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Flash Equipment > if2a-0.94.1 is out for all your F2A/F2AU Linux needs!

#31887 - Vince - Wed Dec 15, 2004 6:55 pm

Hi guys,

We are very glad with spooo, original if2a author to announce the release of if2a-0.90 alpha, the F2A/F2A Ultra managing software.

As you may have noticed, version has bumped from 0.3 to 0.9 since there are many improvements:
+ rewritten structure
+ full 2.4 and 2.6 kernel (spooo)
+ F2A Ultra support, reverse-engineered from PowerWriter software (me)

We will reach 1.0 when Ultra write support is complete.

You will find the release on spooo's site (if2a site in the works) :
http://if2a.free.fr/if2a-0.90a.tar.bz2
http://if2a.free.fr/if2a-static.bz2
http://if2a.free.fr/Sniffs_Dumps.tbz2

First is the release (with source).
Second is the static binary (compiled on a 2.4.21 kernel, libusb v0.1.6). Is completely standalone unless you run a kernel version below 2.4.18, in which case you'll need the ezusb2131 kernel module.
Last is a package containing zipped usbsnoop sniffs from PowerWriter operations as well as various dumps made with if2a Ultra functions (esp. content descriptor which is the 64K block that is used by CIZ to know what is on the cart).
The Sniffs-HOWTO file details use of the supplied scripts to know how to produce pretty-printed output from these logs.

Please test and report bugs : F2A Pro/Turbo read/write support is fully functional, Ultra content descriptor is not fully reversed-engineered meaning you can fully write to the cart but CIZ won't see anything. If you use another loader or Pogoshell, this is gonna work nevertheless. SVD R/W is in on the other hand but needs testing.

We have also included several bootloaders and multiboot images so that you can have the configuration you need (see if2a options to give your own binary/use supplied ones).

You'll also notice that it is possible to supply another background image for the multiboot image. It would be _very_ nice if someone could do a Linux-somewhat background for use in if2a or figure out in what mode it is (I suppose image is mode3, 4 or something like this, maybe tiled?)

We are making this release to get feedback from the community, betatesters and help finish the Ultra support.

Feel free to post on that topic for any issue, bug, patches (most welcome!), etc.

As a glance on the future, here is what will be in future releases (see also TODOs file):
+ SVD disassembler
+ Zipped ROM support
+ Win32 port using libusb Win32 port
+ GTK frontend

Hope you'll enjoy if2a as much as we did developing it,

Vince

Last edited by Vince on Mon Jun 13, 2005 5:00 pm; edited 3 times in total

#31927 - jtengall - Thu Dec 16, 2004 12:01 am

Vince wrote:
We are very glad with spooo, original if2a author to announce the release of if2a-0.90 alpha, the F2A/F2A Ultra managing software.

...

Hope you'll enjoy if2a as much as we did developing it


Great news, Vince! Kudos goes to you and spooo.

This means that I'll get myself a F2AU for my GBA SP really soon now. :-)

/ Johan

#32400 - Vince - Wed Dec 22, 2004 11:30 am

Hi,

And update is available (0.91) on the usual site : http://if2a.free.fr. It corrects problems with USB timeouts that were set too short hence causing write failures on FLASH.

Vince

#32477 - spooo - Thu Dec 23, 2004 4:33 am

Hi,
On the old website http://deyv.free.fr/gba/f2a there's a very interesting update (0.92) to test:

full cartridge autodetection !
Tell us if any problem.

An update will come onto the official website soon.

#32515 - Lupin - Thu Dec 23, 2004 3:28 pm

Hmm, this sounds good! will there ever be a windows version? :-)

The official F2A PowerWriter gets worse with every update, i am now using an old version of it because i can't delete the ROMs on my cart using the new version =(
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#32524 - spooo - Thu Dec 23, 2004 4:50 pm

Quote:
Hmm, this sounds good! will there ever be a windows version? :-)

Some work still has to be done for ultra support. I can't help much since I've only PRO carts.
Anyway, as Vince said somewhere, there's a libusb port for win32. We'll try to compile if2a one of these days and check if the port would be easy.
Feel free to try (using cygwin or mingw).
It's been reported that if2a could compile and run nicely under freebsd and libusb (using a ezusb2131/fxload equivalent that we must get for win32 too).

#32532 - Vince - Thu Dec 23, 2004 5:17 pm

Hi guys,

Yes, there definetely gonna be a Win32 port of if2a. As you correctly stated, PW is really limited in its features and can lead to unrecoverable carts. This is one of the best examples of where free software can shine. This would also dramatically increase our audience as lots of people use Win32 for their GBA work.

As spooo correctly mentioned, there is a win32 port of libusb that we plan to use with Cygwin to produce a full win32 app without any source change (hopefully). Of course, we won't be able to use the ez2131 module as it operates under kernel mode but this should be fine with fxload as it operates purely with libusb (note that I may be wrong as it's spooo who did all the USB 2.6 work of if2a. The basics were laid down in f2a by Uli Recht.)

If you are interested, do not hesitate to try and compile if2a against the cygwin lib with the win32 port of libusb. This would really speed up the whole porting process.

Thanks,

Vince

#33297 - spooo - Sat Jan 01, 2005 7:03 pm

Vince wrote:
Yes, there definetely gonna be a Win32 port of if2a.

The win32 port is now available on the main if2a website.

#33318 - Lupin - Sat Jan 01, 2005 10:07 pm

where can i get the correct cygwin1.dll?
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My blog and PM ASM tutorials

#33334 - spooo - Sun Jan 02, 2005 1:01 am

Lupin wrote:
where can i get the correct cygwin1.dll?
On the (updated) website. Sorry for the inconvenience. I'll try to make executables with no dll requirement.

#33344 - tepples - Sun Jan 02, 2005 4:44 am

If you use Cygwin with the -mno-cygwin switch, you're using MinGW. MinGW compiled executables depend only on msvcrt.dll and other DLLs included with all reasonably recent versions of Microsoft Windows.
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#33363 - spooo - Sun Jan 02, 2005 10:39 am

tepples wrote:
If you use Cygwin with the -mno-cygwin switch, you're using MinGW. MinGW compiled executables depend only on msvcrt.dll and other DLLs included with all reasonably recent versions of Microsoft Windows.
Thanks for the info.
However [I know this is not the place to discuss about this :-] I already tried using mingw and I have basic problems with read() not returning the good value (the number of bytes read). Using cygwin with -mno-cygwin gives the same weirdness. I'll try to play with #includes.

#33368 - tepples - Sun Jan 02, 2005 4:29 pm

I use the fopen() series rather than the open() series. C language runtime libraries on non-POSIX platforms tend to get ANSI functions right more often than they get POSIX functions right.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#33370 - spooo - Sun Jan 02, 2005 5:13 pm

tepples wrote:
I use the fopen() series rather than the open() series. C language runtime libraries on non-POSIX platforms tend to get ANSI functions right more often than they get POSIX functions right.
This s*x. We're using these everywhere... I'll use wrappers then. thanks.

#33436 - Vince - Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:25 am

Hi,

I think we'd rather go for whole ANSI C in the code instead to maximize portability.

Just a thought,

Vince
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Reclaim control of your F2A/F2AU with if2a !!

#34386 - Vince - Tue Jan 18, 2005 8:57 pm

Hello,

New website up and running ( http://if2a.free.fr as usual). I'm quite proud of it as it was my first attempt at 'serious HTML :). Valid under XHTML and CSS2 DTDs.

I'm going to add new stuff this week but the topics are already in !

Enjoy !

Vince
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Reclaim control of your F2A/F2AU with if2a !!

#42311 - Vince - Mon May 09, 2005 6:03 pm

Hello,

Site update with news concerning the next version as well as release 0.93-pre0 which fixes some bugs while writing ROMS. See the site for more info.

Vince
_________________
Reclaim control of your F2A/F2AU with if2a !!

#42639 - Ilomoga - Fri May 13, 2005 6:55 pm

It's strange but with the new version the screen is black if I start it (3 games on F2A Pro 256Mbit with the automatically included gbaloader 3.2)

#42893 - Vince - Mon May 16, 2005 9:09 am

Hello,

Two things :
1. Does it correctly works without any loader?
2. Does it work with another loader (say, v3.3).

Thanks for answering these questions, a black screen is strange here.

Vince
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Reclaim control of your F2A/F2AU with if2a !!

#43135 - Ilomoga - Thu May 19, 2005 12:09 pm

I will try with the next flash :)

At the moment it's not so important but I'll try it soon.

#45654 - Vince - Mon Jun 13, 2005 12:17 pm

Hello,

Version 0.94 (and 0.94.1 bugfix) have been released. Find it on http://if2a.free.fr.
They add dynamic ROM insertion : just tell if2a the ROMS you want to add and it will manage to find holes in the cart for you. This can be used to not rewrite the full cart in case you simply want to change a few ROMS.

Pogoshell is also packaged as the default loader for Pro carts.

Enjoy (and report bugs, thank you).

Vince
_________________
Reclaim control of your F2A/F2AU with if2a !!