Probably at least $10 a piece. Do they have APA075 or APA150 FPGA on them? I have a DMS3 I got ages ago, can't decide whether it's worth re-attempting an install or just parting it for a N64 SD adapter.
Aren't these chips lockable with password ? Won't the password keep them from being erased (and reused ?)?
Hm, didn't know about this... What a shame! There are TONS of Actel chips out there begging to be recycled. That may be the case but the devices are single supply awesomeness.
Accoriding to other sites, they are upgradable, so I'd think not. I've got the Actel tools installed on my other drive, could boot it up and have a look to see about that. Think you can stop the code being read from the device but not overwritten.
Normally that's the case but these actually do lock writing. If an Actel chip is upgradeable through a dongle, the software must contain the unlock code. I'm quite positive DMS chip fusemaps however are not user-upgradeable, just the external FlashROM which is memory mapped. ViperGC is the only user-upgradeable logic-based chip I've seen, but even that might not update the FPGA.
Actel devices with the "Flash lock" feature (they have an logo on the corner with an F inside of an white square and what looks to be a handle of a key right under it) can be password locked. Edit: These devices were used on modchip designs not because they're beautiful or useful, they were chosen because they would make reverse engineering annoying enough to be discouraged. That didn't keep Chinese counterfeiters from applying the "black box approach" to some of these modchips... (lol ironically these modchips apply the very same "black box approach" to the system they're designed to hack. "poetic justice", huh ?)
The Actel chip on Matrix Infinity chip does have that feature, right? Why it has so many clones? Matrix Infinity is a great modchip but there were TONS of clones. Most of these clones would "die" if you tried to acess the modchip settings menu.
You're not familiar with reverse engineering, right ? No worries I'll explain. The "Black box approach" is when one analyzes all the behaviors involving a certain part of a circuit with complex tools such as, for example an logic analyzer and then attempt to make an compatible replacement for the said part which is being treated as an "black box". Similar as arcade games protected by MPUs on MAME. They reverse engineer the game program and attempt to simulate what would be the protection MCU behavior. That usually cause the games to behave differently than what it would behave like on the real hardware as the MCU is also processing some part of the game program, the emulator is missing the original MCU program and MCU simulation isn't right. Inconsistencies on the behavior of the cloned matrix chips are due to differences on the behavior of the replacement PLD chip being used in place of the original (and copy protected) Actel chip. :thumbsup: So, the clones are using the PS2 ROM patches and internal Matrix software/Menus (the contents of the matrix dataflash ) but not the Actel chip. The matrix menu has detections for the Actel chip but the Chinese counterfeiters got around it through "black box reverse engineering"...
I actually understood when you mentioned the "black box" approach. I was only questioning why Matrix Infinity had so many clones, while the DMS3 never had these kind of problems. Any ideas? The DMS4 was far more advanced and it would be very difficult indeed (it even had it's own HD Loader from the modchip), but the DMS3 was on the same "generation" of Matrix Infinity. It was even launched before it.
