______                     
                 /      |       ________     
                /       |____  /        \    
               /        |    \/   _      \   
               \       ___       /_\      \  
                \      \_/          .      \ 
                 \          /\_____/       / 
                  \________/      |       /  
                                  |______/   

qoob-flasher on FreeBSD

Sometimes ago I dug up my old GameCube to give a try to GBI, a very impressive homebrew alternative to the Game Boy Player Start-up Disc.

To load homebrews, the GC had been modded 10 years ago by someone with a now impossible to find Qoob Chip Pro. This great modchip was only provided with a Windows software to flash it. However while looking for a copy of the program, I stumbled upon a really nice Linux CLI version by Joni Valtanen. The software compiles and run fine on Debian, but I also wanted to have it available on FreeBSD. As it turns out, making it working for FreeBSD was fairly straightforward. Crappy patches below.

The flashing software comes in two parts: libqoob and qoob-flasher. Only libqoob sources need to be very slightly adjusted. FreeBSD comes with a specific libusb implementation, so there is no need to check for the regular one while configuring, but the libqoob pkg-config file needs to be edited to point to the libusb shipped with the OS. Also, pkg-config files are not located in a subdir of the lib directory on FreeBSD. All together, some changes need to be made to Makefile.am, configure.ac and libqoob.pc.in:

libqoob/Makefile.am:

diff --git a/libqoob/Makefile.am b/libqoob/Makefile.am
index 51cc260..7adacfb 100644
--- a/libqoob/Makefile.am
+++ b/libqoob/Makefile.am
@@ -7,7 +7,11 @@ all-local: $(pcfiles)
 %.pc: %.pc
        cp $< $@
 
+if FREEBSD
+pkgconfigdir = /usr/local/libdata/pkgconfig
+else
 pkgconfigdir = $(libdir)/pkgconfig
+endif
 pkgconfig_DATA = $(pcfiles)
 
 deb-install:

libqoob/configure.ac:

diff --git a/libqoob/configure.ac b/libqoob/configure.ac
index 0ff95f2..13a0df2 100644
--- a/libqoob/configure.ac
+++ b/libqoob/configure.ac
@@ -16,9 +16,18 @@ if test -z "$PKG_CONFIG" ; then
   AC_MSG_ERROR( pkg-config is required )
 fi
 
-PKG_CHECK_MODULES(libusb, [libusb >= 0.1.12], , AC_MSG_ERROR( libusb >= 0.1-12 
is required ))
-AC_SUBST(libusb_CFLAGS)
-AC_SUBST(libusb_LIBS)
+if test "$(uname)" == "FreeBSD"; then
+  PKG_CHECK_MODULES(libusb, [libusb-0.1 >= 0.1], , AC_MSG_ERROR( libusb >= 0.1 
is required ))
+  AC_SUBST(libusb_CFLAGS)
+  AC_SUBST(libusb_LIBS)
+  AC_SUBST(PACKAGE_REQUIRES, [libusb-0.1])
+  AM_CONDITIONAL([FREEBSD], [true])
+else
+  PKG_CHECK_MODULES(libusb, [libusb >= 0.1.12], , AC_MSG_ERROR( libusb >= 0.1-12 is required ))
+  AC_SUBST(libusb_CFLAGS)
+  AC_SUBST(libusb_LIBS)
+  AC_SUBST(PACKAGE_REQUIRES, [libusb])
+fi
 
 dnl debug
 AC_ARG_ENABLE(debug,

libqoob/libqoob.pc.in:

diff --git a/libqoob/libqoob.pc.in b/libqoob/libqoob.pc.in
index 027e026..559e77c 100644
--- a/libqoob/libqoob.pc.in
+++ b/libqoob/libqoob.pc.in
@@ -6,6 +6,6 @@ includedir=@includedir@/libqoob
 Name: libqoob
 Description: Qoob Pro flasher library
 Version: @VERSION@
-Requires: libusb
+Requires: @PACKAGE_REQUIRES@ 
 Libs: -L${libdir} -lqoob
 Cflags: -I${includedir}

Almost there. FreeBSD needs free() from its own memory allocation functions:

diff --git a/libqoob/src/qoob-defaults.h b/libqoob/src/qoob-defaults.h
index aa17409..116f2f1 100644
--- a/libqoob/src/qoob-defaults.h
+++ b/libqoob/src/qoob-defaults.h
@@ -20,6 +20,11 @@
 #ifndef _QOOB_DEFAULTS_H_
 #define _QOOB_DEFAULTS_H_
 
+#if defined(__FreeBSD__)
+#include <stdlib.h>
+#include <malloc_np.h>
+#endif
+
 /* Common typedefs */
 typedef enum {
   QOOB_FALSE = 0,

Now libqoob will compile and install fine, and qoob-flasher will configure, compile and install nicely out of the box on both Linux and FreeBSD.

It’s now time to plug your qoob’ed GC which will be claimed by the generic USB HID module:

ugen1.2: <QooB Team> at usbus1
uhid0: <QooB Team QOOB Chip Pro, class 0/0, rev 1.10/1.00, addr 2> on usbus1

However unlike on Linux, qoob-flasher will not be bothered by that, so there is a no need to blacklist the device! And now let’s flash some homebrew :)