homebrew

105 Articles

USB Gameboy Cart

August 28, 2009 by 20 Comments

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[Jose Torres] sent in his latest attempt at creating a custom Gameboy game cartridge. We’ve featured his projects before, and he’s come a lot closer over the last 2 years. He’s aiming to create an easy interface for homebrewers that doesn’t require any other special equipment. In this revision, he’s using a PIC and a memory controller to interface between an SD card and the Gameboy. The cart also has USB support for uploading files to the SD card and reprogramming the PIC. Because it’s just USB mass storage, it will work on almost any modern OS. He’s currently testing the device, but hopes to be selling them soon for $40.

Homebrew Wii Via The Bannerbomb Exploit

August 21, 2009 by 26 Comments

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The Twilight Princess hack doesn’t work on newer versions of the Nintendo Wii, but thanks to a new exploit for the Wii, homebrew is still possible. Using an SD card and a few files, you can have the homebrew channel up and running in no time. The folks at Lifehacker show us how it’s done. It’s good to see that the Wii modding community is still in full force. Hopefully, this won’t turn into a back and forth battle between modders and Nintendo, like it has with Sony and the PSP.

New PSP Leaked

May 30, 2009 by 54 Comments

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Engadget has video from the June 2009 episode of Qore that shows the new PSP Go. It has a slide out gamepad, 16GB internal storage, bluetooth, and a memory slot of some sort. We’re naturally curious about its potential as a homebrew platform. Will Sony take the mature route they did with the PS3 and let you run Linux or will they continue the firmware arms race the PSP is known for? We’ll be hearing more about this platform at E3 next week.

Nintendo DSi Teardown

April 7, 2009 by 27 Comments

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Now that the Nintendo DSi has been officially released in the US, the team at iFixit has worked their magic. That magic being: completely disassembling it. They found the new 840mAh battery to be much smaller than the DS Lite’s 1000mAh. The device features two cameras, but both are a paltry 0.3megapixels. They note that this is the first Nintendo device that they’ve taken apart that didn’t require a tri-wing screwdriver.

Many more DSi compatible flash carts are available now than our initial report in December, so you can pick up a Nintendo DSi for homebrew without worry.

[via iFixit blog]

Brew Fridge Thermostat

March 22, 2009 by 32 Comments

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Reader [Will R] sent in a thermostat mod for his brew fridge. His friends had found a perfectly fine bar refrigerator and wanted to repurpose it for brewing beer. A previous batch of microbrew had been mangled by the Australian heat so they wanted something that could maintain the perfect temperature. The fridge’s built-in thermostat wouldn’t rise above 5 degrees so they had to build their own. [Will] used a 10K NTC thermistor to measure the temperature. It’s connected to an ATtiny25 microcontroller that does the comparison and determines whether to turn on the compressor. He referenced SparkFun’s relay tutorial for the switching side. Although he didn’t etch a board for this project, the design file is included along with all the code on the project site.

FiSSION 3D Game Engine For Wii Homebrew

January 31, 2009 by 36 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd1DrN2PDt4]

[PunMaster] wrote in to tell us that he has just released the first public demo of FiSSION Project. It’s a homebrew 3D game engine for the Wii. He’s hoping it will make development easier for other people that want to get into the Wii hacking scene. The project was originally spun out of similar work he was doing targeted at XNA for the 360. This is just a demo to generate interest in the project and hopefully get some feedback as to what’s needed to make a full release possible.

UK Raid Seizes 1,800 Flash Cartridges

December 19, 2008 by 46 Comments

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South Wales Police raided a store in Cardiff seizing 1,800 Nintendo DS flash carts. The devices can be used for playing pirated games or running homebrew software. In the UK, the carts are illegal under the Trademarks and Copyright Acts. The 21-year-old suspect had imported the devices and was selling them both online and in-store. He had over 1,000 devices in his home. Many of them packed and ready to ship. Official statements by the Entertainment and Leisure Publishers Association claim that the hardware irreparably damages the DS handhelds.

[via Joystiq]