Homebrew NUSspli - Install content directly from the Nintendo Update Servers to your Wii U

Stormflora said:

Thanks. Sadly, my ISP provides a static IP, so I'd be forced to use a VPN instead. Which I don't believe both the Wii U and Switch support. But I'll take my chances anyway.

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You can set up an OpenVPN config on your router, and then assign the VPN connection rules to just your Wii U. So your Wii U can connect via a VPN while not touching the rest of the devices on your network.

Stormflora said:

I did a lot of research, and it seems that as long as you format the microSD as FAT32 with 32K blocks, it should work just fine. The microSD to USB adapter is mostly for convenience, and to avoid the slow read speeds of the Wii U's SD card reader port.

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Yes, microSD will work on the Wii U, but only if you use an microSD to SD adapter. If you try using a microSD to USB adapter on the Wii U, it will not work for the homebrew process at all. It MUST be the SD Port.

I could be misunderstanding your intentions / game plan, but that's what it sounded like you were going to try to me.

Korozin said:

You can set up an OpenVPN config on your router, and then assign the VPN connection rules to just your Wii U. So your Wii U can connect via a VPN while not touching the rest of the devices on your network.



Yes, microSD will work on the Wii U, but only if you use an microSD to SD adapter. If you try using a microSD to USB adapter on the Wii U, it will not work for the homebrew process at all. It MUST be the SD Port.

I could be misunderstanding your intentions / game plan, but that's what it sounded like you were going to try to me.

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V10lator said:

There's really no need to. As said: Nintendo never did any such actions as IP bans. They could even punish legit users that way (one user downloads, changes IP, the ISP assignes that blocked IP to a legit user), so I highly doubt they will ever do this.
If anything they would change the servers to dissalow unauthenticated downloads but seeing they never did this (while they did it for the 3DS years ago) this is also highly unlikely.

As @Korozin said you need to put the SD into the Wii Us SD reader, there's no way around this. This SD will just be for homebrew stuff through, your games need to be installed to NAND (not recommended) or a USB drive formatted with an encrypted, properitary Nintendo filesystem.
For the USB drive it isn't recommended to use flash based media (even Nintendo itself sais that) cause the Wii U will wear it out pretty quickly (read: It will kill the flash in no time), so use a HDD (with a Y cable) for this. Anyway, to just homebrew the Wii U all you need is a SD card, so no need to buy a HDD right now.

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Is this just a myth then? https://www.pretzellogix.net/2018/12/18/the-best-external-hdd-for-the-wii-u-is-a-200gb-microsd-card/

There were also a handful of older threads on this forum that detailed people using an SD card for Wii/NGC games via vWii, and a separate SD/HDD is required for Wii U games.

My intention was to use two different microSD cards (with an SD card or USB adapter), one for Wii/NGC and one for Wii U.

Should I be changing up my approach? What do you recommend I use instead? The microSD cards aren't opened yet, so I can just refund them.

And understood about the IP/VPN. I'll just ignore it.

Stormflora said:

Is this just a myth then? https://www.pretzellogix.net/2018/12/18/the-best-external-hdd-for-the-wii-u-is-a-200gb-microsd-card/

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For USB storage? Yeah I'm pretty sure that'd work, but it'd also die super quickly as the Wii U makes a large amount of writes and generally SD Cards are going to take a beating from that. That being said though, you still can't do that to install Homebrew as it must be the SD Card port in use to read the files from.

Stormflora said:

Should I be changing up my approach? What do you recommend I use instead? The microSD cards aren't opened yet, so I can just refund them.

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If you want extended USB storage then I recommend an external HDD with a y-cable since the Wii U doesn't give nearly enough USB power output. The y-cable will be a workaround for that. (You can also get an HDD with an external power supply, but a y-cable is just the easiest method).

But when it comes to actually installing homebrew, whether it be for the Wii U or vWii, you NEED either a regular SD Card or a Micro SD Card with a Micro to Full SD Adapter. This is because all the homewbrew processes can only be done using the Wii U's actual SD Card port. Attempting the homebrew process using a USB simply won't work.

Korozin said:

For USB storage? Yeah I'm pretty sure that'd work, but it'd also die super quickly as the Wii U makes a large amount of writes and generally SD Cards are going to take a beating from that. That being said though, you still can't do that to install Homebrew as it must be the SD Card port in use to read the files from.



If you want extended USB storage then I recommend an external HDD with a y-cable since the Wii U doesn't give nearly enough USB power output. The y-cable will be a workaround for that. (You can also get an HDD with an external power supply, but a y-cable is just the easiest method).

But when it comes to actually installing homebrew, whether it be for the Wii U or vWii, you NEED either a regular SD Card or a Micro SD Card with a Micro to Full SD Adapter. This is because all the homewbrew processes can only be done using the Wii U's actual SD Card port. Attempting the homebrew process using a USB simply won't work.

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Thank you. This was very informative. I'll have to make some refunds/exchanges then.

So the microSD-to-USB adapter is useless. My microSD cards come with an SD adapter already, so that shouldn't be an issue; I can still use the SD card reader port on the Wii U.

Does the microSD need to be completely empty/newly bought to install CFW/homebrew onto the Wii U? Or could I use one I already have that has other random files on it? And will I need to keep it around indefinitely, or is it largely useless after the hacks are installed?

When you say y-cable, do you mean something like one USB split to two USB, for the external HDD? I'll have to look around and find a good deal on an HDD.

V10lator said:

A high endurance card might work but there are so many different cards on the market, we can't give any recommendations for this and with a mechanical HDD you're on the save side.

vWii is a different story but to be fair I'm not using any drive for this but am just injecting the Wii/GCN games (so they go onto the same HDD as Wii U games and can be started from the Wii U menu, just like normal Wii U games).

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How does "injecting" work? Could you link a guide, and/or detail what is required? I was under the impression that two separate drives are required, but if I could fit everything onto one, that would be much better and likely to save me money and space.

Stormflora said:

Does the microSD need to be completely empty/newly bought to install CFW/homebrew onto the Wii U? Or could I use one I already have that has other random files on it? And will I need to keep it around indefinitely, or is it largely useless after the hacks are installed?

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No, it doesn't need to be empty as most of the Wii U homebrew files are just in a folder called wiiu. Although I'd recommend just reserving the SD Card to specifically Homebrew just in case. Just remember if the card is over 32 GiB to format it to FAT32. Also yes, you need to keep the files on the SD Card, and keep it in the Wii U as the files are still actively used even after installation. Your Homebrew apps for example, are stored on your SD Card. Same with Tiramisu / Aroma plugins and whatnot.

Stormflora said:

When you say y-cable, do you mean something like one USB split to two USB, for the external HDD? I'll have to look around and find a good deal on an HDD.

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Basically, yeah. It just supplies more power to the HDD allowing it to be used on the Wii U. Just looking up HDD Y-Cable will get you some results.

Stormflora said:

How does "injecting" work? Could you link a guide, and/or detail what is required? I was under the impression that two separate drives are required, but if I could fit everything onto one, that would be much better and likely to save me money and space.

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Injecting refers to VC injects which can be done with UWUVCI or Tecon Moon VC Injector. It basically works by creating a Virtual Console title on the WIi U's menu using the proprietary emulators to execute your own ROMs. It works for Wii, N64, GC, GBA, DS, etc. Although not all titles are compatible iirc. I'm not the best person to consult on this process as I never bothered with it. I just used RetroArch for GBA emulation and that was about all I did when it came to ROMs.

Korozin said:

No, it doesn't need to be empty as most of the Wii U homebrew files are just in a folder called wiiu. Although I'd recommend just reserving the SD Card to specifically Homebrew just in case. Just remember if the card is over 32 GiB to format it to FAT32. Also yes, you need to keep the files on the SD Card, and keep it in the Wii U as the files are still actively used even after installation. Your Homebrew apps for example, are stored on your SD Card. Same with Tiramisu / Aroma plugins and whatnot.



Basically, yeah. It just supplies more power to the HDD allowing it to be used on the Wii U. Just looking up HDD Y-Cable will get you some results.



Injecting refers to VC injects which can be done with UWUVCI or Tecon Moon VC Injector. It basically works by creating a Virtual Console title on the WIi U's menu using the proprietary emulators to execute your own ROMs. It works for Wii, N64, GC, GBA, DS, etc. Although not all titles are compatible iirc. I'm not the best person to consult on this process as I never bothered with it. I just used RetroArch for GBA emulation and that was about all I did when it came to ROMs.

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If the SD is to remain inserted into the Wii U, wouldn't that also "quickly wear out the SD over time"? Or does that only apply for game files, as they are massive compared to small homebrew files? If the SD card for homebrew is largely unused except for the hacks and maybe some oldgen console ROMs, I guess I don't need a 128 GB SD card then and should probably swap it to save some money xD

Stormflora said:

If the SD is to remain inserted into the Wii U, wouldn't that also "quickly wear out the SD over time"? Or does that only apply for game files, as they are massive compared to small homebrew files?

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The SD Card reader on the Wii U is a bit of a different case. The Wii U makes a ton of writes to the NAND and USB, so obviously it's going to wear down faster. The SD Card however is subject to less writes meaning it'll last a lot longer. Anyways, because of the massive amount of writes to the NAND, this is why we always recommend installing titles to the USB drive so as to preserve your NANDs life-cycle. (Note: By utilizing an HDD your USB storage will last a significant amount of time, so by minimizing NAND writes and focusing on USB with your HDD you basically guarantee long life-times.)

Stormflora said:

If the SD card for homebrew is largely unused except for the hacks and maybe some oldgen console ROMs, I guess I don't need a 128 GB SD card then and should probably swap it to save some money xD

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I'd choose whatever size you'd think would serve you best. When I had my Wii U I personally had around 512 GiB, but that was because I had an utterly absurd amount of ROMs on the card for RetroArch. I also made a lot of file / ram dumps, etc to reverse engineer and examine the memory of certain titles. That stuff takes up a lot of space, but if you're aiming for just general usage then around 32 - 64 GiB should be perfectly fine.

Korozin said:

The SD Card reader on the Wii U is a bit of a different case. The Wii U makes a ton of writes to the NAND and USB, so obviously it's going to wear down faster. The SD Card however is subject to less writes meaning it'll last a lot longer. Anyways, because of the massive amount of writes to the NAND, this is why we always recommend installing titles to the USB drive so as to preserve your NANDs life-cycle. (Note: By utilizing an HDD your USB storage will last a significant amount of time, so by minimizing NAND writes and focusing on USB with your HDD you basically guarantee long life-times.)



I'd choose whatever size you'd think would serve you best. When I had my Wii U I personally had around 512 GiB, but that was because I had an utterly absurd amount of ROMs on the card for RetroArch. I also made a lot of file / ram dumps, etc to reverse engineer and examine the memory of certain titles. That stuff takes up a lot of space, but if you're aiming for just general usage then around 32 - 64 GiB should be perfectly fine.

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What exactly is this "NAND" that you speak of? Do you mean the Wii U's internal drive?

V10lator said:

For Wii/GCN it uses vWii (in ome special VC mode), so compatibility should be just as good as vWii directly.

No. What wears out flash on USB is the properitary Nintendo filesystem and how they access it. The FAT formatted SD card for homebrew stuff will be mostly read-only, so should last a long time.

Yes. Modern CFWs just put a small payload loader onto the Wii Us internal memory which loads the rest from the SD card. Also as @Korozin said all your homebrews and stuff will be there. So it's best to insert the card and then forget about it (no need to put it out even if you want to add new stuff, you can just use FTP for that).

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Okay, so ideally and most simply, a small SD card for the hack and homebrew, and then one big HDD with a y-splitter for everything else?

IIRC, doesn't the Wii U set up some sort of proprietary filesystem that only supports Wii U files, and is thus unreadable by a PC? Or is there some known method to add other files (like ROMs) onto the drive for Virtual Console emulation?

Hypothetically, if the SD card reader on the Wii isn't subject to too many writes, wouldn't it be okay to use the 128 GB SD card (in the card reader slot, not via USB) for emulating old consoles, perhaps even Wii/NGC? I still don't know what the best practice is in terms of splitting apart different use-cases for the Wii U.

Other threads here have had people stating that they use their SD card for Wii/NGC just fine, even if it might load a little slower than HDD.

Stormflora said:

What exactly is this "NAND" that you speak of? Do you mean the Wii U's internal drive?

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NAND refers to the actual NAND chip on the Wii U's mobo. It holds the internal memory, so yeah it can be referred to as the internal drive.

Stormflora said:

IIRC, doesn't the Wii U set up some sort of proprietary filesystem that only supports Wii U files, and is thus unreadable by a PC? Or is there some known method to add other files (like ROMs) onto the drive for Virtual Console emulation?

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Yes, but VC Injects have their own process that gets around that. Not sure if Wii games can be done off of the SD Card, but like I said, I'm not the best person to consult on this so I'd recommend finding a guide / doing research as the help I can offer there is very limited.

Stormflora said:

Hypothetically, if the SD card reader on the Wii isn't subject to too many writes, wouldn't it be okay to use the128 GB SD card (in the card reader slot, not via USB) for emulating old consoles, perhaps even Wii/NGC? I still don't know what the best practice is in terms of splitting apart different use-cases for the Wii U.

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Yes, you can. If you want to do ROMs exclusively on the SD Card you can do things like RetroArch and Nintendont loading from the SD. The VC Injects were more or less a recommendation if you wanted to actually install the games as titles onto your HDD launching from the menu.

When it comes to Wii games you can opt for doing injects or something like USBLoaderGX for the actual vWii side. People often use a different HDD entirely for that process and just switch out the cables upon booting into vWii. The best user-case really depends on what you want to do. No one can decide what will be best for you, but you.

Korozin said:

NAND refers to the actual NAND chip on the Wii U's mobo. It holds the internal memory, so yeah it can be referred to as the internal drive.



Yes, but VC Injects have their own process that gets around that. Not sure if Wii games can be done off of the SD Card, but like I said, I'm not the best person to consult on this so I'd recommend finding a guide / doing research as the help I can offer there is very limited.



Yes, you can. If you want to do ROMs exclusively on the SD Card you can do things like RetroArch and Nintendont loading from the SD. The VC Injects were more or less a recommendation if you wanted to actually install the games as titles onto your HDD launching from the menu.

When it comes to Wii games you can opt for doing injects or something like USBLoaderGX for the actual vWii side. People often use a different HDD entirely for that process and just switch out the cables upon booting into vWii. The best user-case really depends on what you want to do. No one can decide what will be best for you, but you.

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In my case, I want the lowest physical footprint possible. So if possible I'd slap everything onto a single HDD, but that's obviously not possible. Trying not to waste money on components I'd never use.

Is it better to emulate ROMs, or is it better to convert them to Virtual Console injections? What are the performance/load implications? Also, could you link a guide on how to set up Virtual Console injections?

If it's not too big of a deal, I'm perfectly fine with the 128 GB SD card (in the SD card reader slot) holding the hacks and a bunch of pastgen ROMs. And I can use an HDD with a y-splitter for Wii U games (and maybe more).

Stormflora said:

In my case, I want the lowest physical footprint possible. So if possible I'd slap everything onto a single HDD, but that's obviously not possible. Trying not to waste money on components I'd never use.

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In that case, focusing on keeping most of your Wii U side data on the HDD is your best bet. Putting (mostly) everything on one HDD is definitely doable, it's just a matter of what you want to do.

Stormflora said:

Is it better to emulate ROMs, or is it better to convert them to Virtual Console injections? What are the performance/load implications? Also, could you link a guide on how to set up Virtual Console injections?

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Either is fine. I personally went for Emulation as it required less set up and by using RetroArch you can just install cores and get a wide range of compatibility. The problem with doing that though is it doesn't quite support everything (Example: DS, GC, N64 aren't supported with Wii U RetroArch cores. However there are standalone emulators such as Nintendont and a 64 emulator in the vWii side). Doing GC without VC injects would also require using Nintendont and storing the ISOs on your SD Card / HDD. Once you load it up it's more or less fine performance wise.

When it comes down to performance, I'd say VC Injects probably have the best yield as most of them basically hook your own ROMs into Nintendo's official Virtual Console emulation. Using other emulators (such as RetroArch), work fine as well. So performance isn't bad either way.

In my opinion, it just comes down on what you'd like to do. Would you rather have an emulator that holds a host of your games? Or install your ROMs to the Home menu and load them as individual titles?

About the guides. I never actually did any VC Injects, and as such I don't know which guides are actually trust-worthy. @V10lator do you know any reputable VC Inject guides?

Stormflora said:

If it's not too big of a deal, I'm perfectly fine with the 128 GB SD card (in the SD card reader slot) holding the hacks and a bunch of pastgen ROMs. And I can use an HDD with a y-splitter for Wii U games (and maybe more).

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That would work without issues.

Korozin said:

In that case, focusing on keeping most of your Wii U side data on the HDD is your best bet. Putting (mostly) everything on one HDD is definitely doable, it's just a matter of what you want to do.



Either is fine. I personally went for Emulation as it required less set up and by using RetroArch you can just install cores and get a wide range of compatibility. The problem with doing that though is it doesn't quite support everything (Example: DS, GC, N64 aren't supported with Wii U RetroArch cores. However there are standalone emulators such as Nintendont and a 64 emulator in the vWii side). Doing GC without VC injects would also require using Nintendont and storing the ISOs on your SD Card / HDD. Once you load it up it's more or less fine performance wise.

When it comes down to performance, I'd say VC Injects probably have the best yield as most of them basically hook your own ROMs into Nintendo's official Virtual Console emulation. Using other emulators (such as RetroArch), work fine as well. So performance isn't bad either way.

In my opinion, it just comes down on what you'd like to do. Would you rather have an emulator that holds a host of your games? Or install your ROMs to the Home menu and load them as individual titles?

About the guides. I never actually did any VC Injects, and as such I don't know which guides are actually trust-worthy. @V10lator do you know any reputable VC Inject guides?



That would work without issues.

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V10lator said:

@Stormflora For your usecase I would recommend one HDD and a SD card for homebrew, none for vWii. Don't use the smallest SD card you'll find through as you will put the installation files for VC injects and stuff onto that, then install it to USB with NUSspli.

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It does sound like using an emulation hub such as RetroArch/Nintendont would be easier than having to set up each game individually as a VC Inject. But I haven't tried injections out myself yet, so I don't know how automatic/manual the process would be. Since the two of you recommend something different from each other, I'm not really sure which to go for. I just want one thing: simplicity.

For the time being, I'll search for an external HDD.

Stormflora said:

It does sound like using an emulation hub such as RetroArch/Nintendont would be easier than having to set up each game individually as a VC Inject. But I haven't tried injections out myself yet, so I don't know how automatic/manual the process would be. Since the two of you recommend something different from each other, I'm not really sure which to go for. I just want one thing: simplicity.

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I don't really recommend anything specifically, I just recommend searching for what you think would suit you best.

VC Injects can take a bit of set up initially but once they're done you can just load it like a regular game.

Emulation basically allows for a hub that can load the ROMs directly.

Both are good choices, it just depends on what you'd like.

Korozin said:

I don't really recommend anything specifically, I just recommend searching for what you think would suit you best.

VC Injects can take a bit of set up initially but once they're done you can just load it like a regular game.

Emulation basically allows for a hub that can load the ROMs directly.

Both are good choices, it just depends on what you'd like.

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V10lator said:

The Wii U is too weak to emulate Wii / GCN. That's why it has a Wii build in (hardware), that's vWii.

For other things (GBA, DS, N64, ...) emulators might work through.

//EDIT: Nintendont is a Wii homebrew (mapping GCN to Wii APIs as they are almost identical, so no emulation) running in vWii. A GCN inject just bundles the ROM and loads Nintendont with an autoboot of the ROM.

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Still kind of confused, so I guess I'll try to be more specific. If I wanted to use the Wii U gamepad/Wii Remote for Player 1 and USB controller for Player 2, which would support it better? A hacked vWii, or VC Injection? I'm looking to play both NGC and original Wii titles. Don't necessarily need to have a bunch of fancy icons on the home screen; perfectly fine with a single hub.