NeoGeoX Hacking and Mods

Kid Panda

The Chinese Kid
Joined
Jun 13, 2010
Posts
12,514
Mr. Whitefolks:

I'm one of those PMs you haven't responded to :-) Just two things I want you to understand, we are all excited to have this unit and pirates are going to pirate with or without you.

I know you think that you're doing a good thing by holding this back, but in the long run it's really just a bunch of people spending extra money and beating their heads against the wall trying to make this a viable unit. I know, I'm one of them.

I don't want to return the unit, I want to recommend it to several of my friends who I've told to hold off. I want to buy official games, I want to do all that, but unless you spill the beans, I can't speak for anyone else here, but I have to wash my hands of this thing.

Unless someone beats you to the punch

In the mean time, I have my SD --> MicroSD in my c-clamp with the glue drying. I verified with a multimeter that everything is wired right, if I could just keep the thing shut and it works I'll be happy. But I don't want to have to rely on the jenky adapter I made, I just want to play a stupid 20 year old game on my $200 retro console with continues!!

tl;dr I can say for one thing that if I was in mr whitey's shoes I wouldn't release shit, I don't thin it's about pirates, it's about some asshat that takes the info and starts trying to make money off it. My reason? Sony ps3 CFW almost got to the point that jerks were going to start selling it. That's just my 1.48
 

nerdstick

Crossed Swords Squire
Joined
Oct 1, 2012
Posts
183
tl;dr I can say for one thing that if I was in mr whitey's shoes I wouldn't release shit, I don't thin it's about pirates, it's about some asshat that takes the info and starts trying to make money off it. My reason? Sony ps3 CFW almost got to the point that jerks were going to start selling it. That's just my 1.48

? The only way you get to that point is when the information is kept private, to those that would sell it. Making the information public makes it free for all. Such as how the PS3 was completely restricted to multiple dongles you'd have to buy (Cobra/True Blue/etc), but now flourishing with the public leaking of the Level0 keys.

I don't care personally as custom firmwares are far more enticing than any SD hack, but it does seem kind of weird to say anything at all if you're unwilling to share it.
 

werejag

Galford's Poppy Trainer
Joined
May 3, 2005
Posts
2,626
tl;dr I can say for one thing that if I was in mr whitey's shoes I wouldn't release shit, I don't thin it's about pirates, it's about some asshat that takes the info and starts trying to make money off it. My reason? Sony ps3 CFW almost got to the point that jerks were going to start selling it. That's just my 1.48


you missed the whole reason why ps3 dongles was being sold. you getting the cause and effects wrong.
 

werejag

Galford's Poppy Trainer
Joined
May 3, 2005
Posts
2,626
thanks to ppl leaking not hiding info like you wanted in your example " I wouldn't release shit " is why the dongles existed. kind of defeats your idea of hiding info
 
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Tacitus

Volatile Memory Construct - SN://0467839
Staff member
Joined
Apr 26, 2002
Posts
15,120
I had no intent for this to turn into a cocktease or trying to troll a good thread.

There is a lot of risk and liability in releasing ANYTHING. While I have and continue to have the best intentions for both this site and its userbase/community, I realize it's basically a pirating tool and the people MOST pissed off or "just curious, I won't tell anyone" about it are noobs or are basically rom begging. If you don't think SNKP is litigious about their IP and software, you can ask a pair of three letter assclowns how having their houses tossed by agents with a warrant felt because they decided they wanted to run a poor quality printing factory.

For as much "good" as it will do, the risk and "bad" far outweighs it. My message was a way of saying "it's possible" instead of "i can and you can't nyah nyah nyah, pay attention to me." I have no doubt that should I post it, my inbox and this site will be FILLED with posts/pms/nagging about screw ups, technical support, etc about this. I don't like attention and I'm a grumpy fuck, sorry. Giving me shit or telling me I don't know what I'm talking about doesn't faze me a bit.

There are other reasons that I don't care to get into publicly.

I'm not saying I won't ever post it, but I'm certainly not doing it now with all of the traffic and attention this thread is getting. That's that. This post is more than I cared to comment on it. I apologize for the unintentional trolling and cocktease, in retrospect, I should've kept my mouth shut.
 
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jalpert

n00b
Joined
Dec 31, 2012
Posts
11
Up to you, I respect that. But can you put us on the right track? Did you find a way to access the internal chips via USB? Did you find a software package that will image to a regular SD reversed so the X can see it? Does it work on all models? Is this something that needs to be programmed custom or is there some software out there? Thanks.

I had no intent for this to turn into a cocktease or trying to troll a good thread.

There is a lot of risk and liability in releasing ANYTHING. While I have and continue to have the best intentions for both this site and its userbase/community, I realize it's basically a pirating tool and the people MOST pissed off or "just curious, I won't tell anyone" about it are noobs or are basically rom begging. If you don't think SNKP is litigious about their IP and software, you can ask a pair of three letter assclowns how having their houses tossed by agents with a warrant felt because they decided they wanted to run a poor quality printing factory.

For as much "good" as it will do, the risk and "bad" far outweighs it. My message was a way of saying "it's possible" instead of "i can and you can't nyah nyah nyah, pay attention to me." I have no doubt that should I post it, my inbox and this site will be FILLED with posts/pms/nagging about screw ups, technical support, etc about this. I don't like attention and I'm a grumpy fuck, sorry. Giving me shit or telling me I don't know what I'm talking about doesn't faze me a bit.

There are other reasons that I don't care to get into publicly.

I'm not saying I won't ever post it, but I'm certainly not doing it now with all of the traffic and attention this thread is getting. That's that. This post is more than I cared to comment on it. I apologize for the unintentional trolling and cocktease, in retrospect, I should've kept my mouth shut.
 

VRC-SID

Cheng's Errand Boy
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Posts
112
If we could write to the SD card from the USB port (thru the NeoX), doesn't that swap the data as its written? Or does it not mount?

Also, are there any clean tutorials on how to work with 3.70 owners (preferably ones that work with Windows 7 64-bit / Mac). I'm going thru the 33 pages, but the data is very scattered with very little reference on which technique is used and for what device version.
 

nerdstick

Crossed Swords Squire
Joined
Oct 1, 2012
Posts
183
If we could write to the SD card from the USB port (thru the NeoX), doesn't that swap the data as its written? Or does it not mount?

Also, are there any clean tutorials on how to work with 3.70 owners (preferably ones that work with Windows 7 64-bit / Mac). I'm going thru the 33 pages, but the data is very scattered with very little reference on which technique is used and for what device version.

To my knowledge, the only method for 370 owners (unless USB flashing works but nobody's tried it yet) is a modified microSD Adapter.
 

werejag

Galford's Poppy Trainer
Joined
May 3, 2005
Posts
2,626
Mr. Whitefolks

we have known each other for a while. but why in earth did you even mention your app?
 

marvelus10

n00b
Joined
Sep 29, 2012
Posts
49
If someone can write a program that allows you to write to an SD card via swapped pins then there should be a program to read it too. Wouldn't that be in the firmware for this? All the other handhelds that are closely related to this can read SD cards, so why not find it in the firmware cross reference it with the NEO GEO X firmware and make a modded firmware to read standard programmed SD. You could even go as far as to format your packaged in game SD card and then rewrite it normally, once your firmware is "fixed" it should read no problem.
 

marvelus10

n00b
Joined
Sep 29, 2012
Posts
49
I believe that the card has to be initialized to be in another mode. Check out this article: http://mac6.ma.psu.edu/space2008/RockSat/microController/sdcard_appnote_foust.pdf whether it is an alternate standard mode of a proprietary software controlled SNK mode.
I can understand what your saying here, you would have to make an adapter in order to format your Ninja Masters card. But if the firmware of the Neo Geo X was modded to read standard SD cards then problem solved.
I loosely relate this to making repos of NES games, Nintendo used a different pinout for their ROM chips on US carts in comparison to standard eprom chips. When making repros you had to rewire it so the pins matched, someone came up with a nice little program that reduced the amount of pins that had to be rewired.
 

BloodShed

New Challenger
Joined
Dec 26, 2012
Posts
51
Have anyone found the code that executes a firmware update? I'm curious. I suspect that it probably requires connecting the NGX to a PC and dropping a file onto the mounted partition.

If someone can write a program that allows you to write to an SD card via swapped pins then there should be a program to read it too.
The Ninja Master's card is wired up with swapped pins. The flash can simply be written to while on the assembly line before it's been soldered into the SD card. No special equipment necessary.

Anyway, ack did write a program to swap the data structure for decoding/encoding a dd image of a swapped dump. He mentioned that it doesn't work when writing back to a standard card. Possibly something low-level about the partition and format.:

So the 4 data pins are backwards.
I wrote a little program that will decode the pc dumped ninjam based on this info.

http://www.gotwalls.com/neogeox/neogeox_sd_decode.c
But this doesn't really help much. If was just swapped data pins making a dd copy on a pc would work.

There is also something screwy with the partition table of the image, the ending sector of the partition is past the end of the device/image.

edit: the partition thing probably isn't worth looking into. The ngx bitches about it too in my dmesg output on page 14 of this thread.


Wouldn't that be in the firmware for this? All the other handhelds that are closely related to this can read SD cards
It's not in the firmware. The problem is that this data swap isn't being done on a software level. The SD socket is also wired up with swapped pins.

But it should be possible to write a system driver that will "translate" the data structure (either in the NGX or on a PC). It would have to be done with standard file system support layered on top (at least ext3 and vfat). Unless you're already familiar with those file structures and can build your own support. A driver would likely hurt performance but it might not be a concern considering the games are loaded into RAM first and executed from there. The only thing you should notice is a longer load time.
 
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hatch

n00b
Joined
Feb 8, 2002
Posts
15
Ack,

Didnt you mention waiting for the Gcw Zero once, as its Hardware is very close to the NGX? The Team behind it has put the sources for it, including the kernel, on github recently: https://github.com/gcwnow?tab=repositories

Theres also tools for building install images there. Could be interesting.

And the usual disclaimer: afaik, this is the teams official hub, no infringing material there.

Martin
 
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