Hacking Nintendont

[niuus]

Hi I am totally new to everything wii related and just started yesterday with a softmod on my wii but it also have a chip. I have Nintendont installed on my wii now and I can see my gamecube games on there and they play, but I dont have a controller yet.. or I do have controllers but none work. I was just gonna ask you pro's if you could tell me what controller is the absolutely best to have? I have have support for gamecube controllers on my wii but I dont own any yet.. is that the best option for me perhaps? thanks

Wii U Pro Controller if you would like a great rechargeable wireless pad. Wii Classic Controller is also a nice option. Original Gamecube controllers are perfect too, if you can afford them + the USB adapter to use them on the Wii U.

 

[sonictopfan]

Ok. Thank you so much. I think its best for me to get the GC controllers as I like to play games with them and I have the right ports for them too, so I think it will be the best. I will search for the first party ones.

Indeed GC controllers are your best option.

 

[naddel81]

update: on primary fat32 partition nintendont WORKS!

but unfortunately only with gamecube controller. wiimote (not plus) and Classic Controller do not do anything. Strange thing: When I press the wiimote again, it tells me it is "player 2" although I have non other controller connected except the gamecube controller. Is that normal behaviour?
Will try to disconnect GC next time.

 

[pedro702]

update: on primary fat32 partition nintendont WORKS!

but unfortunately only with gamecube controller. wiimote (not plus) and Classic Controller do not do anything. Strange thing: When I press the wiimote again, it tells me it is "player 2" although I have non other controller connected except the gamecube controller. Is that normal behaviour?
Will try to disconnect GC next time.

you need official wiimte and CC since most fake/3rd party ones dont work.

obviously if the gc controller is connected to port 1 it will take port one ...

the controller behavior is like this with priority on the slots

GC>HId>BT

bt controllers like wiimote+CC , wiiupro and such will always take the last slot available, and most games do not let you control the game with slots 2 and up unless its on the multiplayer portion of the said game.

 

[GreyWolf]

great. will try that. before I mess anything up I am going to make an acronis backup of the drive. you never know...

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is just copy and pasting the wbfs folder fine as backup? then I would resize and add a fat32 partition after copying the wbfs folder from the wii HDD to a safe place.

If you put wbfs files on FAT32 they have to be split if they're over ~4GB. You can use Wiimm's ISO Tools to split the files that are too big before copying them to a FAT32 partition. (Or while copying them. )

 

[naddel81]

If you put wbfs files on FAT32 they have to be split if they're over ~4GB. You can use Wiimm's ISO Tools to split the files that are too big before copying them to a FAT32 partition. (Or while copying them. )

great, will try to remember if I have that problem again. for now it is solved for me using NTFS+FAT32 on one HDD. back in the day when I started the HDD collection wbfs on fat32 wasn't even invented

 

[TheKoji]

Nintendont can't find my games when I use a hard drive, when I use a flash drive is ok. On my hard drive I have more two partitions (wbfs partition and a ntfs partition for my standard files) the nintendont partition is FAT32 32KB formated and there is no one another FAT32 partition besides this.

 

[sideskroll]

Yep. Sometimes the console just shuts down without properly creating the card file, too.

Yeah, usually quicker to just turn the console off and try again rather than waiting and hoping it doesn't die. It's pretty good once the card is created though.

Shame you can't keep saves on the SD when playing games from USB. Generally found the SD to be much better for save games etc.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Damn... So it is widespread. Not only @Cyan and myself.
I'm amazed no one seems to notice/care though... It is not a slightly longer wait. It is like I said, OBSCENE.
Anybody knows if @FIX94 is already aware of the issue or looking into it?.
This doesn't look like a minor annoyance to me. It is practically game breaking.

 

[ccfman2004]

Nintendont can't find my games when I use a hard drive, when I use a flash drive is ok. On my hard drive I have more two partitions (wbfs partition and a ntfs partition for my standard files) the nintendont partition is FAT32 32KB formated and there is no one another FAT32 partition besides this.

The FAT32 partition MUST be the first partition on the drive or Nintendont will fail to find it. The WBFS file system is ancient and you are better off using FAT32 and a Wii Backup tool that will split the >4GB isos for you.

 

[GerbilSoft]

I'm amazed no one seems to notice/care though... It is not a slightly longer wait. It is like I said, OBSCENE.

I can't reproduce it. I did notice it takes around 7s to create a memory card file, but that's it. (It's hanging somewhere in FatFS, I'm not sure why.)

The FAT32 partition MUST be the first partition on the drive or Nintendont will fail to find it. The WBFS file system is ancient and you are better off using FAT32 and a Wii Backup tool that will split the >4GB isos for you.

In theory, Nintendont should be able to handle the FAT32 partition as the second partition, assuming the first partition isn't FAT. I'll test this again when I get home tonight.

 

[GreyWolf]

I can't reproduce it. I did notice it takes around 7s to create a memory card file, but that's it. (It's hanging somewhere in FatFS, I'm not sure why.)

In theory, Nintendont should be able to handle the FAT32 partition as the second partition, assuming the first partition isn't FAT. I'll test this again when I get home tonight.

When it hangs while loading Nintendont directly from the HBC it's at the card stage. It just never seems to finish creating it and the hard drive light flashes like it's writing a byte every few seconds.

 

[GerbilSoft]

When it hangs while loading Nintendont directly from the HBC it's at the card stage. It just never seems to finish creating it and the hard drive light flashes like it's writing a byte every few seconds.

I added an "Initializing memory card" screen with progress indicator to my branch. On my setup, it takes around 6-7s for it to write the first 64 KB, but then it's fast.

I haven't pushed a precompiled build yet, but if you have devkitARM and devkitPPC set up, you can try it: https://github.com/GerbilSoft/Nintendont/tree/widescreen-hax.r422

EDIT: There's also a preliminary MD5 verifier. Currently it only supports calculating the MD5; I need to add an MD5 database and have it check the database.

EDIT 2: I think what I might need to do is write a very basic PPC test program using FatFS that does nothing but write memory card images. If that has the same slowdown, then I can add some instrumentation to FatFS to figure out where exactly it's being slow.

 

[pokeparadox]

Has anyone heard anything from they guy that was playing with the anti aliasing modes? I was looking forward to that...

 

[self_slaughter]

I'll try that build later. I noticed a lot of Wii software hangs for a few seconds on the first write, then takes off.

Nintendont just seems to flip out over it and get all out of whack, eventually shutting down, or maybe creating a corrupt card after 10-30 minutes. Yet other times it creates a card and boots fine in less than 10 seconds.

Wondering if holding out for an initial test write before creating the card might help avoid it?

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[GerbilSoft]

Nintendont just seems to flip out over it and get all out of whack, eventually shutting down, or maybe creating a corrupt card after 10-30 minutes. Yet other times it creates a card and boots fine in less than 10 seconds.

What's the exact storage setup? HDD manufacturer/model, capacity, partition layout?

If I can duplicate the 6-7 second delay locally with a basic test program, then that means it will probably have the same issues you're having with Nintendont. I will add extra debugging (console printfs with timing) in various places in FatFS to figure out what exactly is going on. (Possibly an option to save the console output to a log file, but then that'd result in the same delays... Maybe "send log data via wifi" would work.)

 

[GreyWolf]

@GerbilSoft Followup (launching Nintendont 4.425 from the repository directly from HBC):

Game launched with existing card file: boots and works as expected
Game no existing card file: hangs on title list
Game with card file after failing to create one: hangs at "Init CARD..." as when there is no file

Perhaps the card routine is being called before USB/FS init is complete? I see a message prompt for "failed to create card file" but it never comes up at any point.

FWIW the kernel doesn't seem to have any problems with the disc images or card files once control is handed over. It's just the loader initialization.

 

[GerbilSoft]

Perhaps the card routine is being called before USB/FS init is complete?

Initial virtual memory card creation is done by the loader, not the kernel. FS init has to be complete; otherwise how would it load the game list?

I assume by hanging on title list, you mean that you press A to select a game, and then it just hangs. Current master build doesn't update the screen until it attempts to start the kernel, which is *after* it creates the memory card image. My widescreen-hax (CISO) branch added an extra screen to show card initialization progress.

Hanging at "Init CARD" is probably because it doesn't know what to do with a 0-byte file.

 

[GreyWolf]

Initial virtual memory card creation is done by the loader, not the kernel. FS init has to be complete; otherwise how would it load the game list?

I assume by hanging on title list, you mean that you press A to select a game, and then it just hangs. Current master build doesn't update the screen until it attempts to start the kernel, which is *after* it creates the memory card image. My widescreen-hax (CISO) branch added an extra screen to show card initialization progress.

I'll try it shortly. I can compile it locally.

 

[self_slaughter]

I'm using a 1.5tb 5400rpm drive swapped into an old 500gb external enclosure currently. One big happy fat32 partition.

Most apps (nintendont) etc live on the 16gb sd card.

Card bug is extremely random though. Can do 20 clean boots in a row fine, then play up 20 times in a row on the same game.

Once the card is created, boots are fast every time.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[GerbilSoft]

Once the card is created, boots are fast every time.

The problem seems to be FatFS is either slow or unreliable at expanding files. Either that, or one of the underlying HW-specific subsystems has issues.

If the card file is already there, then FatFS doesn't need to expand anything.