Archives

All posts for the month January, 2016

(re)Tinkering with the Wii

Posted by Henry McHenry on 01/21/2016
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a Comment
Lately I’ve been tinkering with my Nintendo Wii (you may have heard of it). In order to play newer stuff it is necessary to update some cIOS. 

Otherwise, at the very least you’ll get a black screen, or if the game loads it may not be fully functional. I had this issue where Rodea the Sky Soldier would reboot all the way back to the system menu when I tried to change the in game language. And the voice would remain in english (bleajh).

At the very least cIOS 249 and 250 need to be updated with the d2x cIOS. Use the beta 53 if you want better usb support, use the beta 52 if you want better emunand support. This is how I allocated the cIOS: 

cios 247 base 37 
cios 248 base 38 
cios 249 base 56
cios 250 base 57
cios 251 base 58

Regarding cIOS 236, it seems it is no longer needed, still it doesn’t hurt to (re)install it. Just make sure you use the “mod” or “pro pirate” version of the installer. If you use the regular one make sure to press “2” especially if your dvd drive is hosed.

Other things I did were update the homebrew channel from 1.1.0 to 1.1.2, install Boomii as IOS (no vulnerable “boot1”), install Priiloader and update USB Loader GX (especially for its superb Nintendont integration).

Selecting the cIOS 250 Rodea now allowed me to change the language, and other black screen games now load. 

All in all, the Wii is a great machine and homebrew development still seems to be going strong. It is my go to emulation machine for pretty much everything (but arcade). Component video is a delight on a CRT, almost as good as RGB.

Well, that’s it for now.

Soft modding the vWii

Posted by Henry McHenry on 01/07/2016
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a Comment
Last night I decided to go ahead and soft mod my Wii U’s “Wii mode”. Main motivation to do this is to play emulators via the HDMI interface and see if input lag would improve, another reason was to try GC games using progressive scan.

The process is simple enough if you have the right tools. In my case I procured a copy of Smash Bros Brawl many moons ago to perform the Smash Stack on a relative’s red Wii. I kept the game in case it was needed in the future.

The process is pretty much the same as with a regular Wii, 

– Start “Wii mode” 
– Delete any Smash saves
– Launch Smash
– Create a save
– Delete custom stages
– Go back to “Vault”
– Insert a regular SD card (< 2gb one) with the smash stack and the Hackmii installer
– Go to the stage builder, the Hackmii installer should begin
– Install the Hombrew channel as usual

I tried FCEU GX, I can even load roms from my NAS. Picture quality and lag improved by a lot compared to using my Wii with composite. Super Mario 3 and Tecmo Super Bowl were definitely playable.

Nintendon’t worked like a charm using the SD card exclusively. Great picture quality at 480p, and flawless control with the Wii U Pro controller.

I couldn’t get the external USB hard drive to work even using a “Y” cable. It seems the Wii U USB ports are utter garbage. The same drive works great on the Wii and using a regular cable. I’ll test tonight with a powered enclosure and report back.

Another issue I found is that with certain homebrew apps (tested multimods, wad manager and the intellivision emulator) after the the app starts the Wii remote disconnects and it doesn’t connect back, so it is impossible to use the app or get back out of it, so I have to unplug the console. Multimods screen saver kicks in so I know the console is not locked, just the remote is not syncing. I’ll have to do some research.

Update 1: Just read some newer controllers maybe incompatible with certain apps. Last night I was using a Luigi edition remote with integrated motion plus. I’ll test with an old regular regular remote and report back.

Update 2: Using a powered interface I solved my hard disk issues, homebrew can see the hard disk no problem. Using an old regular Wii remote solved my controller problems, that one works fine with all homebrew apps (Atari 2600 yay!).