Comments on: New Wii drive hardware emulation

By: launceston computers

launceston computers — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:34:44 +0000

Its really an awesome hack.But actually its not need since already we have an ability to download ISOs from the USB card. But this is the one of the cooler hacks that I have ever seen so far. Thanks for sharing this.

By: Unlock Nintendo Wii

Unlock Nintendo Wii — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:47:34 +0000

You can now unlock your Wii to play copied and import Wii games, plus homebrew and DVD's WITHOUT a mod chip using the New Wii Unlock Hack!

By: 3rix

3rix — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:24:10 +0000

@Mr F
Fuck you man, there are some great title’s on the Wii.

Although Nintendo’s games have gotten pretty bad.

By: tmbinc

tmbinc — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:48:19 +0000

Homebrew Channel to allow selection of ISO?

No.

Pirate’s Channel.

I really thought that the hackaday folks were smarter to not fall the “unofficial code == piracy” trap. I was wrong.

By: Stone

Stone — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:59:33 +0000

Nintendo used to make a cartridge-loading GameCube for development – it emulated the optical drive in just this way, with a large HDD in each cart (up to 4 images possible per cart). Google ‘NPDP’. History repeating itself :)

By: PidGin128

PidGin128 — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:03:05 +0000

@treg + @Blizarddemon + @polossatic : Thanks for the flatmii info, I never heard of it [the page is somewhat barren, but I'll find more.]

@Lank : The wii hardware is USB 2.0, but the stock IOS usb drivers are 1.1 only atm. so naturally, the users made their own 2.0 support. similar to the SDHC support being homebrew first.

@WodeDev : You got a homepage now, woo… Will you be providing detailed technical info? or are you going to keep this closed? Also, I don’t see how this will interface in a wii base type case, since that makes dis/assembling the wii itself tricky.

Also, going at faster rates than an optical disc supports /could/ be detected, and would be a little suspicious, so you would be able to do normal speed at best. [unless N' doesn't care atm.]

Does anyone know the interface on the wii’s optical drive? Also, can anyone chime in about the feasibility of just emulating ATAPI on Sata/IDE? [sATApi? heh...]

*OffTopic : The usb sticks that came with a util partition as a separate “physical” cdrom… Lot’s of people removed that for more space, but could it be replaced with an eltorito booting CDFS, and would a bios be able boot off it? [apart from standard USB stick booting support - I am curious how these flash drives achieved their CD Emulation]

–PidGin128 [After all that, I still think I forgot something...]

By: Wolvenmoon

Wolvenmoon — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:07:58 +0000

FINALLY something like this comes out that is not technically circumventing copy protection so the DMCA doesn’t cover it.

Maybe when this comes out for the 360 and PS3 we’ll finally see them slack up on homebrew users and stop using the DMCA to harass their customers.

The ONLY reason I haven’t bought an xbox 360 and PS3 is because of the arrests / raids on modchippers. I’m just not going to deal with any of that BS anymore. When I purchase a piece of technology, hardware or software, I will use it how I want, when I want, where I want, and on what I want.

Why? Because I paid money for a product and I *WILL* have advertised functionality out of it, and any unadvertised deficits / limitations that are not present on the box for me to see will be ‘remedied’ by me, or I won’t buy the product.

Thanks to the group that did this, I hope they expand it to the xbox and PS3.

By: Wodedev

Wodedev — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:48:29 +0000

“With USB Loaders you can extract and decrypt only the partition game to use. Wii Sports is less than 500MB extracted(i cant remember, but i think it’s not bigger than 300mb), but original signed iso is more than 4GB.”

Wode supports WBFS, you can use the exact same HDD and data.

“maybe you might want to give ben a call?”

Well, we really do need a case to put it in :) Ben does cases, right?

By: mojo

mojo — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:26:56 +0000

I have wanted something like this for ages, mainly for installing Windows XP and the like. It’s largely redundant for that purpose now that Vista and Windows 7 can be installed from a USB drive anyway. I know XP can be as well now, before someone says it.

I never buy games consoles until you can copy the games for them. I’m not cheap, I just hate using original discs because they get scratched and damaged no matter how careful you are with them. I had Crazy Taxi in my Dreamcast for about two years with only the occasional removal for Soul Calibur, and now the music skips.

By: 3riX

3riX — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:23:59 +0000

Now I know what to do with that Wii I had Lying around.
(I have a Wii that bears a busted Optical Drive.)

By: Kez

Kez — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:38:22 +0000

With USB Loaders you can extract and decrypt only the partition game to use. Wii Sports is less than 500MB extracted(i cant remember, but i think it’s not bigger than 300mb), but original signed iso is more than 4GB.
Using WODE you will store a lot of signed padding, but it’s like an original DVD. With USB emulators, you will store less bytes for same games.
I’m thinking if Wii Optical Drive have a S/N inside that Nintendo can check…

By: Lank

Lank — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:19:24 +0000

@ho0d0ohg:

Check the above comments. You need to remember that the USB 1.1s that are already on the wii are quite slow, and that the USB softloaders have problems running games (I think two examples are the new Metroid Prime Trilogy and Super Smash Brothers Brawl). This will enable read times FASTER than a Wii DVD (Wii reads authorized discs at 6x, burned discs with CIOSCORP/backup launcher will run at 3x). So while it’s kind of a pain in the ass (you have to install it), you are rewarded with the potential to run MUCH faster games.

By: Blizzarddemon

Blizzarddemon — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:44:49 +0000

This concept isn’t new, it’s been done before similarly. And this one can fit inside the box:

http://www.flatmii.com/

However this is the first time I’ve seen it done making use of a standalone drive, instead of a full computer. Great Job!

By: polossatik

polossatik — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:39:37 +0000

The “wii part” is similar to the flatmii which uses a pc to do the mounting of the ISO (and has fairly buggy software). If the maker of the flatmii had the guts to document the interface (USB based) to talk to the Flatmii this would have emerged sooner. But with all the USB loader hype I guess no-one bothered to reverse engineer the flatmii pc software.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:55:10 +0000

You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this….But with a Dreamcast instead. I also had the idea of using something similar on the Xbox 360 ever since they introduced the install to hard drive option. Statement I made when they launched NXE “Xbox 360 Fall update, My thoughts…

You can install the games with the new update! What if they find a way to communicate to the dvd drives sata cable the necessary data to make the 360 think that a specific disc is inserted. ie a chip that could be on a sata pass through cable to the dvd drive. So then you rent games & download them to the 360 & when asked to insert a disc the chip will emulate the portion of the disc needed for verification. When installing the game to the 360 the chip could store the security information. Just a thought, This seems the most feasible considering the difficulties in trying to bypass the hyper visor. Just some thoughts.”