Link Generator V2.0

Okay, some of you out there probably download certain files that are split over many archives (ie: r01, r02 etc) and need to combine them.  This is meant for files that ARE NOT rar files.  Trying to combine rar files with copy /B will fuck up the headers and so on.  You can also use this to generate links for flashget, as flashget does not have a ‘Generate Links’ option, like GetRight does (that i know of yet).  You can make the links in this application, and then copy and paste them, and they can be added to flashget, or you can copy the text and then drag it into the flashget ‘dropzone’.  The program is self explanitory, and i’ll probably upload the code for it at a later date if the demand arises.

Without further ado:

http://brentp.net/CSharp/LinkGenReplace.exe

 

Yes, i know this post could have been written better.

Radar image for Townsville Area.

Here’s the radar image for the townsville/ayr/giru area.  Assloads of rain.

 

Floods

If anyone doesn’t know, its pissing down rain here atm.  Attached are some photos of Giru’s insanely high water level (and Townsville Airports flooded runways).  Enjoy.

 

Edit:

Radar image for townsville area:

http://mirror.bom.gov.au/products/IDR213.loop.shtml

 

 

3.03 OE-C (Recovery Mode in XMB)

Short n sweet.  Below is a link to an EBOOT.PBP which allows you to access recovery mode in XMB.  Works pretty well so far.

Enjoy.

To make it work, just shove it inside /PSP/GAME150/RECOVERY.

http://brentp.net/302-OE/EBOOT.PBP

MySQL & C#

Recently, i’ve been coding some stuff that interacts with mysql from C#, and its taken me quite a long time to get some basic stuff working. Here is a basic tutorial to get the stuff working basicly (ie; connecting to database, reading results from rows.).

 

Ok, first get MySQL Connector .NET.  Add it as a reference via Visual Studio, and add “using MySql.Data.MySqlClient;” to the top of your application.

Now, to get to the bones of it.  The basic connect strings i have been using are:

 

   1:  conDatabase = new MySqlConnection("server=brentp.net; user id=bah; password=bahblacksheep; database=haveyouany; pooling=false;");

 

 That connects us to the database.

 

MySqlConnection conDatabase = new MySqlConnection("server=faklas.net; user id=wha; password=asf; database=asfasfa; pooling=false;");
string Query = "SELECT * FROM `blah`";
conDatabase.Open();
MySqlCommand cmd = new MySqlCommand(Query, conDatabase);
MySqlDataReader read = cmd.ExecuteReader();
while (read.Read())
   {
   if (read[0].ToString() == "whatever")
        // do something
         }
    }
read.Close();
conDatabase.Close();

Thats all the  code there that allows us to connect to the database, read a result and do something depending on what it says.  read[0] is the first result from the dataset, (if its easier to you, you can use the name of the column, rather than the index of the row).  This can be made more efficent if you use it multiple times.  If you wish to execute a command where you wish to get no feedback (insert, update, delete), you just use:

 

string strDelete = "INSERT DELETE OR UPDATE COMMAND HERE.";
// CONNECT HERE.
MySqlCommand cmdDatabase = new MySqlCommand(strDelete, conDatabase);
conDatabase.Open();
    try
    {
    cmdDatabase.ExecuteNonQuery();
    }
    catch (MySqlException mye)
    {
    MessageBox.Show(mye.ToString(), "Error:", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
    }
conDatabase.Close();
 

Note: You can use ‘int bleh = cmdDatabase.ExecuteNonQuery();’ then ‘rowsc.ToString()’ for the number of rows changed with the query to see if it worked or not.  Of course, you could do better error handling than what i included here (ie; checking if you actually connected to the db, because if you didnt, the application would throw an exception and crash.  Easy way to fix this would to try, catch and finally.  Thats all i have for tonight, gotta find something to do before alias starts at 12:30 (assuming the tennis doesnt run  over again.  Goddamn channel 7 and their sports coverage).  Enjoy.

 

PS: check out violentacres.com.

3.03 OE-A Released.

Early this morning 3.03 OE-A was released.  The link to the file is: http://brentp.net/303oe.rar.  This release has some advantages over OE-B (one of which is PSX game compression, so all those ps1 games dont take a huge chunk outta your memory stick).  There were other various bugfixes included, and the release of an SDK for 3.03 is great news for the psp homebrew community.  To apply the update, its the same as any other OE release, download the 1.50 update, download the 3.03 update, download the oe-a file (above) and generate the DATA.DXAR.  Then copy the dxar to /PSP/GAME150/303updateflasher (or whatever it is) and wait a few minutes.  As always, read the readme before you try anything here.  This program writes to your flash, so there is always the chance of bricking. Enjoy.

Apache Conf

For those who are running an Apache server, ive found the following bare-bones configuration.  It just serves files and indexes directories.  This is assuming that you’ve compiled apache with shared libraries.

 

   1:  Listen 80
   2:  ServerRoot /usr/local/apache20
   3:  DocumentRoot /usr/local/apache20/htdocs
   4:  LoadModule autoindex_module modules/mod_autoindex.so
   5:  LoadModule dir_module modules/mod_dir.so
   6:  LoadModule access_module modules/mod_access.so
   7:   
   8:  User  nobody
   9:  # If you're not on Linux, you'll probably need to change Group
  10:  Group nobody
  11:   
  12:  <IfModule prefork.c>
  13:  MaxClients       150
  14:  StartServers     5
  15:  MinSpareServers  5
  16:  MaxSpareServers 10
  17:  </IfModule>
  18:   
  19:  <IfModule worker.c>
  20:  StartServers         2
  21:  MaxClients         150
  22:  MinSpareThreads     25
  23:  MaxSpareThreads     75
  24:  ThreadsPerChild     25
  25:  MaxRequestsPerChild  0
  26:  </IfModule>
  27:   
  28:  # Assume no memory leaks at all
  29:  MaxRequestsPerChild 0
  30:   
  31:  # it's always nice to know the server has started
  32:  ErrorLog logs/error_log
  33:   
  34:  # Some benchmarks require logging, which is a good requirement.  Uncomment
  35:  # this if you need logging.
  36:  #TransferLog logs/access_log
  37:   
  38:  <Directory />
  39:      # The server can be made to avoid following symbolic links,
  40:      # to make security simpler. However, this takes extra CPU time,
  41:      # so we will just let it follow symlinks.
  42:      Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
  43:   
  44:      # Don't check for .htaccess files in each directory - they slow
  45:      # things down
  46:      AllowOverride None
  47:   
  48:      # If this was a real internet server you'd probably want to
  49:      # uncomment these:
  50:      order allow,deny
  51:      allow from all
  52:  </Directory>
  53:   
  54:  # If this was a real internet server you'd probably want to uncomment this:
  55:  <Directory "/usr/local/apache20/htdocs">
  56:      order allow,deny
  57:      allow from all
  58:      Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
  59:      #Options All
  60:  </Directory>

VCSCheatDevice clashes.

I’ve had vice city stories since the day it was released, and ever since then, i’ve been using VCSCheatDevice when i play my games.  When i first got it, i had to flash it to flash0 when i wanted to use it, and delete it when i didnt.  This was because it, when used in conjunction with other modules, games, homebrew etc decided to seize up and die.  Here is a list of modules/games that i have personally experienced problems with when used in conjunction with vcscheatdevice:

  • irsmp3.  When this module is enabled at the same time as vcscheatdevice, Vice City Stories has no sound.  The intro movies don’t even play the music.
  • Need For Speed.  Apparently when vcscheatdevice is enabled and you play Need for Speed games, the game fails to function (even though vcscheatdevice has checks implemented to stop it being loaded when another game is being played).
  • And last, but certainly not least.  This one happened today (the straw that broke the camels back):  SOCOM: US Navy Seals Fireteam Bravo 2′s infrastructure online play mode does not function when vcscheatdevice is loaded.  Also, for other people who are having problems using SOCOM FTB2 with OE-B, you must emulate firmware 2.81 or 2.82 in devhook to successfully download the 1.10 update required to go online. Or, you could try downloading hte update from here: http://brentp.net/UCUS98645.rar .  All you should need to do is shove the UCUS98645 folder inside ms0:/PSP/GAME and you should be able to go online, but it may not work because apparently that prx is customised for every psp.  Dont know if it is true yet.

If you have any more issues with VCSCheatDevice and another game, email me and i’ll add it here.

 

NOTE:  I’m not saying that VCSCheatDevice is a bad program.  Its great, it vastly improves the gameplay aspect of vice city stories, but when left loaded in conjunction with other games, the results can be unpredictable.

Apache Module – Completed.

About 10 minutes ago i finished writing the documentation and packaging together all the crap that goes with my apache module.  Theres a readme of course, the C code, the configure and make scripts (configure.in, configure, and Makefile.in) and a TCL-INFO file with regards on howto get it working with eggdrop (or any other tcl bot if you tried).  For this module, there are two parts, the “webserver” side, and the bot site.  Most of the guts of the module are on the webserver side.   As i mentioned in a previous post, i might release it in a period of time, after i’ve cleaned up the code and hopefully gotten rid of the ugly hax.

Monsters Inc & 2.8 Downgrade.

I was going to test out what (remaining) ps1 discs i have.  I found gta before and it was scratched to buggery, almost no chance of it working, and i was right.  Later on i found a “Monsters Inc: Scare Island” in my old PS1 carry case.  It was barely scratched, looked like it was in mint condition.  The rip got to 77%, and you guessed it, it stopped!  The only confirmed half-working fucked ps1 rip of mine is f1 2001, and it’d probably be fixed when SCE releases another pops.prx.  In other news, i witnessed a 2.8 Downgrade (yes 2.8).  By the looks it was pretty flawless.  All you have to do is get a 1.50 user to dump their ipl and firmware, then, on the psp you want to downgrade you have to run the actual downgrader via xloader (not eloader).  The downgrade worked a treat, and the guy is now on 3.02 OE-B with no problems reported yet (not even the blue screen!). Birdman helped him through with no problems and apparently there have been 17/17 downgrades successful using birdmans pack.  Great Work. There has been an influx of psp roms from release groups in the scene recently after the release of OE-B.  Individuals now have the ability to rip their own “PSP Format” ps1 images from their own legally owned discs, this was made possible by Dark_Alex’s “popstation.exe” file.  Instructions on how to use are below:

NOTE: You do need “Hot Shots Golf 2″ USA version because the exe uses the sfo stuff from hotshots.

  1. Rip an iso from the cd using IsoBuster (or another similar program)
  2. Open a command prompt and cd to the folder where popstation is.  Make sure the iso is in the same folder. ie: cd “C:\documents and settings\owner\desktop\oe-b\popstation\”
  3. Run “popstation.exe filename.iso”.  If the cd rip is in .bin/cue format, use the bin as the iso (“popstation.exe CD.bin”).
  4. Wait around 3 or 4 minutes for the files to generate.

NOTE1: Downgrader is available at 0okm.blogspot.com.  Very very risky if you don’t have an experienced person helping you.  The downgrader does no checks for nothing, so if one thing is fucked, your psp is fucked.  Simple.  Dont say you havent heard the risks.  There is a link to a dump on the blog post for 0okms downgrader on his site, however, i cannot vouch for its credibility.