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http://forums.maxconsole.com/attachm...=&postid=49329
nfo:
- qoob BIOS v1.2 -
27th of april, 2005
This is the v1.2 final.
FEATURES:
- Direct boot of all media (including DVD+R),
without swapping!
- Fastboot of both original and backups
(this time with autodetection for original games)
- Disc swap support! (one game on multiple discs)
- Multigame support! (one disc with multiple games)
- Less DREs than older BIOS!
- Disc browser for ISO9660-DVDs, supporting
Joliet for running homebrew .ELF/.DOL files
- Disc check feature
- All the usual stuff
- Network support, look below!
- Panasonic Q support (yes, you've read right.)
Sorry for not having too many updates this time, but we thought
that multigame support might be a good idea. We first felt a bit
sorry to "use" loonycube's very good work on the windos tool
which generates the multiboot images instead of writing our own
fstmerger, but as loonycube are an independent scene group and
not directly related with any modchip group, we think it's ok.
In the end we made the boot method compatible because we felt
that it's the best for the users.
(A side note: somebody noticed that you can in fact launch
.iso / .gcm files burned on dvd as iso9660. Good catch!
But please, don't do this, as it will break the whole file
alignment. At least for games with streaming audio this will
be fatal. We might remove this feature again, so don't even
think about making compilations as iso9660.)
We added support for the Panasonic Q in this release. There's
no way to connect the lidswitch for the Q now. Just leave it
unconnected. It will increase the boottime by some seconds,
so it's not recommended for normal cubes, but it works.
(In case you care: the Q has a 2001/08/31 drive firmware,
which handles the tray and the eject button. Everything else
is just like a normal japanese cube.)
We tried a small DRE work around, but this of course doesn't
fix your media. If you have DRE problems, please try checking
the disc with the integrated disc check (hold 'A'). If you
get errors here, you *have* a media problem. We try working
around this, but this won't fix the root of the problem.
The new windows software has support for directly flashing ELF
and DOL files. When selecting the file, be sure to select the
right filetype, otherwise it won't work.
The next paragraph shouldn't be required anymore, but for the
people interested:
--------------| Some small technical information:
All flashed "blocks" have a 0x100 bytes header which looks like:
00....03 ID (either "(C) " for a .GCB file or "ELF\0"
and ELF, more (like DOL and BIN) to come soon)
04....f7 description, will be shown in boot menu
f8....fb reserved
fc....ff size (in bytes), must be multiple of 64k
If you have flashed an elf file, it should appear in the boot menu,
so you can run it. All blocks must start at 64k boundaries.
--------------| About the network support:
IP address is currently hardcoded to 192.168.1.32. This should fit
most people. (Hint: Even Windows supports more than one IP address
per network adapter. No need to break your network.)
We will make this configurable in the next version, don't worry.
(Sorry that we didn't got this into 1.2.)
Network support comes from tmbinc's fine IPL replacement (thanks,
man!). We removed GPL'd parts before (especially the gc-linux based
network driver) and replaced them with own. LWIP's license is
BSD-styled and tmbinc's stuff is public domain, as he stated. We
hope it's ok, but we would had done it in a very similiar way, so
we better used the time to improve it than to reinvent the wheel.
Oh, the /DVD-rip support has been recoded, but it was only like 5
lines of code thanks to the nice httpd design.
This only applies to the network stuff. Every other GC code was
completely recoded by our team.
Supported stuff is:
- DOLUP (upload dol/elf on port 4000 - no bin yet)
- HTTP ("/DVD" for ripping discs)
--------------| About the game disc swap support:
This support won't be 100%, but it should work for most of the
unplayable games.
The lid switch will be autodetected - if you leave the lid open
while booting, it's ok - you won't be able to swap discs then.
If you have the lid closed, you can open it while playing and swap
the disc.
When closing the lid again, it takes some seconds until the drive
continue reading again. It will take ~20 seconds or so. Don't worry.
We try to fix this for sure, but we think it's ok.
--------------| About the audio fix
this bios has - since ever - an integrated audio fix. Some people
have messed up their backups with "fixing" the data so it works
with older bios which don't fix the audio streaming. We feel a bit
sorry for these people, so in this release you can press 'START'
while booting to disable the builtin audiofix.
Please, people, don't mess with your GCMs! Most things will only
make things worse, not better.
--------------| The mp3 player...
I know that it comes a bit late, but this release includes the
infamous qoob mp3 player *with full source*.
Simply flash the elf file somewhere on the qoob. Be sure to
select the "elf" file type! Now it should appear in the "flashed
applications" menu.
To launch the mp3 player, put in your iso9660/joliet formatted
disc with mp3 files on it. When you enter the iso browser, press
'B' and select the mp3 player. You should now enter the mp3
browser. Select your favourite mp3 and press 'A' to hear it!
Press 'B' to return to folder.
Expect some improvements here.
The mp3 player uses libmad as well as some convenience functions
here and there (libm). It's free as speech so do whatever you
want with it.
--------------| network / dvd upgrade
This release includes a network / dvd updater. Just run the
update_12.elf somehow (either by burning as iso9660 to a dvd
or by uploading per network).
If you burn it to a cd, make sure to fill up the dvd to at least
1.2GB of data else the gc drive can't read it.
--------------| Inside the qoob bios...
Well, we might have made it a bit *too* easy since somebody leaked
a 0.5 beta which was never supposed to go away. Anyway, it did, so
we prepared some (rather lame) excuses:
- "The code did evolve a lot since q0.5. q0.5 was nearly based on
c0.3 (plus our way of doing nonswap-booting), but it did
change a lot since then."
- "c0.3 *was* the basic idea of dvd-rom patching, and we worked
on top of that."
and finally:
- "it might be only 12 lines of code, but they were so hard to
write that MC needed 3 months for it."
We promise again that we haven't seen any beta of c1.0. We
saw the first nonswap bios after our bios was already finished.
Yes, again for you: We had noswap working before we even saw
screenshots of cobra 1.0.
Our code is based on anaconda, nothing newer. Everything since
then was improved by US (except that we made multigame stuff
compatible for obvious reasons).
Finally we invite everyone to take a look at our drivecode and
analyze it. Go improve it and release it as your own bios!
We were the first one bringing you the audiofix, dvd+r noswap,
Q support, multidisc support, so please shut up telling we only
rip stuff - it's simply not true, though we understand that
owners of other modchips don't like to hear that.
Changelog:
1.2:
- Panasonic Q support
- Multigame suport
- minor bugfixes (workaround to some homebrew lib, iso9660 fix,
some old games didn't work due an apploader bug)
1.1:
- disc swap feature for games
- network support
- audio fix can be disabled
1.0:
- initial release
