Hacking USBloaderGX cIOS emuNAND wads - only N64 working (others don't)

[Dr_fleb]

Hey there,

I'm new to wii hacking and to this forum, but am facing some problems that I can't really resolve and for which I could not find a solution on the world wild web. So well here I am, hoping someone could give me a hand

I'm also jumping on the opportunity to warmly thanks all the persons from this forum and elsewhere that develop and make softmod tools and tutorials available. Your dedication is amazing !

So my problem is the following :
I did setup cIOS emuNand through USBloaderGX (haven't touched the neek setup yet), and have been able to install a few wad games through the embeded emunand wad manager and amongst these few, only N64 are working while I get black screen for all the other I tested so far (NES, SNES C64 and arcade).
This seems to be quite the opposit to what others have experienced as far as I can tell from google searches. I'm quite puzzled and could not find a solution so far.

The story starts last week when I started softmodding a PAL 4.3E wii
Without too much details I used this method:
letterbomb/HackMii installer v1.2/Priiloader_v0_8_1/d2x-cios-installer-3.1-v6-v7-v8-v10-wii

I then installed USBLoaderGX r1262 and launching it through the HomeBrewChannel I'm able to run wbfs wii games from a fat32 USB stick with no problems at all

I decided to go a step ahead and tried to setup emunand through USBLoaderGX to play some virtual console games. I followed a nice totorial by Cyan on this forum
https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-do-i-get-usb-loader-gx-to-properly-utilize-emunand.437521/
In short :
- I did set up the forwarder for USBloaderGX ( ̶U̶S̶B̶L̶o̶a̶d̶e̶r̶G̶X̶_̶v̶3̶.̶0̶_̶I̶O̶S̶2̶4̶9̶.̶w̶a̶d̶/USB Loader GX-UNEO_Forwarder_5_1_AHBPROT.wad)
>EDIT : I did not install the v3.0 ISO249 wad

- dumped the nand in sd:/nand (I kept default path unchanged)
- installed virtual console wads with the USBloader wad manager and from this location usb1:\wad\

I haven't been through the neek setup because I wanted to first play NES games. All installed games appear in the channel but to my great disapointment vast majority of them will not load. I instead get a black screen and have to power off the console with long press on power button
The only exceptions being N64 games. F-ZeroX is for instance working like a charm...

Would someone have an idea on what I did wrong ???

My wii is connected to a PC screen with a wii2hdmi adapter. I also have a crappy RCA to hdmi converter to output video on the screen or can output the video through RCA to a picopix projector. Changing adaptor or switching to projector do not solve the problem. Both screen and projector seem to accept 480i 480p signals but I doubt they would accept 240p signal. Because I though NES virtual console might output such a signal through wii that would be the cause of the problem I tried to play with all the video output option in USBloader - Force480iNTSC etc ... but it did not resolved the problem

Many thanks for your help !

Here is a sys check of my system

Spoiler

SysCheck HDE v2.4.0 HacksDen Edition par JoostinOnline, Double_A, R2-D2199, et Nano
...tourne sous l'IOS58 (rev 6176).

Region: PAL
Menu Systeme 4.3E (v514)
Priiloader installe
Date de disque: 12.18.2008
Chaine Channel 1.1.2 utilise IOS58

Hollywood v0x21
Identifiant de la console: 149807954
Type de Console: Wii
Pays de la chaine boutique: France (77)
Boot2 v4
110 titres trouves.
46 IOS trouves sur cette console. 15 sont des stubs.

IOS3 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS4 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS9 (rev 1034): Pas de patches
IOS10 (rev 768): Stub
IOS11 (rev 256): Stub
IOS12 (rev 526): Pas de patches
IOS13 (rev 1032): Pas de patches
IOS14 (rev 1032): Pas de patches
IOS15 (rev 1032): Pas de patches
IOS16 (rev 512): Stub
IOS17 (rev 1032): Pas de patches
IOS20 (rev 256): Stub
IOS21 (rev 1039): Pas de patches
IOS22 (rev 1294): Pas de patches
IOS28 (rev 1807): Pas de patches
IOS30 (rev 2816): Stub
IOS31 (rev 3608): Pas de patches
IOS33 (rev 3608): Pas de patches
IOS34 (rev 3608): Pas de patches
IOS35 (rev 3608): Pas de patches
IOS36 (rev 3608): Pas de patches
IOS37 (rev 5663): Pas de patches
IOS38 (rev 4124): Pas de patches
IOS40 (rev 3072): Stub
IOS41 (rev 3607): Pas de patches
IOS43 (rev 3607): Pas de patches
IOS45 (rev 3607): Pas de patches
IOS46 (rev 3607): Pas de patches
IOS48 (rev 4124): Pas de patches
IOS50 (rev 5120): Stub
IOS51 (rev 4864): Stub
IOS52 (rev 5888): Stub
IOS53 (rev 5663): Pas de patches
IOS55 (rev 5663): Pas de patches
IOS56 (rev 5662): Pas de patches
IOS57 (rev 5919): Pas de patches
IOS58 (rev 6176): USB 2.0
IOS60 (rev 6400): Stub
IOS61 (rev 5662): Pas de patches
IOS70 (rev 6912): Stub
IOS80 (rev 6944): Pas de patches
IOS222 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS223 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS249[56] (rev 21008, Info: d2x-v8final): Trucha Bug, Acces NAND, USB 2.0
IOS250[57] (rev 21008, Info: d2x-v8final): Trucha Bug, Acces NAND, USB 2.0
IOS254 (rev 65281): BootMii
BC v6
MIOS v10
Rapport genere le 2017/04/20.

[\spoiler]

 

[GreyWolf]

(USBLoaderGX_v3.0_IOS249.wad

- no.. this is the full channel and it is out of date. Use the v5.1 forwarder for your console and the .dol file in an /apps folder

If you are using d2x v10 do not use the beta53 version. It's broken with compatibility for EmuNAND and many disc titles.

 

[Dr_fleb]

Hello GreyWolf

Thanks for your quick reply
Sorry I made a mistake in my explanations, I actually downloaded this file (USBLoaderGX_v3.0_IOS249.wad) as specified in Cyan tutorial but did not used it, as I did not installed it in the first place (Cyan was explaining how to uninstall it)

I actually installed USBLoaderGX r1262 (the one you sent)
and used this forwarder: USB Loader GX-UNEO_Forwarder_5_1_AHBPROT.wad

When launching USB Loader GX channel I see v3.0 r1262
and when I go to "credit" I have this in the top right corner;
Rev1262 iOS249 (Rev 21008) +AHB (d2x v8final base56)

Are these up to date ??

 

[John_Ice]

Hello GreyWolf

Thanks for your quick reply
Sorry I made a mistake in my explanations, I actually downloaded this file (USBLoaderGX_v3.0_IOS249.wad) as specified in Cyan tutorial but did not used it, as I did not installed it in the first place (Cyan was explaining how to uninstall it)

I actually installed USBLoaderGX r1262 (the one you sent)
and used this forwarder: USB Loader GX-UNEO_Forwarder_5_1_AHBPROT.wad

When launching USB Loader GX channel I see v3.0 r1262
and when I go to "credit" I have this in the top right corner;
Rev1262 iOS249 (Rev 21008) +AHB (d2x v8final base56)

Are these up to date ??

Yes it's up to date with this (tu es correct, donc le problème est ailleurs).

 

[GreyWolf]

Did you try running them without the HDMI adapter? I seem to remember there being something funky about the video output for older VC.

 

[Dr_fleb]

Merci John

I've been reading carefully again Cyan's tutorial and couldn't find any obvious mistake I could have done ...
I've been running a couple tests yesterday:

I haven't tried all wads installed - I have some for NES, SNES, C64 and N64 - but the only one that do not give blackscreen are 1080 snowboard/ Mario Tennis and F-Zero X(all N64)
Loading wii games is still working after installing the USB loader GX forwarder
Changing within USB loader GX options the loader and game iOS from 249 (default for both) to 250 did not changed anything - N64 working, others not working
I tested within USB loader GX all video options (force NTSC etc ...) , but I'm not able to launch excitebike NES with any of them

I'll try to run some more tonight:
Basically I had the wads on a USB stick but dumped the nand on the SD card - and as far as I understand presumably installed the wad to this SD-dumped nand from USB.
I formated the SD from Win10 to Fat32 and the USB stick 64GB I bought was already Fat32 so I kept it like that (even left the sandisk files that came with it on the root).
But now I realize that I did not check if they were formated with 32k clusters. Could this be the cause ?? I'll chek that.

I also wanted to redo a nand dump and reinstall wads maybe on the USB stick this time ...
I'll also try to get game wads from different source and ideally test wether PAL one works better than NTSC (I think most of mine are US). They could also be corrupted for some reason

I'll come back here to report any progress

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Hi Greywolf,

Yes, I've been trying
- with the wii2hdmi on a PC screen
- with official RCA (composite-yellow red white) cable plugged to a misou RCA to HDMI converter on a PC screen
- with official RCA cable plugged to a philips picopix projector on ... a wall

I sadly don't have any analog display like CRT tv I could try. If the emuNAND outputs 240p on some games I bet this could be a problem as none of the solution I tried would, I believe, accept such signal.
Then N64 would outputs different signal ? Shouldn't the video output options I've been trying (like Force NTSC 480i) overcome this problem anyway ???

I also have a wii component cable (red green blue) but none of my display accept such an input. I think I read somewhere that you can get black and white signal plugging one of the component plug to the yellow one of the RCA ...
Could try this just to see what happens.

Also I should mention that when using the RCA to HDMI adapter, image is quite grainy (adapter is definitely not high end) and when I get the black screen testing my games, I starts getting a grainy black, then after a couple seconds a "real" dark black, just like if the video signal was somehow lost.

 

[Dr_fleb]

Problem solved !!

Well let's say I found a workaround
problem was coming from the region of the wads. On my PAL wii with USBloaderGX default loader parameters it's working with NES and SNES PAL wads but is not working with same NTSC-U wads.
Surprisingly the few N64 NTSC-U I tried worked fine with default parameters
This works with the wii2hdmi, RCA to HDMI adapter and with RCA plugged to the projector

So now I'm really wondering if there is a way to make problematic NTSC wads work on a PAL wii ???
Would anyone here have an idea how to do ??
Wouldn't the region free options solve this problem ?? I can use wii US wbfs with no problem

For your information this is what I (unsuccessfully) tried so far to load these NTSC wads
>> In the loader options:
- Using dol video patch ON, all or region patch with video mode Force pal50, 60 or PAL480i from USB loader global menu or from the in-game menu
- setting language game as english
- setting patch country strings
>> In priiloader hack settings:
- setting "region free channels" in priiloader hacks
>> Patching NTSC iso using wwPacker
(tutorial from a reddit thread entitled "Guide: How to install and play NTSC Virtual Console wads on PAL Wii"

Also when checking with chkdsk from windows cmd I discovered that my SD was actually in Fat and my USB Stick in Fat32/16k
I tried to redump the nand on the USB stick but progress bar remained stuck at 0% and I could not cancel the transfer
After a hard reboot I copied from my PC the content of sd:/nand to usb1:/nand

Wonder why I had this error ...

Loading wads from sd or usb gave the exact same results
NTSC N64 wads > working
NTSC NES/SNES wads > not working
PAL NES/SNES wads > working

thanks John_Ice and GreyWolf for your help

 

[John_Ice]

Problem solved !!

Well let's say I found a workaround
problem was coming from the region of the wads. On my PAL wii with USBloaderGX default loader parameters it's working with NES and SNES PAL wads but is not working with same NTSC-U wads.
Surprisingly the few N64 NTSC-U I tried worked fine with default parameters
This works with the wii2hdmi, RCA to HDMI adapter and with RCA plugged to the projector

So now I'm really wondering if there is a way to make problematic NTSC wads work on a PAL wii ???
Would anyone here have an idea how to do ??
Wouldn't the region free options solve this problem ?? I can use wii US wbfs with no problem

For your information this is what I (unsuccessfully) tried so far to load these NTSC wads
>> In the loader options:
- Using dol video patch ON, all or region patch with video mode Force pal50, 60 or PAL480i from USB loader global menu or from the in-game menu
- setting language game as english
- setting patch country strings
>> In priiloader hack settings:
- setting "region free channels" in priiloader hacks
>> Patching NTSC iso using wwPacker
(tutorial from a reddit thread entitled "Guide: How to install and play NTSC Virtual Console wads on PAL Wii"

Also when checking with chkdsk from windows cmd I discovered that my SD was actually in Fat and my USB Stick in Fat32/16k
I tried to redump the nand on the USB stick but progress bar remained stuck at 0% and I could not cancel the transfer
After a hard reboot I copied from my PC the content of sd:/nand to usb1:/nand

Wonder why I had this error ...

Loading wads from sd or usb gave the exact same results
NTSC N64 wads > working
NTSC NES/SNES wads > not working
PAL NES/SNES wads > working

thanks John_Ice and GreyWolf for your help

Hi. For me, I have NTSC Console. And if I try PAL wad, doesn't work. But with NTSC, no problem. For real game with disk, no problem, USB Loader GX can play it but for wad it's another story.

So I recommend you to use only Pal Wad for your wii.

Edit: I forget to mention that you can install an another Emunand Region (PAL or NTSC) for the Wad Region too. So you can switch between your Emunand.

Cheers

 

[Dr_fleb]

Hi John

Switching nand region could indeed be interresting.
I was wondering if PAL wads were displayed as 50hz. NTSC wads would then probably work at native 60hz speed.
This is only speculation and PAL wads work now very well for me but this is something I might try.

I've seen some mention of this but couldn't find how to do.
Would you know how this can be done ??

Cheers