Well, I didn't really intend on this being 3 parts, but here we are. So if you haven't read the previous parts, you probably should. Here are some links:

• Part 1 - White Screen Brick Recovery
• Part 2 - Firmware Flashing

Following Part 2, I went from having a frozen white screen "brick" of an Action Replay DS cartridge to having a working cartridge, just like how things were in 2007. I now have full access to working hardware. And I am able to flash any kind of firmware I want onto a physical ARDS cartridge utilising a trick with CFW. So I think it's now time to go and finish off the remaining research on how the thing works.

In Part 1, a lot of the recovery steps taken were based on guesses and looking at bytes in a hex editor. While I'm sure a lot of that research and guessing was correct (as I was able to recover all of my old codes), it would be nice to simplify it all down and organise it. Documentation, I guess. So, where do we start?

Following Part 1, I felt like the research done was sufficient. And it really was. I was able to recover the data from my Action Replay DS by dumping the cartridge and taking a look at what's inside. I even wrote programs to aid in extracting the data. So what's next?

I just feel like we can do better than that. It didn't sit well with me that I was restricted by a means of not being able to test this with hardware, because I was missing some pieces of the puzzle. But I want this story to have a proper ending, so it's time to fix that cartridge and get it working again. Once it's working, testing it and getting accurate data for documentation and archival purposes sounds like a great next step. Also, I would like to figure out what actually went wrong with my cartridge which started this series of blog posts. So, let's jump in.

In 2007, I got a hold of an Action Replay DS cartridge. As a kid, I used it not only to cheat, but to experiment and play around with games I had physical copies of. Don't worry. I didn't cheat online. Aside from them wiping out my saves, it was a pretty fun time. The way the cartridge worked was cool. It had an additional NDS cartridge slot on top. You would put your game in there. Apply the cheats in the interface that boots up, and then boot the game. The cheats will be applied and you can play the game normally.

Unfortunately, a few years after owning one, I managed to make that cartridge unusable. I have no idea how it actually happened. When I boot it, I am presented with a white screen and nothing else. On top of that, I don't have the cable that would let me connect the cartridge to my PC. So I am kind of out of luck, right? Well, not really. Let's look into it.

Just a disclaimer, this blog post was typed progressively. I type as I figure out more things. So it won't just be a "this is this" and "that is that". So it might come across as disorganised. My apologies. But I do think it might be useful to some people to see how I come to some of the conclusions I do. And you see the journey I went across. It's a fun challenge to me. So know what you're getting into by reading this. My goals are to figure out how to salvage whatever data I could off the cartridge, and then figure out why the Action Replay DS froze in the first place.

Since 2020, I got into HDR10 video production. I got an HDR10 monitor and started playing games and even recording them in HDR10. It's nice. But I've been wondering, if I can record videos in HDR10, why not take HDR10 images?

Well, turns out, images in true HDR10 hasn't been looked into a lot until recently. Formats like JPG and PNG do support higher bit depths than 8bpc (bits per channel). The idea is there for at least storing the colour information. But what about the HDR10 metadata? How will the monitor know how to calibrate the content to the monitor? Maybe HEIC can store the metadata just like HEVC in a video container? Let's look into it a little.

I used to be an iPhone user back in the days of the iPhone 4S. Back in those days, I would jailbreak my phone, which gave me full file system access. Backing up my device was very simple, without even needing iTunes. Since then, I've moved to Android. I've just used microSD cards to store everything, as well as have a script to run rsync to copy my data to my personal server. It's nice. But that's just my own backup solution.

I thought I never had to deal with iPhones again. Not like they were a problem. I just enjoy Android much more. The rest of my family uses iPhone. Yes, in our family group chat, I'm the sole reason they have green text message bubbles instead of blue. It's funny. Well, now that the iPhone 13 is out, they are upgrading to that and want to have their data backed up.

Side note, this is a bit more of a rant or silly story than an actual post. It's almost straight from my diary. It'll be shorter than a usual post, and more dramatic. Gotta make it fun somehow.

I like to grind in games. Part of how I play games is that I like to record all gameplay to preserve it in its entirety. That mentality has posed some technical challenges over time that tested hard drive capacity, video codec tuning, and more. That Dark Aether camo in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War looks pretty good. But it will take days of gameplay. That's a huge quantity of footage which would normally take a huge amount of time to run through x265. Time for another media project?

Sure. I'm up for the challenge.

Like always, I'm setting up a checklist of things I want for the final video to meet. Here's the specifications I want:

SpyHunter is a great example of a reboot done correctly. The 1983 arcade classic got a reboot on the PS2 and other platforms in 2001 and it looked well ahead of its time. One thing that caught my eye earlier this year was that the reboot also featured a Japanese release, which hasn't been dumped. On top of that, I wanted to play this again in stunning 4K. So, time for another media project?

First, I had to get a dump of the Japanese Release. I found a used copy on eBay for $15. So I had that delivered and I dumped the disc myself via dd (Unix utility). After testing on PCSX2, it works just as well as the USA release. After that, I cranked the internal resolution up to 3840x2160 and went to work.

I wrote a post before regarding how I archive Zoom lecture recordings, whether I am teaching or someone else is. However, post-recording, those files sit in the vault unedited. It took a few months, but I discovered an issue with the audio in them. Funny. The times that I don't check audio prior to recording are the times it always goes wrong. It's Sod's law. With the audio messed up, and no chance to re-record, is recovery possible?

Let's analyse the situation. They are MKV files with a single video stream encoded via h264_nvenc. Ok, nothing wrong there. There's 3 audio streams saved as lossless FLAC. Here's the ffmpeg stderr output (yes, it goes to stderr) for one of the files:

Recently, a group of friends wanted to replay the Mega Man Star Force series. The Japanese version of the first game has some accessories that you can purchase to enhance your stats. One in particular, the Wave Scanner, caught my attention. So, I bought two of them. What does it do though?

It's a cute little device that lets you swipe real life battle cards in. Every battle card has a barcode at the bottom of it, so this device has a barcode scanner embedded. Battle cards may be used for the minigames that are on the device. However, the feature that caught my eye was that it can connect to your Nintendo DS/DS Lite/DSi via microphone jack and send battle card data over that. Now that's pretty cool.

My 42 TB storage is running out and Black Friday is around the corner. Deals are already out online. This sounds like a pretty good time for an upgrade. I need something that can last for a few more years. The plan? Same as the last time. Shuck external drives to get high capacity drives for cheap. Can't be a data hoarder without the capacity to store data, right?

Let's take a trip back for a sec, so we can compare past to present. Those WD (Western Digital) easystore drives have consistently been a nice way to get high capacity drives for cheap. Back in 2017, I needed more storage because some external 2 and 3 TB drives weren't enough. I wanted something overkill. Something that will last me for a few years. So I bought 4 of the 8 TB models for $160 each. That's just a bit above $20/TB when tax is considered. I have tweets with pictures covering these and what shucking them looks like. You can see those below: