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Nintendo       Thread starter PSXHAX       Start date Sep 28, 2017 at 1:46 AM       10      
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While the SNES Classic Edition won't be officially released until September 29th, retrogaming hackers on Reddit already confirmed that Hakchi2 can dump / write the SNES Mini's kernel as-is meaning it's essentially as hackable as the NES Classic Edition was jailbroken earlier this year! :bananaman14:

To quote from SpongeFreak52 on Reddit: Managed to get my Best Buy ordered SNES Mini shipped in this afternoon, so I was excited to start toying with it since it doesn't seem like others have yet.

After playing a few games, I wanted to see how it would behave when thrown at Hakchi2. To my surprise (though I guess I shouldn't have been given the hardware similarities), it CAN have its kernel dumped and re-written with it with the current version. I even threw a NES Mini kernel at it just for kicks (spoiler: nothing happens -- the power light just blinks) then reverted back to the SNES kernel with no issues.

For reference, the SNES Mini's stock kernel is 2,736,128 bytes, compared to the NES's 2,826,240 bytes.

Though I don't assume there's much else that can be done with existing tools at this point, I figured people would be interested to know that the recovery mode seems to behave the same as the NES Mini's.

UPDATE: Looks like full NAND-dumping capabilities are in working order -- a European dump has already even been confirmed bootable on an NES Mini! (credit to /u/madmonkey1907)

As a nice surprise, it looks like Nintendo fully anticipated this, and left a note for tinkerers within the NAND! Hidden within the /etc directory is a file simply named "nineties", which contains:
Code:
Enjoy this Mini,
Disconnect from the present, and
Go back to the nineties.
PS: Thank you guys for the gold! Be sure to send some towards those who actually know what they're doing with this thing though! :)

Thanks to @LightningMods for the news tip in the PSXHAX Shoutbox tonight! (y)
SNES Classic Edition Confirmed Hackable with Hakchi2 by Retrogamers.jpg
 

Comments

Thanks @GrimDoe, I peeked at the Reddit thread yesterday but only saw reports of it without any download links so much appreciated for passing it along! <3

A few more links for devs, open source code for NES and SNES Mini:
Alex Page working on python script that converts SNES ROMs to SNES Classic (.sfrom) format:
https://gist.github.com/anpage/4834433944a2875ee6d4cbb5786c6bf7
https://github.com/ClusterM/hakchi2/releases/latest
 
it was a nice release for a classic console
given the core used, a 5 stage pipelined 32 bit processor.
run it on a cortex A9 and get a buttery smooth performance
of course there are other uses for going digital

though if most corps like nintendo and sony are going down the classic console
makes sense if you are dealing with a quad core cpu as base to port to Free RTOS eh?

added support for 32 bit floating point is fantastic if ppl can understand the build infrastructure
and base for x86
 
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