Hacking Devolution Speculation thread

[SifJar]

What I am slighty concerned about is not the way DV writes stuff to the NAND (I trust tueidj to deliver quality work), but the amount of times stuff gets written. Everytime you save a game, stuff is written to the NAND. I am aware that Wii games write stuff to the NAND too, but they do it with Nintendo's official way. I obviously don't know how the Wii operates as much as a hacker, so I can't tell the difference between Nintendo's way of writing to the NAND and Devolution's way, but there must be a reason why Nintendo doesn't allow us to save gamecube games to the NAND since the Wii's release.

I'd say because that's not how GC games work.

Exactly. Nintendo aren't going to give themselves extra work. They sort of had to support GC memory cards for the benefit of those who had original GCs and wanted to continue games etc. So they wouldn't want to bother adding another save feature when it wasn't necessary. It would also probably have confused some users, which isn't ever a good idea.

 

[Zero Aurion]

@[member='Zero Aurion'],
The reason why the last devolution thread was closed is because too many people were focusing on AP related issues. At this point, not only does asking AP questions piss some people off but it shows that you haven't fully read the devolution thread(s) otherwise you'd know better than to ask pointless AP questions.

edit: I posted this before seeing your post above, sorry, didn't mean to continue bothering you after you already sorta apologized

Ok, I'll stfu about it, then

 

[WiiUBricker]

What I am slighty concerned about is not the way DV writes stuff to the NAND (I trust tueidj to deliver quality work), but the amount of times stuff gets written. Everytime you save a game, stuff is written to the NAND. I am aware that Wii games write stuff to the NAND too, but they do it with Nintendo's official way. I obviously don't know how the Wii operates as much as a hacker, so I can't tell the difference between Nintendo's way of writing to the NAND and Devolution's way, but there must be a reason why Nintendo doesn't allow us to save gamecube games to the NAND since the Wii's release.

I'd say because that's not how GC games work.

Exactly. Nintendo aren't going to give themselves extra work. They sort of had to support GC memory cards for the benefit of those who had original GCs and wanted to continue games etc. So they wouldn't want to bother adding another save feature when it wasn't necessary. It would also probably have confused some users, which isn't ever a good idea.

Are you kidding? Nintendo's engineers have built all the Wii's internal software from scratch. If they want they could add NAND support for GC games in no time. It's not like they would have to hack and reverse engineer foreign software first.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

What I am slighty concerned about is not the way DV writes stuff to the NAND (I trust tueidj to deliver quality work), but the amount of times stuff gets written. Everytime you save a game, stuff is written to the NAND. I am aware that Wii games write stuff to the NAND too, but they do it with Nintendo's official way. I obviously don't know how the Wii operates as much as a hacker, so I can't tell the difference between Nintendo's way of writing to the NAND and Devolution's way, but there must be a reason why Nintendo doesn't allow us to save gamecube games to the NAND since the Wii's release.

I'd say because that's not how GC games work.

Exactly. Nintendo aren't going to give themselves extra work. They sort of had to support GC memory cards for the benefit of those who had original GCs and wanted to continue games etc. So they wouldn't want to bother adding another save feature when it wasn't necessary. It would also probably have confused some users, which isn't ever a good idea.

Are you kidding? Nintendo's engineers have built all the Wii's internal software from scratch. If they want they could add NAND support for GC games in no time. It's not like they would have to hack and reverse engineer foreign software first.

Correction, BroadOn built it from scratch. Nintendo went on top of BroadOn's code..... IIRC

 

[SifJar]

Are you kidding? Nintendo's engineers have built all the Wii's internal software from scratch. If they want they could add NAND support for GC games in no time. It's not like they would have to hack and reverse engineer foreign software first.

Yes, but making everything just work the way it did originally is bound to be easier than trying to change anything. Remember that in GC mode, the Wii essentially becomes a GC. So it would have been more hassle to make extra stuff like this work in GC mode. AFAIK, DM(L) can't do this, because of the limitations of GC mode. Could Nintendo have used the approach used in Devloution? Sure, but it's easier to just add a bit of software to turn off enough hardware that the console essentially becomes a GC and just let it work the way the GC did.

 

[WiiUBricker]

Correction, BroadOn built it from scratch. Nintendo went on top of BroadOn's code..... IIRC

The people behind BroadOn delivered the GPU for the Wii if I'm not mistaken. The operating system of the Wii (IOS files and stuff) is © Nintendo.

 

[obcd]

Ninty provided gc compatibility to boost the selling of the new console, so that people with a gamecube wouldn't mind switching to a wii as they could still use the controllers, the memory cards and the gc games they had.
The way the situation is now, ninty doesn't see any profit anymore in gamecube compatibility, which is why they dropped the controller ports and gc memory slots.
We can see the same with the gameboy advance -> ds -> dsi. The advance cartridge slot dissapeared as well.
So why would they put energy in extra saving options on the wii nand, knowing that the backward compatibility goal is just there to boost sales at launch time (when not much games are available.) They are a company, and the goal of a company is to make money.

 

[WiiUBricker]

Well, if they want money they might as well provide a paid GC saves to NAND patch via the Wii Shop

 

[DeadlyFoez]

Correction, BroadOn built it from scratch. Nintendo went on top of BroadOn's code..... IIRC

The people behind BroadOn delivered the GPU for the Wii if I'm not mistaken. The operating system of the Wii (IOS files and stuff) is © Nintendo.

BroadOn, IBM, and ATI is written on Hollywood. Now, IIRC, BroadOn wrote the core of the IOS, including boot0.

Also, IIRC, crediar was writign some CPU emulation software that he called BroadOff.
EDIT: Found this on wiibrew.org

The graphics chip in the Wii is codenamed "Hollywood"; it bears the logos of NEC (who presumably manufactured the chip), ATI (who designed the GPU), and BroadOn (who designed the Starlet "I/O Bridge")

 

[WiiUBricker]

Alright. Every day a bit wiser I guess

 

[tueidj]

The GPU was originally designed for the gamecube by ArtX, then ATI bought them up and turned it into the Radeon series. Nothing to do with BroadOn, who made starlet. Presumably BroadOn also initially developed all code that runs on starlet (boot0/boot1/boot2/IOS) and handed it over to Nintendo to maintain... then changed their name when their secure processor turned out to not be very secure at all.

 

[Maxternal]

If game saves are made on a 16mb virtual memory card, is there some sort of card selector on there so we can choose which memory card file we want to use along with the choice of virtual or real card? It would just be nice to not have to manually rename the file if it fills up and we need to be swapping "cards"

If nothing else, I'm sure someone could make a GUI front end that would take care of renaming for us so I guess it's no big deal.

 

[WiiUBricker]

The GPU was originally designed for the gamecube by ArtX, then ATI bought them up and turned it into the Radeon series. Nothing to do with BroadOn, who made starlet. Presumably BroadOn also initially developed all code that runs on starlet (boot0/boot1/boot2/IOS) and handed it over to Nintendo to maintain... then changed their name when their secure processor turned out to not be very secure at all.

So is every single IOS Nintendo made not written from scratch but based on BroadOn's IOS source code?

 

[Nemix77]

Question:

Will Devolution have a GUI like Configurable USB Loader or USB Loader GX with box cover art for GameCube games?

And will Gamecube games load any faster from USB drive compared to disc drive?

 

[Maxternal]

Question:
Will Devolution have a GUI like Configurable USB Loader or USB Loader GX with box cover art for GameCube games?
And will Gamecube games load any faster from USB drive compared to disc drive?

[member='tueidj'] isn't making a GUI but he's making it in such a way that someone else could make one for it. I suppose CFG and USBGX could also use it directly.
Typically thing load faster from USB but that always depends on your hard drive.

 

[Nemix77]

Can't wait, I'm trading my newer Wii with no Gamecube ports for an older one with Gamecube ports just for Devolution.

I'd prefer playing Gamecube games with an Official Gamecube controller.

Edit question:

About progressive scan, will there be an option to turn of progressive scan on indefinitely for games that support 480p instead of getting a message popping up everytime the game is loaded?

 

[tueidj]

So you want the option to ignore a component cable being present?

 

[Nemix77]

Sorry, I edit my message.

Normally when you pop in a Gamecube game that supports 480p into the Wii you'd get a message asking if you want to enable progressive scan of course the message would only be present in the Gamecube if the Wii already has component cables and 480p enabled in the Wii system settings.

However, the message pops up everytime you load up the the same Gamecube game you already know supports 480p and want it to be enabled.

I'm asking would there be a setting in Devolution to remember that you'd like to run that Gamecube game in 480p without a message popping up evertime?

Edit:

Nevermind, found out the Wii already does this on it's own. Pretty cool since the original Gamecube you had to hold b evertime you start the game.

Sorry for the confusing question.

 

[SifJar]

Question:
Will Devolution have a GUI like Configurable USB Loader or USB Loader GX with box cover art for GameCube games?
And will Gamecube games load any faster from USB drive compared to disc drive?

[member='tueidj'] isn't making a GUI but he's making it in such a way that someone else could make one for it. I suppose CFG and USBGX could also use it directly.
Typically thing load faster from USB but that always depends on your hard drive.

Not sure where you are getting your information, but tueidj isn't making it in such a way that others could make a GUI I don't think.

 

[obcd]

I asked the question if he would provide usefull info to build a gui frontend. It never got answered.