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DS Flash Equipment > PassMe1 doesn't seem to work (anymore)

#75016 - Spaceface - Thu Mar 09, 2006 2:31 pm

Hey there...

I have a PassMe1 which I ordered about a year ago. Now all of a sudden my PassMe won't boot gba ROMs off my EZ-Cart and instantly boots it as a GBA cartridge. My DS has FW1 and always seemed to work. I've heard rumours about Mario Kart updating your firmware, is this true?

Anyone knows what the problem can be?

Sorry if this has been posted before.

Thanks in advance.

#75018 - funkaster - Thu Mar 09, 2006 2:53 pm

Spaceface wrote:
Hey there...

Anyone knows what the problem can be?

Sorry if this has been posted before.

Thanks in advance.


Can't help you, but I have the same problem... It was working but not anymore (I also play MK)... :-S

#75074 - vb_master - Thu Mar 09, 2006 11:37 pm

Spaceface wrote:
I've heard rumours about Mario Kart updating your firmware, is this true?.
No. Try seeing that you have your flashcard set up right.
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#75078 - gcnaddict - Thu Mar 09, 2006 11:59 pm

vb_master wrote:
Spaceface wrote:
I've heard rumours about Mario Kart updating your firmware, is this true?.
No. Try seeing that you have your flashcard set up right.
Actually, Mario kart and all other Wifi games do write to the firmware:

Wifi enabled games write the wifi settings to the firmware (such as the IP it will use, the SSID of the AP, etc.). You will notice this when you swap MKDS for animal crossing; you won't have to reconfigure IP settings for each game. Configure it on one and the other game knows it too, because both games simply tag the settings onto the firmware.

#75084 - vb_master - Fri Mar 10, 2006 1:10 am

gcnaddict wrote:
vb_master wrote:
Spaceface wrote:
I've heard rumours about Mario Kart updating your firmware, is this true?.
No. Try seeing that you have your flashcard set up right.
Actually, Mario kart and all other Wifi games do write to the firmware:

Wifi enabled games write the wifi settings to the firmware (such as the IP it will use, the SSID of the AP, etc.). You will notice this when you swap MKDS for animal crossing; you won't have to reconfigure IP settings for each game. Configure it on one and the other game knows it too, because both games simply tag the settings onto the firmware.
Yes, but they don't upgrade it to a new version.
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#75090 - swimgod - Fri Mar 10, 2006 1:58 am

vb_master wrote:
gcnaddict wrote:
vb_master wrote:
Spaceface wrote:
I've heard rumours about Mario Kart updating your firmware, is this true?.
No. Try seeing that you have your flashcard set up right.
Actually, Mario kart and all other Wifi games do write to the firmware:

Wifi enabled games write the wifi settings to the firmware (such as the IP it will use, the SSID of the AP, etc.). You will notice this when you swap MKDS for animal crossing; you won't have to reconfigure IP settings for each game. Configure it on one and the other game knows it too, because both games simply tag the settings onto the firmware.
Yes, but they don't upgrade it to a new version.

this is true :P,
it can't due to the way the firmware memory chip is protected,
as you all know (i think) you have to short the SL1 for flashme.
same goes for Any firmware update :)
(note: some parts are unprotected by this)
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#75106 - HyperHacker - Fri Mar 10, 2006 3:42 am

swimgod wrote:
same goes for Any firmware update :)

Not necessarily. Most DSes only protect the first 64K or 512 bytes, so if Nintendo really wanted to put the effort into it, they could update silently. (However, this would be difficult; they generally code in C, so they'd probably end up having to rewrite the entire thing. Also they probably wouldn't want to risk bricking it.) Hence how most FlashMe updates don't require shorting. A few new ones protect everything but the user settings area, so with these you would have to short for any update.

#75122 - Joat - Fri Mar 10, 2006 8:06 am

There aren't any firmware chips that only protect 512 bytes, that was a misreading of a datasheet on someone's behalf, a long time ago.

ST chips protect 64 KB, and sanyo protect 0, 64, 128, 192, or all, IIRC (but every DS I've had someone run an ID program on has shown sanyo firmware configured to protect 64 KB*)

* CaitSith's DS is strange, it seems to give a 64 KB protection reading, but really protects almost all of the firmware. See his post for more details.

Since the CRC16 of the firmware portions are stored low, and that cannot be overwritten without shorting on *any* DS shipped, nintendo cannot easily (and certainly not arbitrarily) update the DS firmware. You can easily find CRC16 collisions, but finding a CRC16 collision while *also* maintaining the LZSS decompression state of an encrypted stream, not as fun, and either way, there is a large chunk of code that simply cannot be changed (the part below the 64 KB watershed). Even more fun, if the CRC fails (e.g. if the user turns the DS off during the update of any of the binary portions), the DS is a brick, perfect for your gaudy plastic home construction needs.

Thus, nintendo will never have a game that will update the code portions of the firmware (WFC settings just overwrote an already empty portion of the firmware, and it's possible that future games could write another few hundred bytes in there).

They *could* do a hash of the firmware and compare that hash to a list of existing firmwares, and check for a RSA signature otherwise (to allow future firmware revisions), and just refuse to play if the firmware doesn't match the known firmwares or contain a secure future signature. However, such a thing would be easily patched away, and isn't really worth their time to implement.
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