5 ms·

First Glimpse into the Soul of a Tamagotchi

76 points by austengary 13y ago

mikecane 13y ago
It was discovered with the original Tamagotchi that never disciplining it led to the pseudo-human incarnation. And a Tamagotchi's death was often a bit traumatic to small kids. I wonder how many nihilists it created?
raldi 13y ago
> I dumped the ROM of a Tamagotchi using the code execution ability... I don't understand this. She could execute arbitrary code but couldn't just rip the ROM directly?
- glurgh 13y ago
  There's a presentation of hers from what looks like last year that describes the hoops she's jumped through to try to get ROM dumps http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/attachments/2097_Tamagotchi.ppt http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/attachments/2097... There are videos of it around, it seems, from various conferences.
- danbruc 13y ago
  The ROM is mask ROM inside the microcontroller and not directly accessible. At first she was only able to modify the content of an external EEPROM for keeping game state connected via I2C and emulate another external (mask) ROM - something like a game cartridge for extending the game - containing mostly images and a single byte triggering additional game logic connected via SPI. Then she found a way to trigger a jump into the LCD RAM by messing with the later ROM and she had already control over the LCD RAM content by modifying the images on that ROM. So finally she used this code execution ability to dump the mask ROM in the microcontroller. I hope I got it right.
  - raldi 13y ago
    Thank you; that was an extremely informative yet concise reply.
rbanffy 13y ago
And to think my first "real" computer had a 6502 inside it...
sp332 13y ago
Her talk at the Chaos Communication Congress is a great introduction to the executable environment of the Tamagotchi, and a fun story to boot! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOJfUcCOhJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOJfUcCOhJ0
hayksaakian 13y ago
Oh no! Bandwidth Limit Exceeded The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later. Apache/2.2.22 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.22 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 Phusion_Passenger/3.0.15 mod_bwlimited/1.4 mod_wsgi/3.3 Python/2.5 Server at www.kwartzlab.ca Port 80
- ANTSANTS 13y ago
  For the time being, here is Google's cached version of the page, sadly missing the images. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.kwartzlab.ca/2013/05/first-glimpse-soul-tamagotchi/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.kwa...
i386 13y ago
I wonder how long until this gets taken down by a DMCA request. IANAL, I don't think dumping the ROM and uploading it to Github is legal.

76 points by austengary 13y ago

It was discovered with the original Tamagotchi that never disciplining it led to the pseudo-human incarnation. And a Tamagotchi's death was often a bit traumatic to small kids. I wonder how many nihilists it created?

raldi 13y ago

> I dumped the ROM of a Tamagotchi using the code execution ability... I don't understand this. She could execute arbitrary code but couldn't just rip the ROM directly?

glurgh 13y ago
There's a presentation of hers from what looks like last year that describes the hoops she's jumped through to try to get ROM dumps http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/attachments/2097_Tamagotchi.ppt http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/attachments/2097... There are videos of it around, it seems, from various conferences.
danbruc 13y ago
The ROM is mask ROM inside the microcontroller and not directly accessible. At first she was only able to modify the content of an external EEPROM for keeping game state connected via I2C and emulate another external (mask) ROM - something like a game cartridge for extending the game - containing mostly images and a single byte triggering additional game logic connected via SPI. Then she found a way to trigger a jump into the LCD RAM by messing with the later ROM and she had already control over the LCD RAM content by modifying the images on that ROM. So finally she used this code execution ability to dump the mask ROM in the microcontroller. I hope I got it right.
- raldi 13y ago
  Thank you; that was an extremely informative yet concise reply.

rbanffy 13y ago

And to think my first "real" computer had a 6502 inside it...

sp332 13y ago

Her talk at the Chaos Communication Congress is a great introduction to the executable environment of the Tamagotchi, and a fun story to boot! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOJfUcCOhJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOJfUcCOhJ0

hayksaakian 13y ago

Oh no! Bandwidth Limit Exceeded The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later. Apache/2.2.22 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.22 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 Phusion_Passenger/3.0.15 mod_bwlimited/1.4 mod_wsgi/3.3 Python/2.5 Server at www.kwartzlab.ca Port 80

ANTSANTS 13y ago
For the time being, here is Google's cached version of the page, sadly missing the images. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.kwartzlab.ca/2013/05/first-glimpse-soul-tamagotchi/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.kwa...

i386 13y ago

I wonder how long until this gets taken down by a DMCA request. IANAL, I don't think dumping the ROM and uploading it to Github is legal.