Hacking USB Loader GX

ChibiMofo · Apr 2, 2023

JuanBaNaNa said:
Not wearing out Wii's Disc Drive?
I mean, my Wii's Disc Drive it's been barely used because Piracy = good for preservation of physical media.

Forgive my ignorance. It's 2023 and I assumed every single person on this forum had long ago converted to ISO/WBFS or similar files on a USB drive (or now even SD). Personally I haven't used the Wii's drive since I bought Harley Pasternak's Hollywood Workout in 2012. Writing all the code necessary to utilize a USB DVD drive this late in the game seems a big ask. But good luck!

JuanMena · Apr 2, 2023

ChibiMofo said:
Forgive my ignorance. It's 2023 and I assumed every single person on this forum had long ago converted to ISO/WBFS or similar files on a USB drive (or now even SD). Personally I haven't used the Wii's drive since I bought Harley Pasternak's Hollywood Workout in 2012. Writing all the code necessary to utilize a USB DVD drive this late in the game seems a big ask. But good luck!

I agree, it might be a waste of time, but still, I'd like to recommend everyone to just use SD and USB since it achieves the same goal, that is, preservation of physical meedia.

godreborn · Apr 2, 2023

JuanBaNaNa said:
I agree, it might be a waste of time, but still, I'd like to recommend everyone to just use SD and USB since it achieves the same goal, that is, preservation of physical meedia.

my wii's disc drive makes a weird noise when turning on the system now. it still seems to work though. I have a wiikey in mine, and it seems to handle burns better than original discs.

blackb0x · Apr 2, 2023

JacobM said:
Oh boy! I am curious to see what change you made. Thank you!

It gets Nintendont booting into games correctly again, but I'd like to see if I can remove the workaround that Cyan introduced and fix the freeze that you encounter when using a HID controller.

On the subject of Wii U, if anyone is using this forwarder package then they should avoid using the UNEO WAD file that's bundled with it, since it's a buggy version that doesn't pass arguments to the loader correctly. Instead you should use this WAD file (for vWii only).

I've asked cucholix to repackage his Wii U forwarder, but I don't know if he will since he's left the Wii scene.

Amuro-san · Apr 2, 2023

Of the games I've put on the Wii, Mario Super Mix Sports and Driver San Francisco are on a black screen, but the others worked, including Driver: Parallel Lines

Kirby6417 · Apr 3, 2023

Amazing work blackb0x, I finally updated to rev1281 from the old version and it is so nice. Thanks thanks thank you for the work you've done to improve Cyan's incredible app.

2 questions for anybody to answer:

1) Does Metroid Prime 3 work better than on rev1271? Mine would close and return to USBLGX randomly no matter what cIOS base I would use, made the game not worth playing.

2) Changelog says custom forwarders now return to USBLGX, but mine are still returning to HBC. Specifically forwarders to WiiSXRX and Not64. Is there a way for those to return to USBLGX yet? It would be reaaaaalllly sweet if that could happen, since it would make the user experience of my Wiis never have to visit the HBC.

mario-lucis-caelum · Apr 3, 2023

What's the extension for split iso files? With wbfs I know it's .wbfs for the first one and .wbf1 for the second. Is it .iso and .iso1?

blackb0x · Apr 3, 2023

Kirby6417 said:
1) Does Metroid Prime 3 work better than on rev1271? Mine would close and return to USBLGX randomly no matter what cIOS base I would use, made the game not worth playing.

Honestly, I haven't played through Metroid Prime 3 enough to know for sure. But I think a few people have mentioned playing it and this is the first time I've heard about it returning to the loader randomly.

Kirby6417 said:
2) Changelog says custom forwarders now return to USBLGX, but mine are still returning to HBC. Specifically forwarders to WiiSXRX and Not64. Is there a way for those to return to USBLGX yet? It would be reaaaaalllly sweet if that could happen, since it would make the user experience of my Wiis never have to visit the HBC.

The changelog has a few different fixes...

Fixed an issue that prevented homebrew from returning you back to USB Loader GX when you'd exit

So, if you used the loaders built in homebrew browser and launched something like WiiSXRX then when you'd exit WiiSXRX it wouldn't return you back to the loader. Now it will.

Fixed an issue that prevented USB Loader GX from launching custom channel forwarders correctly

In a previous release I added the ability to patch WiiWare and VC games, but in the process I accidently broke support for custom channel forwarders, so I fixed that.

As long as you've got the return to setting set to the UNEO forwarder then you should always return to the loader, unless of course another homebrew app changes the stub to return to something else.

mario-lucis-caelum said:
What's the extension for split iso files? With wbfs I know it's .wbfs for the first one and .wbf1 for the second. Is it .iso and .iso1?

I don't think that's supported. So for large files you'd need to try using NTFS instead of FAT32.

Glomgold · Apr 3, 2023

I've been revisiting my Wii, updated USB loader GX, cIOS, Nintendont etc. I noticed that I'm not saving to the emunand. Is this something I should enable? The emunand channel is set to full. I don't have NEEK.

If I set save to full and make a save with for example NSMB and then copy over the save from the nand to the emunand with GX. Is it that simple?

blackb0x · Apr 3, 2023

Glomgold said:
If I set save to full and make a save with for example NSMB and then copy over the save from the nand to the emunand with GX. Is it that simple?

The channel mode should be set to full, but for the save mode you should use partial most of the time.

Not all games work correctly with EmuNAND saves, so you'd need to turn it off it's causing a problem for a game.

Glomgold · Apr 3, 2023

blackb0x said:
The channel mode should be set to full, but for the save mode you should use partial most of the time.

Not all games work correctly with EmuNAND saves, so you'd need to turn it off it's causing a problem for a game.

Aha, so I could just leave it as is?

blackb0x · Apr 3, 2023

Glomgold said:
Aha, so I could just leave it as is?

If you're using partial for EmuNAND saves and your games are loading and saving to your storage device instead of your NAND then yea, leave it as is.

Amuro-san · Apr 3, 2023

now Mario Mix Sports and Driver: San Francisco is working, I had forced the video to progressive, now I put it to Disco and it's working perfectly, all the games I have now are working as they should, this USB Loader GX update is amazing, I'm going to get Tintin to see if it works (always heard great things about this game and when I saw a video I liked what I saw)
Here's a suggestion for future USB Loader GX updates: AMD FidelityFX™

blackb0x · Apr 4, 2023

Driver San Francisco is sensative to setting changes, which is why I can only guarantee that it works with the default settings.

Amuro-san said:
I'm going to get Tintin to see if it works (always heard great things about this game and when I saw a video I liked what I saw)

That won't work until the next update.

almmiron · Apr 4, 2023

After Installing d2xv11 and latest UsbLoader gx (jan/2023), some things slowed down....I use channel view: When I click the game, start game screen takes longer to show.

I mean, before the update, start game screen was instantly loaded, now it's a 2~3 seconds delay. I will try to defrag my external HDD, maybe boof things up.

Anyway, if not, I will post a video here and my syscheck to see if it's only me.

blackb0x · Apr 4, 2023

almmiron said:
After Installing d2xv11 and latest UsbLoader gx (jan/2023), some things slowed down....I use channel view: When I click the game, start game screen takes longer to show.

Is that d2x v11 with the new recommended slots and bases?

No changes were made for 1280/1281 that should impact how long it takes for a games screen to display. Although maybe your USB HDD doesn't like to initalise with IOS58 at all, in which case you could enable arguments in meta.xml and then try changing the boot IOS to 249.

almmiron · Apr 4, 2023

blackb0x said:
Is that d2x v11 with the new recommended slots and bases?

No changes were made for 1280/1281 that should impact how long it takes for a games screen to display. Although maybe your USB HDD doesn't like to initalise with IOS58 at all, in which case you could enable arguments in meta.xml and then try changing the boot IOS to 249.

I don't know if I made myself clear:
I mean, from this screen:

To this One, there is a delay:

After this one, is perfectly fine.

blackb0x · Apr 4, 2023

almmiron said:
I don't know if I made myself clear:
I mean, from this screen:

The channel grid is normally the slowest viewing option to use since it needs to load in cached banners, but you shouldn't have a delay when you click on one to get that Settings/Start screen.

Do still try editing the meta.xml file, since I'd be curious to know if that makes a difference. Just make sure you remove the two lines to enable arguments.

Also, do you have the loader and the cached BNR files on an SD card or are using a USB HDD for everything?

Glomgold · Apr 4, 2023

blackb0x said:
If you're using partial for EmuNAND saves and your games are loading and saving to your storage device instead of your NAND then yea, leave it as is.

I have it set off currently, been like that for years.

danny19901 · Apr 4, 2023

I have a slight idea which maybe possible to do and that would be making a .conf file for each individual game this being loaded when that game is loaded possibly improving compatibility for each game so users don't need to mess with different settings.
Idealy SB4E01.conf could be used with the game that uses that Title ID not sure if this wuld or could help or even be impemented Idea idealy comes from PCSX2 with auto fixes that get pushed to the gamedb

Hacking USB Loader GX

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