HackMii

mha’s server, which hosts Wiibrew, is currently down for as of yet unknown reasons. HackMii was also partially affected as the static content (images/CSS) was also hosted there – I’ve temporarily moved those to the main server (please don’t kill my bandwidth too much), but only blog content is here, so file links / post images might be missing. hbc.hackmii.com is also on the same server and equally affected.

I’ll update this post with more information when I get it. In the meantime, no need to panic – we have no clue what’s up, but there’s no indication that it’s a malicious attack or anything like that.

Update: see the comments for mha’s information and a workaround.

Update: Everything should be back up and working.

Back at 25C3, pytey handed me a rather intimidating piece of hardware. “It’s a flash programmer, but it doesn’t work; I think I broke it with a custom adapter I was working on for it. I don’t have any tools to try to fix it, you want to have a go?”

Here’s the device:

The “Labtool-48UXP” is an “Intelligent Universal Programmer”, with an impressive list of features. Some of the ones that caught my eye were “Four DACs for Vcc, Vpp1, Vpp2 and Vpp3 with 8-bit resolution. Software controllable rises time and current limit protection”, “Logic driver supports pull-up/ pull-down or high impedance on all 48 pins with 2.0V-5V level,” and “The LabTool-48UXP performs device insertion and contact checks before it programs each device. It can detect poor pin contact and devices inserted upside down or in the wrong position.”

I had high hopes for this device — maybe I could write a Mac client for it, or add support for the Wii’s NAND flash chips to it. In any case, I could find virtually no info about this thing online; surely someone had hacked on one of these things before? In any case, before any more fun could be had, I had to get it working, and that required understanding what’s inside. Shall we take a look?

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Nintendo recently began selling their next-generation handheld console, the Nintendo DSi. I picked one up on eBay from Japan, since they will not be available for sale here in the US until April.

Why did bushing buy a new DSi, especially given the fact that he’s turned his DSlite on maybe 3 times and he can’t read Japanese?
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