Planet Sillicon

Oh yeah, I did it!

By blog on May. 22, 2009.

Huzzah! The other day I mentioned that I went out and bought Magician’s Quest: Mysterious Times (what the hell’s with that name? Generic much?) and I have this routine that I go through with all my DS games.

Whenever I buy a new one, I download the ROM for it, because I like to keep the majority of games I am interested in on my R4DS cartridge, which means I can swap between games without swapping cartridges, and my cartridges are kept nice and safe. Occasionally, certain games resist these attempts. Nearly everything from Square Enix does this, and it is really annoying to have a handful of games that I can’t just put on my R4 and go on my way.

So, I download the ROM to Magician’s Quest and guess what. I can’t load it up. This is a coding thing because the R4 isn’t the newest type of cartridge, and because games do this so people don’t bother illegally using the ROMs. Which I am all for, I only use ROMs that I already have the game of. I love games and want to support them!

Anyway. After downloading the ROM, I get the message, ‘The save data could not be accessed. Please turn off power and reinsert the DS card.’ Gah! I hate that! So I look it up online, and figure out there is a way to fix it, by patching the ROM in question with a new arm7.bin. This is one of those tech things I have no idea about. I hate those!

After leaving it and coming back to it for the past few hours, after reading, trying and failing, more reading, I have finally succeeded! I patched that sucker and now I can play! Pity it took so long I now don’t have the time.

Oh well, I have rectified one of the many tech things I didn’t know, that counts for a lot! I should have a list somewhere and cross off those things that I actually figure out how to do. And now, when I have spare time tomorrow, I can be playing my new game, knowing the cartridge is safe and sound.

Tech things I don’t know

By blog on Apr. 11, 2009.

That incident with that terrible store the other day got me to thinking. You see, in spite of working exclusively in the tech support field for the last three years, there are some fairly basic techish things that I have no idea how to do. I thought if I compiled a list of things I would like to know how to do, then maybe I would go out and learn these things… or not… whichever.

As I said to the stupid store manager, I don’t know how to copy a game disc. I know it could be as straight forward as copying the files onto ones computer and then over to another DVD, but then again, it could actually be a heck of a lot more complicated than that… I really don’t know… And in some ways I don’t want to know, because I wouldn’t want to illegally copy games… But then I thought, having a back up of every game I own? Well now that does sound appealing! I would actually like to have a back up, just in case the disc gets scratched or lost, then I won’t have to fork out for the game again.

I also don’t know how to backup my DS cartridges into ROMS, and again, I would like to have back ups of my games so that if anything were to happen to the cartridge, I could still play my game. Or even better, if I could backup all my games into ROMS, I could use an R4 and carry multiple games with me all the time, without having to swap the cartridges over! That is very appealing, especially when traveling, as those little boxes can take up a surprising amount of space, and having it all on one game card already inside the DS would be excellent!

I would also like to know how to set up my own website… this is something I know next to nothing about and yet would love to have my own. I am not sure to what purpose I would have said site, but just having one that is mine is rather appealing.