Zipplet's Stuff

Recently I switched to Delphi 2010 and noticed the sudden increase in output executable size. I spent a short while researching the problem and have put together an article with tips and tricks you can use to get the smallest possible executable out of Delphi 2010.

Shrinking large Delphi 2010 executables - removing RTTI properly

While it does not matter for most projects it does for some - and I hope the article helps those people for whom it matters.

I've just finished putting together an alarm system for my room with a difference - a set of RF keyfobs using the Keeloq protocol are used to arm/disarm and control 2 extra relays (for room lights or so). It proved to be a nice experiment with RF stuff that's also useful

I'll be putting up the schematic/code soon - it's a mess but I'll do it anyway. When I do, you can be sure I'll post the addition to the site news as usual.

I am currently modding a friends megadrive - and taking step by step pictures as I go. Once I've done that I need to draw up a schematic. At that time I will update the megadrive mod page with all of the information needed for you to mod your own megadrive along with a step by step guide.

Stay tuned.

I have added a project to the electronics section. It is an LED driver I built a few months ago that is designed for use with 12V LED strip lights. See the project here. The design is very simple but very efficient

I've uploaded another minor update to zipNES 0.1. The changelog is as follows:

• Changed Dump CHRROM to use proper save dialog (8KB CHRROM/CHRRAM)
  
• Added dump name/attribute data to file (4KB PPU memory)
  
• Added dump sprite data to file (256 byte spriteram)
  
• Added dump palettes to file (32 byte internal array)
  

These had to be finished now as I need them to help me debug the new zipNES releases.

Stay tuned for a couple of cool PIC controlled region mods for the megadrive and SNES

I've joined the DMDirc development team to work on the windows parts of DMDirc (notably parts of the setup program, launcher, updater and uninstaller). Who knows maybe I'll end up working on java bits later?

If you haven't used DMDirc already, what are you waiting for? It's a real alternative to mIRC and my opinion much better than the rest. What's more - it's completely open source and free.

Grab a copy from the official site

I am aware of a reasonably serious issue with zipNES on Windows Vista. The sound is unstable and crackles. There is no quick fix I can apply to the code base without changing the sound output pipeline so I am afraid you wont be able to play with sound on Vista until the next version of zipNES. Sorry

Additionally, Aero will be disabled while zipNES runs because it uses DirectDraw mode. You can work around this by disabling DirectDraw and using GDI. Luckily, any PC capable of Vista Aero will be able to run zipNES in GDI mode perfectly even with a stretched window.

I am pleased to say that zipNES does run well under XP inside Sun VirtualBox for those of you who really want to get it running properly and don't have XP. I've also been told it works well under Wine on linux.

I've uploaded a minor update to zipNES 0.1 to make it slightly more useable. The debugger console has been disabled, the emulator no longer writes CHR files and I disabled CPU exceptions as they are buggy. Grab it from the zipNES project page.

I have decided to resume development of zipNES with new knowledge of Delphi and how the NES works.

To celebrate I've released the latest old version of zipNES 0.1. It's not that great but it lets you see how I got on with delphi a few years ago when I started out.

Get it here