Hacking Why you don't need to be afraid of a vWii Update

[King penguin]

Except for those who don't care about supporting game companies, i suppose thats true

 

[megazig]

http://wii.marcansoft.com/wiimpersonator/reports/vwii/USA/

they can update vwii without overwriting everything and have before. your whole first post is wrong

 

[Slartibartfast42]

Except for those who don't care about supporting game companies, i suppose thats true

We only have so much money. I can support Nintendo with $500. I can't support Nintendo with $5000.

 

[King penguin]

We only have so much money. I can support Nintendo with $500. I can't support Nintendo with $5000.

i don't get it, but ok.

 

[Sage Gaara]

Well for one don't double post. Two there's no reason to get into a huge rant about the same thing i'm talking about. You truly don't know a whole lot about console modification nor emulation. Go google the definiton, regardless of what you're trying to say no matter what vWii is emulating a Wii OS. Period. Alongside virtualization. It is technologically impossible to update the vWii without deleting the entire process itself and re-downloading it with whatever update Nintendo patched it with. Go to college and learn some computing before you try to tell someone the way something works instead of using most likely internet-gained logic.

EDIT: No, Nintendo can't. The firmware is locked

 

[megazig]

it runs the Wii OS on the espresso chip. and runs IOS on the starbuck. it's not virtualized even. it's a hardware compatibility mode that allows for memory config, cpu clock speed, and then just doesn't initialize the 3 cores. there is 0 emulation being done. see the link I posted where they didn't delete the whole "process" because it's still a NAND the same on on a wii with a normal looking filesystem listing. the vwii update before updated the files same as it would on a wii. difference is that they're signed with keys so that the wiiu side can decrypt it and install it to vwii NAND.

 

[Sage Gaara]

You're not understanding what i'm saying. Not the technical term "Emulating" the literal term. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/emulation

Emulating has more than one definition even though they're practically the same thing.

 

[Ray Lewis]

You're not understanding what i'm saying. Not the technical term "Emulating" the literal term. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/emulation

Emulating has more than one definition even though they're practically the same thing.

No, Megazig is expert and you have no clue. If he posts it is 100% accurate. It is hardware there so vWii is not emulation or virtualization. You need to look up f0f. He is also pretty cool as long as you are not a jerk. Not that he needs me to say it but I am saving you the trouble here...trying to.

 

[Warlord698]

it almost makes me wanna see Nintendo patch the vWii with a small update just to bitch slap his theory to hell

 

[Bladexdsl]

so you created an account just to say this having absolutely no clue what your talking about and your wrong. you might have gotten away with it on gametrailers or 4chan but there are REAL hackers in here and they know what their doing and saying so time to move on bud i expect this thread to be closed real soon

 

[Sage Gaara]

so you created an account just to say this having absolutely no clue what your talking about and your wrong. you might have gotten away with it on gametrailers or 4chan but there are REAL hackers in here and they know what their doing and saying so time to move on bud i expect this thread to be closed real soon

Actually I created an account because I was having trouble getting my vWii to read to my HDD wise ass (http://gbatemp.net/threads/cant-get-any-loader-to-recognize-hdd-on-homebrew.348755/) Excuse me for trying to calm down Casuals afraid of their vWii bricking with things that I tried piecing together from college courses. No need to make an ass of yourself. Also i'm not arguing, my opinion is different, that's all.

It's a theory based on things I know. That's it.

it almost makes me wanna see Nintendo patch the vWii with a small update just to bitch slap his theory to hell

That doesn't have anything to do with what i'm saying.

I don't believe the firmware will surpass 4.3 because usually what bricked homebrew was firmware updates and my whole thing is that updating the firmware would require what I said in my first post.

 

[osaka35]

Also i'm not arguing, my opinion is different, that's all.

Just had to jump in here, as you raised a pet peeve of mine.

An opinion is a statement of a reflection of personal taste or preference.
An assertion is a statement about reality, possible or otherwise.
In other words, if you're arguing about the validity of some facet of reality, you're not talking about opinions. You're talking about assertions and evidence.

Since you said "it is this way", yours is obviously an assertion and NOT an opinion. It is a statement of reality and can be shown to be right or wrong. It can be tested. If you had said "I'm not sure if it's this way, could anyone verify/not verify", then you're asking a question, acknowledging possible gaps in your knowledge and not asserting anything.

An opinion is "I like this president"
An assertions is "This president lowered my taxes"
An opinion based on an assertion is "I like this president because he lowered my taxes"

I could go on like this for a while, but I think you get the idea.

 

[the_randomizer]

You're not understanding what i'm saying. Not the technical term "Emulating" the literal term. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/emulation

Emulating has more than one definition even though they're practically the same thing.

Megazig knows what he's talking about, your opinions don't equate as hard facts. The vWii is a compatibility layer or somewhat similar to a virtual machine, but not emulation. Emulation would require tremendous processing power.

 

[HaTaX]

I'm just going to chime in here, it's been said enough, but vWii mode on the Wii-U is not emulation... There's nothing to 'emulate' as the instruction set for the CPU used on the Wii is fully supported by the Wii-U. Emulation is used when you have a dissimilar instruction set between the software you want to run, and the CPU it's being processed on. For example, the instruction set supported on an old NES is that of a 6502 (A slightly modified version of a 6502 but still basically a 6502), so when you use an emulator it's translating all of the assembly code instructions into a language that your CPU can recognize and process. Some / most instructions require multiple 'passes' to properly translate that code to something that the emulating hardware can understand and process. Think of this, if it only took 2-3 extra instructions to translate the code you would need a CPU that's 2-3 times as powerful as the hardware you're emulating. That's an EXTREMELY conservative estimate as translating instructions from a process specific ASIC to a general purpose CPU generally requires 5-10 iterations / cycles to translate most instructions.

Now back to the vWii and Wii-U topic and how the above information applies, the instruction set supported on the Wii hardware is FULLY supported within the vWii environment and requires no translation of the machine code being executed. If there WAS translation going on, then you would have a form of emulation happening to make the vWii work. Good hard evidence that there's no translation going on is that the CPU clock speed is reduced back down to exactly the same speed as the Wii, as well as the extra cores being disabled. This allows them the best chance of running Wii code exactly as it did on the Wii hardware, no clock speed differences to mess up some games that might have been 'optimized' for Wii hardware only. (Another way to say that is poorly coded, but that's a term that would have to be qualified by looking at the code for a game's engine)

I think the biggest qualifier of the word 'emulation' is being missed, that's translation. Changing the machine code language so that it could run on a different architecture on the fly. That's not happening here as the code is being run natively on the CPU. Hell, even virtualization is a stretch to me... To me it's more akin to having a dual boot linux system for example, one OS has the CPU running at full bore and all cores enabled while the other is using a kernel compiled without SMP support and a set CPU speed. Just because you pick an icon for it doesn't mean it can't set a flag on the system and then reboot using the alternate OS, to me that's not even virtualization.

That was a bit to type and probably TLDR; but maybe it will give a little insight into what's happening here and the classification of it.

FWIW I've been designing and reverse-engineering applications / OSes on embedded devices for about a decade and a half. Just wanted to state that I may not be a industry expert on it, this stuff is kinda right up my alley.

 

[blinkzane]

Props to the new guy for trying, but you can't have an opinion on facts. these guys are right if they say they're right. because if it were as simple as you say it is, we would be playing playstation and Xbox games on the Wii U right now.

 

[Ray Lewis]

Props to the new guy for trying, but you can't have an opinion on facts. these guys are right if they say they're right. because if it were as simple as you say it is, we would be playing playstation and Xbox games on the Wii U right now.

Are you being sarcastic? Hatax or ts?

 

[Sage Gaara]

No, Megazig is expert and you have no clue. If he posts it is 100% accurate. It is hardware there so vWii is not emulation or virtualization. You need to look up f0f. He is also pretty cool as long as you are not a jerk. Not that he needs me to say it but I am saving you the trouble here...trying to.

All that post is is hopping on a fanwagon. I'm starting to feel like this forum is almost an equivalent if se7ensins.

Megazig knows what he's talking about, your opinions don't equate as hard facts. The vWii is a compatibility layer or somewhat similar to a virtual machine, but not emulation. Emulation would require tremendous processing power.

And now you don't know what you're talking about because you didn't even understand the post you quoted.

Just had to jump in here, as you raised a pet peeve of mine.

An opinion is a statement of a reflection of personal taste or preference.
An assertion is a statement about reality, possible or otherwise.
In other words, if you're arguing about the validity of some facet of reality, you're not talking about opinions. You're talking about assertions and evidence.

Since you said "it is this way", yours is obviously an assertion and NOT an opinion. It is a statement of reality and can be shown to be right or wrong. It can be tested. If you had said "I'm not sure if it's this way, could anyone verify/not verify", then you're asking a question, acknowledging possible gaps in your knowledge and not asserting anything.

An opinion is "I like this president"
An assertions is "This president lowered my taxes"
An opinion based on an assertion is "I like this president because he lowered my taxes"

I could go on like this for a while, but I think you get the idea.

Did you not read the post I made that was literally right above yours?

I'm done with this thread because it's just slowly turning into flaming.

You can have your opinions and i'll have mine. If the vWii ever sees a firmware update you can laugh at this post, but, until then i'll consider mine right and you can consider his right.

 

[megazig]

the vwii has had an update
see my previous link to the wiimpersonator vwii logs

 

[Sage Gaara]

the vwii has had an update
see my previous link to the wiimpersonator vwii logs

I'm talking about firmware updates (i.e. 4.3-4.4) The whole time i've been saying it can't get a firmware update because those are usually what bricked the old Wii's.

 

[megazig]

those numbers are system menu versions. not really a firmware. also, they can update system menu and IOS the same way as on the wii.