#1518 - Kay - Sun Jan 19, 2003 8:30 pm
It's seriously rumoured in game developpement spheres that Nintendo has modified BIOS & hardware of the up coming new GBA SP to prevent running FLASHCARD software like FlashAdvance.
Anyone to confirm that ?
-- Kay
#1521 - ampz - Sun Jan 19, 2003 8:46 pm
Just stupid rumors. Nothing else.
Nintendo could very easily stop piracy by just modifying the game carts themselfs, without modifying the GBA in any way.
I'am surprised they haven't.
#1527 - Splam - Sun Jan 19, 2003 9:07 pm
You can break flash cart compatibilty in software if you know what you're doing ;)
#1532 - tepples - Sun Jan 19, 2003 9:30 pm
| ampz wrote: |
Nintendo could very easily stop piracy by just modifying the game carts themselfs, without modifying the GBA in any way.
I'am surprised they haven't. |
They have. The trick is to make a physical object that acts as the seat of the license. For instance, Pilotwings and Super Mario Kart for the Super NES contained a coprocessor that handled some of the physics. Many arcade boards also have such coprocessors that decrypt the game ROMs; some destroy themselves upon detection of tampering.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#1538 - Kay - Sun Jan 19, 2003 11:05 pm
Informations told about pin voltage and impedence troughout testing, plus EPLD probing by using registers acces sequences used by most know flashcards. Voltage and impedence will be reflected by a GBA IO register and EPLD string tested by new BIOS startup sequence.
Concerning extra hardware logic (like GAL/PAL/ASIC) embeded on cartridge, nothing filtered.
Due to extra cost and easy protection removing, i'm sure that Nintendo won't add anything to current cartridge design, like they do with extra DSP or logic with GB and SNES.
Don't forget: ROM isn't easily patchable !
Even if this new seems to be astonished, it sounds right and logic to me.
I absolutely can't confirm that at all, so take this with extreme prudence ...
-- Kay
#1539 - ampz - Sun Jan 19, 2003 11:25 pm
Voltage and impedance testing?!?! Gee, that's just a theory of someone who think he know more about electronics than he actually does. Trust me, it's not realistic.
Register probing for known flashcart designs is not a working protection either.
There is zero cost involved in adding copyprotection to carts.
ROM is not patchable, no, but what has that to do with anything??
All dark rumors that floats around the net before any new hardware release by big companies are quite entertaining, don't you think?
If N wanted to do something to the GBA in order to stop piracy, there is nothing to stop them from doing it to the current GBA design, why would they wait until their next hardware version?
Beside, why would we care? We don't do piracy, we do GBA hardware and software development.
Last edited by ampz on Mon Jan 20, 2003 2:53 am; edited 1 time in total
#1549 - Kay - Mon Jan 20, 2003 12:50 am
This looks more like disinformation or survey.
Nintendo may be trying to gain trust from investors and softwares companies, before new hardware comes to market.
I'm astonished as you all for such bullshits !
-- Kay
#1550 - SSilver - Mon Jan 20, 2003 12:55 am
nicely stated Ampz.
#1621 - NEiM0D - Mon Jan 20, 2003 8:15 pm
There is a detection method for detecting which cart you have.
This method detects which Visoly (Turbo 64M,128M,...) or Hudson cart you have.
So in theory it could be possible.
#1629 - ampz - Mon Jan 20, 2003 9:01 pm
No, it's not possible.
Linkers examine PLD and flash registers, they can do that because they know what to look for.
The GBA cannot, since it can only look for known stuff. Registers can easily be changed.
Heck, Visoly linker think my 32M cart is a 32M visoly cart... :)
#1652 - shadow_gg - Tue Jan 21, 2003 2:31 am
Hello everybody,
I think it's possible for Nintendo to prevent the use of FA card on gba2.
Maybe instead to jump to rom code at start,
jump in the bios execute special code:
try to write
in rom memory and if the walue written is the same after a read at the same adress -----> block else start game.
I use a f2a linker and it's the program on the gba who write physically the game in the cartridge so I think Nintendo can make a thing like this
Is my theory impossible,am I just paranoid?
#1660 - tepples - Tue Jan 21, 2003 4:42 am
| shadow_gg wrote: |
| try to write in rom memory and if the walue written is the same after a read at the same adress -----> block else start game. |
AFAIK, flash chips are write-protected unless they've been set into write mode, and the precise steps to go into write mode are different on each model of flash chip. Though Nintendo could probably get away with disabling Visoly and F2A carts, I don't think a BIOS could divine the write-mode sequence for an unknown flash chip. And because the BIOS is on the CPU die and not on a separate part (as on the Xbox), it's a bit harder to change the BIOS in future GBA units after having discovered the write-mode sequence for a given chip.
And even if Nintendo gets really smart about detecting flash in future GBA BIOS revisions, there's always the option of putting a write-protect switch on the exterior of a flash cartridge.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#1672 - Sweex - Tue Jan 21, 2003 1:11 pm
I'm wondering how big the piracy actually is on the GBA. I mean, I think Nintendo aims at selling games to (young) children, which don't have a lot of knowledge about piracy.
Having said that, you can buy quite a few games for the price of a 256M flashcard, so is Nintendo actually that bothered about it?
(Sure, closing down a part of Lik-Sang could never hurt sales though:-( )
#1682 - Splam - Tue Jan 21, 2003 3:43 pm
I really don't think they will stop the flash carts from working. Look at how many gba's are sold already, people who are most likely to buy a 2nd one just because it looks cool are the (excuse me hehe) geeks like us :P As soon as 1 person found out his flash linker cart didn't work, the news would spread and nobody would buy one.
btw, found an interesting thing the other day, seems GamePark have had a newer version of their GP32 in the works for about a year now
http://www.insertcredit.com/news/e3_2002/gamepark/index_gpi.html
(link seems to be down atm) Look familiar?? hmm