Qoob BIOS Pro Version 1.3 Released

nature

            - qoob BIOS v1.3 -

           14th of may, 2005

This is the v1.3 final.

FEATURES:

- Direct boot of all media (including DVD+R),
  without swapping!
- Cheats (AR required, look below)
- Fastboot of both original and backups
- 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
- Customization feature
- In Game Reset by pad (L+R+Start)
- Force Videomode for games

--------------| Videomode force:

Starting from this release, you can force the video mode for
games. This should work for almost all games, but it won't
work for homebrew.

It should be compatible to almost all games, but you might
mess up timing if games are not supposed to run in a certain
mode.

You can force progressive output. Yes, this even works for
(most) PAL games.

You can set the videomode of the qoob bios itself. In case
you have a VGA adapter, we're sure that you appreciate this.

Still, forcing the video mode involves modifiying the game's
intended behaviour. Use this option only when required. It's
always better to let the game configure the video mode (PAL60,
Progressive - hold B button while starting the game!)

We implemented this option only as a last resort, for example
for progressive on PAL games. (Yes, PAL gamecubes support
progressive. You need the component-cable, of course.)

--------------| In Game Reset:

You can InGameReset with Start+L+R. It might not work on all
games. It does not work on homebrew.

--------------| Cheats:

This release is the first one which supports cheats. The only
real sources for Gamecube cheats is the Action-Replay-Database,
available for free on the codejunkies.co.uk website.

We know that developing cheats, especially the advanced cheats
by Datel, require a lot of work. Therefore we decided to do our
best to not rip off Datel.

The qoob bios does not contain a special piece of software called
"cheat engine". The cheat engine is a small part of software,
which executes the entered cheats in the special "AR"-Format.

Instead, we require to use the cheat engine of a real AR. The
Bios can rip the cheat engine from an AR-disc. It will then
be stored in flash, so you don't need to swap the disc each
time. Cheats are also stored in memory.
We provide a tool to generate the qoob cheat compilations
from .cod (basically decrypted AR codes). We will lateron
publish a tool which can manage these data better, but right
now it should be enough.

We think that requiring an action replay disc once is the best
compromise between being user-friendly, not breaking any
copyrights (more an ethical problem than a technical) and
usefullness.

We included a compiled version of mario's big collection
of .cod. Thank you for your work! We hope it's ok to include
your collection here.

Cheats don't include useful information which game they
are belonging to. Thus you have to select. We know that
this is a PITA because you can store all codes in flash
and it's going to be a big list. We implemented some
fuzzy logic to determine the most "fitting" cheat,
but you can have a sorted list with the L/R-buttons, too.

--------------| Customization:

It's possible to replace the standard qoob background picture.
It must be encoded as an MPEG1 I-Frame. We've choosen this
format because it's way easier to decode that JPEG while having
at least similiar performance.

You can generate these logos for example with TMPEGEnc. Be sure
to encode in MPEG1 only (MPEG2 doesn't give a real advantage
on single frame sequences while complicating the stuff a lot).
Resolution must be 640x480.

You can disable the status information in the configuration
menu. If you don't, make sure that you have a black background
as certain stuff will be overwritten by the text.

As always, we will continue to improve this, which more
configurable colors, positions etc.

The MPEG decoder is based (but HEAVILY simplified) on a
public domain mpeg decoder software.

--------------| Panasonic Q:
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.

--------------| div stuff

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. 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 defaults 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.)

If you want to change this, you must prepare for some hex-editing
(sorry). Store the configuration, read the configuration block
with the flash tool, and load it into an hex editor. at offset
108, 10c, 110 you have to insert the IP, Netmask, Gateway.
You *must* specify a non-null IP for each of the three.

(You either know what this means or you have to wait for the
next version!)

Example:

00108: 0A 00 00 10 FF FF FF 00 0A 00 00 01

would be IP 10.0.0.16, netmask 255.255.255.0, gateway 10.0.0.1.

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.

--------------| network / dvd upgrade

This release includes a network / dvd updater. Just run the
update_13.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.

Changelog:

1.3:
- Cheats (ActionReplay required once)
- Cheats: Current Game fuzzy autodetection
- Configuration can be done in Menu
- Settings can be stored in flash
- DRE fix / swap support can be disabled
- Time fixed
- Background can be changed, texts can be disabled
- In Game Reset (IGR)
- Video mode force (for games)
- Video mode configurable (for menu)
- Progressive support (even for PAL)
- Flash tool doesn't store full path anymore

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

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