Friday, May 15, 2009

Nintendo dual screen (NDS) study

This is information that I gathered on NDS so far. Please let me know if anything is not 100% correct. I can be contacted via "chris in taipei at g mail dot com" no space

1. Too basic to find, but so basic that you should know:
There are 3 DS consoles, namely Nintendo DS (aka NDS, the ugly kid), Nintendo DS Lite (aka NDSL, the one that is available everywhere), and Nintendo DSi (aka NDSi, the latest one)

  • 1.1 Charger for NDS, NDSL and NDSi are all imcompatible. They usually come in either 110v or 22ov (not 100v to 240v). A 100v to 240v charger in Taiwan's auction site costs around USD 2.5 for NDSL, to USD 5 for NDSi. Charging via USB cable is slower than adaptor, can may not charge as full, but it is the most compatible/convenient. USB cable is around USD 2, same price for NDSL and NDSi
  • 1.2 Games all seem to be compatible
  • 1.3 Hacking cards may not be compatible. So far I know AK2i works on NDSi and NDSL. R4i works on NDSi but I am not sure if it works on NDSL. Please note AK2i has language issue on NDSi. More info on that here
  • 1.4 All NDSL and NDSi, the console interface language can change to English even if by default is in Korean (mine is...) or else. Console interface language, hacking cards interface language and game's language all don't seem to be linked i.e. you can have a Korean NDSL running a Chinese interface hacking card while playing games in English
  • 1.5 NDSL and NDSi use lithium ion battery i.e. no need to purposely run the battery flat then recharge
  • 1.6 In terms of convenience, best charging method is to use USB cable like this one here. Note NDSL and NDSi uses different cable (head is different)
  • 1.7 GBA and NDS charger are compatible
  • 1.8 NDSL/NDSi consoles are not like DVD, they don't have region restriction. Units only differ in terms of bundled charger voltage and default interface language (can always change back to English). The same applies to game, but most games you cannot change its language
  • 1.9 For example, Mario Kart DS is available in both English and Japanese, you cannot mix the 2 to play multiplayer games. The game in both console must be in the same language. But there is a work around :)

2. Information to read before buying your first NDSL and NDSi hacking cards (aka Nintendo DS storage devices, it is used to play illegal downloadable games as per below)

My wife bought a metallic pink NDSL together with R4 SDHC, it reads 4GB SD fine, presummabilly it'd read 8GB fine also. My NDSL battery is flat and without a correct voltage charger with me... Will try the 8GB once battery is charged up

For NDSL, the most popular card is the R4DS. This leads to make fakes... And R4DS does not support SDHC (max 2GB SD). DSTT supports SDHC but also plagued with fakes. The most powerful is the CycloDS Evolution which also makes it the most expensive

If you are in to buy a NDSL like me, my recommendation at this point, is the AceKard 2i (aka ak2i) as this works for both NDSL and NDSi. Please note I do not own ak2i card nor NDSi, this recommendation is based on my reading so far

3. Emulators to play on PC

Since my battery is flat and without charger, I thought perhaps one can play it on PC instead. This is my finding:
Places to find emulators for NDS
http://www.ndsemulator.com/
http://www.emulator-zone.com/
http://nocash.emubase.de/

And you'd need a joystick/game pad for PC to better mimic the NDS control. This Logitech game pad is very inexpensive and the layout "looks" pretty similar to NDS

5. Recommended games to play on

Now you need the games to play it and here you go :)

5A. A short list of best selling Nintendo DS games (torrent downloading directly from isohunt):

5B. Sites where you can find NDS news, and games to download:
isohunt.com -> need I say more? Anything and everything is here...
www.ndshb.com
www.dev-scene.com/NDS/News
www.ndsthemes.com
ds.qj.net
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Nokia smart phones saving email onto SD to free up internal memory

Taken from here

The original post was for Nokia E61. I tried on my colleague's E71 and it worked the same

Follow these steps...

  1. Go into the messaging application.

  2. Go into options and then settings.

  3. Go to the "Other" option in this menu.

  4. Scroll down to "Memory in use".

  5. Change it to memory card.

  6. Icon for messaging should now show either an envelope with a small memory card over it, or just a memory card.

  7. Your messages are now being stored on the memory card.

Note that the phone may or may not ask you whether you wish to copy over existing messages in the phone memory to the memory card. I find it helps to delete all the messages in the phone memory before you start this process (Don't forget outbox and sent as well)
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Sunday, April 19, 2009

extract files that are available on windows update

goto here to the Microsoft Update Catalog site, search for the kb number, you can download those big patch files for offline installation (or just don't want to download them repeatedly)
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Friday, April 17, 2009

next hard drive capacity limitation to watch out

once drives larger than 2.2TB rolls out, we will start to have problem seeing 100% of the capacity

Below is direct quote from here:
While it is true that the ATA/ATAPI-6 standard defines a method to provide a total capacity for a device of 144 petabytes, the next limit will be imposed not by the ATA devices but by many of the popular operating systems in use today. This limit will be at 2.2 terabytes (2,200 gigabytes). This barrier exists because many of today's operating systems are based on 32-bit addressing. These operating systems include many flavors of Linux, Mac OS 9.x, and Windows 95, 98, ME, NT 4, 2000, and XP (Windows XP/64-bit also has the limit because of leveraged 32-bit code).
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Thursday, April 16, 2009

how to set a strong password

Let me make it short, it's really easy...

If you like me who sometimes use traditional Chinese and uses alternative input method such as 注音輸入, you can "encrypt" your password in Chinese. Ha you don't get it, right? For example:

you are a stupid ass = 你是笨蛋 in traditional Chinese

if you type 你是笨蛋 using 倉頡 in English keyboard layout, you type it as "onfyymrhdmnolmi"

Now that is more difficult to be hacked :)

Yeah I know this isn't perfect as it doesn't do mix cases and numbers, but hey it's better than your original password, and it doesn't take you efford to learn a new trick

Something for nothing
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Saturday, April 11, 2009

entry level PC with good performance would cost how much at Q2 2009?

according to this analysis, entry level PC with good performance would cost under TWD 12500 (he reckons TWD 12250 would do it). that's excluding casing, monitor, optical drive and power supply

yet the spec is pretty decent!

furthermore, many people would have got an old display card, twin display (yeah i am thinking KVM, or VNC approach), more than one hard drive, and no need of optical drive in the second PC. the total then comes to TWD 7500 excluding casing and power supply

that's freaking affordable. you could have run linux on it and using it as a high-end router with bandwidth control, or NAS, or as a media centre next to your PC. that'd make it only TWD 3500 more than "western digital HD TV media player (TWD 4000)"

think about that...
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AutoHotkey

AutoHotkey (ahk) is a very powerful scripting utility

only down side is the learning curve to start coding

below code is taken from here. it remap you external keyboard's numberpad so that, regardless of numlock on/off, the numberpad is always number

=======quote========
NumpadIns::Numpad0
NumpadEnd::Numpad1
NumpadDown::Numpad2
NumpadPgDn::Numpad3
NumpadLeft::Numpad4
NumpadClear::Numpad5
NumpadRight::Numpad6
NumpadHome::Numpad7
NumpadUp::Numpad8
NumpadPgUp::Numpad9
NumpadDel::NumpadDot
======unquote=======

and to start using ahk, you would have these added
=======quote========
#z::Run "D:\profile\chris\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\Google Chrome.lnk"

^!n::
IfWinExist Untitled - Notepad
WinActivate
else
Run notepad
return

^!c::
IfWinExist Calculator
WinActivate
else
Run calc
return

#c::Run cmd
======unquote=======

with the above implemented, we are yet to learn the scripting language and already we are off the mark with some big boost
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