Hacking My discoveries with the new BC-less Wii's

[Krestent]

During a trip to Amsterdam, I bought one of the new BC-less blue Wii's. Here are some things I noticed:

1. Inserting a GameCube disc causes the drive to not take in the disc, make some noises like it's jammed (gave me a scare), and then spit the disc out as if it was a disc that someone had grabbed and prevented from going in.

2. It runs a plain old version of System Menu 4.3E; the Disc Channel still shows both a Wii disc and a GC disc.

3. It has a standard set of IOS's, I was able to install the HBC, BootMii, IOS236, and cIOS d2x v7.

4. BC v6 and MIOS v10 are, for some reason, still being preinstalled on these new Wii's. I wonder why...

5. The top of the Wii, where there would be the GC ports, there is a separate piece of plastic that I presume can be removed without removing anything else; it is screwed on by 3 screws. I wonder if there's a surprise underneath, like GC ports.

Discuss. Post if someone wants me to try something.

 

[Lacius]

4. BC v6 and MIOS v10 are, for some reason, still being preinstalled on these new Wii's. I wonder why...

Without them, I'm guessing retail discs might prompt the Wii for an update anyway. I've never tried it, so I might be way off base, but I could imagine that it works the same was as if I deleted cIOS 249 from my Wii, popped in a retail disc, the disc notices that I don't have a stubbed IOS249 (but everything else is up-to-date), and it prompts me for an update (just to install stub IOS249). With the MIOS missing, discs might do the same thing.

 

[Krestent]

4. BC v6 and MIOS v10 are, for some reason, still being preinstalled on these new Wii's. I wonder why...

Without them, I'm guessing retail discs might prompt the Wii for an update anyway. I've never tried it, so I might be way off base, but I could imagine that it works the same was as if I deleted cIOS 249 from my Wii, popped in a retail disc, the disc notices that I don't have a stubbed IOS249 (but everything else is up-to-date), and it prompts me for an update (just to install stub IOS249). With the MIOS missing, discs might do the same thing.

They could have just stubbed them.

I can also, after installing a patched MIOS, get GC homebrew to run. Too bad I can't do anything.

 

[Foxi4]

...as you can see, the presence of MIOS and the fact that it "still accepts GC discs" is caused by the simple fact that it's the exact same hardware without the ports. There's a cover on the "ports" side, It can be taken off, and once you do that, you reveal... left-over holes for ports and loose female connectors. Laaazyyyy...

Photo: Courtesy of AWal_, originally posted on wii.ds-scene.net

 

[FAST6191]

Interesting- I was almost expecting unpopulated points on the motherboard but this is a cheaper move than I expected.

I have to wonder if some of this is tied to some of the hardware driven fixing methods for repair shops.

Also yeah some nice PCB photos/scans if people can get them would be nice but not quite as interesting in light of this info.

 

[Foxi4]

I'm convinced the hardware was obviously altered to some extent as to retain the same resistance, but other then that it's the same "Wii" that was sold earlier in a barely modified case.

I wonder if it'd be possible to "attach the ports back" somehow though... Probably not without some soldering gymnastics, but I digress. It'd really be easier to determine the differences between MB's (if any) if we had photos of the guts of both consoles.

EDIT: I just had a look on the standard Wii MB and... I really don't know what this white female connector could be for (in the lower left-hand corner of the first pic, can be seen through the memory card slot hole). It's missing on the original Wii MB...

 

[DeadlyFoez]

I'm convinced the hardware was obviously altered to some extent as to retain the same resistance, but other then that it's the same "Wii" that was sold earlier in a barely modified case.

I wonder if it'd be possible to "attach the ports back" somehow though... Probably not without some soldering gymnastics, but I digress. It'd really be easier to determine the differences between MB's (if any) if we had photos of the guts of both consoles.

EDIT: I just had a look on the standard Wii MB and... I really don't know what this white female connector could be for (in the lower left-hand corner of the first pic, can be seen through the memory card slot hole). It's missing on the original Wii MB...

I can not see what white connector you are speaking of. I know the older wii's mobo like the back of my wifes hand and I have never seen on older revisions a connector that was not used. So please explain more.

 

[Supercool330]

Looks like what we need is a cmios that redirects the GC controller ports to USB gamepads, and the memory card slots to SD (IIRC, isn't there something that can already do emulated GC mem cards). Then we could just use something like swiss to read games from the "mem card" (actually SD), and we would have GC back.

I could also see a hack like this being useful for brining GC mode to the Wii U as it doesn't have any of the GC stuff, but will definitely have a Wii compatibility mode.

 

[Foxi4]

Looks like what we need is a cmios that redirects the GC controller ports to USB gamepads, and the memory card slots to SD (IIRC, isn't there something that can already do emulated GC mem cards). Then we could just use something like swiss to read games from the "mem card" (actually SD), and we would have GC back.

I could also see a hack like this being useful for brining GC mode to the Wii U as it doesn't have any of the GC stuff, but will definitely have a Wii compatibility mode.

Impossible due to the simple reason that the USB ports are disabled in Gamecube Mode.

I can not see what white connector you are speaking of. I know the older wii's mobo like the back of my wifes hand and I have never seen on older revisions a connector that was not used. So please explain more.

I meant the connector on the blue Wii, which is missing on the older motherboard picture that I posted. Take a look at the first picture, you can see a white female connector through the memory card slot. That connector is not present on the original Wii motherboard.

 

[Supercool330]

The USB ports aren't disabbled in GC mode (as proved by DIOS MIOS), it just doesn't know how to talk to them. That isn't to say either of those things is simple (actually, both are exceedingly difficult), but definitely not impossible.

 

[Foxi4]

The USB ports aren't disabbled in GC mode (as proved by DIOS MIOS), it just doesn't know how to talk to them. That isn't to say either of those things is simple (actually, both are exceedingly difficult), but definitely not impossible.

DIOS MIOS artificially turned on the USB slots and had incredible trouble with actually reading anything from them, that's why the project was cancelled in favour of DIOS MIOS Lite. Get your facts straight. The same technique of utilizing the USB could not be used on a clean copy of NAND, it only worked when running a NAND image with SNEEK/UNEEK.

 

[Luigi2012SM64DS]

im guessing nintendo was too lazy to remove the plastic that holds the ports and memecard

 

[Foxi4]

im guessing nintendo was too lazy to remove the plastic that holds the ports and memecard

That they were. Left-over cases were converted for the new hardware to cut costs.

 

[ClockWorK]

I would like to know if anyone encounters any incompatibilities with the new Wii's and USB HDDs. I just hacked my 22nd Wii. I've never had a problem (thank you ModMii!), but this new one without the GameCube ports is very inconsistent about initializing the USB HDD. 50% of the time, the HBC won't see it, and same with a forwarder channel. Emulators won't see the USB HDD at all. I had to install HBC apps to SD for this wii, and store all ROMs on SD. USB Loader GX spends a few seconds waiting for the drive, but does consistently initialize it. I was starting to think I had a corrupt IOS58 or something wasn't working with USB 2.0 (and I am still not sure).

I tried two different hard drives. Both work flawlessly with my 3 year old wii. Both work inconsistently with new Black wii that has no GC ports. Also, when the new Wii does read the USB HDD, it seems slower. Don't know if it's the new Wiis, or just the one I have in front of me today.

 

[Supercool330]

@Foxi4: I have discussed this exact issue with Crediar; Dios Mios (Lite) add parts of the USB code from IOS to MIOS, and even Crediar wasn't entirely certain why it didn't work outside of emulated NAND (he just really didn't care).

 

[mauifrog]

Possibly that connector port is used by Nintendo repair to load Recovery Mode, since the gc memory slot is gone one would think they would need an alternate method to load it.

 

[Lacius]

They could have just stubbed them.

If they stubbed them, any updates to the BC and/or MIOS would just overwrite the stubs anyway.

 

[techboy]

They could have just stubbed them.

If they stubbed them, any updates to the BC and/or MIOS would just overwrite the stubs anyway.

Unless they used v65280...an official update will never install lower version over higher, so the stubs would survive all Nintendo updates.

 

[WiiPower]

Looks like what we need is a cmios that redirects the GC controller ports to USB gamepads, and the memory card slots to SD (IIRC, isn't there something that can already do emulated GC mem cards). Then we could just use something like swiss to read games from the "mem card" (actually SD), and we would have GC back.

I could also see a hack like this being useful for brining GC mode to the Wii U as it doesn't have any of the GC stuff, but will definitely have a Wii compatibility mode.

1. A cMIOS with these patches wouldn't get you anywhere. You can see an IOS as some kind of firmware or OS if you want, because it's running in the background and handling most of the hardware access. MIOS on the other hand just boots the game, all hardware access is handled by the game/homebrew itself. So you would need those patches in Swiss. (this is also the reason why gamecube backup loading is such a mess compared to wii backup loading)

2. Loading the game itself from front SD should be possible as well as emulating the memory card on front SD. Crediar proved that both is possible with his DML. Well, i'm not sure if the released DML contains the memory card patches, but i know that he had it at least semi working and it just needed some more updates to work with all games.

3. Access to usb 2.0 in gamecube mode is not impossible, but it's a total mess. Apparently the Wii can only do usb DMA transfers to mem2. But mem2 is used to emulate the audio memory of the gamecube. If i understood it correctly, then DIOS MIOS switched mem2 all the time between mem2 and audio memory, which is why it worked so badly. But usb controllers would only need usb 1.1 and just tiny amounts of data transfers, i don't know if that would work without touching mem2.

4. Is there any code yet for usb game controllers? If not, that would need to be written from scratch. This could prove as much work as the rest of the project itself, depending if there's any usable code that can be ported to wii or not.


PS: Considering the memory situation of the Wii while loading gamecube games, i expect that the usb game controller code would need to be arm code which would run in SRAM like DML does it with the sd code.

 

[Supercool330]

Good info WiiPower. I knew that we would need an IOS with the proper modules, but I wasn't sure what parts would go in MIOS and which in IOS (or BC for that matter, but IIRC BC bascially just sets the CPU to a lower clock speed). USB 1.1 would work fine for basic joypads, but if rumble support, it would probably need to be 2.0 (or at least 1.1 with power). ASAIK, there aren't any joypad libraries for the Wii, but it shouldn't be too hard to port one of the open source Linux joypad drivers to work natively on the Wii.