bowwowxx/hakchi2

NES Mini pimp tool

hakchi2

NES Mini pimp tool

This application can add more games to your Nintendo Classic Mini. All you need is to connect it to PC via microUSB cable. No soldering, no disassembling.

So you are hacked NES Mini?

No! It was my russian сomrade madmonkey. He created original “hakchi” tool. It was not very user friendly so I decided to create tool which is simple for everyone, not only Linux users. I named it “hakchi2” because I don’t like to coming up with names. So first version was 2.0 :)

How to use it?

Basically you need just to unpack it somewhere (installation not required), run it, press “Add more games”, select some ROMs and press “Synchronize”. Application will guide you.

How it’s working?

You don’t need to worry about it. But if you really want to know it’s using FEL mode. FEL is a low-level subroutine contained in the BootROM on Allwinner devices. It is used for initial programming and recovery of devices using USB. So we can upload some code into RAM and execute it. In this way we can read Linux kernel (yes, NES Mini runs on Linux), write kernel or execute kernel from memory without writing it to flash. So we can dump kernel image of NES Mini, unpack it, add some games and script which will copy them to flash, repack, upload and execute. But games directory is on read only partition. So we need also to create and flash custom kernel with special script that creates sandbox folder on writable partition and mounts it over original games folder. So your original files are safe. You can’t delete or harm original files in any way. For kernel patching my application just executing other applications, that’s why there is “tools” folder.