Category Archives: in English

Minecraft LAN bağlantı problemlerini aşmak

My son was playing minecraft 1.4.2 and I was connecting to his game, until suddenly “Open to LAN” option stopped working.

At first, I was able to see the game on LAN servers list, but couldn’t connect it. So I think it’s an outdated version or something, then I updated the game to 1.4.5. As problem continued, I proceed and install latest version, which is 1.4.7 by the time of this writing.

Then I give up and leave my son alone in the game. After a couple of weeks later, he insisted me to join his game to hunt some monsters and XP farming, I decided to fix the issue. Strangely, this time I wasn’t able to see any games on server list.

First I checked if I can see if the game actually opens the port for listening. There is a very nice tools from Radmin, which is called “radmin port scanner“. I scanned my local ports, and found out there is no problem on my local ports, they were open internally. After that, I checked servers ip (which was 192.168.1.3 @win7) from my laptop(192.168.1.30 @win8) at same LAN. This time there was no open ports, so something must be stopping me from reaching server port. This is generally a firewall or badly configured router.

Then I realized when I open a game to LAN, minecraft thinks that the game runs on 0.0.0.0 not 192.168.1.3. When I opened win7’s network configuration screen, I immediately see the root of the problem, which is VMware’s virtual network services. I disabled the virtual ethernet devices, and restarted minecraft, the game started to get a proper ip adress again.

Now I was able to see the game in the local servers list on my laptop, but still unable to login to the game. First I disabled laptop (win8) firewall. (I do not recommend this on a public LAN, such as an airport or workplace as there may be vigilante computers around). Nothing changed. Then I proceed to disable server’s firewall (win7), and the LAN game started working again.

SO IN SHORT,

1. If you got minecraft lan game 0.0.0.0 ip problem:
Solution: You got more than one active network connection in your machine. You have to disable any other connection device on your computer. Go to “Network and sharing center”, right click and “disable” network devices&connections other than your main connection. (such as virtual networks set by virtual machine programs)

2. Minecraft lan game not showing up:
Solution: Your server cannot broadcast if a game is open, check your firewall rules. This has nothing to do with client’s firewall config.

3. If your minecraft lan game gives “connection timed out” error, even though you can see your local game on servers list:
Solution: Disable firewall on both ends (server&client). Don’t forget to disable, public, private and domain level firewalls individually. You can do this by typing “check firewall status” at start button search. And do not forget to re-enable it after playing. Warning, this is a security risk. But if this is your home router, you are already protected by your router, as it is an actual firewall by default, no computer can reach your computers from outside (using internet) unless you configured your router to allow that.

Normally you don’t need to disable your firewall, but I couldn’t find which program to allow through firewall. I allowed all java execs, minecraft jar files but no joy. If you can, it’s better to create a firewall rule for JavaVm, and minecraft rather than disabling it.

Zx Spectrum Graphics (G) Mode Editor: CheqEdit (For Zx Spectrum and ZX81)

CheqEdit
it’s a simple and small program that helps you to draw 64×48 graphics on screen in GRAPHICS MODE. Program can output as text in CHR$ format, control codes format, a special compressed data format or special Basin/Zmakebas format, all in Basic. (Edit: Chris Cowley reminded me that this mode is native resolution for ZX81, and as CheqEdit already supports zmakebas style output, it is somehow compatible with zx81 graphics.)

Program can also import/export image files (bmp, png, jpg etc..).
What is it for?
if you want to create big graphics using G mode, this program can help you.

How to import text into zx spectrum?
This is tricky, you have to find an emulator or a tool to convert plain text into zx basic format. I recommend using basin. For Zx81 there is a program called “zxtext2p”. You can find it’s web address at the bottom of the post.

Here is the screens:

Editing with a mouse (screencap software couldn't capture mouse)

Read more and download:

Continue reading Zx Spectrum Graphics (G) Mode Editor: CheqEdit (For Zx Spectrum and ZX81)

Connecting Ericsson Chatboard to a GP32

What the heck is a GP32?

It’s a first generation “open” handheld console, possibly the first one. Gp32 is designed and sold by a Korean Company called Gamepark (Creators of caanoo, wiz, gp2x etc). It has a big 3.5″ color LCD, 133mhz 32bit ARM processor, 8MB ram. It has no custom cpu or gpu, everything is handled by the CPU. The GP32 was sold between 2002-2005, then superceeded by Gp2X.  In it’s golden years, the console’s community was flourished by counltess homebrew originals, countless software ports and hardware hacks. There are even some original boxed smc cardtridge games. There are no official sales figures, but GP32 is suspected to sold about 15000 units worldwide.

a GP32 handheld console

We will take a look at the keyboard enhancement for GP32: a simple chatboard hack. Read on:

Continue reading Connecting Ericsson Chatboard to a GP32

Zx Spectrum’da SNA to Tap converter

Çevirici

 

 

While I was messing with my zx microdrives, I decided to put some games into one of my old microdrive carts for quick loading. But this proved to be not only difficult task, also it spinned off two different tools out of discussion: zxBoot and SnapToTap.

 

Converting sinclair zx spectrum snapshot (sna) files into standard loading tap files: Not an easy task at all!

There were some tolls to convert snapshots into Tape files, but because of the very nature of snapshot files and the way of starting them once they loaded, it is impossible (read:impossible) to load a snapshot into zx spectrum without corrupting the snapshot itself. To do this properly you need additional hardware.

a Snapshot file is a full memory backup *with* extra CPU register data. Speaking of which, that data resides *inside* CPU. So you need a way to put the data into CPU before resuming snapshot state. Ofcourse this task also need to handled with CPU itself, which needs some code to reside in RAM, which also corrupts snapshot image. But this is not the only issue.

The goal was to put snapshot files into zx microdrive. But you will need a custom loader which loads the data from microdrive. There are none. Or you will need a converter which converts the snapshot into a standard loading code block. You couldn’t find one of thouse either.

Standard loader always tries to return to basic after loading is done. Because it is a basic component. But a snapshot occupies whole memory, so basic will be overwritten while you load snapshot block. And even if you manage to load the all 48k of ram from tape, it will crash your machine because standard rom loader will return to address that’s not there anymore.

The trick is the preserve small portion of basic just to execute the loaded code.

I used bitbuster (originally developed for MSX by team bomba) compressor. It’s very effective windows based packer normally reduces almost every 48k image atleast by %10 which produces about 5k, more than enough for us to fit in basic. Also the z80 decompressor is 79bytes long, plus some bytes as buffer, that it won’t be corrupting that much.

So I managed to create a clever program to decompress, move, merge the snapshot data, load the registers into cpu and finaly jump the the program counter location of snapsot image thus executing image.

The result was VSC, a proof of concept, an experiment over converting snapshots into tap files.

While this program re-invented in WOS forums a while ago, and people complained about the crapness of gui, I prepared a simplistic gui with automatic converting: it is SnapToTap. You drag and drop the file and it will create a tapfile highly compressed thus loaded in seconds, and with standard loader!

So there are two versions. Here is the downloads:

1. Latest version 2.4: Snaptotap 2.4 download)

2. First release: Visual Snapshot Converter – 250kb advanced controls, optional uncompressed converter, you can decide where to put executer code thus preserving screen or any other data–do not try to use this, I really messed up while creating a gui. 🙂

Snaptotap r2

A little bit warning about the tools:

No error checking, so it may crash time to time, it’s normal. Resart the app and try again.

Those are dotnet framework binaries, you will need .net framework 2.0+ to run them. Windows Only!

If snaptotap didn’t work for you, try asm’s zxboot for command line support, but it’s still windows only.

ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection (iPhone)

25 yıllık yazılım firması “Elite”, yeni iTunes uygulamalarını duyurdu:

Bugünden itibaren iPhone kullanıcıları, sadece 56 Pence’e (1$’dan az) zx spectrum emülasyonu yapabilecekler. Elite Kolleksionundaki oyunlar şöyle imiş:

– Turbo Esprit #3 on top 100 best games, voted for by visitors to World of Spectrum
– Saboteur #10 on top 100 best games
– Chuckie Egg the classic, developed by Nigel Alderton
– Harrier Attack inspired by the conflict in the South Atlantic
– Frank Bruno’s Boxing the UK #1 Best-Seller
– Buggy Boy the arcade original driving game

http://www.elite-systems.co.uk/elite/htdocs/user_home.php?show=26

Doğrusu, Chuckie Egg’i düşününce, touch screen kullanarak nasıl oynanacağını bilemiyorum. Kaldı ki, diğer oyunların aksine, bence o oyun sadece ve sadece orjinal 48K’nın kauçuk tuşlarıyla mükemmel oynanabilir.

cULA64 V5 is out.

in order to satisfy feature hungry spectrum users, I’ve updated the ConvertUla64 (cULA64) utiliy. This version includes latest patches from scrPlus0.12 and gui based batch conversion mode.


I tried to tidy up the UI, but it still looks ugly.

Warning, I updated sources during lunch break at work, so there may be plenty of bugs. Please feel free to report bugs here.

Download here: CULA64_v5.zip 40kb


Kullanıcılardan gelen istekler doğrultusunda CULA64’ün son sürümüne toplu iş yapabilme seçeneği ekendi. Artık bir klasördeki tüm dosyaları tek seferde dönüştürebileceksiniz. Ayrıca çevirici kodu 0.12’ye yamalandı.

Bu metni yazdığım sırada farkettiğim birşey, kasördeki dosya isimlerini sadece küçük harf olduklarında toplu işe verebiliyorsunuz. Bunu yakında düzeltirim. Programı iş yerinde yemek arasında güncellediğim için pek test etme fırsatım olmadı.

Buyrun çekin: CULA64_v5.zip 40kb