00.000-07:00

I'm not meant to be a hacking "scene" news reporter, I just don't have the time. So I'll be closing http://1ntrusion.com in October when the hosting runs out due to a lack of time on my part to maintain the site and due to a lack of user activity. A general hacking site as an alternative to profit-hungry, unmoderated, and incompetent GBAFail is a great idea and one that I fully support. I just don't have the time to do anymore than that. http://www.gc-forever.com and http://rvlution.net and http://pdroms.de are all great sites for general "scene" hacking and cover tons of news and new ideas. I'd like to maybe one day pitch in and help one of these sites, but I am in no way inclined to ever be able to run one.

I'm changing the purpose of my IRC channel, #arikadosblog on EFNET from a chill anything goes channel to a channel dedicated primarily to DOP-Mii, DeSmuME Wii, and libwiisprite support. Of course I'll gladly help people out with their Dingoos, general Wii hacking, and offer support for all my other projects. But those projects will be my main three which will be discussed in the channel. We usually have about 30 members in the channel, so I strongly encourage everyone reading this to stop by. News is usually broken in there before anywhere else ;-)

Regarding DOP-Mii, Lunatik is now the primary developer of that application. I'm taking more of an advising role. Lunatik is extremely talented, hard working, and dedicated and he will take the project to great new heights. I have a few things left I want to add myself (like savegame support functions) but the project is no longer a priority for me.

Regarding DeSmuME Wii, scanff and Dancingninja are rewriting our renderer in GX. It's already mostly completed and games are seeing a 20% (or more) speed boost from it. When they're done, I will work on expanding the emulator with a proper GUI (finally) and finish giving it the 0.9.6 DeSmuME core update (which means another big speed boost). With that in mind, DeSmuME Wii is still one of my top priorities, but, I'm taking a little time off while the other devs work on it so I can do other cool things ;-)

Regarding libwiisprite, I've had an e-mail to chaosteil sitting in my draft box for about a month now discussing the finer points of the changes I hope to add to the library. libwiisprite development is probably my top priority right now and you will all hear more about it very soon.

Some of you may know that I've been working on porting RealityBoy (virtual boy emulator) over to Wii. It's an extremely difficult task to say the least. Since it's written in ALLEGRO, almost every line of the emulator must be completely rewritten. Development is slow and frustrating but I hope to have a first release no later than this Christmas. Yes, that's a bit far down the line, but it will be worth the wait.

I'm still working on porting Hexen to Wii too. Despite some comments I've made claiming otherwise, I'm going to try to rewrite a ton of the engine using the WiiDOOM port. Speaking of WiiDOOM, as I've been playing with the source, I've made a ton of improvements to the app. I'm going to try and contact the authors to see if I can push my changes into their repository. If I can't (I've heard they no longer answer their e-mails) I might branch the project under a new name. I still have a bit of work left to do before either of these outcomes anyways.

Lastly, let's talk about donations. I think it's safe to say there's no way I'll meet my Chip-In goal of $45,000 USD for a chance to go a better school. However, I'm leaving it up since I can't accept PayPal donations any other way (since I'm only 17, I have a student account). Each and every donation is greatly appreciated and will most likely be used to get me through my local college (books are super expensive).

That's all for now. Hope everyone likes the new directions I'm taking :3

Failed? Port of Hexen to Wii

2010-08-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

As a side project, I've been porting Hexen to Wii. I made a lot of progress getting the program to compile and run on Wii. However, once it began to run, the port had problems reading certain sections of the Hexen WAD. File IO, endianness, and complex data structures really aren't thing so I asked for some help to finish the port in a forum thread here:

http://forum.wiibrew.org/read.php?26,56919

I was able to make some good progress, but I ultimately ended up not too far from where I began. After working on this problem for several days, I'm tired, and I need to go back to DeSmuME Wii and libwiisprite. If this Hexen WAD reading problem was resolved, I could easily have Hexen up and running on Wii within a few hours; It's a rather frustrating thought to say the least :P

I'm hoping that by posting this on my blog someone with the ability to fix the WAD reading problem sees this. If not, I might take another stab at it myself in a month or two.

I only start projects because they're things that I really want to see happen. I really want to see Hexen running on the Wii happen. To that end, I'm rather quite saddened and disappointed in myself with how this is all working out. I'm sure you all are too but I'll kindly ask you to save the hate for somewhere other than these comments - thx.

libwiisprite 0.3.0d Released

2010-07-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

I love libwiisprite. I really do. In my personal opinion, it's the only developer library geared exclusively towards game development. It's focus on game development makes it extremely simple to use with a very small learning curve. With libwiisprite, your most complex code will be generated by you, the author. Not by a spaghetti mess of library function calls. No other library can compare to that (of course, no other library is geared exclusively toward game development either).

libwiisprite's grown old though. Recent updates in libogc and libpng have caused it stop working. I took it upon myself to fix these problems and libwiisprite now looks and works as good as it ever did. Since I was rewriting a handful of it to compensate for the compatibility issues, I also fixed a bug in the layer manager and made a few minor "under the hood" improvements to improve the performance of the library.

I showed chaosteil my work and asked him if I could become an official maintainer of the library and he very warmly granted my request.

I am now continuing to work on and improve libwiisprite. I have a handful of ideas including a sound manager that I'm discussing with chaosteil that I'd like to add to the library. libwiisprite is only going to continue to get better and better. I believe that loyal users of the popular library such as myself are going to be thrilled.

Download libwiisprite 0.3.0d: Mediafire
Get the source to libwiisprite 0.3.0d: Mediafire
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

If you'd like to donate to me, please use the ChipIn widget on the upper right hand corner of this blog or follow this link: http://arikado.chipin.com/college-fund

SuperTux Wii 1.1 Released

2010-07-03T19:03:00.000-07:00

I recently set-up Wii homebrew for a friend of mine. When I was finished, he was asking me about homebrew games he could play for the Wii (unlike most people, he does not care about emulation or piracy :o). So I thought to myself, "Hey, there's gotta be a SuperTux port around here somewhere. That game's a blast to play." And there was indeed a SuperTux port for Wii. I was shocked to learn it was actually written by favorite coding partner scanff.

My excitement quickly waned when I played it though. scanff did a lot of great work and took the port very far. However, the port was still long away from being complete with awkward controls, video issues, a broken save system, and other serious issues making it rather unenjoyable to play. Not one to complain, I spent the last week fixing all of these issues. I also added new things to the port such as USB support and some Wii personalization to make it a little less of a direct port.

Now, SuperTux Wii is a fully complete port that plays exactly as you would expect it to without any problems.

In the not too distant future, scanff and I will probably look into adding support for more forms of control and fixing that annoying static that occurs occasionally during loading sequences. For now though, I'm sure everyone will be more than satisfied with this port.

Download SuperTux Wii 1.1: Google Code Download
Get the source to SuperTux 1.1: Google Code Checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

If you'd like to donate to me, please use the ChipIn widget on the upper right hand corner of this blog or follow this link: http://arikado.chipin.com/college-fund

Lulz and Newz

2010-07-02T13:06:00.000-07:00

First some lulz.

I got an anonymous e-mail the other day pointing me to this page written about the "drama" between myself and fatquack that occurred forever ago. http://encyclopediadramatica.com/fatquack (NSFW) While I don't particularly condone the making fun of pictures of fatquack's family members, the page is surprisingly accurate and relatively humorous so I figured I'd share. At the very least, it's interesting to actually look at the guy who wanted to arrest me on a basis of purely 10 year old speculation six months ago.

Now for some newz.

I've been working on some really big stuff lately. Most of it I haven't ever talked of publicly ever before. I'm finally ready to start releasing some of it. The first of it will be released late tomorrow (later tomorrow on account of I have to work and I need to get someones permission before I release it). You're all sure to enjoy it ;-) (No, nothing regarding emulation this time)

Wii Update 4.3

2010-06-21T19:15:00.000-07:00

Im really tired and I have my last and hardest exam in the morning.So I'm just gonna make this short and sweet:

DO NOT UPDATE YOUR WII!!! YOU WILL LOSE EVERYTHING UNTIL WORKAROUNDS ARE RELEASED!!!

I will have a full report for you tomorrow and an update to DOP-Mii no later than Wednesday so you can safely update your Wii if possible (if not possible, the update to DOP-Mii will be released when it is possible to update safely; ie; when workarounds are developed)

/join #wiideve3 on EFNET

2010-06-14T10:19:00.000-07:00

Last year at E3 time, the people in #wiidev on EFNET were getting a bit upset at all of the talk over E3 interfering with discussion. So I set-up #wiideve3 on EFNET to filter it out. Much to my surprise, we ended up getting more than 100 members in the channel. Discussion was surprisingly technically oriented and unique to that which you can find anywhere else on the internet. We culminated the event with a rather large Mario Kart Wii tournament.

This year, I've restarted #wiideve3 in the hopes to do something similar. 15 minutes away from the Microsoft Press Conference, we have a little under 20 members in the channel. I've also started an online database here http://1ntrusion.com/wiideve3.html as preliminary set-up for an online tournament.

#wiideve3 on EFNET is going to be a ton of fun to hang around in during E3 and everyone reading this should join. You can join from your internet browser by clicking here.

Update: We've got a solid 30 members in the channel now at the conclusion of EA's press conference. Still trying to get to a solid 100 like last year.

Dingoo A330 Review Published at 1ntrusion.com

2010-06-12T09:40:00.001-07:00

I've just finished reviewing the new Dingoo A330. You can read the review on 1ntrusion.com here: http://1ntrusion.com/forum/content.php?181-Dingoo-A330-Review

General Update

2010-06-03T14:17:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not dead and neither is DeSmuME Wii. Nor are any of my other projects.

In no particular order, here are the updates everyone is starving for:

First off, I'm at the end of my senior year in high school. I don't have nearly as much time to devote to programming as I wish I did thanks to end of the year exams and prom.

Secondly, I finally bought a USB Gecko. This is helping me debug and more quickly develop homebrew Wii software. I'm also doing a few cheat code requests in my spare time which is a lot of fun.

Next on the list, http://1ntrusion.com is finally picking up in traffic a bit. Thanks to everyone joining and participating in the site as well as giving it a daily read. (We've had enough traffic that I'm being sent a Dingoo A330 to review for the site :) )

Now onto DeSmuME Wii: Recently, the DeSmuME Team released DeSmuME 0.9.6. It is a huge improvement over 0.9.5 which DeSmuME Wii is based on. So we are updating the DeSmuME Wii core to 0.9.6. The process of doing this is similar to porting DeSmuME from scratch except for the fact that we have a road map to follow from the 0.9.5 port and a working front-end.

It's going to take some time to finish the next DeSmuME Wii update. We are not going to make any commits until it is better than what is in the SVN now. Most of it is ported now. All that remains is to upgrade the saving system and the GPU (the old 0.9.5 ones are now mostly broken due to updates in other aspects of the emulator).

So in short: Things are going good. More cool stuff soon. I've just been quiet because I've been working so hard.

Done Hacking Twitter - Source Released to all Twitter Hacks

2010-05-23T15:36:00.000-07:00

If you've been reading this blog for a bit then I'm sure you know I was able to successfully write bruteforcers and a dictionary attack for Twitter allowing anyone to be able to retrieve the password of any Twitter account. While they were not perfect (you'd have to read the output LOG file to see when it hit the correct password, the programs couldn't stop themselves) they worked and were to my knowledge used to successfully retrieve the passwords of more than a few Twitter accounts.

However, Twitter eventually took action (I actually find this to be a good thing and am disappointed it took so long) by blocking an IP that unsuccessfully logs into an account 10 times in succession from attempting to log into said account for 60 minutes. I was able to come up with a workaround to this. My workaround was to, after 10 logins, connect to a proxy, try to login in 10 more times, connect to another proxy, try to login 10 more times, and so on and so forth. This actually works.

To get my Twitter password grabbers working again I would have to retrieve create a list of roughly 2,000 different proxies to log into. This is extremely tedious to say the least and I was not able to find any pre-compiled list. So rather then waste my time continuing working on my Twitter attackers (I think we all know I have better things to do ;-) ) I'm releasing making them open source.

They are written in C++ and set-up to compile under Dev-C++ under cygwin in my environment. However, they should be able to compile under any OS and under any IDE with a little bit of rearranging. The libraries I used (libcurl and twitcurl) all claim to be completely platform independent. I also neglected to use any platform dependent code of my own beyond what I hope would be completely cross-platform calls to the C++ Standard Library.

Here are the Download Links:

Sequential Ascending Bruteforcer
Sequential Descending Bruteforcer
Randomized Bruteforcer
Dictionary Attack

If you have any questions regarding the content of this post, feel free to leave a comment, join me in #arikadosblog on EFNET, post in our forums, tweet to me, or send me an e-mail at castlevania7689@yahoo.com

Looking for a Wii Game to Make Cheat Codes For

2010-05-17T15:11:00.000-07:00

So I just received my USB Gecko in the mail about a few days ago and finally got around to trying it out. It really is a truly awesome little device. Now I'll be able to debug and improve my code quicker.

Messing around with it, I was able to quickly make cheat codes for several popular games. However, a quick google showed me that these codes I made had already been made before me. I was recently lead to believe that the cheat code making scene has slowed down quite a bit and I would love to contribute some new codes for it.

As I really don't follow the scene, I figured I'd post offering to make cheat codes if there are any codes people want really badly. Making cheat codes is a rather trivial process, but one that I can undergo to better understand the USB Gecko and teach myself to better debug my homebrew. If you have an idea for a cheat code I could make, please let me know in a comment to this post or shoot me an e-mail at castlevania7689@yahoo.com.

But of course, remember, I can't make any guarantees (you never know what curveballs you may be thrown in the development process) nor can I commit an excessive amount to this (I think everyone would rather see me put more time into DeSmuME than spend more than 20 minutes making a cheat code)

Twitter Strikes Back

2010-05-13T15:28:00.000-07:00

Call this a coincidence, or call this a message to me from Twitter. Today, I realized that Twitter has finally updated and for the moment broken all of my Twitter password grabbing programs.

Here's what happened: It would appear that starting today, after you attempt to log into an account on Twitter unsuccessfully 10 times, your IP address is blocked from logging into that account for the next sixty minutes. However, you can still try to log into other accounts. This essentially kills my programs after they've tried 10 password combinations for sixty minutes until they can try 10 more.

I already have a solution to this problem and a working proof of concept of the solution in action. In fact, this solution can probably be adapted to allow the programs to realize when to stop trying passwords. I'll see if I can at the very least fix up the dictionary attack by the end of next week. Stay tuned!

A Dictionary Attack for Twitter

2010-05-12T13:22:00.000-07:00

A dictionary attack is an attempt to crack a password by trying a list of logical passwords from a list of commonly used dictionary words.

Today, I'm pleased to release a dictionary attack which can obtain the password of Twitter users. The program itself is entirely free and legal. It should not be used illegally. I am not releasing the source code to it at this time.

There are two flaws with this dictionary attack. 1)Like the bruteforce attacks I released for Twitter, this program does not stop trying passwords once it finds the correct one. So you will need to watch the Twitter account of your victim. When the victims account tweets the tweet you wanted it to tweet, stop the program and view the LOG file it outputs to figure what password it used was the right one. 2)The dictionary list included with this program is not very good. A lot of the passwords in it are actually too short to be Twitter passwords >_<. If anyone can make or find a better list, let me know and I'll update the release with it.

If you're a concerned Twitter user over the vulnerability of your password, just put a number in your password and this attack will not be able to obtain your password. However, other and future Twitter attacks will be able to (until Twitter fixes the flaws in their system of course).

Finally, note that this release can obtain most passwords which do not use numbers within a weeks time. It can not obtain any passwords which contain numbers. It is overall much faster than the bruteforcers I have released previously due to the nature of dictionary attacks.

You can download the dictionary attack here.

You can view my previously released Twitter attacks here.

If you have any questions regarding the content of this post, feel free to leave a comment, join me in #arikadosblog on EFNET, post in our forums, tweet to me, or send me an e-mail at castlevania7689@yahoo.com

Lastly, if you can, please donate to my college fund using the chip-in widget on the right-hand side of this blog.

http://1ntrusion.com

2010-05-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

When tehskeen died, very few people were quite as upset as I was. There was no longer one definitive site to turn to for general news on hacking. I found myself unfortunately pointing people to gbatemp because there really was nowhere else. Len (N0tBrakk3n) decided to set-up a site called NewSkeen to fill the void left by Tehskeen. I was quick to sign on to work for NewSkeen as it was indeed a noble endeavor and I had high hopes for the site.

Without being insinuatingly mean, I will say nothing beyond NewSkeen did not turn out to be what I wanted and I quickly became very frustrated with Len. In fact, NewSkeen is a bit of a joke on the interwebs today. When I offered to help fix up NewSkeen, Len refused to listen to me citing reasons of trust and he didn't feel I should have access to anything beyond permission to post news and permission moderate the forums. That was really the last straw for me. NewSkeen was a site that became practically dead after the first two weeks and I had no real ability to help it get up to the same level as similar sites, so I quit.

Shortly before quitting NewSkeen, Warpedflash came to me offering me unlimited hosting and webserver space he bought that he decided he did not want to use. Between the internal problems with Len and the free hosting space being offered up, I found this be less of a coincidence and more of a sign of what to do next. I studied several sites which I frequently visit and figured out what I liked and hated about each site. From there, I decided how the perfect all-around hacking site should operate based on my findings, wrote up a set of rules, and gave vbulletin birth to:

http://1ntrusion.com
#1ntrusion on EFNET or freenode

I want to stress a couple of points which drove the founding of this site:

A site that is interested in all kinds of hacking and is not limited to video game console hacking
A site with a friendly community which is heavily moderated to weed out trolls and trouble makers
A site in which the sharing of knowledge from experienced to new hackers is at the forefront of the site
A site in which it is nearly impossible to get banned unless you are intentionally a large multiple offender

Beyond that, 1ntrusion.com is entirely not for profit and promises to keep you updated on the latest and greatest news in the world of hacking. So please, stop by and join in the fun: http://1ntrusion.com

Round 2 Against That Pesky Scam Site

2010-04-27T16:23:00.000-07:00

Im sure most of you read when I decided to do what I could to take down http://myhomebreware.com . If not, click here and read it.

Today, I woke up and my RSS reader was filled with new comments on my blog posts from almost a year ago to the post made just before this one (all in all, it was about 20 comments on 20 different posts). Each of these new comments that appeared overnight all had the same message and were all left by the same person. They were advertisements telling readers to visit MyHomebreware.

With a little help, I traced the IP and MAC Address left by these comments and it turns out that they were left by the person running MyHomebreware.

I have only one thing to say in response to this:

Pathetic

Now affiliated with http://www.wii-homebrew.com/

2010-04-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

In today's age of the Internet, it is very hard to find reputable sources of information. It is even harder to do so when English is not your first or dominant language.

I am pleased to announce that myself and this blog are now affiliated with http://www.wii-homebrew.com/ .

http://www.wii-homebrew.com/ offers great and comprehensive news, guides, and tutorials for Wii Homebrew in German for it's users. It has a very large and intelligent user base and I welcome members from its site to mine while meanwhile encouraging members of my sites to check out their website. What this means is a larger network of users between both sites which is good for everyone.

http://www.wii-homebrew.com/ really is a great site and I strongly encourage everyone reading this to pay them a visit.

DeSmuME Wii r154 Released

2010-04-20T08:17:00.000-07:00

Up until now I haven't been too loud about every time I upload a build of DeSmuME Wii to it's google code SVN's download tab. This is for no particular reason other than that the builds haven't really been that high quality or feature complete and because I have more feedback on the emulator than I can keep up with reading.

DeSmuME Wii r154 is different. This is the first release I've uploaded that I firmly believe is an important and powerful revision. At this point, 95% of DS games should be able to be booted and about 30% of those should be fully playable. The layout on your SD Card or USB device is nice and clean now. We also have loading and saving savegames finally working perfectly. Lastly, we have a number of different ways you can view the emulator including just filling your TV with the top or bottom screen (which is really cool to use with Yoshi's Island, Fire Emblem, and other games which play only on one of those two screens).

So with all of this in mind, you'd be crazy to not give DeSmuME Wii a quick whirl. Thus, I'm being a bit less tight lipped about this release.

Download DeSmuME Wii r154: Google Code Download
Get the source DeSmuME Wii r154: Google Code Checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

If you'd like to donate to me, please use the ChipIn widget on the upper right hand corner of this blog or follow this link: http://arikado.chipin.com/college-fund

DeSmuME Wii : From Beginning to Today

2010-04-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

This post is the culmination of about five days of writing detailing the entire development process DeSmuME Wii has gone through. A lot of people all over the Internet have been asking for this, I hope that everyone will enjoy it. For the most part, I keep things as easy to understand as possible so that anyone can read along and follow the development cycle.

Ever since Wii homebrew happened, people have been asking if a DS emulator was possible to be made for it. (I remember reading topics about the possibility since the first day of the WiiBrew Forums creation) Based on the hardware specifications alone, I was confident that a DS emulator could in fact happen on the Wii. So near the end of July of 2009, I decided that I would write one.
Read more »

Attempting the Impossible: Raising $45,000 USD for College

2010-04-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

Well, to be blunt, I've spent the last two years since I emerged onto the Internet as Arikado trying to do the impossible. And this is the most stupid or brilliant thing I've ever attempted yet.

It's my dream to become a great programmer. I find video-game programming to be the ultimatum of programming. You must know more to write a video-game than to write any other program. It's take high level math, physics, science, and the most random trivial factoids in existence memorized to be used at any time.

In fact, were it not for my knowledge of video-game programming, DeSmuME Wii would have never happened. And neither would have DOP-Mii. Only because of the knowledge I've gained through video-game programming was I able to bring these projects to where they are today.

So what I'm trying to say is: I want to become a video-game programmer. That's my career choice. It always has been, and it always will be. I was born to do it. I've been programming since I was 12 starting in Liberty BASIC and graduating to markup languages (HTML, CSS, javascript) and then finally to C/C++. Every step of the way I challenged myself to think: How can I make a game out of this? It took lots of research and teaching myself advanced concepts but I've always been able to complete whatever I set my mind to. And through this, I've been able to branch off and create other related projects. Yes, I'm saying that, in some sense, DOP-Mii and DeSmuME Wii were easier to write than WiiBreaker and Wii Shooting Gallery and my other games.

This June I'll finally be out of high school. Finally. Of course I'm choosing to get a degree in computer science. However, there is once school in the world that offers a bachelors degree specifically in video-game programming and then allows you to achieve a masters in computer science. That school is the holy grail of colleges for me to attend. That school is DigiPen ( https://www.digipen.edu/ ).

DigiPen is located in Washington State. I live in New York State. I live in a deeply financially troubled family and thus I have almost a full ride in financial aid to a local school for a degree in computer science. DigiPen offered me next to no financial aid whatsoever. After talking to parents and figuring everything out, we've come to the conclusion that I will need $45,000 USD to make it to DigiPen for the first year (I will be working two jobs this summer and getting as much scholarship money as possible but its still $45,000 USD :( ). My parents told me that this is way too high an amount and that I should just take the local school.

I dont believe in the impossible. I believe that I can raise the money via the awesome people on the Internet. By May 1st, I have to make a decision on which college to attend. If I can get $10,000 USD by then I can probably convince my parents that I can raise the rest (if I can get all $45,000 USD by May 1st though that would be ok too ;) ). If not, well, the money you send will make my crappy local school experience at least a little less harsh.

You can donate via the ChipIn widget on the right-hand side of this page. Or the same widget right here:

I will be taking programming and blog and other requests if you are willing to donate if I complete them.

Thank you to everyone for reading this :)

Video of DeSmuME Wii r148

2010-04-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

I took a video of DeSmuME Wii r148 in action. And I put the title cards to the song Thunderstruck by ACDC. What could be more awesome? Enjoy. You can download the latest version of the emulator here: http://code.google.com/p/desmumewii

DeSmuME Wii Day 2

2010-03-29T06:47:00.000-07:00

About 24 hours ago we first saw DeSmuME Wii begin to emulate ROMs. Now, a whole day later, we've made a lot of progress.

First off, sound does work. We've currently disabled it in order to preserve fps, but anyone who wants to is welcome to checkout the SVN and change a single line in main.cpp to enable it.

Homebrew ROMs and official ROMs have some interesting quirks. We can only boot homebrew ROMs if we hardcode the GPU display mode to mode 2, but we can only boot commercial ROMs if we do not. We will have a workaround later today to boot both commercial and homebrew ROMs. Whether it is an ugly if() hack of sorts or different display code that handles both properly remains to be seen.

Homebrew ROMs run at full speed compared to how they run on DeSmuME on a PC as far as I can tell. Likely, not all of them do. But the ones I've tested certainly seem to. Any homebrew ROMs which load external files will crash DeSmuME Wii at this point in time.

Commercial ROMs seem to all work up until they have to render something in 3D. Up until that point, most of them they seem to be pretty fast (but I haven't personally tested too many).

The emulator now finally accepts input. The working control scheme is as follows:
The classic controller represents the buttons on the DS (A = A, B = B, etc.). Pressing A on the Wiimote connected to the classic controller touches the stylus to the touch screen. Using the DPAD on the Wiimote connected to the classic controller changes the position of the stylus. More and probably better control schemes will be added as soon as possible.

The last new goal of our project I'm going to mention before ending this post is that we are now trying to get rid of SDL from the project. SDL takes up way too much of the stack and getting rid of it would basically end our RAM limitation worries. We would also see a significant speed boost from doing so.

We have video emulation on DeSmuME Wii now

2010-03-28T05:51:00.000-07:00

We were very very very very very very very very very very close to this for the longest time. Scanff of WiiRadio and Bash the Castle fame found the problem. We now have video emulation from NDS ROMs on our port of DeSmuME to the Wii. At this point we've only tested some of the most basic homebrew ROMs available. More information and prolly pictures or a video soon.

Btw, yes, Im back from vacation now (I will be back on IRC later today). It was truly great. Coming back and seeing the progress made on porting DeSmuME to the Wii while I was gone is simply breath taking. I'm thrilled to be able to start working on it again =)

Update: In comments, profetylen claims that the sound emulation intentionally disabled in the SVN works when enabled. I can not confirm this at the moment.

Update 2: Apparently, some people reporting on this story fail at using the emulator and are saying things causing a lot of uneducated comments along the lines of "dis is fake it no worky!!!!!!12". To reiterate, most ROMs are NOT going to work right now. However, quite a few already do. Here is a picture of the DS homebrew ROM FileNinja running on DeSmuME Wii:

What is this???

2010-03-24T19:36:00.000-07:00

Seriously. What could it be???

Now to be honest, all of my work has been done involving the DeSmuME core itself. I actually did nothing to contribute to the GUI, but the rest of the team (which is rather quite large now) did. More info in the near future ... (Looks I did have something awesome to show off just before my mini vacation o_0)

Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
IRC channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET

Update: Just realized that (as revealed in comments) this is only a teaser of the GUI, or rather a photo shop cleaned up version of it. The only thing photo shopped in is the game case art which will eventually be put into the real GUI. There are also a few things in the GUI now that aren't in the image.

Update 2: Please please please don't ask for a release date. We can't possibly even estimate one at the moment for fear of inevitably breaking it. Please understand that this is really, really, hard stuff.

Miscellaneous news and facebook fail

2010-03-22T19:11:00.000-07:00

So lately I haven't been up to too much publicly. I've been mostly wasting my time trying to get my savegame stuff to play nice (and better) with DOP-Mii. I've also restarted development on DeSmuME Wii (which is progressing at a rapid rate now -- more on that later). So nothing too exciting publicly at the moment with the exception of a a fun little legal battle.

For those of you that don't know, I'll be going away to compete in the Model United Nations competition in New York for the latter half of this week. I really wanted to show off something awesome before then but I realized today that I don't have the time to make it happen. So I thought I'd show off a hilarious tidbit from my personal life instead (plus I've been dieing to make one of these images like all the others I see on the internet - it was a fun little experience). This personal occurrence just happened yesterday between me and someone I thought I was really good friends with and have never done anything to~~, it reminded me of how I got banned on gbafail~~.

So ... Yeah. Enjoy. I'll have some new cool stuff real soon after this competition is over. The 'personal occurrence' is after the break (click Read More to see it).

Read more »

My Turn: I Try to Stop a Wii Homebrew Scam Site

2010-03-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

This was really more of an intellectual experiment than something entirely serious. I was tired of seeing so many people complain about these illegal homebrew selling scams so I decided to see exactly how hard it is to take one down. With Daco's (the guy who made Priiloader) help, we quickly found a site illegally selling an old version of Dop-IOS MOD (now known as DOP-Mii). Our target site: http://myhomebreware.com

Almost never does any one person run a website alone. Usually, they use a service to host the website. And in this case, they also used a service to sell their product on the site. So our plan of attack was simple. Send angry letters to the hosting service, the ClickBank transaction service, and last but not least, the website owner himself. With luck, one of these parties would stop the website at least temporarily.
Read more »

DOP-Mii v12 Released

2010-03-04T10:47:00.000-08:00

Things all started with how Dop-IOS let you install other IOSes, but used cIOS 249 exclusively to do so. As IOS249 is primarily a piracy IOS (which is in some cases is itself illegal) many people felt a certain resentment toward it's exclusivity on which the authors have no comment. A better solution for all users would've been to allow users to select which IOS they use to install other IOSs. This is why DOP-IOS MOD was created.

Since fulfilling its original purpose, DOP-IOS MOD has brought many new and improved features to it's Dop-IOS base (or "core" if you will). Eventually, it became less and less of a port and more and more of a unique creation.The name was changed to Dop-Mii in compliance with the v12 overhaul of the application since the application had long lost it's Dop-IOS similarity.

Here's the full list of changes for v12:

IOS Menu Changes

You can now select what version of an IOS you want to install. Including Stubbed IOSes if you want to revirginize your Wii.
- NOTE: Just because the option is available to install any IOS version. Not all Wiis will support the lower IOS versions.
Uninstall IOS feature
Added BC & MIOS Support
Menu now driven by a homegrown title database. It now knows what IOS versions can have what patches applied to them.
IOSes can now be installed into empty Slots. To perform the install Hold A then press +.

Channels Menu

Can now be installed via WAD. Menu will tell you the WAD Filename it requires. If the Channel requires 2 different titles it will display both WAD filenames.

System Menu

You can now upgrade or downgrade to ANY System Menu version.
- NOTE It is not recommended to downgrade below 3.2 if you have a newer Wii. Rule of thumb is if you can't install BootMii as Boot2 then you should not go below 3.2.
Installer will check to make sure you have the correct IOS with the correct IOS Version installed before installing the selected system menu. If the IOS is not installed, it will prompt and install the IOS.
If Priiloader is installed, it will temporarily backup Priiloader. It will prompt you at the end of the System Menu installation if you would like to restore Priiloader.
Can now be installed via WAD. Menu will tell you the WAD Filename it requires. If IOS is required it will also provide the IOS WAD filename.

Boot2 Menu

Yes there is now Boot2 Upgrade Support. We were requested to add it in. I would like to give a special thanks to Bushing for providing me the ES_ImportBoot code to ensure that Boot2 gets updated properly. If you are already at Boot2v4 you will not get the option to upgrade as you are already at the latest version.
- NOTE: If you have BootMii installed as Boot2. Beyond our control it will wipe it out. You will need to reinstall BootMii as Boot2 after Boot2 has been upgraded.
- NOTE: As a reminder, when your boot2 is upgraded, it CANNOT be downgraded.

Other Changes

Removed FakeSign check for TBR Restore so that if people have a corrupt IOS36 they can reinstall it.
WiiMote LEDs now flash during installation. This can be disabled via the config file.
Wii LEDs now flash during installation. This can be disabled via the config file.
Removed USB 2.0 checking from SysCheck.
Because of new Title Database. SysCheck now reports on all Installed NON-STUBBED IOSes.
SysCheck will now ask where you want to save the report.
Added a config file with the following tags.
- alternateURL: This will allow you to specify an alternate url to try downloading the NUS files. If it cannot find the file or has troubles connecting to the alternate url then it will fallback to NUS. If the files are cache it will try and load the cached files before attemping to download from ALT or NUS.
  - Example: http://myserver/nus/{TITLEID1}{TITLEID2}v{VERSION}
  - Example: http://myserver/{TITLEID1}{TITLEID2}
- cacheFolder: You can now specify where the files are to be cached. This can be stored on either on SD or USB. If the setting is blank or does not exist. No Caching will take place.
  - Example: sd:/nus/{TITLEID1}/{TITLEID2}/v{VERSION}
  - Example: usb:/nus/{TITLEID1}/TITLEID2}/v{VERSION}
- defaultIOS: You can now specify what the default IOS will be when it shows the initial IOS Selection Screen.
- wiiMoteLeds: On = WiiMote LEDs will flash during installations. To disable set the config to Off
- wiiLeds: On = Wii Disc LEDs will flash during installations. To disable set the config to Off
- TAG Definitions
  - {TITLEID1} : if TitleId is 0000000100000024. TITLEID1 is 00000001
  - {TITLEID2} : if TitleId is 0000000100000024. TITLEID2 is 00000024
  - {VERSION} : Version of title (Optional)

Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout

Support forum: http://arikadosblog.myfreeforum.org/forum27.php
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

Savegame Manager MOD v1.0 Released

2010-03-03T11:12:00.000-08:00

One of the major hindrances of the Wii's savegame system is that, for reasons only Nintendo understands, some savegames can not be transferred back and forth from the Wii and vice versa. To counter this and make gamers all over the world rejoice in happiness, Waninkoko created a program called Savegame Manager that owuld transfer any save back and forth from the Wii to the SD Card. Unfortunately, Waninkoko forced his cIOS 249 onto everyone that wanted to use his program. As his cIOS 249 mainly used for piracy, most users did not want to use Savegame Manager.

So today, after nearly a month of hard work, I am pleased to released Savegame Manager MOD. It works exactly like Savegame Manager but you can use any IOS you want so long as that IOS has NAND permissions installed in it. If you need NAND permissions installed in an IOS, my Dop-IOS MOD program can do that for you.

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?mlwzfnmlcma
Source: http://www.mediafire.com/?ywmfqbnz4yn

Support forum: http://arikadosblog.myfreeforum.org/forum27.php
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

Counting in bases: How to count in binary, hexadecimal, and more!

2010-03-03T06:15:00.000-08:00

Awhile ago, I posted a tutorial explaining to someone how to count in hexadecimal. I've edited the tutorial a bit and am now posting the superior version exclusively on my blog. Enjoy!

The first step to understanding bases is figure out what base a number is part of. To do that, count how many numbers are in that number's number system.

Binary only has 2 characters in it: 0 and 1. Thus, binary is referred to as being a base 2 number system.
Our Decimal system has 10 characters in it: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Thus, our decimal system is referred to as being in base 10.
Hexadecimal has 16 characters in it: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F. Thus, hexadecimal is a base 16 number system.

If a number is not written in base 10 (Decimal), it should have a subscript saying what base it is in. Example: Binary should be written like this: 101010101110100₂

Do you remember how they taught you to add in grammar (elementary for Americans like me) school? You used columns like the ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, etc. column. Like when you had a problem like the one below:
19
+3
-----
22

You were taught to add a one to the tens column after you exceeded the value of nine in the ones column. (You were also taught to add a one to the hundreds column after you exceeded a value of 9 in the tens column and so on and so forth). If you had for example, a 2 in the the ten;s column wit would have a value of 10 because 10*2=20. Likewise, that 9 in the example above has a value of 9 because 9*1=9. I guess you could say Number*ColumnValue=TrueValue. Most importantly, what I'm trying to do here is jog your memory of that 'columns system'.

Now consider this: How do you think the value of each column was determined?

The value of each column was determined by taking the base number (10 in our decimal system) and giving it an exponent of the column placement. Remember you move from right to left when doing this. Thus, the first column was the ones column because 10^0 is 1. The second column the tens column because 10^1 is 10. The third column the hundreds column because 10^2 is 100.

Now this column system I've finished fully describing applies to any base, just change the base number. So for binary (base 2), the first column is the one's column because 2^0 is 1. The second column is the two's column because 2^1 is 2. The third column is the four's column because 2^2 is 4. The fourth column is the eight's column because 2^3 is 8.

1111₂ (binary) is equivalent to 15 in decimal because (1*1)+(1*2)+(1*4)+(1*8)=15.

For hexadecimal (base 16) this application works the same way. The only thing that throws some people off about hexadecimal is the letters. Here's the hexadecimal to decimal conversion for them:

Hex -> Decimal
A         10
B         11
C         12
D         13
E         14
F         15

Before I move on with my lesson I want to point something out quick that's in huge relevance to digital circuitry and programming. The max value for one character of hex is 15. Thus, any one character in hex is equivalent to 4 characters in binary. If you don't fully understand why, take a look at that 1111 in base 2 equals 15 in base 10 example above again. Each binary character is actually called a bit in technological vernacular and each hex character is called a nibble. Two hex characters next to each other (AB for example) is called a byte.

So now, finally, let's calculate the decimal value of a hexadecimal (base 16) number:

A35D₁₆

First let's figure out the column values (Remember, we're working from right to left):
16^0 is 1 so the first column on the right is the one's column. The column next to it on the left is then the sixteens column. Then the two-hundred-fifty-six's column. Lastly on the far left we have the four-thousand-ninety-six's column.

So let's add it up:
(10*4096)+(3*256)+(5*16)+(13*1)=41821

If you understand all of this, you should now be able to count in any base be it base 2 binary, base 16 hex, or base 398 (whatever that's called). If not, read over the tutorial. I've truly made this as short and sweet as possible. Good luck :-)

If you have any questions regarding the content of this post, feel free to leave a comment, join me in #arikadosblog on EFNET, post in our forums, tweet to me, or send me an e-mail at castlevania7689@yahoo.com.

Anyone attending MUN 2010 in New York soon in March?

2010-02-23T14:18:00.000-08:00

I'm participating in the Model United Nations competition at St. Bonaventure University in New York March 14-18. Schools from all around America and even other countries come to compete to see which school can best solve the world's problems. I'm told (this is my first and last time competing) there will be a huge number of people (my source claims over two thousand but I find that very, very high).

Anyone else reading this attending the competition? If so, I'd love to meet you!

Thoughts on the PS3

2010-02-20T12:59:00.000-08:00

Like most homebrewers and hackers (not necessarily just those of Wii "scene" fame like myself) I'm experiencing a growing interest in the PS3 all of a sudden. It's an amazing and beastly console that has simply gone too long without any serious hacking attempts made. Now that the Wii has been thoroughly disassembled and capable of being made to do anything, the PS3 is the next most interesting target. In my opinion, it's more interesting than the XBOX 360 because the XBOX 360 has already been hacked a couple of times in the past, the PS3 has better controllers, and the PS3 is simply a more powerful machine.

Geohot's efforts of hacking the PS3 have certainly been entertaining to watch. He's managed to dump information using the PS3's OtherOS feature and it's yielded some interesting finds of course. If you haven't read RootLabs writeup of the hack, I strongly advise you to do so.

Before I go any further with just spewing out the thoughts running through my head on the PS3 I want to take a quick moment to mention something. MaxConsole ~~orchestrated a devious scheme to get hits on their site~~ started a rumor that Sony intends to remove the OtherOS feature in the next update from PS3s which support it (those of you just tuning in, newer models of the PS3 already don't support the OtherOS anymore). This rumor is the most uninspired attempt to cause senseless panic that I've ever seen. Sony has stated that they will not remove the OtherOS feature on PS3s which support it so there is nothing to worry to about. Any news site that says or even implies otherwise should no longer be thought of as a credible source of information and should suffer a fiery 404 death. Sorry I had to go off on a tangent here, I'm sick and tired of hearing this rumor day in and day out.

Now where was I? Oh yes, even though geohot's hacking efforts are extremely interesting, they're not going to make any huge waves. The information obtained from them (dumps of lv1 and other internal goodies for example) will certainly help in the future, but it's a future that's a long way off for the moment. Right now, what's first needed is way for the average consumer with and PS3 model to be able to run homebrew code on their system. In other words, we need a sort of Twilight Hack for the PS3. Whoever finds a way will be met with fame and respect from all around the world. Thus, the PS3 has become a very tantalizing machine to try and hack right now and thus people who have already had experience working with the Wii are turning their attention to it now.

It's a very exciting time to be a PS3 owner for sure on what I hope is the verge of PS3 homebrew. I don't own one myself at the moment but I would like to pick one up the instant I get the cash for it. For those of you as interested in the PS3 as I am right now, I encourage you to join #ps3dev on EFNET, to hang around the PS3 homebrew development forums, and to closely watch the wiki documenting hacking and homebrewing on the PS3.

http://newskeen.com

2010-02-18T18:43:00.000-08:00

The new tehskeen is located at http://newskeen.com

We have an IRC channel set up at #newskeen on EFNET. (Mention my blog and I'll give you a voice ;-) )

When tehskeen was shutdown I and many others were rather ticked off that we now had to check 12 websites everyday instead of just 1. Newskeen was created as a reaction to the loss of tehskeen in order to fill the void of a great one-stop news site tehskeen's death left behind. It is not for profit like other homebrew/hacking "scene" news sites. Sure, I still have to check 12 sites a day (and now even report what they write), but at least no one else does. I truly hope you all enjoy the site.

Perhaps most exciting of all, I'll get back to blogging about things other than newskeen now ;-P

New tehskeen opens this Friday

2010-02-14T14:27:00.000-08:00

N0tBrakk3n has told me he's decided to open the new tehskeen to the public this friday. We're doing something exciting that no other homebrew news site does. We'll also have the site full with the latest big stories of the last couple weeks when it opens. The time until Friday will be spent primarily making the new site look pretty. We have a new name for it that's a little bit of a play on the old name. We're going to be reporting on news for consoles that tehskeen never reported on (think Apple). The site is going to look and feel reminiscent of tehskeen but will mostly be it's own beast. It will not be perfect when it opens but N0tBrakk3n will listen to users and make it perfect according to them. There will be no ads on the site when it opens. Even if there are ads down the line it will never be as bad as it was on tehskeen (current homebrew news sites are much worse than tehskeen ever was).

Yes, this is a kinda ugly post but Im just getting the details out. This will be awesome. Trust me.

Update: Anyone who wants to view the site early, read the comments on this post.

Dop-IOS MOD Enters v12 Beta Stage

2010-02-14T06:31:00.000-08:00

Our first major change is that you can now install any version of any IOS that you want. You are no longer limited to just two versions of an IOS. Yes, you can install stubbed IOSs if you please. You can now downgrade any IOS.
We now let you uninstall any IOS.
You can update BC and MIOS.
When you download stuff, you no longer download stuff from NUS, you download it from Lunatik. Lunatik is hosting a copy of NUS on his personal server. So, if Nintendo ever decides to be like Apple and start changing stuff on their server, it won't affect anyone thanks to Lunatik's server.
You can now use WADs throughout the entire application to perform offline installs.
You can now safely downgrade your Wii to any system menu including 2.0 (the first system menu). This will not brick newer Wiis like older downgrading methods (*cough*Waninkoko*cough*) did. Just be sure you have the necessary IOSs installed before downgrading your system menu.
We now have Priiloader support throughout the entire application. This means that you can install Priiloader on whatever system menu you have installed. It works on all system menus.
Thanks to some code donated by bushing we now have the ability to update boot2. No, we cannot downgrade boot2. Be 110% sure you want to do this before updating boot2. There is no risk to it, but it will delte bootmii forcing you to reinstall it.
Due to how no one can consistently write USB modules in IOS we no longer check for USB support in syscheck.
Thanks to Lunatik's new server set-up, syscheck will now check ALL non-stubbed IOSs (ie: bugfix).

Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-iosmod/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-iosmod/source/checkout

Support forum: http://arikadosblog.myfreeforum.org/forum27.php
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

Dop-IOS MOD v11.5 Released

2010-02-03T13:47:00.000-08:00

Dop-IOS is a program that lets you install any IOS you want. Unfortunately, Dop-IOS used cIOS 249, the "warez IOS" to do so. Many people feel a resentment toward the enforcement, so I created Dop-IOS MOD; A program that lets you use any IOS you want, to install any IOS you want.

Since its original release, Dop-IOS MOD has become less and less of a modification and more of an entirely original creation. Unlike it's older brother, Dop-IOS MOD can install channels and system menus as well. It also has the ability to restore fakesigning ability to any Wii with a single button press. This makes Dop-IOS MOD a versatile tool in the recovery of a broken Wii (the gamecube controller support exclusive to Dop-IOS MOD helps out with that as well ;-) )

Between the v11.1 and v11.5 releases we've made several releases which I have intentionally not reported because they contained new bugs not in any of the older versions. I'm pleased to say we squashed them though. Here is the full changelog for v11.2 through v11.5

FIX: The shopping channel's revision was getting set to 0 which was causing the shop channel to think it needed to be upgraded when it was in fact installing the latest version.
SysCheck was not properly reporting all FakeSigned IOSes. Some of the Patched IOSes were showing disabled when they were in fact enabled.
Fixed a memory leak
SysCheck Fix: NAND Permission check was supposed to replace Boot2 Check, however it was accidentally missed in the final build.
Fixed bug in SysCheck that was causing the Channels to reboot when ran.
If you were affected by this bug, just rerun SysCheck again and it'll fix itself.

Now working for http://tehskeen.info

2010-01-29T19:37:00.000-08:00

I've been chatting with N0tBrakk3n, the awesome man bringing back Tehskeen in the form of http://tehskeen.info , quite a bit lately and I'm pleased to announce a an exciting decision of his. When the new Tehskeen starts running like the old Tehskeen, I will be reporting news for the site. For those of you who remember, I'm basically going to be like djdynamite123 for the new site. I can't wait! I hope everyone is as excited about this as I am!

Dop-IOS MOD v11.1 Released

2010-01-29T08:30:00.000-08:00

Hopefully fixed Core Dump issue when running IOS36 (r3351) w/Fakesign Installer.
Hopefully fixed Core Dump issue when running cIOS249 r17
Fixed SysCheck csv output.
Fixed problem where when network couldn't initialize it would go into an infinite loop.

Twitter Bruteforcers v1.1 Released

2010-01-27T15:16:00.000-08:00

I've fixed a few issues with all of the bruteforcers. The proxy stuff should now work correctly and you should be able to enter in a custom status message to tweet when successful now. The randomized bruteforcer now handles only bruteforcering a single character number too (example, you can now enter 6 for the min and max values and it will only bruteforce 6 character passwords instead of hopping around between 6 -7 character sizes)

Again, do NOT use these programs illegally. I do NOT support or condone doing that.

Check the original post for the new links.

Twitter Bruteforcers Released

2010-01-26T20:10:00.000-08:00

Well, turns out there's a reason I've been doing so much blogging about how bruteforcers work and whatnot! I've written three for the popular (and my favorite) social networking website Twitter!

For those just tuning in, a bruteforcer is a program which cracks passwords by trying every possible password combination until it tries the correct one. Thus, these Twitter bruteforcing programs can figure out the password to any Twitter account eventually.

The first bruteforcer is the sequential ascending bruteforcer which tries every possible password from the bottom up. The second brutefrocer is the sequential descending bruteforcer which tries every possible password from the top down. The third bruteforcer is the randomized bruteforcer which tries every possible password combination in a random order.

Unfortunately, these bruteforcers do not work as well as I would like them to. There is a major bug present in each of them. All of these bruteforcers are based upon the twitcurl library which the bug lies therein. Basically, once the bruteforcer finds the correct password it doesnt stop bruteforcing because the twitcurl library does not correctly distinguish between failed and successful password login attempts. To combat this bug, I have the bruteforcer tweet if the login is after it logs in. If the tweet is made under the account being bruteforced, then you know that the bruteforcer has hit the correct password. I have each bruteforcer log all of the passwrods tried and the output returned from Twitter. So after you see your tweet made under the account being bruteforced, you should stop the bruteforcers and check the log to find out which was the successful password. Yes, it's extremely annoying, but at least it is possible to get the successful password without too much pain.

These were written in C++ using the twitcurl library. The source should be entirely cross-compatible so it should be able to be compiled on MAC, Linux, or Windows. I am only releasing Windows binaries in this post. The source to each of these bruteforcers will be released (this post will be updated with the links) in no more then 72 hours. I have no intention of making Linux or MAC binaries on my own but if anyone does let me know and I will add the links to them to this post.

Regarding the legality of these programs: These bruteforcers are NOT illegal. But they can be used illegally. Do NOT use them illegally. I do NOT support or condone using them to obtain passwords you do not have permission to get (which is again illegal).

Downloads:

Sequential Ascending Bruteforcer: Mediafire
Sequential Descending Bruteforcer: Mediafire
Randomized Bruteforcer: Mediafire

If you have any questions regarding the content of this post, feel free to leave a comment, join me in #arikadosblog on EFNET, post in our forums, tweet to me, or send me an e-mail at castlevania7689@yahoo.com

Dop-IOS MOD v11 Released

2010-01-24T10:43:00.000-08:00

Dop-IOS is a program that lets you install any IOS you want. Unfortunately, Dop-IOS used cIOS 249, the "warez IOS" to do so. Many people feel a resentment toward the enforcement, so I created Dop-IOS MOD; A program that lets you use any IOS you want, to install any IOS you want.

Since its original release, Dop-IOS MOD has become less and less of a modification and more of an entirely original creation. Unlike it's older brother, Dop-IOS MOD can install channels and system menus as well. It also has the ability to restore fakesigning ability to any Wii with a single button press. This makes Dop-IOS MOD a versatile tool in the recovery of a broken Wii (the gamecube controller support exclusive to Dop-IOS MOD helps out with that as well ;-) )

In between v9 and v10, I added the developer Lunatik to Dop-IOS MOD. We worked together making v10 about 50% of each of our work. In v11 however, 95% is Lunatik's work. In v12 upcoming very soon, all of it will be Lunatik's work. Lunatik is an absolutely amazing and infinitely talented programmer and it's been a true pleasure working with him.

Here is the changelog for v11:

Any WiiRemote or GameCube pad can now be used
Fixed NUS offline installations
Power button on Wii and WiiRemote now works
- NOTE: If performing an install the power will not shutdown the wii until the install is finished.
Reset Button on the wii will now exit to loader.
- NOTE: If performing an install the reset button will not exit until the install is finished.
Added Scan Wii Internals to display various information about the IOSes installed.
- NOTE: It is a known issue that it will not pick up all IOSes installed. This will be fixed in v12.
Console should fit the screen better now.
The Shopping Channel was hardcoded to version 18. It will now get the latest version from NUS.
IOSes can now be installed from WAD from the SD/USB. Channels and SysMenu will come in v12.
FakeSign Restorer (aka Trucha Bug Restore) will now install IOS36 in 1 step.

More Effective Bruteforcing

2010-01-24T08:15:00.000-08:00

The goal of bruteforcing is ultimately to obtain a password via trying everyone possible until you tr the correct one. The main concern in any bruteforce attack is time. Thankfully, there a number of different modifications you can make to a bruteforcer to speed up the process. Please note that these methods are only effective on human created passwords. Passwords generated by a computer may become impossible to obtain if the suggestions in this post are followed.

Eliminate unlikely numbers

The most commonly used numbers in creating a password are the numbers 1 and 9. Unless you have reason to believe that the password you're attacking may contain other numbers, you will want to prevent your bruteforcer from checking any other numbers. Generally, people do not use all the numbers ( 0 - 9 ) available to them and sometimes don't even use any numbers at all. Getting rid of as many numbers as possible from being checked will greatly speed up your attack.

Eliminate unlikely letters

Most people do not use the letters z, x, or q in their passwords. You should prevent your bruteforcer from checking these and any other unlikely letters during your attack.

Attack from multiple directions

Figure out the sequentially greatest password your victim could possibly have. For example, if you believe that they do not have a password more then 8 characters long, then the greatest sequential password they could possibly have is zzzzzzzz. Have a descending sequential bruteforcer work from the top down.

Figure out the sequentially lowest password your victim could possibly have. For example, if you believe they could not possibly have a password less then 6 characters, then the sequentially lowest password is 000000. Have a second bruteforcer work as a sequential ascending bruteforcer from the bottom up.

Lastly, have as many bruteforcers as you can work as randomized bruteforcers and guess passwords between what you believe are the sequentially highest and lowest possible passwords.

Hopefully, the tips and tricks I've shared here will help you to more efficently and more quickly successfully bruteforce a password.

Writing a Randomized Bruteforce Attack in C/C++

2010-01-24T07:40:00.001-08:00

The randomized bruteforce attack works by guessing possible passwords in a random order unlike the sequential bruteforce attacks which guesses passwords in a logical order.

Writing a randomized bruteforcer is very similar to writing a sequential bruteforcer. The only change in the attack is the password generation. For the password generation, in order to efficiently guess the password, you'll want to guess inside of a range character length. For example, if I was attacking someone, I would only try passwords between 6 and 8 characters in length since that is the average password size. Once you have the length decided upon and you have the location to attack specified, all thats left to do is generate and try passwords.

Below is a simple randomized bruteforce attack I wrote in C/C++:

/*Change "(" to "<" and change ")" to ">" */
#include (iostream)
#include (string)

      using namespace std;

      /*Prototypes*/
      void checkPassword(string password);

      /*Globakl Variables*/
      char chars[]={'0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9','a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z'};
      string t;

      /*This function checks to see if the generated password is correct*/
      void checkPassword(string password) {

      cout << "Trying this password: " << password << endl;

      if (password==t) {

      cout << "match [" << password << "]" << endl;

      int pause;
      cin >> pause;

      exit(1);

      }

      }

      int main() {

      cout << "Enter a string (No more then 10 characters for demonstration purposes): " << endl;

      cin >> t;

      int passwordsize = t.length();
      string basestring = "";

      for(;;){

    /*Generate and then check the password*/
      for(int i=0;i

      int chooseachar = rand() % 35 + 0;
      basestring += chars[chooseachar];

      }
      checkPassword(basestring);
      basestring = "";
      }

      return 0;

      }

Really, this attack is much simpler then the sequential bruteforce attacks and should be very easy for everyone to understand. One quick note about it, for demonstration purposes, it only guesses passwords as long as the one you input.

Writing a Sequential Bruteforce Attack in C/C++

2010-01-20T14:37:00.000-08:00

The bruteforce attack is simple enough to understand. It is performed by entering in every possible password that can be accepted by a system until the correct password is entered. However, actually writing one is a bit more complex. There's a complex underlying logic involved simply entering in every password. This post will cover the logic of programming a sequential bruteforcer and cap off with writing a sequential ascending bruteforcer in C/C++. Lastly, I will show a quick trick to turn the sequential ascending bruteforcer into a sequential descending bruteforcer.

A bruteforcer has three main logical components: A selection where the user inputs specific location of the attack; Generating the passwords to test; Testing the password.

Having the user input the specific location to attack is arguably the easiest part of writing a bruteforcer. This part can actually be "hard-coded" (specified by the programmer so no input is required) so I was thinking of not even mentioning it. But, I decided to bring it up as any bruteforcer meant to be used by more then one person will include this. Let's say we've written a bruteforcer that attacks Yahoo accounts. In this case, the bruteforcer will be programmed to attack Yahoo accounts, but the user must input the Yahoo account to specifically attack. This first component of the bruteforcer will handle thus handles obtianing this information.

Once the bruteforcer knows what it is going to attack, it must generate the password to try. In a sequential bruteforcer, the password tried each time will be sequentially one step away from the last password tried. So, in a sequential ascending bruteforcer, the bruteforcer will try the password 000001 followed by 000002. This works in reverse in a sequential descending bruteforcer. The programming of this is generally handled by writing a continuous loop which breaks only when the password generated is successful. Meanwhile, a handful of variables constantly increment with each run through the loop. When all of the possible passwords are tried, the variables are all reset as low as possible, the number of characters in the password is incremented or decremented, and the process begins again with checking all of the passwords one character longer or shorter then the last number of characters in a password. In practice, this is simpler then it sounds.

The last main component of a bruteforcer is the part in which a bruteforcer checks to see if it's generated the correct password. In some cases, this can surprisingly be the hardest part of the bruteforcer to write. Using our Yahoo example again, writing this part of the bruteforcer requires a knowledge of the Yahoo API. It's really hard for me to write how to perform the password check as each check will be written differently. While all checks are simple from a broad perspective, this is liable to get quite complex depending on what you're trying to bruteforce. My recommendation is to look for a library to do the check for you so you can do the least amount of work possible to perform what is really be a trivial step overall.

Here is the code I wrote to an ascending bruteforcer in C/C++. It's really rather small code and thus pretty self-explanatory. (The comments should help explain things too):

/*Change "(" to "<" and change ")" to ">" */
#include (iostream)
#include (string)

      using namespace std;

      /*Prototypes*/
      void checkPassword(string password);
      void recurse(int width, int position, string baseString);

      /*Global Variables*/
      char chars[]={'0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9','a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z'};
      string t;

      /*This function generates the password*/
      void recurse(int width, int position, string baseString) {

      for(int i=0;i<35;i++) {

      if (position < width-1) {

      recurse(width, position + 1, baseString+chars[i]);

      }

      checkPassword(baseString+chars[i]);

      }

      }

      /*This function checks to see if the generated password is correct*/
      void checkPassword(string password) {

      cout << "Trying this password: " << password << endl;

      if (password==t) {

      cout << "match [" << password << "]" << endl;

      int pause;
      cin >> pause;

      exit(1);

      }

      }

      int main() {

      cout << "Enter a string (No more then 10 characters for demonstration purposes): " << endl;

      cin >> t;

      int maxChars = 10;

      for(int i=1;i

      cout << "Checking passwords width [" << i << "]..." << endl;

      recurse(i,0,"");

      }

      return 0;

      }

To turn this into a sequential descending brutefrocer, make two small changes. Change the chars[] to equal: {'z','y','x','w','v','u','t','s','r','q','p','o','n','m','l','k','j','i','h','g','f','e','d','c','b','a','9','8','7','6','5','4','3','2','1','0'};
And lastly change the for loop in main() to:
for(int i = maxChars; i >0; i++) {

For those of you who still might not fully understand how all of the C/C++ works, I strongly encourage you to compile the bruteforcer program to further your study. I hope all of you reading this have found the subject of bruteforcers to be as fascinating as I find them to be.

The Bruteforce Attack

2010-01-19T15:33:00.000-08:00

In computers and computer security, the one thing protecting data is the computer password. And where there are passwords, there are people who want access to whatever it is they protect. One of the most popular methods used to obtain a computer password is the bruteforce attack. This post will thoroughly explain what the bruteforce attack is and how to defend your computer security system from it.

Aside from guessing a password, the bruteforce attack is the most popular method used to uncover a password. The bruteforce attack is performed by simply testing every single possible password. By doing so, the correct password is bound to be discovered eventually.

The problem with the bruteforce attack is the impractical amount of time it takes to find the correct password. If the password you attempt to crack is rather large, it can take nearly a century to try every possible password combination until you try the correct one. The solution is to bruteforce the password in different directions. Thus, for a hacker to successfully uncover a password through a bruteforce attack in a significantly shorter amount of time, he would have to have run one bruteforcer program trying every password in a sequential ascending order from the first possible password; Run a second bruteforcer program trying every password in a descending sequential order from the last possible password; And lastly run as many bruteforcer programs as possible which randomly try password combinations in between the sequentially first and last possible password. Hopefully, a hacker can then uncover a password in more decent amount of time (But it is still probably going to be a very long amount of time overall).

A subsidiary of the bruteforce attack that I feel inclined to mention is the dictionary attack. The dictionary attack takes a list of words which the hacker believes are liable to be part of the password being attacked. The dictionary attack program uses an algorithm to test each word individually, each word with numbers inserted on the ends of the word, and combinations of putting words together, and putting numbers on the end of word combinations. Dictionary attacks are generally hit-or-miss when compared to the generic style of a bruteforce attack performed by hacker as described in the paragraph above this one. Also as described in the paragraph above, the solution to more quickly obtaining a password via bruteforcing is to run as many bruteforcers as possible; In this case, running as many different dictionary lists to attack passwords with at once as possible.

Defending your computer security system from bruteforce attacks is really pretty simple. The easiest method is to make passwords case sensitive. Just by doing this, you can take the time it takes to successfully bruteforce a password and raise that to a power of 26 (this does not hold true between varying units of time). The second way to defend against bruteforce attacks is to only let a user incorrectly enter in a password 5 times a day. Since it usually takes thousands of failed passwords before successfully uncovering a passwords, this simple addition to your security system renders bruteforcing useless. Thirdly, you should require your users to have passwords that are at least eight characters in length. And lastly, you should encourage your users to change their password once a year.

All together, the bruteforce attack actually isn't as great as people make it sound like it is. Yes, it has infamously cracked some important passwords, but overall, you're better off practicing Kevin Mitnick's Art of Deception (AKA Social Engineering) to crack a password.

Wii Shooting Gallery 2.0 Released (Final Release)

2010-01-17T10:59:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to announce the final release of my most popular Wii homebrew video game, Wii Shooting Gallery.

Wii Shooting Gallery was my first project for the Nintendo Wii and unsurprisingly the first one I can truly say I've finished. When I originally arrived at the Wii homebrew "scene", I came because of the prospect of developing video-games for a true gaming console without the need to purchase an expensive SDK.

When racking my brain to some up with a game idea, I realized there weren't any good target shooters. So I slapped some ugly coder art onto a simple C++ program and had a program in which you could use a huge square to shoot red blood cells that were capable of moving in a couple of different directions.

My goodness how the game has evolved since then! The game now has an exhaustive GUI, sound, the ability to save your favorite options and your progress, and many, many more modes of play including one similiar to galaga (but with a twist of course ;-) ).

The entire development cycle for this game was about a year and half. While I doubt most people wont play this game for more then twenty minutes or so. I truly hope everyone gets a little something out of it; Be it a little bit of fun or a great lesson in programming (all of the techniques used in the source are covered in detail on this blog).

It's sad to goodbye to this project, but even though it's development cycle is over, the things I learned and friends I made while working on it will never be forgotten.

Download: Mediafire
Source: Mediafire

Good news for tehskeen fans

2010-01-14T18:13:00.000-08:00

As there's really no good place to go for news anymore since tehskeen died, I guess I'm doing some news reporting duties.

Anyways, if you miss tehskeen as much as I do (I still can't bring myself to remove their ad from my site ;_;), cross your fingers and check this out: http://www.tehskeen.info/

My experience with Wiigamestudio.com (AKA I almost abandoned my identity as Arikado)

2010-01-13T12:43:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was just like any other day/ Aside from me being "Arikado" and doing the things Arikado does, it would've been a perfectly normal day for any teenager teenager. Wake up, high school (Seniors 2010!!!), clubs/activities/sports, come home, do homework - the essentials of any day in the life of an teenager. Every day, the first thing I do when I come home is check my inbox. I was startled and scared when I found this message in there from fatquack, the man who runs http://www.wiigamestudio.com (a site which illegally sells a program that makes unofficial Nintendo Wii homebrew via exploiting devkitPRO and GRRLIB) :

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Will Thompson
(Arikado/Cornell)

I am FatQuack from Wii Game Studio and if you try any more funny business, I will press charges for fraud due to your fake email from paypal. After 01/02/2010 you may return to wii game studio (though I cannot see why you would want to) but further offence will cause a perminate ban a legal action against ths paypal fraud.

--
Robert Dixon - FatQuack
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To say the least, I was very shaken up by this e-mail. It seemed to me that fatquack had found evidence that I had sent an e-mail to him pretending to be PayPal and that I had posted on his forum under the alternate name "Cornell" in a manner that seemed unfit to him. He also seemed convinced that my name is Will Thompson and it's certainly not.

A while earlier to receiving this e-mail, the WiiBrew Forums which I help run had been spammed with advertisements for fatquack's Wii Game Studio. A member of our forums discovered that Wii Game Studio was being illegally sold as it fails to include necessary license files in it's distribution. Our forum member (WikiFSX) posted in their forums about it and his post was deleted by fatquack. I was initially under the impression that WikiFSX was also banned but realized later that another member of their forums who posted against the illegal distribution under the name "Cornell" was the one who was banned. Like WikiFSX, all of his posts were deleted.

And now, somehow, it seemed that fatquack had become convinced and had proof that I was Cornell and that I illegally sent him a fraudulent e-mail. I assure everyone that none of his accusations were true and I was extremely confused. I was seriously afraid of a lawsuit and would do everything in my power to prevent, including abandoning my identity as "Arikado" forever.

In my confused and upset state, I quickly sent this response to fatquack:

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Hello Robert,

First a quick preface, I certainly do not want any legal trouble or to be challenged in a law suit. As you have generously stated that despite your claims against me you intend not to press a lawsuit, I strongly plead you to keep to that display of generosity. And I thank you very much for your generosity and kindness shown in e-mailing me alternatively to taking a rash action of a lawsuit against me.

Your e-mail has given me a lot of questions which I would appreciate that you would answer so I can get everything straight. If any of these questions offend you, you do not have to answer or even acknowledge them. Again, as stated in my preface, the last thing I want (and I hope you as well want) is a lawsuit.

First, my name is not Will Thompson. If you have been having trouble with someone you know is named Will Thompson, then you have got the wrong person. I am wondering if you would mind explaining to me why/how you believe I am Will Thompson.

Second, I have never used this e-mail under the name "Cornell" nor have I ever connected my internet nickname "Arikado" to "Cornell". Someone on the WiiBrew Forums mentioned that someone named "Cornell" was banned from your forums for issues relating to some recent legality trouble with your WiiGameStudio product. I am wondering why/how you would connect me with "Cornell".

Third, I have been advocating people online to report your product to paypal as I believed it was being illegally sold but I am wondering why/how you would connect me with a fake e-mail you received. There are a lot of angry people on the internet over your product and I am wondering why out of all the people who could have sent you it you connected it to me. Also, may I ask you to forward the fake email to me so I may analyze it myself to see how it could connect to me?

Finally, let me say that I am a rather young person (under 18) and that I can not handle and do not want any legal trouble. I truly appreciate you emailing me before filing a lawsuit in order to talk things over. I certainly agree to not try any more "funny business". I would like to note that I have not confessed to anything in this email but am simply asking for information on how your claims connects to me.

Lastly, if anything in this email, offends, frustrates, annoys, bothers, or contains any other content you do not appreciate, you do not have to respond to it. You do not have to even respond to this email of you dont want to. But whatever you decide to do, please, please do not file a lawsuit against me.

--Arikado
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I spent the time until I received a response nervously considering that this may be the end of me if fatquack had some form of proof I could not disprove easily. All I had ever done to him was speak out against his flaky product on the WiiBrew Forums and on tehskeen (RIP Tehskeen) and now it seemed I may lose everything for my trivial sentences I made publicly viewable. I pretended this was all a bad dream waiting for his response.

Here is the response I received from fatquack:

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Hello. I am sorry if I have wrong person, but a user informed me that you were the Cornell in my forum and after having researched your username in other forums, I thought it is likely to be true as you have said various comments with similar content to what has been said by Cornell about the legality of Wii Game Studio.

I would not take legal action anyway without substatial proof that I had the correct person, and I still endevour to find evidence of who cornell is.

Let me inform you of the offences Cornell has made:
Offensive behaviour to my forum members, including exposing personal information.
Impersonating PayPal in an email he sent to me.

I do not see it as a crime to suggest that Wii Game Studio is illegal (as you have done on some forum posts you have made elsewhere). This is just a matter that needs to be cleared up. I have explained a few times on my forum that it is legal and explained how it does not contradict the liscences of various software on which it relies.

The ONLY basis for assuming that Cornell was you and linking it with the username 'Arikado' is the information I have received from a user. Please forgive me if I am wrong and I am sorry for the misunderstanding.

The reason the paypal email is suspected to be fake is because it was sent though my email subission form in my website, and not from paypal directly to my paypal email, and I contacted paypal who state that it must therefore be fake and it quoted facts about my paypal account that were untrue, such as the fact that it had been disabled.

If you do happen to know of any information about the identity of the 'Cornell' user on my forum, I would appreciate your help.

Once again, sorry for the misunderstanding and if you would like me to explain the legality of my product to you, I would be more than willing.

Any connection I made to you (the email included) was a connection I made to the user Cornell, who I thought was you.

I only connected the name Will Thompson to the name Arikado, from http://facebook.com/Arikado who has joined various game-related pages, so I thought it was accurate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So it turned out that fatquack had threatened me with a lawsuit over some speculation in his undying attempt to get at whoever said things about his illegal product that he didn't like. After spending the worst time of my life thinking my escapade as Arikado was over and that I might be in a jail cell soon, I was (and still am) extremely infuriated that this had all been caused by fatquack desperately going to any means necessary to get the last laugh his spammer. My response to fatquacks email sum's up my feelings at this point very nicely:

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Hi Robert,

First, thank you for admitting your mistake. I must say, you really shook me up as I was not expecting this and I certainly am not directly related to any of your accusations.

The name "Arikado" was picked for myself because it is one of my favorite video-game characters in the Castlevania video-game series. Literally everywhere I go online the name is taken. I post under the name "OArikadoO" if the name "Arikado" is taken because the O's emphasize "Arikado" strongly. If I have something to say, I will not hide my identity under an alternative name. So, it is certainly not surprising that someone on facebook stole the name before I could :/

The connections between me and Cornell were probably made because whoever your friend is thought, "Hey look, two people who strongly dislike Wii Game Studio, zomg!!! They must be the same person". Obviously this demonstrates the sleuthing tactics of a two year old and I will thank you to in the future to find some form of proof beyond speculation to before accusing anyone of anything.

I would never, ever send someone a fraudulent email and I would certainly not ever pretend to be PayPal of all people.

If I have something to say, I will never hide under an alternate name nor will I hide behind fraudulent e-mails.

I certainly don't mind you questioning my activities or pointing out a possible connection, but to falsely accuse and threaten me upon a basis of speculation is simply inexcusable. You clearly must have some form of mental illness if you want to take down this "Cornell" you don't like so badly that you would go to such lengths as to do what you've done to me.

I'm afraid this whole incident has made me feel rather sour towards yourself, your friend who accused me, and even more so towards your product.

I will thank you never to email me again.

--Arikado
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unfortunately, he didn't take my advice and he emailed me again :/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once again, I am very sorry for the misunderstanding, and I am replying in humility and acceptance of my wrong-doing, but I would like to call upon the offer:

"I certainly don't mind you questioning my activities or pointing out a possible connection"

Would you mind telling me what is meant by the post "I'll tear his post apart when I wake up tomorrow :p" (refering to my product) on this page:

http://testing.lukegb.com/logviewer/index.php?action=viewlog&channel=%23wiihelp&datetime=1260918000

I am not asking this in accusative way, but just to settle my mind.

I really would like there to be no hard feelings between us and I hope this 'sour'ness will end (as deserved as it is).

-Robert
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I understood this reply as, "Hi! Just because I have no proof doesn't mean I'm not correct. I bet you can't explain this snippet IRC log from #wiihelp on EFNET from almost a little more then a month ago ;)"

My reply:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That comment was made referring to this post http://forum.wiibrew.org/read.php?20,44369,44446#msg-44446 made by your forum member LordAshes in what appeared was an attempt to spam the WiiBrew Forums with your Wii Game Studio. "Tearing apart" specifically refferred to my style of using quotes to break up the post and respond to each point made individually.

--Arikado
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After sending my last response to fatquack, I have not received another e-mail from him. I'm truly disgusted by the lengths he is willing to go to just to have the final "ha-ha" at someone who posted something he didn't like a week or so back.

Lastly, as I've stated many times in this post, fatquack is illegally selling his product by failing to include the necessary GRRLIB and 7zip licenses in his distribution. They're simply two .txt files. It would take 5 seconds to add them to his distribution. But he refuses to because he clearly does not want to acknowledge their usage in his product.

Please everyone, join me in reporting fatquack's illegal product to paypal and shutting him down once and for all!

Drunken Coders 5th Annual Winter Coding Competition

2010-01-09T09:40:00.000-08:00

http://drunkencoders.com/2009-winter-game-programming-competition/

I don't normally report on news but I wanted to post this to ensure as many people know about it as possible.

Please chip in a few dollars if you can to encourage the creation of exciting new homebrew.

I may or may not be developing something for this competition. I have to think about it for a bit (I have sooooo many other projects awaiting me to work on them...)

How to connect a Wiimote to your PC under Windows Vista or Windows 7

2010-01-04T19:24:00.000-08:00

For those of you unaware, there are a ton of interesting projects floating around the old worldwide web involving wiimote hacking. While, to some people at least, it may not be quite as interesting as Wii homebrew; The notion of having your PC interact with Wii controllers is far too tantalizing an opportunity to pass up. Everyone should seriously try it at least once.

This post aims to provide the most clear and simple instructions available all across the internet of how to connect a Wiimote (the balance board and additional Wiimotes can also be connected the same way) to a PC running under Windows Vista or Windows 7. Regarding the choice of operating system for this post, I chose only to cover the operating systems which I've actually successfully done this on so far. I would assume connecting a Wiimote to a PC running Windows XP or perhaps even Windows 2000 would be nearly identical process. I am also currently playing with trying to get it to connect to my Ubuntu OS and will post a Linux version of this post when I do.

What you will need:

A PC running Windows Vista or Windows 7
A Wiimote
A Bluetooth adapter to read transmitted bluetooth signals if your PC cannot already do this
Bluetooth technology installed on your PC (if your PC has an internal bluetooth reader or you have already set-up a bluetooth adapter, then this should already be installed)

Before we begin, I want to quickly address the issue of setting-up your PC to receive and read Bluetooth signals. Most newer PCs are already set to go so you can skip reading this paragraph. Even though I only bought my powerhouse laptop a few months ago, I unfortunately realized that it did not have any Bluetooth capabilities whatsoever. I bought this adapter to receive Bluetooth signals. By simply following the set-up instructions and running the companion CD, I also installed Bluetooth technology to interpret and use the picked up signals. Setting up your PC to receive Bluetooth signals is a trivial matter at worst so you really shouldn't worry if you happen to have a PC that can't pick them up already.

Now for the meat of this post: Connecting your Wiimote to your PC.

Windows Vista:

Go to Control Panel
Click on Bluetooth Devices

Windows 7:

Go to Control Panel
Click on Hardware and Sound
Click on Devices and Printers
Click on Bluetooth Devices

Now click the Devices tab along the top of the Bluetooth Devices window.

Now click Add which is located on the left side of the Bluetooth Devices window close to the bottom.

The Add Bluetooth Device Wizard appears!

Click the check box next to the phrase "My device is set-up and ready to be found."

Now press 1 and 2 on your Wiimote simultaneously.

While the LEDs along the bottom of your Wiimote are flashing, click Next in the Add Bluetooth Device Wizard.

This new screen of the wizard shows all of the Bluetooth devices within the range of your Bluetooth receiver. Click on Nintendo RVL-CNT-01 and then click Next.

In the next screen of the wizard, select the fourth option "Don't use a passkey". If your Wiimote has stopped blinking, press 1 and 2 simultaneously again and then click Next while the LEDs are still blinking.

Now click Finish to close the Add Bluetooth Device Wizard.

From now on, your Wiimote is connected to your PC. Your Wiimote only becomes unconnected when either end of the connection is broken. To break the connection, you will either have to remove your Wiimote's batteries, put your PC to sleep, or turn off your PC. Every time you want to connect your Wiimote to your PC, you will have to run through the process of adding a Bluetooth device again. Otherwise, whatever you are trying to use will not work. After you forget a few times and crash whatever program you're running that wants to use the Wiimote, I guarantee you that you will commit this simple little process to memory.

Now, before I end this post with you sitting at your computer screen with a nice connected Wiimote and nothing to do with it, let's run the Wiimote Data Visualizer program by Matthias Shapiro. To run the program, simply download it, unzip it, and then double-click the .exe file. You should be able to press buttons on your Wiimote and have your computer screen confirm that you are pressing them. You should also be able to read all of the other data being output by your Wiimote too. A quick final note before I send you off into the world Wiimote hacking, I linked to an older version of the Wiimote Data Visualizer program because I'm under the impression that is the most stable version of it. Later versions added the ability to see data from plug-in controllers (Nunchuk, Classic Controller, etc.) and even the Balance Board but I've read they don't work very well and crash often. Oh well :-(

If you have any questions regarding the content of this post, feel free to leave a comment, join me in #arikadosblog on EFNET, post in our forums, tweet to me, or send me an e-mail at castlevania7689@yahoo.com

Dop-IOS MOD v10.1 Released

2009-12-29T15:57:00.000-08:00

Fixed a typo on the main menu causing serious confusion
Added a bit of code to display error messages for an infinitely longer amount of time so people can easily read them

Dop-IOS MOD v10 Released

2009-12-29T14:36:00.000-08:00

Fixed a bug which caused the gamecube controller to work incorrectly in some places
Fixed bugs which prevented the classic controller from correctly working in some places
Fixed the section that can install an IOS that accepts fakesigning for Wiis which lack one by implementing the entirety TBR
The internet channel now installs correctly
Removed the nintendo channel (just grab it through your shop channel instead)
The application will now install content from an external device if found before attempting to download content from NUS
Added an option on the main menu to detect and delete stubbed IOSs
Added an option on the main menu to display information about your Wii's boot2 version
The banner of the application now keeps track of the SVN version it is based on
Compiled under the newer libogc, libfat, and devkitPPC releases

The Universal Scientific Laws of Wii Homebrew or Hacking

2009-12-27T07:18:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of interesting Wii modifications out there to perform in the name of Wii homebrew and Wii hacking. There are countless guides to achieving these modifications available to you by simply googling for them. However, how many of these guides are entirely accurate? And how many of these modifications should actually be performed?

This post will present to you a list of proven scientific truths to follow when performing any modification to your Wii. In fact, most of these truths or laws will even apply to hacking other video game consoles and even performing software modifications to your computer you're reading this on.

The less you do, the better off you will be

Practically every guide out there contains loads of unnecessary steps of supplementary modifications to perform to achieve your goal. Almost always, at least half of the steps in any guide do not need to be performed to achieve your primary target. Always keep your eye on the prize and question whether or not everything you do is absolutely necessary. If you do too many unnecessary things, you are likely going to end up bricking your Wii.

Never, ever, ever, downgrade anything

All Wii homebrew and Wii hacking can be done on any Wii irregardless of the Wii's firmware. There is never a reason to downgrade your Wii. In fact, if you downgrade on a newer Wii, you will brick your Wii. So why risk doing something that is never necessary?

Have a credible reference on hand at all times

Any time you are doing something to your Wii, you should have someone or something to refer to for help at all times. Generally, experienced people and thorough references can bail you out of any predicament and walk you through any intimidating situation. Credible references are WiiBrew and Tehskeen. Credible people are myself, the people at the WiiBrew Forums, the fine folks at my forums, and the gentlemen at the tehskeen forums.

Never let one person force you to do something

Its your Wii, you can do whatever the hell you want with it. If you don't trust someone or you don't like the advice someone gives you, get a second opinion. This is your Wii that you spent hard-earned money on, so be sure to take as much of your time you want before you do anything.

I truly hope this post will help you in making decisions while modifying your Wii. If you have any suggestions of content to add to this post, please leave a comment below. Also, please feel free to follow my twitter.

External MP3 Playing Demonstration With libwiisprite For The Holidays Released

2009-12-24T09:26:00.000-08:00

~~Long name~~

A couple of days ago I released a video which demonstrated my method of how to load and play an external MP3 file on the Wii.

Today, I am releasing the binary and source code to that program.

You can grab the HBC-ready version here: Mediafire
The source can be obtained here: Mediafire

Demonstration video of externally loading and playing an MP3 (for the holidays)

2009-12-16T12:50:00.001-08:00

For my high school physics project, I was told to explain what MP3s are and how they work. I could use whatever props or supplements I wanted in my presentation. I quickly wrote a Wii Homebrew program which uses my external MP3 playing method ( http://tinyurl.com/ykamym6 ) and took a video of it and posted the video here on youtube to demonstrate during my presentation.

The program and it's source code will be released after I get my grade.

Technical details:

Written using devkitPPC, libogc, libwiisprite, libfreetype, freetypegx, and ftimage in C++
Song: Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow by Dean Martin
Launched using v1 of Bannerbomb (because I think exploits are more impressive then loaders for a class project :p)

Site cleanup and updates

2009-12-14T15:28:00.000-08:00

I've just finished a long 3 day haul of going through every post I've ever made on this blog and fixing everything from errors in my English, to updating existing guides, and elaborating sections in my coding tutorials. So, if you've ever wanted to go back and reread an existing post, there is no better time then to do so right now.

Interview with Arikado

2009-12-10T06:15:00.000-08:00

I just took my first press interview. You can read the interview here: http://www.whohub.com/arikado

I'm copying and pasting the interview here to preserve it here as well as on whohub.

How did you begin programming and at what age?

I began programming at the age of nine out of self-interest. I did so by purchasing and religiously studying the book Beginning Programming by Greg Perry. Since then I have continued to train in the art of programming.

What languages do you code, and in what platforms?

I'm fluent in Liberty BASIC, C, C++, XHTML, and CSS. I know a handful of Lua, Java, and general assembler as well.

What machine configuration and operating system do you use?

I use an Hewlett Packard laptop with an Intel quad core processor with 8GB of RAM and the latest NVIDIA sound and graphics cards. I use a Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux dual-boot operating system.

Please list web addresses where we can see some of your work

Wii Shooting Gallery:
Page: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Wii_Shooting_Gallery
Video of the upcoming release: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dNbdoDObAo

WiiBreaker: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Wiibreaker

Dop-IOS MOD: http://code.google.com/p/dop-iosmod

ALLEGRO Sprite Class: http://arikadosblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-allegro-sprite (...)

My main site which links to everything I've ever done publicly: http://arikadosblog.blogspot.com

What motivates you to undertake a new project?

I work for free so I only undertake projects which I would like to see come to fruition. I'm always open to suggestions for what to work on next.

What part of project development is most gratifying to you?

The point at which something I'm developing works, but still needs to be tuned up to be enjoyable.

From the outside, it seems a rational job, but is creativity necessary for programming?

Certainly. You know, it's funny; When you learn how to program you learn a solution for every problem you could possibly encounter. But when you step away from the books and actually get on to the IDE, you'll end up up making and (re)using your own solutions to problems instead of the one's you were taught. To that end, I truly believe creativity is an essential asset for all programmers.

What conditions do you need to concentrate when programming?

I generally need as much piece and quiet as possible to concentrate on my craft. The nice thing about working on a computer is that you're never truly isolated from people yet you can easily ignore them (think facebook, IRC, etc.)

After working for long periods of time, have you ever felt as though you were in a bubble?

Yes! If I ever work for more than for hours at a time or work very late into the night I find it nearly impossible to talk in a socially acceptable manner to other people for at least twice as long as I worked for.

When you check out code you wrote time ago, what's the main difference with respect to code that you write nowadays?

Usually the code I wrote a long time ago is much neater than the code I write today.

Do you still buy programming books, or do you learn everything from online sources?

Yes I do. It's nearly impossible to find exactly what you're looking for on the internet. Books are still the best reference medium for technical information as they localize exactly what you're looking for and more.

Do you think programming should be taught at the basic education level?

If you're going to force to me to learn how to paint then you better force me to learn how to program. They're both artistic endeavors and can completely change your views on things. At my high school I currently attend, there aren't any classes which teach a programming language.

What has been your experience in marketing your software?

As I dont charge anything for people to use my software, I really haven't marketed anything. The users of my software usually market it for me ;)

What do you learn from software users?

That humanity is slowly declining into a cesspool of miserable little illiterate hermits. I can count the number of users that ever actually taught me anything on one hand. Even though that makes users in general sound bad, there are many users who I truly enjoy talking to. They just... never taught me anything.

What would be your solution against piracy?

To make as many aspects of a piece of software as possible linked to an online account which verifies that you've actually purchased the software before using it.

Would you consider yourself rigorous in the organization of the coding that you write and on commenting it?

Depends. If I'm writing something people are supposed to learn from or build off of then there will be more comments than code.

How do you calculate the budget for a software project?

The only thing I budget is my time. The more I'm interested in what I'm working on the more time I'll put into it.

What are your favourite games and on what platform do you play them?

I really dont play games that much. My favorites are mostly classic or "retro" games. I generally play them on the platform they were made for.

How often do you clean dirt-buildup on your keyboard?

I've honestly never done that.

How do you feel when friends or family ask for your help in solving domestic computer problems?

I'm always happy to help out.

As machines for development, what opinion do Macs deserve?

I'll keep this as short as possible. The only reason I would ever get a MAC is so (like most developers) I can develop for their ipod platform.

How do you protect your computer from viruses?

I don't. If I get a virus I'll eradicate it myself.

In social settings, do people become interested when you tell them you are a software developer?

Absolutely. But it's because I generally don't tell people until I trust them enough to tell them. There are people I've known for years that don't know I develop software. If I tell someone about it too early in a relationship (be it a loving relationship or merely friendly relationship) people get kinda "weirded out".

Do you work alone or in a team? Which do you prefer?

I could really go for either one. When you work alone you dont have deadlines. But when you work with people you have people to help you out when you get stuck.

Are you one of the first to update to new software when it comes out, or do you normally wait until more stable versions appear?

I wait and see what people who have updated think of the new software. If everything looks good, I go ahead and update.

What is your main reason for not meeting project deadlines?

I lost the time I should have used coding to schoolwork.

In your opinion, which company helps software developers the most?

Google

How many breaks per day do you normally take?

I don't regularly code every day (although I would like to) so I really can't provide a clear answer to this question.

At this point in your career, what would be the project of your dreams?

DeSmuME Wii. Hopefully I can get it working really soon.

What is your next project?

There's this game I'm writing for PC. I've put a ton of time into it, but I'm not going to reveal it until the day I release it.

Which websites or forums for programmers do you frequently visit?

http://forum.wiibrew.org
http://tehskeen.com
http://gamedev.net

What advice would you give to someone who wants to become a programmer?

Just start doing it. You'll never be a programmer if all you ever do is think about it.

Dop-IOS MOD v9 Released

2009-11-29T14:13:00.000-08:00

Dop-IOS is a program that lets you install any IOS you want. Unfortunately, Dop-IOS used cIOS 249, the "warez IOS" to do so. Many people feel a resentment toward the enforcement, so I created Dop-IOS MOD; A program that lets you use any IOS you want, to install any IOS you want.

Since its original release, Dop-IOS MOD has become less and less of a modification and more of an entirely original creation. Unlike it's older brother, Dop-IOS MOD can install channels and system menus as well. This makes Dop-IOS MOD a versatile tool in the recovery of a broken Wii (the gamecube controller support helps out with that as well ;-) )

Dop-IOS MOD v9 adds another new landmark feature: The ability to install an IOS that accepts fakesigning on Wii's that don't have one. This means that if your Wii doesn't contain any IOSs compatible with Dop-IOS MOD, Dop-IOS MOD can install one for you. The code which does so is directly based off the application Trucha Bug Restorer.

Besides reaching the next milestone in Dop-IOS MOD's development history, v9 also adds automatic default region detection and fixes a small bug causing the improper IOS version numbers to be displayed.

Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-iosmod/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-iosmod/source/checkout

Support forum: http://arikadosblog.myfreeforum.org/forum27.php
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO

How to safely update your Wii to 4.2

2009-11-26T15:56:00.000-08:00

Nintendo released the 4.2 firmware and it dealt a serious blow to Wii homebrew. It was also seen bricking some Wii consoles due to an update made to the Wiis boot2 process. The infamous Waninkoko as well as other coders have released programs which claim to safely update people to 4.2. However, you actually have a better of chance of these apps bricking you than Nintendo's boot2 update. This leads many people to believe that it is simply best to stay away from 4.2 However, this is not the case. You can safely update to 4.2 retaining all of your homebrew and avoiding the boot2 update. This post will show you how.

Disclaimer: Before going on, I would like to remind you that updating through Nintendo is not as risky as it seems. Even after updating through Nintendo, you can still retain all of your homebrew. However, in theory, the method I describe in this post does carry less of a risk.

First things first, use the latest hackmii installer to update to the latest versions of the Homebrew Channel, DVDX, and BootMii.

Now backup your NAND with BootMii. We will obviously be messing with the NAND a little bit, so it is best to have a backup incase something goes horribly wrong.

Before going on, you need an IOS with the trucha bug installed. If you do not have one, use the trucha bug restorer to install one.

Now, have my Dop-IOS MOD install IOS 61 and IOS 70 using your trucha bugged IOS.

Next, have my Dop-IOS MOD install System Menu 4.2 for your region.

Then, have my Dop-IOS MOD install the shop channel for your region.

Finally, use StartPatch (make sure you use the proper version for your region) to install hacks you think are a good ideas into your 4.2 system menu.

Congratulations, you have safely updated to 4.2! As a bonus, you can now do things on 4.2 normal 4.2 users can't.

If you have any questions regarding the content of this post, feel free to leave a comment, join me in #arikadosblog on EFNET, post in our forums, tweet to me, or send me an e-mail at castlevania7689@yahoo.com

A thorough explanation of IOS and cIOS for everyone

2009-11-22T10:21:00.000-08:00

We all remember when we first hacked our Wii. It was a fairly straightforward process. Crash your Wii, run some magic code (called a boot.elf) and install a magic channel that will let you run any and as much code as you want (homebrew applications or apps).

Eventually, we began reading more and more about the cool Wii homebrew applications and we began to read about these things they used called IOSs and cIOSs. Often we would see, "You must have a cIOS 249 installed to use this app" or "You must have an IOS that accepts fakesigning", and most common recently, "No vulnerable IOS found. For security reasons, we will not use an IOS that accepts fakesigning."

This post is intended to be a thorough explanation of what IOSs are, how they work, and what a cIOS is. Anyone, at any experience level (except for the hackmii l33t) should learn something here.

I feel the best way to start explaining IOSs is to take a trip through Wii homebrew history. Back when Hackmii developed the twilight hack, coders and users alike suddenly had the ability to create and run unsigned (or unofficial, ie: "homebrew") code on their Nintendo Wiis. However, it was undoubtedly very inconvenient to have to run The Legend of Zelda: Twlight Princess and crash it every single time you wanted to run one piece of code on your Wii. So Hackmii went to work creating a channel that you could access right from your Wii and run homebrew code with. In fact, this channel would even be able to run multiple pieces of code in a single use.

To install a channel, Hackmii went to work figuring out channels were installed naturally by the Wii. It was discovered that the Wii relies on an underlying system called IOS to do just that and more. The Wii contains multiple IOSs inside of it which are used for different purposes, but contain the same basic functions. In fact there is room in the Wii for 255 different IOSs. There is one IOS for the system menu, another IOS for games to use, and yet even another IOS for some channels to use. However, no more than IOS is ever running at once.

It was determined shortly afteraward that each IOS is made up of a set of low level functions, or code routines. Wii programs (games, channels, the system menu, etc.) called on the functions inside IOS to do things. If this reminds of you Linux kernels, you're thinking along the right path. IOSs basically are here to perform the same role for Wii that kernels perform for Linux.

One of the functions of IOSs is the ability to install content. This installable content, of course, included channels. In order to install a channel you needed two security keys.
The first key, the common key, was hidden inside each Wii on a ROM next to the starlet coprocessor. The common key is the same in each Nintendo Wii. In order to obtain it, Hackmii used a pair of tweezers in a tweezer attack (this is where the name team twiizers comes from) to complete a circuit, creating a serial line of communication to sniff (view the contents of) the RAM where the common key is stored while it is being used. And so, the firs tof two keys, the common key, was discovered: EBE42A225E8593E448D9C5457381AAF7 (base 16)

The second key, the private key, is stored only on Nintendo's servers. There is literally no way to obtain it from our client end except to attempt to bruteforce it (guess it again and again until we guess right). However, after staring at disassembles of IOSs for countless hours, hackmii realized that each IOS had a bug in their security. To check for the presence of the private key, the IOSs used strncmp(). strncmp() is a C function which checks to see if two strings are the same. If a null byte is detected, it is assumed that the strings are the same. So, in order to install a piece of content, we pass the common key and a null byte into IOSs content installation function. The method of installing content using a null byte instead of the private key is called fakesigning. The bug found in IOS (the usage of strncmp() as opposed to, say, memcmp() ) is called the trucha bug.

To summarize so far: In order to install content onto the Wii, the IOS you have running in the background must contain the trucha bug.

Later down the line, Nintendo would begin updating IOSs by fixing the trucha bug. Most likely, they did so by replacing the strncmp() check with a check like memcmp() which wouldn't terminate after the discovery of a null byte. Hackmii came up with a piece of code called patchmii to download the new IOSs and install the trucha bug into them. IOSs that have had the trucha bug patched into them are called cIOSs.

tona was the first programmer to release an application which downloaded an IOS (IOS 36 actually), patched it (making it a cIOS), and installed it as a different IOS (IOS 249 actually). Thus, cIOS 249 was created.

Other programmers have since replicated the feat. Waninkoko in conjunction with WiiGator have a cIOS installer which applies the trucha bug and other patches to an IOS (IOS 36 I believe) and install it as IOS 249. The patches in the cIOS beyond the inclusion of the trucha bug are patches to allow pirated games to be played. This has made cIOS 249 the "warez IOS" and is Nintendo's primary concern. I could give a you spiel about how this IOS appears to be inflated with inefficient code and how a lot of what's in it doesn't actually work like it claims to, but that's for another post.

So now I've walked you through what IOSs and cIOSs are by showing you the history of them. Hopefully, you should fully understand their purpose and be able to better understand what homebrew is talking about when it references them.

If you have any questions regarding the content of this post, feel free to leave a comment, join me in #arikadosblog on EFNET, post in our forums, tweet to me, or send me an e-mail at castlevania7689@yahoo.com

Now tweeting

2009-11-19T18:42:00.001-08:00

It seems like the popular thing to do so I've begun tweeting on Twitter.

Follow me here: https://twitter.com/OArikadoO

The purpose of this will be to provide more frequent updates on things (like commits and other small updates for example) not worthy of wasting a blog post on.

Sporadic Updates on Everything

2009-11-19T15:42:00.000-08:00

Yes, this blog (and its forum and its IRC channel for the past day) have been awfully quiet. This doesn't mean I'm forgetting about them, in fact, it's quite the opposite. I keep thinking and thinking about what I could write, and I intend to post whenever I have something worthwhile to say. This post is meant to be a little status update to everyone on literally everything and to silence ridiculous "I dont care anymore rumors".

First things first, believe it or not I have a real life too. I have a very time consuming life. I'm a high school student graduating a year earlier than I'm supposed to and I'm trying to get into college. The road to college requires spending many hours over the course of several weeks filling out countless forms to places I would like to seek a higher level of education at. Of course, a handful of these forms are way too hard to fill out for anyone not educated in their legal dialect so it must be done with the aid of a professional (in this case, a guidance counselor). Specifically, this has resulted in many long conversations involving me trying to explain to these professionals that I am "Arikado" and that I've successfully developed unsigned software on a popular gaming device, run what was a popular website, and have influenced literally thousands of people. Beyond this utter waste of time I can't afford, I have no money so I work long hours washing dishes in a busy country club. I don't mind all of this, in fact, I'm quite happy with my life right now. I guess the point of this paragraph, then, has been to explain that real life has been getting in the way a little too much lately.

Also, for anyone who cares, I've become an administrator on the WiiBrew Forums. It's honestly no more time consuming than moderation duties were though.

Now on to more interesting things...

DeSmuME hasn't been updated too frequently lately. But profetylen and I work on it regularly throughout the week and then make a weekly commit of our changes. Yes, development is slow, but it is progress. Things should progress faster when we get more time off. Two people have stopped into the IRC channel and have been claiming to work on it a little in their time off. They've promised to notify me if they make any positive progress.

Dop-IOS MOD is basically perfect now. Ultimately I could be done with it and only update it after every Nintendo Wii firmware update from now on. But you know me too well to know that I'd do that ;-) There's a bunch of interesting feature requests in the svn and I intend to incorporate all of them one by one.

Wii Shooting Gallery 2.0 will be the last update to the game. It's all done except for sound effects I need to add. mdbrim gave me the code to do it, now I just need to sit down and do it. Compared to the importance of my other projects though (DeSmuME) this is on a bit of a back burner so to speak.

WiiBreaker is getting the same the treatment Wii Shooting Gallery has gotten. I really haven't put too much work into it ATM, but around spring time I expect I'll have more to say about it.

Warpedflash and I are teaming up again to work to on a new project. This time its for computers though. It started out as a port of a Wii game I made, but it's rapidly evolved into something much more. It will be released for Windows, Linux, and MAC when it's done. This project is mostly being done for the school's college application process. Wii homebrew is kinda hard to show off beyond youtube videos of it in action.

To that end, there will be an update to my ALLEGRO sprite class soon which incorporates translucency functions into the easy to use format of my sprite class.

IRC Channel

2009-11-09T15:39:00.001-08:00

By popular request, I've set up an IRC channel for the readers of this blog.

It's #arikadosblog on EFNET

I have tutorials for how to connect to the IRC in the "computers" section of my blog for anyone who needs them. Hope to see you there. I'm in there 24/7

Edit: Just because I'm in there 24/7 doesn't mean I'm at my computer 24/7. If I don't respond immediately, give me a little time to realize my client is blinking...

Dop-IOS MOD v8 Released

2009-11-07T07:14:00.000-08:00

Dop-IOS MOD is a modification of Dop-IOS that lets you choose what IOS you want to use to install other IOSs. Unlike Dop-IOS, this means that you do not have to have an (illegal) cIOS used for only piracy installed. Since then, Dop-IOS MOD has suroassed Dop-IOS in a number of ways with efficent rewrites of core Dop-IOS functions and the addition of Gamecube controller support (ie: Semi-brick recovery)

Now, Dop-IOS MOD has working support to download/update channels and the system menu. I'd like to take a moment to thank everyone who tested for me so I could make this release work (unlike the last release lol).

In v8, I've fixed everything that was broken in v7, added the ability to download 1.0 or 1.1 of the photo channel, and added a sanity check.

SVN: http://code.google.com/p/dop-iosmod
Support Forum: http://arikadosblog.myfreeforum.org/forum27.php

Googlecode SVN and Tortoise Tutorial

2009-11-07T06:21:00.000-08:00

Ever since I set-up two svns of my own on googlecode, I've recieved a ton of questions about SVNs and how to use them ranging from the most basic to the most complex. I apologize that I haven't been able to individually respond the unprecedented amount of messages I've recieved, so this post will aim to be a rather lengthresponse to all of them. So lets get started shall we?

What is an SVN?

"Subversion is a free/open-source version control system. That is, Subversion manages files and directories, and the changes made to them, over time. This allows you to recover older versions of your data, or examine the history of how your data changed. In this regard, many people think of a version control system as a sort of “time machine”."--svnbook

In my own words, think of an SVN as a landfill. Every now and then the garbage trucks (coders) come in and dump their garbage into the landfill. At any point, anyone can visit the landfill and view the garbage that was dropped off at any day. If they want to, they can even take an exact copy of any of the garbage home with them. Thus, people can compare garbage dropped off at different days and seek to understand why the garbage one day is different than the day before it, or attempt to improve the garbage collection by adding some garbage of their own ~~to produce a more ripe smell.~~ Now think of the garbage as code and you'll figure out the picture of what an SVN is supposed to do.

Why Googlecode?

Because Googlecode securely hosts your SVN online for free for the world to view. Googlecode also allows you to have a wiki and an issue tracker for you project to help you help your fans and maintain your code respectively.

How do I access/use an SVN?

You use an SVN by performing basic commands upon it which I will cover here. Generally, people use an SVN client, or a computer program to perform these SVN commands for them. The two most popular are RapidSVN and Tortoise SVN.

Import: Upload a new project to an SVN

Commit: Upload new versions of existing files onto an SVN

Add: Add a file to an SVN

Delete: Remove a file from an SVN

Checkout: Download an entire SVN

Why Tortoise?

Most SVN clients are command line programs. In colloquial terms, this means that they require you input long strings of text into an ugly console window to get something to work. Tortoise is a nice looking shell extension. This means that you can perform basic SVN maintenance by simply right-clicking.

And finally, a tutorial on how to set-up and run your own SVN with Googlcode and Tortoise:

1)Create an account with Googlecode

2)Create an SVN on Googlecode on the create project page. Be sure to use a subversion set-up instead of a mercucial one.

3)Install Tortoise SVN

4)Right-click on the main folder for the project you want to upload to your SVN and select import

5)You will be prompted to enter some information. Your username is your Googlecode account name and your password is the security code found in your Googlecode profile settings.

6)Delete your project from your computer

7)Right-click and checkout your SVN

8)From now on, right-click your project's main folder and commit after you make any changes to your project to upload a new revision of your project to the SVN.

9)Stop reading this guide. Your done. Congratulations!!!

Libwiisprite compiled under devkitPPC r19

2009-11-04T06:22:00.000-08:00

For anyone interested, I just recompiled the wii homebrew libwiisprite game programming under devkitPPC r19.

You can grab it here: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?n2mjnqmymbh

Now playing Quake Live...

2009-11-04T05:25:00.000-08:00

I have a bunch of friends who are into playing Quake Live regularly so I decided to get into it too.

It's awesome. It's the best fps multiplayer out there as far as I'm concerned.

I'm registered as OArikadoO under the email castlevania7689 [at] yahoo [dot] com. I'll see you on the battlefield.

DeSmuME Wii SVN Set-up

2009-11-03T12:47:00.000-08:00

I've just finished setting up a subversion repository on googlecode for DeSmuME Wii with every revision of the source code from the first to the latest inside of it. I've documented each revision as thoroughly as I could. Couple that with the documentation to the source already on this site and there's a helluva lot of stuff out there now for anyone to jump in and qork on the project if they want to.

All future revisions of the source code that positively progress the emulator will be added to the SVN.

This will help us keep the public update on the progress of the emulator more easily and regularly.

The SVN is here: http://code.google.com/p/desmumewii/

And don't forget, I have a support forum here: http://arikadosblog.myfreeforum.org/forum28.php

Dop-IOS MOD SVN Set-up

2009-11-03T08:19:00.001-08:00

In order to better keep people informed on the progress made with Dop-IOS MOD, I've set-up a subversion repository on googlecode.

I've uploaded every revision of the source I could find on my old PC so people can see the changes from build to build from the very beginning and hopefully understand why said changes were made. All future revisions of Dop-IOS MOD will be uploaded to the SVN immediately after being made with detailed documentation.

The SVN is here: http://code.google.com/p/dop-iosmod/

And dont forget, I have a support forum here: http://arikadosblog.myfreeforum.org/forum27.php

Wii Shooting Gallery Beta 1 Video

2009-11-03T07:51:00.000-08:00

As the game is still unfinished, I realize that this is a bit of an inappropriate time to post another video of it. Thing is though, there are real-world people that are interested in viewing my work but are unable to run wii homebrew - so this video is really for them (but I certainly hope everyone else enjoys it as well!!!). As always, I apologize for the low video quality.

Mah new laptop computer

2009-11-01T16:06:00.000-08:00

HP Manufactured
Intel Quad Core Processor (1.6 - 2.8 GHz)
6GB DDR3 RAM
500GB HDD
NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M graphics and sound cards
DVD+-RW Optical Drive
17.3 inch LCD display
Windows 7/Ubuntu Dual-boot OS
Too many ports

$1299.99 USD

Now that I'm done showing off...

I haven't done any programming work in the last 2 weeks because I lost the ability to get real work done on my old computer (it was a machine for the whole family and I simply couldn't find any 'play time' for it). Now, I'm pleased to announce that I'm back to a regular (actually, longer/larger) work schedule.

I can now also do things that I've never been able to do before. Which leads me to announce this: SVNs for my most important projects will be up shortly.

Links to this post

2009-10-25T11:49:00.000-07:00

I got a new section built into posts called "links to this post". Basically, click on any post and at the bottom of the page you'll see a section where you can create links to other web pages that link to the blog post.

If you see any web pages online linking to one of my posts, then please make a "Links to this post" link.

Doing so not only helps me to be aware of the popularity of my posts, but it also helps other web sites to get a little free advertising.

Thanks :-)

Dual and Multi Boot Operating Systems

2009-10-25T08:48:00.000-07:00

Did you know it's possible to have more than one operating system installed on your computer? In fact, some people have three or even more operating systems installed. Having two operating systems installed on your computer is called having a dual boot operating system. Having more than two operating systems installed on your computer is called having a multi boot operating system.

There are many advantages to having more than one operating system installed on your computer.

Foremost, it makes your computer compatible with a wider variety of programs. Since computer programs only work on the operating system they were compiled for, having another operating system ready to go means that you can launch a lot more computer programs than you could without one.

Another advantage to having more than one operating system installed is security (also called "insurance" by some people). Should something ever happen to one of your operating systems, it's possible that you may be able to use one of your other operating systems to fix whatever went wrong with your broken operating system. For example, you could use a Linux operating system to fix a corrupted file preventing a Windows or MAC operating system from launching.

Before I go any further with this post, I wanted to quickly point out that it is possible to have multiple versions of an operating system installed on any computer. For example, you can have Windows Vista and Windows XP and Windows 7 all installed on the same machine. Likewise, you can do the same with different versions of MAC or Linux operating systems if you wish to.

Installing another operating system is as simple as installing your first operating system. You run the operating system installer (which is usually a disc you put into your computer before turning your computer on) and tell the install to install your designated operating system into partitioned space not used by any other operating system. For example, your Windows 7 installation takes up a partition of 250GB on your 500GB hardrive so you choose to install Ubuntu Linux on a partition of 100GB of the remaining 250GB. From then on, every time you turn on your computer, you'll be asked which operating system you'd like to boot into.

A Basic Explanation of Operating Systems

2009-10-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

Computer hardware is important and all, but everyone knows that operating systems are the most essential piece of a computer. A computer operating system is the main piece of software that runs a computer. The purpose of an operating system is to let you launch and use programs on your computer. Generally, operating systems come with their own set of programs already installed so you can browse the internet, explore your file system, and play media files from the get-go.

The three most widely used operating systems (which I'll cover in more detail later in this post) are:

Windows
MAC
Linux

Windows is a commercial operating system created by the Microsoft corporation which can be installed on any computer. Windows comes with a ton of popular programs including Microsoft Works, Internet Explorer, and Windows Media Player. Windows is drastically the most expensive operating system, but it's users will argue that the steep price is more than worth it. The latest version of the Windows operating system is Windows 7.

MAC is a commercial operating system developed by Apple. MAC operating systems are unique in that they can only be installed on computers manufactured and condoned by Apple. MAC operating systems come supplied with an unrivaled set of photo and video editing software. MAC users tend to argue that the monopolistic hardware situation is worth the cheaper price and the MAC operating system. Most interesting about the MAC platform (for programmers only, really) is that MAC computers come with an SDK which allows people to develop for any device (including iPhone) that's part of the MAC platform. The latest version of the MAC operating system is MAC OS X.

Linux is a free, open source operating system core. Developers then use the core to create their own distributions (also known as versions or distros) of the linux operating system. The two most popular distros are Ubuntu and Arch. Because linux operating systems are free, they can save you a signifigant chunk of money when you are building your own PC. Many people say that the linux operating systems rival and in many cases even surpass the quality of the commercial operating systems.

Every computer needs an operating system to perfrom the most rudimentary tasks and we are fortunate to live at a time with so many different choices of operating systems.

A Very Basic Explanation of how Computers Work

2009-10-19T07:59:00.000-07:00

The computer is easily the most important object in the modern day. Whether it's a PC, MAC, iPod, Nintendo Wii, or even a PS3, all computers operate in the same manner. Unfortunately, the average consumer doesn't understand even the purpose of the most basic components of a computer. So with the new computer and laptop model releases right around the corner (I'm picking up my first computer in less than a week!!!) I figured it would be appropriate for me to write out a very basic explanation of how every computer works.

While writing this, I'm going to keep two very important things in mind. First, long explanations are boring and unnecessary. Second, I need to write from the point of view of someone who knows absolutely nothing about computers. So let's get to it!

All computers are made up of the same basic components which interact with one another to perform the overall function of making the computer work. These parts are:

The motherboard
The processor
The RAM
The hard drive
The video and sound cards

The motherboard is the main or central part of all computers. Every part of the computer is connected to the motherboard in some way. Motherboards determine what type of processor you can have as well as what and how many inputs (USB, PS2 ports etc.) you can have on your computer.

The processor is the "brain" of the computer. The processor reads and executes all of the code it receives. The faster your processor is, the faster things happens. The more cores your processor has, the more information it can simultaneously process (again, the faster it can go).

The random access memory (RAM) of a computer temporarily holds information the computer needs. For example, your computer's RAM is currently holding your entire internet browser. While information is held in the RAM, the processor can more quickly access it. My dad has a simple explanation of why more RAM is better which I'll quote here: "The more RAM your computer has, the more computer programs you can have running at a good speed at once."

The hard drive is the storage unit of the computer. All of your save files, mp3s, videos, and pictures are stored on the hard drive to be accessed when the computer wants them (ie: When you tell the computer to get them)

The video and sound cards of a computer are parts that output video and sound signals to the monitor and speakers respectively.

All of these different parts work in unison in every computer to provide a user friendly experience. This explanation was aimed at being an extremely simple "ground level" explanation of how computers work so everyone is starting at the same the level for when I get more into how computers work later.