Hacking Delete or hide the disc channel?

[raulpica]

Splitted posts from the three threads, and merged them into a single big thread. (OP was warned for massive derailment)

You can continue in here, if it's needed

 

[SifJar]

I'm not sure if this would work, but snort48+ might be able to move the disc channel to a location not on the system menu (ie. page 20 or something). Don't try this though unless you have bootmii @ boot2 and a nand backup. Snort48+ was mainly intended to be a manager of channels that are saved to an emulated nand, I'm not sure if it has the power to move the disc channel to a phantom page, but even if it does there is potential for errors so don't attempt this without bootmii@boot2.

No that wont work, because Disc Channel ISN'T a channel. i.e. it is not an installed title, so it will not show up in that.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

Well, it does have a changeable location in whatever file that keeps track of channel locations. Certainly it may be possible to put it out of range through a hack of some sort.

 

[SifJar]

Possibly. But not through Snort I don't think.

You might need to manually edit iplsave.bin. Remove the channel with the channel_type and secondary_type both 0x01. By remove, I mean blank with zeros, otherwise the file size would be wrong. Maybe that'll hide it completely.

EDIT: Nope, just tried - SM puts it back into iplsave.bin if you remove it.

EDIT: Did a bit of reading: Looks like there needs to be enough channels installed so that there are no spaces (i.e. 48 channels) for you to be able to hide disc channel. In other words, it can only be done if you have 48 channels installed, otherwise, SM will slot it in wherever there is a space.

 

[AbdallahTerro]

I have 48 channels all the time. I even have more (I recently installed HAXX channel that runs from rescue disc as brick protection) as channel 49. So Sifjar what can I do to make the Disc channel #49 i.e. not showing anymore.
From what I read in your Post I can get it back by just deleting any channel.

---

 

[SifJar]

Basically you need to dump your "iplsave.bin" from your NAND (title/00000001/00000002/data/iplsave.bin), open it in a HEX editor and overwrite the first entry (disc channel) with a different one.

At offset 0x10, you will find the following:

01 01 00 00 00 00 00 0F 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Replace that with something like this:

03 00 00 00 00 00 00 0E 00 01 00 01 53 4A 42 36

where the last 8 bytes are the HEX title ID (e.g. for latest HBC, you'd put 00 01 00 01 AF 1B F5 16). Leave the rest of it, and use the title ID of a channel that is installed but not currently displayed on SM.

This should "probably" work, but I have not tested it. I advise trying it on SNEEK/UNEEK if possible before trying on a real NAND, if not at least have BootMii/boot2. A working iplsave.bin is essential to the Wii booting.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

@[member='SifJar'], great insight man. Too bad it requires filling up the rest of the channel slots, but it at least something which is better than nothing considering that no one is willing/capable of modifying the SM besides just themes. I bet a nicely made priiloader hack can make the disc channel be out of range no matter what.

 

[SifJar]

Perhaps. But that'd be way beyond my level of expertise.

 

[damysteryman]

Now this is an interesting thread... the first time I have seen someone actually ask for such.

I bet a nicely made priiloader hack can make the disc channel be out of range no matter what.

...or just tell the Disc Channel to load... another channel instead of the disc
You can use this to boot an autoboot NeoGamma channel via the Disc Channel itself!

I had actually made such a hack well over a year ago for another gbatemp user (I made it for cwstjdenobs; I made it for him as part of a project he was making at the time) but never got around to porting it to all System menus or releasing it to the public... I guess now would be the time for me to do so. It was a really simple hack actually... based on the "Force discs to use IOS249" hack. When the sysmenu boots a disc, it finds out what IOS the game is using, and loads it. The above hack just tells the sysmenu to always load IOS249 instead. What I did was tell the sysmenu to load up a title I wanted instead of the IOS that the game wanted.

So far I only have it made for 4.3E and 3.2E. I will make a vid of it in action, and post the vid here just to show what I mean, and then after that if you guys want me to, I can make another thread with a more detailed description and port the hack to all 4 regions of 4.3, and then maybe port it to 4.1 and 4.2. (Not sure if I will port it to all 3.xx sysmenus yet)

EDIT: DAMN! I finally port the autoboot stuff over to b56 (from a modified b52 I had), put all the hack materials back on my Wii, test it all out to make sure it all works, then when I get to filming, my camera's batteries die 16 seconds into filming. Once I get some more batteries sometime tomorrow, I will film this hack in action and post the vid here. Sorry about that guys...

 

[davebaol]

Soungs good. Just one thought about what you said

It was a really simple hack actually... based on the "Force discs to use IOS249" hack. When the sysmenu boots a disc, it finds out what IOS the game is using, and loads it. The above hack just tells the sysmenu to always load IOS249 instead.

If you always force ios249 some games won't be supported because there's no universal base working for all the games out there.
However d2x cios is signed with some useful info, among them there's the base too.
So you might force it to use the most suitable cios i.e. the one built on the base corresponding to the ios required by the game.
The cios built on base 56 is the best fallback if you can't find any cios with the same base required by the game.

 

[damysteryman]

Yeah, that is why that particular hack in itself does not work too well. But in this case, this "Channel via Disc Channel" hack used tells the sysmenu to boot an actual channel title instead of an IOS title, and the channel that is booted behaves as it normally does. It does not have actually have anything to do with IOS249, it just boots a specified channel, and then the channel - in this case NeoGamma set to autoboot - does all the rest of the work. The disc itself does not get booted by the System Menu.

The main reason I mentioned that other hack is because this one works in the same way as that one, and patches the same offset as that one did.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

EDIT: DAMN! I finally port the autoboot stuff over to b56 (from a modified b52 I had), put all the hack materials back on my Wii, test it all out to make sure it all works, then when I get to filming, my camera's batteries die 16 seconds into filming. Once I get some more batteries sometime tomorrow, I will film this hack in action and post the vid here. Sorry about that guys...

You are a fucking disappointment.

j/k

Good job on that. I can't wait to see it

 

[G0dLiKe]

Xfalk, is there a tool to delete or hide the disc channel?
Another even harder question, Can I a make a channel such as neogamma show the disc banner when a disc is inserted (same way as disc channel)?

1. its XFlak not Xfalk
2. You can hide the Disc channel by moving it to the far right screen when you got it enabled in priiloader.
3. Why you wanna see the game banner when you want to hide the disc channel anyways already answered.

 

[SifJar]

Now this is an interesting thread... the first time I have seen someone actually ask for such.

I bet a nicely made priiloader hack can make the disc channel be out of range no matter what.

...or just tell the Disc Channel to load... another channel instead of the disc
You can use this to boot an autoboot NeoGamma channel via the Disc Channel itself!

I had actually made such a hack well over a year ago for another gbatemp user (I made it for cwstjdenobs; I made it for him as part of a project he was making at the time) but never got around to porting it to all System menus or releasing it to the public... I guess now would be the time for me to do so. It was a really simple hack actually... based on the "Force discs to use IOS249" hack. When the sysmenu boots a disc, it finds out what IOS the game is using, and loads it. The above hack just tells the sysmenu to always load IOS249 instead. What I did was tell the sysmenu to load up a title I wanted instead of the IOS that the game wanted.

So far I only have it made for 4.3E and 3.2E. I will make a vid of it in action, and post the vid here just to show what I mean, and then after that if you guys want me to, I can make another thread with a more detailed description and port the hack to all 4 regions of 4.3, and then maybe port it to 4.1 and 4.2. (Not sure if I will port it to all 3.xx sysmenus yet)

EDIT: DAMN! I finally port the autoboot stuff over to b56 (from a modified b52 I had), put all the hack materials back on my Wii, test it all out to make sure it all works, then when I get to filming, my camera's batteries die 16 seconds into filming. Once I get some more batteries sometime tomorrow, I will film this hack in action and post the vid here. Sorry about that guys...

Ah yes, that makes sense. I had suggested somewhere (I think the post was moved into this thread when it was all merged together) a Priiloader hack to autoload a channel in place of loading disc channel, but I hadn't really thought about how to do it. This makes perfect sense, and should be pretty easy from what I gather.

EDIT: And it looks like with hash_hacks.ini, the IOS249 hack works on all SMs, so you shouldn't need to port it I guess.

EDIT: @damysteryman: If it's not too much trouble, would you by any chance be able to quickly explain the hack?

[Force Disc Games to run under IOS249]
maxversion=518
minversion=1
amount=1
hash=0x7f06c378,0x7f25cb78,0x387e02
patch=0x3B200001,0x3B0000F9

Obviously I understand the last two bytes of each patch referring to the IOS to load (right?), but what do the first two bytes mean? (0x3B20 and 0x3B00). Is that some ARM instruction? Do these instructions add 0000 to the start of each of the other parts, to give the full title of the IOS?

Sorry if I'm bothering you, I'm just rather curious about this sort of thing.

 

[davebaol]

I didn't verified the binary format for the immediate MOV instruction on ppc but at quick glance they seem to be something like
MOV r2, 1
MOV r0, 249

 

[SifJar]

OK, thanks. That helps.

 

[AbdallahTerro]

Basically you need to dump your "iplsave.bin" from your NAND (title/00000001/00000002/data/iplsave.bin), open it in a HEX editor and overwrite the first entry (disc channel) with a different one. At offset 0x10, you will find the following:

01 01 00 00 00 00 00 0F 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Replace that with something like this:

03 00 00 00 00 00 00 0E 00 01 00 01 53 4A 42 36

where the last 8 bytes are the HEX title ID (e.g. for latest HBC, you'd put 00 01 00 01 AF 1B F5 16). Leave the rest of it, and use the title ID of a channel that is installed but not currently displayed on SM. This should "probably" work, but I have not tested it. I advise trying it on SNEEK/UNEEK if possible before trying on a real NAND, if not at least have BootMii/boot2. A working iplsave.bin is essential to the Wii booting.

Just tried on USB Nand - Status:not working
System Menu recreates disc channel in first slot even after replacing it with channel 47.

 

[SifJar]

Basically you need to dump your "iplsave.bin" from your NAND (title/00000001/00000002/data/iplsave.bin), open it in a HEX editor and overwrite the first entry (disc channel) with a different one. At offset 0x10, you will find the following:

01 01 00 00 00 00 00 0F 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Replace that with something like this:

03 00 00 00 00 00 00 0E 00 01 00 01 53 4A 42 36

where the last 8 bytes are the HEX title ID (e.g. for latest HBC, you'd put 00 01 00 01 AF 1B F5 16). Leave the rest of it, and use the title ID of a channel that is installed but not currently displayed on SM. This should "probably" work, but I have not tested it. I advise trying it on SNEEK/UNEEK if possible before trying on a real NAND, if not at least have BootMii/boot2. A working iplsave.bin is essential to the Wii booting.

Just tried on USB Nand - Status:not working
System Menu recreates disc channel in first slot even after replacing it with channel 47.

Channel 48. You should have 47 channels displayed and at least one not displayed, and then move one that is not displayed to overwrite the disc channel.

But it may just not work. There is a good chance SM will always restore disc channel. One other thing to try: Try doing what I suggested while having the priiloader hack to allow moving disc channel enabled - this may stop SM from replacing disc channel.

However, it'll probably be better to wait for damysteryman's hack to autoboot a channel from the disc channel.

 

[AbdallahTerro]

Yes I mean 49 - stupid typo mystake.
I think this will only be possible via a priiloader hack too

 

[damysteryman]

OK! sorry about the wait, but here is the video as I had promised:
Volume in video is low, so you may need to increase yours.
WARNING! My voiceover in this video is horrible and absolutely EVIL. (I do not actually sound like that IRL lol) When I watched this video after filming, I almost went insane. Almost went insane while filming towards the end too! Watch this video at your own risk... if you start uncontrollably laughing, get nightmares, or go insane after watching it all then it is your own fault.



So, what do you guys think about it (OTHER than the evil voiceover that is)?

I might make a new thread to post the actual hack in, along with a description of it.