When did you start getting into homebrewing/jailbreaking?

[GoldenBullet]

I ask this question because I was thinking to myself the other day that I spent a lot of time of my preteens messing around with my ipod touch, kindle fire, and wii instead of doing my schooling (I actually failed the 8th grade). I did fix my priorities during highschool (finishing with honors) but today, I'm pretty well versed with rooting androids, jailbreaking, and homebrew.

Am I the only one who exchanged a social life for being able to play free games on my wii?

Also wanted to say that I didn't start early enough because I got a psp late and missed what seemed to be a golden age of a homebrew scene (from my perspective). Like so many things were made into homebrew for it

 

[Chary]

I spent just about all summer of my freshman year of high school learning about softmods for game consoles. I started with the Wii, then the original Xbox, I bought a DStwo for my DS, and jailbroke my ipod touch.

I kind of followed the early 3DS scene but I didn't own a 3DS until a good few years into the system's life. I hacked the first one I got, but I barely used it in the end. But man, I was super invested in emulation and homebrew stuff for wii and ds back in the day.

 

[Deleted User]

It's a rather complicated question because the Terminology is more appropriate to a specific Space-Time, which is more in this Century.

I did start learning Programming in Australian Public School with the 1980s MicroBee Computers from the Third Grade.
Shout out to North Ryde Public School, Sydney - Australia ...

I basically Homebrewed my DOS Boot Disks with ASCII Art back in my 80286 days, alongside other functions.
I was also active in Modding The Elder Scrolls Morrowind, Grand Theft Auto III and The Sims 2.
People actually made money selling Sims 2 Skins back in the day, usually Full Nudity ones.

But when I fit into this definition would be with the Nintendo Wii.
And now the New Nintendo 3DS XL USA that I carry around the World, well, again when the Restrictions allow.

 

[GoldenBullet]

I spent just about all summer of my freshman year of high school learning about softmods for game consoles. I started with the Wii, then the original Xbox, I bought a DStwo for my DS, and jailbroke my ipod touch.

I kind of followed the early 3DS scene but I didn't own a 3DS until a good few years into the system's life. I hacked the first one I got, but I barely used it in the end. But man, I was super invested in emulation and homebrew stuff for wii and ds back in the day.

I actually only got the 3ds solely because smash was releasing on it and I didn't have a Wii u. Strangely enough I didn't install cfw on it till a bit later.

I only did save editing on the Xbox (because jtag seemed very confusing at the time) for Minecraft which was a whole different story. I ended getting permanently banned on my main email because I accidently edited my Halo multiplayer save.

It's a rather complicated question because the Terminology is more appropriate to a specific Space-Time, which is more in this Century.

I did start learning Programming in Australian Public School with the 1980s MicroBee Computers from the Third Grade.
Shout out to North Ryde Public School, Sydney - Australia ...

I basically Homebrewed my DOS Boot Disks with ASCII Art back in my 80286 days, alongside other functions.
I was also active in Modding The Elder Scrolls Morrowind, Grand Theft Auto III and The Sims 2.
People actually made money selling Sims 2 Skins back in the day, usually Full Nudity ones.

But when I fit into this definition would be with the Nintendo Wii.
And now the New Nintendo 3DS XL USA that I carry around the World, well, again when the Restrictions allow.

Dang so you made actually made mods? I think the only mods I've made or posted were some smash 3ds skins here on this forum. Having my skin featured in a YouTubers video was an oddly high achievement. I'm currently studying computer programming but I don't even know how people even learning these things

 

[Deleted User]

I'm currently studying computer programming but I don't even know how people even learning these things

You're probably going to go much, much farther than I've ever been and I look forward to seeing your works posted online in the future.

I have always been just a Hobbyist in Gaming, but it does give me great joy to accomplish minor personalisations here and there.

It's also always nice to interact with Past, Current and Future Talents in the Gaming Scene.

 

[GoldenBullet]

You're probably going to go much, much farther than I've ever been and I look forward to seeing your works posted online in the future.

I have always been just a Hobbyist in Gaming, but it does give me great joy to accomplish minor personalisations here and there.

It's also always nice to interact with Past, Current and Future Talents in the Gaming Scene.

I really appreciate the kind words. Ive got big dreams for the future but I just got to get off my lazy ass to do so

 

[duwen]

If we're talking "piracy", well, that began in the early 80's for me with duping ZX Spectrum cassettes. Also did a bit of what could be considered modding back then too; a friend and I took a fishing game that was coded in basic and meticulously changed all the text, creating something more akin to a fever dream pokemon game... a decade before pokemon even existed.
Due to my early start, piracy was always kind of the norm. I had adapters/mods to run imports/bootlegs on every system I've owned (except Ps4 and 360, although I did a little avatar modding on 360 that got my Japanese account banned).
That said, I don't *just* pirate, and while I still do it I'm certainly more of a collector these days.

 

[DebianLoriX]

If we're talking "piracy", well, that began in the early 80's for me with duping ZX Spectrum cassettes. Also did a bit of what could be considered modding back then too; a friend and I took a fishing game that was coded in basic and meticulously changed all the text, creating something more akin to a fever dream pokemon game... a decade before pokemon even existed.

Cheers! Very similar here!
I started with the C64 and his datassette, I spent hours and hours aligning it
And dreaming the enormous 5" 1/4 data drive, with "Mission Impossible" loading much faster than my pirate tape

 

[fvig2001]

I mean if we were talking about "backups", it's the normal way of like in my country. So probably since I was like 2nd grade with my PC stuff.

 

[FAST6191]

As with others there are what I now recognise as key points, however I also recognise now I lacked anything in the way of formal rigour in approach compared to what I know now and approaches I take now.

PC stuff sends us back to 286s still being current. Was messing around with the rudiments of electronics back then too (had, still have even, one of those things with components and springs and wires), and lego technic and a toolkit when I was 5 meant I was no stranger to the insides of things and general mechanics.

Had some minor experience with savestates, peek and poke on the commodore 64 but it was more copying things from magazines than knowing precisely what I was doing. Never really did much with the vic20. Programming arguably came with some flavour of basic on a little toy computer thing from vtech more than it did with the C64, and qbasic on the PC (got to love gorillas.bas and nibbles (think snake on a phone).

Amiga was when I first properly noted things (trainers, intros, art/music associated with said same, lingo, copied games, anti piracy...).

Had a few lucky lucky man 30 in 1 things for the gameboy.

Emulation appeared around 1998-2000 for me (in my case disc from a computer fayre with genecyst and a bunch of megadrive games), though PC stuff was also a thing by then (remember some people otherwise important in my formative years downloading Windows ME when that was new).
GB/GBC emulation soon after. Some friends did SNES but I mostly missed out there.
More intro to hacking as well as said fayres also sold discs with all sorts of fun programs, examples of hacked sites and more to look at.

PS1 mod chips and cheat cart along with a burner soon after, and the anti piracy race in that. PC throughout it all too, including pulling apart games to explore their files, settings and the like (though nowhere near as systematically as I can do now). N64 cheat cart taught me to make cheats and I had a similar thing for the PC (was Datel I think and came with a dongle for the parallel port... I did not know better and that I could have used any number of debuggers for free, though did not really have internet outside of libraries down town and school).
Technically did a light bit of dreamcast (still have the utopia disc my dad got from a friend in the pub) but nothing to really note there.

2003 or just after had messed with a bit of GBA emulation in the years prior but did not have the PC to do it justice and got a GBA flash cart and GBA-SP.

All downhill from there. Stopped being as much of a guide follower to instead go on the path to hack maker and guide writer. Learned the ins and outs of flash carts, emulators, took up ROM hacking in earnest, repeated for the DS, xbox, 360 and yeah. Already had a fair bit of hardware experience from the years prior and had biased my education towards it and continue hardware/electronics, programming and hacking to this day.

 

[Taleweaver]

I've got two answers here, depending on context:

When we first got a PC, it was almost normal that you exchanged floppy disks with games on it. You bought something someone else with a computer didn't have, and you traded your games by simple floppy disk transfer. I must've been around twelve at that time.
Shortly after, things got "harder" somehow. But like console companies later, they were on a sort of war against everyone else. Cracks, modded patches, overburned CD's...pretty soon, the idea of still somehow being able to play game X after returning the original disk (which I started borrowing from libraries as well, btw) became the sport at a time. It's only a couple years ago that I got rid of most of those CD's, as they were (at that time) illegal acts whereas I hardly ever bothered playing anything of it.

For my second answer...If I calculate correctly, I must've been 28. It was the summer of 2009, and I was invited for a party at a friend's. Among the other guests were a couple with kids. At certain point, the father asked the host (my friend) if it was okay to entertain the kids a bit with this console. This was a wii, just like the one I bought for wii sports at one point (and was since gathering dust). For some reason there was a USB stick or hard drive connected to it. More so: that guy had a whole libary loading from his wii. At first I was just mildly curious: I knew about hardmods, soldering and stuff like that. Then was the first time I heard about "softmods", that didn't involve any hardware fiddling that could easily destroy your console (okay, perhaps this was exxaggerating, but I wasn't about to mess with console hardware).
Not long afterward, I started googling and learned about softmodding on a Dutch wii forum that I can't even recall anymore. This was the time of Waninkoko's cIOS and the first USB loaders.
What struck me as odd was that the hardware news wasn't so much a "everyone shares something" but more hierarchical: there were one or two main...I guess tutors are the best word. The guys that started threads and replied to most questions newbies like me had. And it also showed that their source was the same for about 90-95% of the time. This English site called "gbatemp" (you might have heard of it ). So rather than wait until they learned their stuff on that site, I decided to join the site and cut out the middlemen. And...

...well: I'm still here, aren't I?

 

[DebianLoriX]

PC stuff sends us back to 286s still being current.

my first PC was an i8088 at 8 MhZ with 1 Mb RAM, EGA card graphics (16 colours! The most PC at that time has only CGA monochrome!), double 3" 1/2 disk drive... only later I got an hard drive, it was enormous for me, 20 Mb! So I started to assemblate it myself, trading many pieces with friends and so on; then I discovered the world of consolle with PS1, the first modchip (soldered by a friend)... recently, bored of buying expensive VGA cards for gaming, I bought a PS4 (a bargain offer) which I use it with satisfaction (FW 6.72, sleirgoevy's JB, with some fake packages rom), no more searching for warez and cracks (and no more viruses)!

Had some minor experience with savestates, peek and poke on the commodore 64 but it was more copying things from magazines than knowing precisely what I was doing. Never really did much with the vic20. Programming arguably came with some flavour of basic on a little toy computer thing from vtech more than it did with the C64, and qbasic on the PC (got to love gorillas.bas and nibbles (think snake on a phone).

I started dumb-replication most of the C64 manual BASIC manual listings when I was 6 y.o, then I got the i8088... but the real turn for me was in 2000, when I met Linux, also my wife love it!

 

[Deleted member 514389]

It all started around the year 2003 with the GBA, the Gbamp V2 (aka. GBA Movie Player) and a certain forum called gbatmw (long defunct).

Later with the DS a PassmeV2 made the gbamp even more useful.
The rest is history.

I always stuck with Ninty's handhelds, and thus it will always be.

 

[AncientBoi]

1987 I think. Jailbreaking my android

 

[theravingrabbid]

It started for me in June 2016 whenever I first got into AC with City Folk. I noticed that it had online features but I remembered that the service was discontinued 2 years prior. I then looked for a way to play online again in which I had found Wiimmfi, so then I homebrewed my Wii with the patcher, met my two very first AC friends from a YouTube comment section and you can, probably guess the rest.

 

[GoldenBullet]

I gotta say, its fascinating reading all y'alls stories.. but it also made me realize y'all are old

Jokes aside, its crazy you guys have been doing this for a long time (I thought installing android/linux on my 2010 ultrabook was bad). I still haven't gotten into anything like soldering (partly because I don't have one) and because I got shaky hands. Almost broke my 3080 because of it.

For my second answer...If I calculate correctly, I must've been 28. It was the summer of 2009, and I was invited for a party at a friend's. Among the other guests were a couple with kids. At certain point, the father asked the host (my friend) if it was okay to entertain the kids a bit with this console. This was a wii, just like the one I bought for wii sports at one point (and was since gathering dust). For some reason there was a USB stick or hard drive connected to it. More so: that guy had a whole libary loading from his wii.

I caught someone using USB Loader GX, who was loaded with games but decided to not say anything, to not expose him for the piracy lol

 

[JoeBloggs777]

looks like I'm not the only old timer on here but I'm guessing I'm probably the oldest
I go back to even before the days of the ZX81, first computer I was given by my older brother was a RAIR Blackbox https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=454
I built a ZX81 from a kit, had a Vic 20 and all the other home computers, still have a Jupiter ACE
but piracy for me really took off with the MGH and SWC for the Snes and megadrive.
still carrying on today, not for me but my kids

 

[JaapDaniels]

When i was 4 years old i learned how to copy multiple lended games on tape for my Comodore 64,
then when i was 6 i started by bypassing manual questions for sierra games, like king's quest and police quest.
Most copied discs i made were good enough to use without the need of a crack (elmer bytes rules)
In this same era of time my brother introduced the super nintendo (and a superwildcard 16, too bad the manual was korean only)
When i got older i patched out registration check of winrar with just a hexeditor.
Modded a psx for a friend first option on the market in the netherlands.
from wii and DSi time on i got interested in here since the over complete info and cheaper solutions.

 

[DebianLoriX]

You guys, how much remembers! It seems like yesterday, when first I played "Wing Commander" on my new 80386 PC... but absolutely the game I remember the most is "Manic Miner", when I was a child on my C64 I think I destroyed three or four joysticks with jumping on those damned platforms!


Later I discover MAME emulation, playing those old coin-op games I played in the bar years before; most recently, I discovered home brewing with flashing firmware routers (I have a SOIC8 clip, to R/W their NOR, but I have to do much experience with it), jailbreaking my first android smartphone and now with my PS4

 

[Dust2dust]

Sometimes I feel I'm the oldest guy on this forum, but reading all the comments in this thread, I see I'm still a young one (not really ) Someone should make a poll... How old are you? (be honest)
As for the topic, for me, that would go back to around 1983, with the Atari 8-bit computer. Lots of piracy there, too. I still enjoy a good game of Star Raiders.