The SP case.

Himmel, I hate those sect cases. If they want to reach enlightenment, I can offer them a small estate where the light on the ceiling never turns off. I got one at the office. But the clue my informant Gilles dropped me leaves no doubt about it. The meditating guru is back, and where he goes, he always leaves a red trail behind.

Of course, he had to be back just we were celebrating the nomination of City's new Release. A promising release in fact. With almost as much guts and balls as I've got guns and bullets. I'm afraid he'll have a though time getting us rid of corruption where he lays. I remember hearing the Chief warning he that he pushed too far. "You are trying to get things too perfect", the Chief said. "But you shouldn't be in such a rush to do it. I'm not sure there is room for so much perfection in our City as it is now."

I'd better be in my bed than chasing the guru's minion in a smelly car. But I can wash my car next week... the City's honour is not likely to wait that long. The younger brother of our fresh Release is already getting media attention, promising to take over the duties of his beloved elder. I knocked Malloc on the door, as usual, but for once he seemed clean. Maybe a bit too clean. I suspect he could have avoided the drama if he felt like moving a mere finger. But you know how Malloc is. Claim that you will do garbage collection to get a clean City, rid of corruption and you know he will stare and wait for you to collect yourself.

I tried to hook on Noda, too. He's been seen on riots against the Devkit's establishment with his anti-ARGV claims, free-EFS for all and so on. He used to hang around on the docks. Looks like he now hangs. Period. The guru again ? Perhaps. But the murderer forgot something behind, this time. There was some pointer showing that Mr. Stack has been breaking away his parole. He shouldn't have moved any further than 16K from his home, in 3e' block of district B, and here he was, at 0xAFFFF58. I'm pretty sure if I get my hands on him, he'll sing.

Either that, or I'll find a place where I could find another bottle.

tout ça pour faire un clin-d'oeil à Gilles pour avoir attiré mon attention sur un couac que j'ai laissé passer. Avec une mémoire de seulement 16Ko pour la pile, y ajouter une copie des 6 maps (un peu moins de 2Ko chacune) destinées à l'écran de statut, c'était une mauvaise idée. Faire une release sans avoir re-testé l'ensemble sur le vrai hardware encore plus. Comme quoi, les jours d'optimisations de la NES ne sont pas encore complètement obsolètes

Bowels of the Memory Manager ...

With cases stacking up, I got used to ignore all those testimonies that pretend that "Malloc is the killer, I've seen him". I wouldn't trade Malloc's skin for my oldest pair of gloves, as he's always the first one people blame.
Bah. People. What do they know about crime, after all...

Hopefully, I have other noses for such cases, so I paid tracemem.pl a visit and showed him the shots Coroner GDB gave me from the victim.
At first, Tracemem pretended to know nothing about that laying frame... he always does, until I provide him hexadecimal evindence he can't deny, as the victim's and suspects addresses.
"Free(man) is cheating you", he finally dropped, panting. "Look at those figures: these are not even addresses. I have no idea what this is, but this is certainly not addresses".
"When you've got no idea, Tracemem, it usually means you've seen them last week. I don't need idea, I need info. Tell me what you know".
"Okay, okay" he added "take it easy... You shouldn't mess up with those guys, really. They're trading bare hex they compile themselves in a hideout they name "AnimEDS". They say they can make you move in ways you've never experienced before. I don't have anything to do with these guys, right ? I just serve drinks when people order. I don't want any trouble".

I'd lost almost half a week, and all I know is that the last address where Free had been seen is fake, and actually a room in a building owned by someone else in the AnimEDS gang. Not yet enough to get the cavalry moving. I had need for another vision of the problem. I went to Doc Xygen and showed him the remains of GameScript. "I want descriptions", I insisted, "don't puzzle me with line numbers". I didn't tell him that pictures in malloc.h were made up from archives, but that's the best way to make him sing. With his usual frenzy, Doc Xygen started to show all the connection he could find. Among the expected ones, however, there were surprising exchanges. "Wait, SpriteSet got some cans from Malloc and directly sell them back to Free ?" I asked.
"Elementary", the Doc said, "SpriteSet is low on stack. With only 16K brutto, he's got to rent space to Malloc&Free for his loading activities on the docks.
Nothing to worry about. But ... hmmm ... *this* is interesting", he said, drawing a red circle around a triangle of pictures among the boxes and arrow he had scribbled all over the desk. "Interresting?"
"Clearly", he said. "Look, GobAnim and GameScript both tried to sell back some cans to Free, a few cycles from each other! Both pretending that they had the exclusivity on products by A'n'Im Eds"
"So they would have a tussle next to Free's place just as Malloc was going out!?"
"Of course", added the Doc. "Malloc gets back the cans that Free buys to the dockers, optionnally clears them and sells them back to other dockers. Everyone blame them, but noone else has cans to provide ..."

I fixed my hat and thanked the doctor: Malloc & Free's dubious activities are none of my business. I had a name to give to my client, and he'd be able to deliver his new product in due time. Happy clients make larger checks.

7 of 9 -- personal Log

27/11 : quelque soit le code ARM7 que j'utilise (le mien modifié, celui de Tobias ou le code DefaultARm7), runme ne passe pas le cap "sync with 7" sur l'ARM9 ...
28/11 : avec le code ARM7 de Tobias et le code ARM9 de l'exemple httpget.c, je parviens à avoir une transmission WiFi fonctionnelle. C'est donc (contre toute attente) le code ARM9 qui foire.
29/11 : la présence d'IrqInit() dans le code de GuiEngine::prepare() était clairement une des causes d'erreur, mais je ne sais pas encore dire si c'était la seule. Je vais devoir continuer à importer petit à petit les fonctionnalités de runme sur cette nouvelle base pour mettre le doigt sur les éléments perturbateurs.

Seven's log, stardate 201011.27 -- I am trapped in my ARM7 cortical implants. Although I could potentially still communicate with the WiFi collective -- if any was at short range -- I have lost connection with the ARM9 behaviour controller that would allow me to communicate with the crew of the Voyager. I have analysed the defect starfleet fifosystem.c that the Doctor installed to replace my damaged borg implants that is the root cause of my malfunction. The only tool I have to operate is a standard DESMuMe tricorder from the federation filled with irrelevant features, and that reaches only 67.3% of the efficience of a corresponding Borg nanoprobe.

Seven's log, supplemental -- A double initialisation of my interrupt mask might be the cause of this FIFO dysfunction. Deeper inspection of the starfleet FIFO protocol revealed a rigid structure with 16 virtual channels and imperfect typing of messages into one-word addresses, one-word value and external larger dataquads. I will resume my investigation when my refresh cycle is complete.


PS: curieux qu'avec le couple de processeurs ARM7 et ARM9, personne (que je connaisse) n'ai fait le rapprochement entre la DS de nintendo et le borg converti "Seven of Nine" de Star Trek : Voyager, vous ne trouvez pas ?

Note: j'aimerais bien également en savoir plus sur le support des fonctions FIFO dans desmume ... je note par exemple dans la fonction _MMU_ARM9_write32

case REG_IPCFIFOSEND :

  IPC_FIFOsend(ARMCPU_ARM9, val);

  return;

Mais aussi (dans le même fichier FIFO.cpp) des fonctions GFX_FIFOsend, apparemment utilisées par l'implémentation des fonctions 3d -- et qui n'a donc probablement rien à voir dans le cas qui m'intéresse.

PS: to the devkitpro and desmume teams : no offense intended. That's Seven's "personality". Watch season 4 of Star Trek Voyager if you haven't yet: you'll know what I mean.

PPS: here's a patch against svn revision 3601 of desmume that enhance debugging of FIFO by
1) enabling per-direction logging of writes to FIFO registers through the DESMUME_FIFOLOG environment variable
2) uses location 0x04042000 as REG_DEBUG : everytime you write some 32-bit word there, it will be dumped -- together with processor no and PC value -- on STDERR.
I don't think I have "fixed" anything, so it looks like r3601 of desmume-cli already supported the full FIFO features (even though generation of interrupts are a bit obscured and could use some more documentation), but it could certainly help people understanding or validating the fifosystem.c of libnds, or other ARM7 initialisation code.

Stuck again >_<

A peine avais-je corrigé cette histoire de "blocage en tombant au sol" que je me rends compte que Bilou peut à nouveau se retrouver coincé dans un mur >_<.
J'ai un peu pataugé pour trouver le soucis (de nouveau lié au changement que j'ai introduis il y a une ou deux semaines), entre autres parce que je cherchais au mauvais endroit. La dernière fois qu'une telle chose s'était produite, c'est le "StopController" qui ne vérifiait pas que Bilou ne rentrait pas dans les murs. Mais cette fois-ci, rien.

Himmel! Just after I fixed the land-and-got-stuck case I mentioned last week, I got a phone call from GuiEngine, asking me to find out who smashed Bilou into a wall up to the point that he became definitely stuck! Once again, I suspected a side-effect of the new way events are managed, and investigated collision checks in StopperController who were involved in similar cases a while ago.

J'ai finalement repris les choses à la base, avec la fonction "pas à pas" de l'InspectorWidget -- maintenant totalement rétabli, pour me rendre compte tout d'abord que c'était bien pendant que Bilou marche qu'il heurtait les murs, mais aussi que le problème ne venait pas d'un signal FAIL mal traité, mais du fait que les contrôleurs (en l'occurence la gestion de l'inertie) générait des EVENT à tort et à travers, court-circuitant certains tests.

But the stopper was innocent this time. I was sneaking on the wrong guy. I was walking down dark, cobble streets, under pouring rain with hope that one of my contacts would sing me a clue... in vain.
I sat down and opted for another strategy, reviewed the facts and the pictures shot by Inspector Widget one after the other, and the truth at last appeared to me in a flash: Bilou was walking when he got embossed into the wall. It turned clear that DDD had lied to me and that he should be paid another visit. "You asked me about FAILures!", he said crawling on the ground, "I told you all I knew about them !..." - "You did", I replied, "and still you knew there was more to tell. Where can I find DPAD and Momentum ? They're hinding since the start of this case!". Panting and flickering, it didn't take long for DDD to sing after I pointed my breakpoint at him. Before the end of the hour, I had Momentum tied on the back seats of a car: he'd never forge fake speed limit reports again.