That page has web buttons that overlap my scrollbar .... how is that even a thing? please make it stop.
Reimplementing scrolling. Isn't JavaScript amazing?
Depackaging the Nintendo 3DS CPU
31–40 of 48 posts
Re: Depackaging the Nintendo 3DS CPU
#32I seem to recall that imaging the bootloader ROM straight off the silicon was how the original Gameboy's bootloader was finally pulled out. I just forget who did it, which is unfortunate.
I spent a fair bit of time trying to find an article or something about this, but came up empty. I was especially curious to know how you can decode the program's bits from the silicon.
I found a similar idea here: http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1/gurudumps1/decap/ind... The photo in the upper-right looks like it could reasonably be turned into binary, if you knew what you were looking at.
Anyone have any more info about how this actually works?
Re: Depackaging the Nintendo 3DS CPU
#33This is incredibly awesome work, and I envy students who can actually take a course in this stuff! However it makes me realize in what kind of weirdly antagonistic society we live. In an ideal universe, you could just ask the Nintendo engineers for the chip layouts, or for the boot ROM. It reminds me of a documentary I saw the other day where they tested the chicken content of chicken salad. Again, in an ideal univer…
In an ideal world, nobody would steal chip designs and boot ROMs to create counterfeit products.
In an ideal world, DS piracy wouldn't have been as rampant and Nintendo wouldn't have needed to add DRM.
Re: Depackaging the Nintendo 3DS CPU
#34Re: Depackaging the Nintendo 3DS CPU
#35That page has web buttons that overlap my scrollbar .... how is that even a thing? please make it stop.
That is div#gadget-dock. It technically located beneath the blog post, but it has a fixed position that is on top of the scroll bar. It has a z-index of 3000, which puts it on top of everything else.
Re: Depackaging the Nintendo 3DS CPU
#36That page has web buttons that overlap my scrollbar .... how is that even a thing? please make it stop.
Not to mention that if you click on any of the images to view the larger version of the images, hitting the back button resets you to the top of the page and you have to re-navigate to where you were. And this is in the latest version of Chrome on a Mac.
What's old is new again.
Re: Depackaging the Nintendo 3DS CPU
#37That page has web buttons that overlap my scrollbar .... how is that even a thing? please make it stop.
For fuck sake, is it possible to have a HN comments page without complaints about the design of TFA? Speak to the author if you have a problem with their site! Don't mumble about it from a distance!
I think it's useful to point out egregious bad behavior in web design/implementation. Others can learn from the mistake, or people who wouldn't necessarily see something wrong with it can learn from the backlash it generates.
Re: Depackaging the Nintendo 3DS CPU
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
In an ideal world, nobody would steal chip designs and boot ROMs to create counterfeit products.
In an ideal world, we'd all be living in a post-scarcity economy with Basic Income and no IP laws and no "currency" to speak of. In an ideal world. An ideal world sounds really cool! The implementation details might get a little crazy though.
An hour goes by and no one has called me on this? "Basic Income" and "no 'currency' to speak of" seem contradictory. I'd go for no currency rather than BI now that I think of it. Replicators for everyone!
Re: Depackaging the Nintendo 3DS CPU
#39As someone who knows nothing about this stuff, can someone explain to me how soaking the CPU in sulfuric acid removes the packaging material, but does no harm to the chip inside?
Sulphuric acid is powerful enough to react with polymers, but not to dissolve silicon.
"does no harm" might be an exaggeration here. It's doubtful you'd have a functional chip. But the fine structure remains, clearly.
Toss some nitric acid in there, forming aqua regia, and you'll dissolve the whole chip including any gold.
Re: Depackaging the Nintendo 3DS CPU
#40I seem to recall that imaging the bootloader ROM straight off the silicon was how the original Gameboy's bootloader was finally pulled out. I just forget who did it, which is unfortunate.
I spent a fair bit of time trying to find an article or something about this, but came up empty. I was especially curious to know how you can decode the program's bits from the silicon. I found a similar idea here: http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1/gurudumps1/decap/ind... The photo in the upper-right looks like it could reasonably be turned into binary, if you knew what you were looking at. Anyone have any more…
Currently on mobile, will update tomorrow.
Start here:
Somewhere in that site they detail the step by step process of decapping, delayering photographing and identifying the logic.
There's also a JavaScript simulator, check it out.
The CCC also had a few lectures about decapping. The most interesting one is about backside scanning the die to bypass the safety features.