Monthly Archives: December 2006

You’re Dead To Me, Gentoo

You crossed the line this time, Gentoo. I stuck with you through the tough times, even through this humiliation. But when you specifically tell me to do something that renders my computer completely useless, that warrants a big, sloppy, kiss of death. I might be able to recover from this latest disaster but why should I have to put up with it?


Dead Gentoo

The only question that remains is whether there is another Linux distribution that supports x86_64 as well as Gentoo. Maybe I should just run in a pure 32-bit mode. Stuff is better supported for x86_32 anyway.

Real Linkage Part II

Pursuant to yesterday’s Real Linkage experiment, I decided to repeat the same experiment only using the regular inverse transform as opposed to the one for handling the optimized case of only a non-zero DC coefficient. Thankfully, the results were exactly the same as the DC-only I-transform when the general I-transform is fed a DC-only matrix. A little guru told me that the 169 constant (a.k.a. 132) is also a characteristic of the SVQ3 I-transform. I would like to run some sample vectors through both transforms to see if they arrive at the same output. But I am not sure how to instrument the SVQ3 4×4 I-transform to print before and after data sets.

So, still working on that. Then deciding where else to take this project afterwards.

Real Linkage

I was giddy when I recently learned that there were x86_64 builds of the Real codecs available that had function names inside, if for no other reason than that it might finally provide a good reason to learn x86_64 ASM. But then Benjamin helpfully pointed out that there are .a libraries available for their codecs as well (look for .a files in the current source packages). These are far more interesting, particularly in the context of black box reverse engineering. So I established a little proof of concept experiment.

Continue reading →

V.Disc

So I went out and got one of those V.Discs that operate with the VTech V.Flash console: The Amazing Spider-Man: Countdown To Doom. This is what it looks like, front and back (click for larger pictures):


VTech Spider-Man V.Disc (front)

VTech Spider-Man V.Disc (back)

The door in the back is spring-loaded; I taped it open for the photo shoot. Now I just need a good way to get the cartridge open, hopefully by employing a method somewhat more sophisticated than my first impulse– bang with rock. I’m not really worried about getting the disc back into the cartridge. But it would be nice to ensure that the optical disc is not damaged during the process. Even if I get a cheap V.Flash console somewhere down the line, it stands to reason that the disc can be placed in the audio CD tray and played. Though there could be some mechanism to prevent that– perhaps the cartridge design trips some switch in the console authorizing the disc as an actual bootable game. The game’s instruction manual warns of the legal ramifications of copying and claims that backup or archival copies are legally prohibited. So, the manual tacitly acknowledges that copying is somehow possible.

Studying the remainder of the manual as well as the box copy, I see no other companies involved other than VTech (and the myriad license holders of the properties advertised). So I imagine that VTech develops all the software in-house.

As an aside, when it comes to children’s toys, I have really been out of it for the last, oh, 17 years or so. When wandering down the toy aisle containing the VTech products, I was stunned by the volume of tech-y kids toys. I guess it’s a good business model– sell some kind of cheap base system and then sell lots of media. And I don’t know what I was thinking in my previous post when I expressed amazement at VTech’s licensee lineup for the V.Flash– these companies will whore their properties to just about anyone, as my trip to the toy aisle revealed (e.g., Disney for every no-name gizmo system). But as long as a system uses optical media and probably displays FMV, you know I’ll be interested.

Obligatory MultimediaWiki page: It’s not much more impressive than the current English Wikipedia page.