The recent Brick inducing PSP/DS Software has claimed many victims, more DS than PSP, heres an article from the respected Kojote of PDRoms

just can't hold myself back but there are a few things which have to be said right now.

Recently the PSP and now the DS are affected by malicious programs, which are able to break your handhelds. The sense of this action is just right beyond my understanding and the understanding of most developers I know. People who are new to homebrew might be tricked to run a program, which will destroy their hard paid off system. Not everyone can afford a new one - and it's not clever to trick new people into running code which is really doing bad things. Many people will get a wrong opinion about homebrew software and this is what i don't want.

The PSP is affected in two ways:

There is a FAKE downgrader which ****s up your bios, the chance of getting it back to work is almost zero
Recently Symantec also figured out the first VIRUS for the PSP. It doesn't spread it self, but it ****s up the bios as well.

The NDS is affected in this way:

The DS bricker will overwrite some regions of the bios and it will be extremly hard to recover anything.

All that stuff might have been developed to show skills, but never forget there are kids who don't understand anything about it and they forward those things to their friends to fool them. More and more system will be bricked - Is this what we need? Things will spread over Bittorrent and E-Mule and reach hundrets of people - hundrets of people who are now in potential danger to brick their system.

Exactly such a behaviour shows companies as Sony that they are right with upgrading their firmware again and again, and finaly eleminate EVERY SINGLE EXPLOIT which is found. If there are no exploits left, you can't run any homebrew. This could be the dead of everything people were supporting for years.

Until further notice:
* NO NEWS ON PDROMS

Homebrew over - at least for the next days.

I hope my words will ring a bell in some people head. A general warning to everyone who is new to homebrew, please only get things for a serious source and avoid warez, as playing commercial games for "free" might be a bigger target. You shouldn't play warez at all anyway.

Thanks for everyone who keeps on destroying the homebrew scene - Thanks for destroying the hard work of many people - Thanks for destroying the effort people used to get everything working. ...

The recent Brick inducing PSP/DS Software has claimed many victims, more DS than PSP, heres an article from the respected Kojote of PDRoms

just can't hold myself back but there are a few things which have to be said right now.

Recently the PSP and now the DS are affected by malicious programs, which are able to break your handhelds. The sense of this action is just right beyond my understanding and the understanding of most developers I know. People who are new to homebrew might be tricked to run a program, which will destroy their hard paid off system. Not everyone can afford a new one - and it's not clever to trick new people into running code which is really doing bad things. Many people will get a wrong opinion about homebrew software and this is what i don't want.

The PSP is affected in two ways:

There is a FAKE downgrader which ****s up your bios, the chance of getting it back to work is almost zero
Recently Symantec also figured out the first VIRUS for the PSP. It doesn't spread it self, but it ****s up the bios as well.

The NDS is affected in this way:

The DS bricker will overwrite some regions of the bios and it will be extremly hard to recover anything.

All that stuff might have been developed to show skills, but never forget there are kids who don't understand anything about it and they forward those things to their friends to fool them. More and more system will be bricked - Is this what we need? Things will spread over Bittorrent and E-Mule and reach hundrets of people - hundrets of people who are now in potential danger to brick their system.

Exactly such a behaviour shows companies as Sony that they are right with upgrading their firmware again and again, and finaly eleminate EVERY SINGLE EXPLOIT which is found. If there are no exploits left, you can't run any homebrew. This could be the dead of everything people were supporting for years.

Until further notice:
* NO NEWS ON PDROMS

Homebrew over - at least for the next days.

I hope my words will ring a bell in some people head. A general warning to everyone who is new to homebrew, please only get things for a serious source and avoid warez, as playing commercial games for "free" might be a bigger target. You shouldn't play warez at all anyway.

Thanks for everyone who keeps on destroying the homebrew scene - Thanks for destroying the hard work of many people - Thanks for destroying the effort people used to get everything working. ...

Spacy has just posted a new work in progress build of his unofficial VisualBoy Advance. No changes were listed with the files but if you are interested in giving it a go and want to provide Spacy with some feedback that would be cool.

Head on over to his support thread to leave some feedback after giving this work in progress build a go.

http://www.emutalk.net/emu64-news/3...-1-7-7-wip.html ...

BigRedPimp founder of #DSDev speaks out on the Bricker issue, heres the full newspost:

I feel that this should be said considering how people are saying #dsdev supports the bricker…

I, BigRedPimp, am the founder of #dsdev on EFNet. Rumor has been going around that the bricker app (which renders stock Nintendo DS units useless) is supported by the ops of my channel. This is not the case. The fact of the matter is that I am disgusted with certain individuals who not only created it but condone its creation by saying “because I can”. This, to be blunt, is bullshit. You are single-handedly making it hard to trust anyone out there looking for help on their current work. Why someone would create an “app” that would turn a US$120+ portable device into a paperweight is beyond me. I think this individual needs a serious reality check. Just because you can afford a DS whenever you want one doesn’t give you the ****ING RIGHT to destroy the rest of ours. I’ll be expecting some sort of retort for this but I don’t care.

In closing, I reiterate the point that the staff of EFNet #dsdev does NOT condone the use of the bricker in any way, shape or form. Support positive development, not destructive. That is all.

- I say thanks to BigRedPimp for this news, pity that one lamer and a few idiots who think its funny can cause problems for our scene. ...

A new version of VBA smooth has been released.


new features:

- update to latest VBA v1.8 beta 3 core
- integrated with achurch's optimized ARM cpu core
- add PM's 2xPM, 2xPMLQ image filter (2xPM now works)

bug fix:

[many people] VBA smooth v6.4 failed to open file dialog in Win98
- fixed this bug by change MFC compiler directive

[mikoxc] VBA smooth in window x2 size or below, image filter effect was messed up by d3d bi-linear filter
- fixed this bug

[mikoxc] VBA smooth in window x2 mode, the right and bottom lines pixels was cut off
- fixed this bug

[Kaminari] When using 2xPM filter, the output image is heavily distorted.
- fixed, now add 2xPM and 2xPMLQ to filter plug-in

[mikoxc] after VBA smooth v6.1, for win98 failed to open FileDialog
- fixed by setting VS.NET to compile a version compatible with win98

[jeffkongz] suggest not to delete rewind states when save states are loaded
- fixed, not to reset rewind states when save states are loaded as suggested way

[suanyuan] remove skin functionality to clean up code base a little bit
- Remove skin functionality, since skin option only worked for DirectDraw driver

http://www.emutalk.net/emu64-news/30...-released.html ...

First off id like to say that no release on this site will ever brick your DS because i will check everyone that doesnt come from a valid source, the DS scene is great apart from some elitest idiots who think its funny to ruin peoples DS consoles.

Heres a log thats on the net of the time when Darkfader released his bricking app --> http://www.tehskeen.net/files/dsdev.20051007.log (original url)

Read it and youll see that the Developers (a minority it must be said) thought it was funny when one of the users ran the software and nearly bricked his PSP.

I read what other forums and sites posted about the loader and so i went in myself to #dsdev and well the atitude that came across when i asked about the loader was disapointing to say the least, basically they were saying that unless you flash your DS then its tough if anything happens.

My thoughts on the whole situation are that as any homebrew scene you do not shit on the homebrew users and this ill guarentee will be found in a homebrew game before long.

No site or forums or even a chat room should think its funny when a release like this happens but it seems that a certain chat room does, now ill bet that a lot of the developers are horrified that this has been released but from what i seen in there, only a few lamers rule the roost.

So in future can you trust anything released from such sources if they think its funny when your DS dies, it has to be the lamest release of the year and it will hit homebrew users more than any bloody warez users in the long run ...

This isnt really PSP Related but its very serious to all users of the Nintendo DS, apparently Darkfader who is a well known hacker of hardware has released a file that will brick not only your DS but the fllash card etc also.

You may say this will only affect the warez boys but this code could already be in homebrew, its rather sad to see a scene destroyed by one person.

The full story is on our Nintendo DS Sister site here --> http://nintendo-ds.dcemu.co.uk/

For the moment extreme caution is going to be needed for anyone trying Homebrew on the DS - A sad day indeed-

What would you like to say or do to Darkfader and the people behind this. ? ...

According to logs that were posted on the internet a coder by the name of Darkfader has released a Bricking tool which will kill any Nintendo DS that uses PassMe/FlashMe and any of the following cards Supercard, M3 Adapter and the GBA Media Player.

Basically for now you must hold off trying any new homebrew unless you can guarentee 100% that the person supplying it is safe:

Brakken posted this:

DarkFader, the person who cracked the Nintendo DS, was behind the creation of the NeoFlash, the MAN who ran the Nintendo DS ROM release group GST (Golden Sun Team) has released a small program that will erase your Nintendo DS firmware, GBAMP firmware and/or your SuperCard Firmware and the release appears to be supported and endorsed by the DSDEV (#dsdev on EFNET IRC) community of dev's (who most recieve free NeoFlash devkits). This Bricker does not destroy NeoFlash carts? Could there possibly be any correlation?

The code used in the original bricking application has been ripped and now is being added to other homebrew and roms so if you run one without checking it first you'll end up with a dead Nintendo DS, GBAMP and/or SuperCard. This is a very counter-productive move on the Nintendo DS's Development Community as their code to disrupt piracy (which they helped create) is now being used in their own programs! Currently there is no way to test for this bricking code!

Just image going to run NESDS and having your Nintendo DS die! Luckily, if you use the FlashMe Firmware replacement for the Nintendo DS you can recover from this deadly attack by booting up the system any holding "A+B+START+SELECT" then loading the Firmware from a flashcart other then your SuperCard (as it's most likely been destroyed).

Some Conversation off IRC that was posted:

yes
what's all this about a trojan?
DS program that erases some things
hmmm... payback for something?
firmware of supercard, media player, DS
nah
for fun of course
heh, I see
it also erases the xg/neoflash card and CF inside movie player
I still need to add support for more devices
M3, G6, SD cards
hmmm... for what purpose? laughs?
it will put ppl on alert
and leave them with a hell of a lot of broken DS'es
it can be fixed
but still very annoying to fix it all
indeed
but won't stuff like this kill the homebrew scene?
no one wants to load anything in fear of frying their DS.. or flash card
hmm

There you have it folks please do not touch it ...

The Playstation emulator for Palms and the Tapwave Zodiac has been updated to v0.69, heres whats new from zodttd:

Ok all, here's a new release of PPSX version 0.69 (no chuckling!).

The big differences in this version since the last ones are:
-- Automatic frameskip removed. Replaced with a more (or soon to be) functional frameskip solution.
Press down on the analog stick and press the Left Trigger: Lower Frameskip By One after release of button
Press down on the analog stick and press the Right Trigger: Raise Frameskip By One after release of button
Press down on the analog stick and press the Top Hard Button: Displays Framerate
Press down on the analog stick and press the Top Hard Button: Displays Frameskip
NOTE: Theres a design flaw currently that makes the frameskip not display if it's at 0. Hope ya don't mind. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)
-- During the intro/load screen theres a checkbox for USE HLE.
Try games with and without this enabled and see if the framerate/compatability is better for you.
Then let me know in the Compatbility Thread!

Hopefully this release will help me get a feel for the 5000 or so available games out there and how they perform speed and compatbility wise with certain options. And it may even help get your fav game running better.

Oh yeah, I get a constant 13 for framerate during Buster Bros gameplay, and 20 in some other titles like Front Mission 3 at times. So there are games that will run around the 15 mark. 15 just isn't as fast as it needs to be, or even sounds.

CURRENT RELEASE V0.69
http://www.friggingames.com/ppsx069.prc

More info here ...