FlatMii Review

[NextStep]

You only have to open the Wii, not your PC. All you have to do is disassemble it down to where you can remove the DVD drive, connect some ribbon cables and seat the chip. I am quite sure that even a non tech-savvy person could do it, as long as they follow the instructions. There is no soldering required at all.

Once you've installed the chip, you reassemble the Wii, plug in the USB connector and connect it to your PC. My Wii is almost always disassembled in some way, so the install only took me about 15 minutes.

cool, thanks for the clarification.

 

[ron555]

Yes. Keep in mind if you want to use trucha-signed discs, your Wii firmware still needs to be v3.2.

Wow, thank you for the clarification.

I'm not really familiar with trucha-signed discs. I do have firmware 3.2U w/ Homebrew channel and Starfall installed.

The main reasons I really like this:

1) I love stuff connected to comp to control (more powerful)
2) No wasting discs
3) Faster to upload to Wii vs
4) No wear on laser
5) ***No more LOUD Wii disc sound!***
6)


Cons:
1) Expensive (even @ $60 shipped IMO)
2) Have to open up Wii/manipulate.

Other than that, great

 

[Agjsdfd]

Does it load games from different region, RegionFriid/brickblocked?

 

[SomeGuyGG]

This will be great for testing out custom modified Guitar Hero discs!

 

[ron555]

Brickblocked, yes, see a couple of posts above yours

RegionFree'ed - no idea.

 

[SSJToo]

Any chance someone would know if the FlatMii would work with a wireless USB Transmitter/Receiver?
Say for example the

"Cables Unlimited Wireless USB Kit with Transmitter and Receiver with Base"


Or with a cable range extender?

"Cables Unlimited USB Over Cat5e Extender" (Allows you to use up to 150ft of Cat5e to extend the range of your use cable)

 

[Deleted-119707]

i own an unmoddd wii. if i install this, do i have to do the twighliight hack or just plug n play?

 

[Lily]

Does it load games from different region, RegionFriid/brickblocked?

You can load games from any region, as well as brickblocked discs. I don't know about RegionFriid, but I assume so, because you can force the FlatMii into any region you want.

Any chance someone would know if the FlatMii would work with a wireless USB Transmitter/Receiver?
Say for example the

"Cables Unlimited Wireless USB Kit with Transmitter and Receiver with Base"


Or with a cable range extender?

"Cables Unlimited USB Over Cat5e Extender" (Allows you to use up to 150ft of Cat5e to extend the range of your use cable)

I don't have any wireless USB equipment to test that. I do however have a Cat5e USB extender, and yes it works with that.

QUOTE(nicky041192 @ Feb 17 2009, 02:02 PM)

i own an unmoddd wii. if i install this, do i have to do the twighliight hack or just plug n play?

It is plug and play. If you want to use and install homebrew software, you will still have to do the twilight hack.

 

[squirt1000]

Has anyone tried the Flat Mii with Call of Duty - World at War? I'm curious if it can handle the textures and fast action.

Works fine

Loads as quick if not quicker than on a dvdr

 

[ace90099]

I think this is one of the best chips out so far. Yes you have to connect it to your computer but not all the time if you go with the combo install. and if you read the different posts you know that it is possible to to use a cat5 cable up to 150ft, if your wii and pc and farther apart then that then you have an extremely large house and probably have enough money to buy a computer to go next to your wii.

and about people waiting for a standalone type chip where you just need a hard drive, you will most likely need to do some type of disk swap method to use it or you will need to have a soft-modded wii. this is because you have to tell the chip where the image is on the drive so you will either need a start disk that gives you a program that can do that or you will need a channel installed on the wii that can do that. but i could be wrong and they could make it where the disc channel always launches the same thing(a program built into the chip) and asks to browse for a image or launch from drive, like a rebooter program. this type of chip will most likely be much more expensive.

now i have a question about the flatmii, does anyone else get a flatmii development cmd-type window when they try to run GC multirom images? and what is this or what can this be used for?


and about the multidisc images not working, i already had a soft-modded wii when i installed this so I think that had something to do with it because I just run Softmii alpha on it last night and now they work fine but that cmd-type window still pops up on my PC.

 

[WiiMoosh]

If you could just simply connect an external HD to the Wii's USB then it would be great, having to turn on my PC just for a quick game of Wii Sports just doesn't appeal to me, but maybe thats just me...

While such a device is technically possible, at least when it comes to using FlatMii's tech the market realities make it unlikely. The reason a PC is needed is that the FlatMii chip needs to be fed a single ISO in a controlled manner. If you get rid of the PC, some other device must do this.

This would entail a complete System on a Chip (SoC) that can receive commands and can read a complex partition format like NTFS. You'd be looking at pushing the cost of the device to over $100. It would probably reach half the cost of a Wii itself. And that's before adding a hard drive.

The hardware for such a device is simply too expensive to be practical.

Ok, You are saying that the HDD would be too expensive? Well I bought 2 1TB Sata HDD at 81 and 82 Dollars and an Dual Bay enclouser at 40 dollars with 3 years of Warranty. Ok, yes the Hardware would be expensive, but its possible, I think, what it's difficult would be find SoC supplier that works on this kind of project, may be in China, Japan are lots of companies that do this kind of chipsets, like the modchips and the flatmii.

2TB External HDD == 203 Dollars with 3 Years of warranty. Well That's doesn't suprass the Nintendo Wii's Prizw that is 250 plus Tax, well At least my wii prize yes, it only cost me 70 bucks

, but not all the standard Sale wii's around. And its that the case I already got them!

and my Wii wasn't that expensive.

SO this SoC it its possible to make or its just another rumor or speculation? Tell me more about it...

Thanks!

 

[wchill]

Hmm, would it be possible to daisy-chain a FlatMii with a DriveKey and a Wii disc drive?

 

[john25usa]

meh to me this seems useless except for people who are modifying the iso's eg. undubs and custom guitar hero disks. but my wii len is half dead so ill have to get this sooner or later. i just hope by that time this or something similar will be able to load from external hard drives.

 

[enarky]

If you could just simply connect an external HD to the Wii's USB then it would be great, having to turn on my PC just for a quick game of Wii Sports just doesn't appeal to me, but maybe thats just me...

While such a device is technically possible, at least when it comes to using FlatMii's tech the market realities make it unlikely. The reason a PC is needed is that the FlatMii chip needs to be fed a single ISO in a controlled manner. If you get rid of the PC, some other device must do this.

This would entail a complete System on a Chip (SoC) that can receive commands and can read a complex partition format like NTFS. You'd be looking at pushing the cost of the device to over $100. It would probably reach half the cost of a Wii itself. And that's before adding a hard drive.

The hardware for such a device is simply too expensive to be practical.

Ok, You are saying that the HDD would be too expensive? Well I bought 2 1TB Sata HDD at 81 and 82 Dollars and an Dual Bay enclouser at 40 dollars with 3 years of Warranty. Ok, yes the Hardware would be expensive, but its possible, I think, what it's difficult would be find SoC supplier that works on this kind of project, may be in China, Japan are lots of companies that do this kind of chipsets, like the modchips and the flatmii.

2TB External HDD == 203 Dollars with 3 Years of warranty. Well That's doesn't suprass the Nintendo Wii's Prizw that is 250 plus Tax, well At least my wii prize yes, it only cost me 70 bucks

, but not all the standard Sale wii's around. And its that the case I already got them!

and my Wii wasn't that expensive.

SO this SoC it its possible to make or its just another rumor or speculation? Tell me more about it...

Thanks!

He's not saying the HDD is expensive, he says the accompanying hardware would be expensive if you wanted to expand FlatMii. He suggests that currently all the logic of the DVD drive emulation is done on the PC and that the chip is simply passing through data to the Wii and vice versa. If you wanted a standalone HDD you'd need something to emulate that logic instead of the PC (to replace the PC) - and that would be additional hardware that needs to be quite fast and thus drive the costs up.

That's how I assume how this chip works, too, so I guess he's correct. I don't think it can't be done, but to expand this particular chip to support external HDDs would be quite complicated. This is not a rumor, this is fact. And I doubt anyone is doing it.

A completely new chip that does just that, OTOH, is quite a possibility. And it looks like the WiiZii that FAST6191 links to can do it. If it's real, only time can tell.

Reading ISOs from the Wiis own USB I have no idea. Could be possible that Nintendo engineers have capsulated it enough that no access to it is possible outside a few special applications. This is speculation.

 

[ViRGE]

If you could just simply connect an external HD to the Wii's USB then it would be great, having to turn on my PC just for a quick game of Wii Sports just doesn't appeal to me, but maybe thats just me...

While such a device is technically possible, at least when it comes to using FlatMii's tech the market realities make it unlikely. The reason a PC is needed is that the FlatMii chip needs to be fed a single ISO in a controlled manner. If you get rid of the PC, some other device must do this.

This would entail a complete System on a Chip (SoC) that can receive commands and can read a complex partition format like NTFS. You'd be looking at pushing the cost of the device to over $100. It would probably reach half the cost of a Wii itself. And that's before adding a hard drive.

The hardware for such a device is simply too expensive to be practical.

Ok, You are saying that the HDD would be too expensive? Well I bought 2 1TB Sata HDD at 81 and 82 Dollars and an Dual Bay enclouser at 40 dollars with 3 years of Warranty. Ok, yes the Hardware would be expensive, but its possible, I think, what it's difficult would be find SoC supplier that works on this kind of project, may be in China, Japan are lots of companies that do this kind of chipsets, like the modchips and the flatmii.

2TB External HDD == 203 Dollars with 3 Years of warranty. Well That's doesn't suprass the Nintendo Wii's Prizw that is 250 plus Tax, well At least my wii prize yes, it only cost me 70 bucks

, but not all the standard Sale wii's around. And its that the case I already got them!

and my Wii wasn't that expensive.

SO this SoC it its possible to make or its just another rumor or speculation? Tell me more about it...

Thanks!

Finding a supplier wouldn't be too hard. My working assumption is that something more complex than a simple DSP would be necessary for the task of reading the file system. FAT32 is out, so that leaves NTFS as the next most compatible thing. Maybe you could do it on a FPGA (although writing your own NTFS read-only implementation from scratch would be hard) otherwise you'd move up to a SoC. In either case both are readily available, numerous companies make FPGAs and Samsung (among others) will gladly sell you ARM SoCs, however not necessarily at a price you'd like.

 

[jd506]

Can the FlatMii handle multidisk GC games that don't save before switching?

 

[enarky]

Finding a supplier wouldn't be too hard. My working assumption is that something more complex than a simple DSP would be necessary for the task of reading the file system. FAT32 is out, so that leaves NTFS as the next most compatible thing. Maybe you could do it on a FPGA (although writing your own NTFS read-only implementation from scratch would be hard) otherwise you'd move up to a SoC. In either case both are readily available, numerous companies make FPGAs and Samsung (among others) will gladly sell you ARM SoCs, however not necessarily at a price you'd like.

ViRGE, that file limitation of FAT32 isn't the biggest problem someone would face in that case, IMO... if you have the knowledge to implement all that I guess it's not that hard to write something that can access a split ISO on FAT32, no need to write your own NTFS driver.

I assume Implementing that logic in a FPGA at all is the hardest part here.

[tag: speculation, speculation]

EDIT:
Post #600, yay.

 

[ViRGE]

A completely new chip that does just that, OTOH, is quite a possibility. And it looks like the WiiZii that FAST6191 links to can do it. If it's real, only time can tell.

I wasn't aware such a device had been announced. It does seem a bit vaporwareish though, and regardless it still has to solve the read & translate problem. Swapping out a USB controller for a SATA controller doesn't really make the problem any easier.

 

[ViRGE]

Finding a supplier wouldn't be too hard. My working assumption is that something more complex than a simple DSP would be necessary for the task of reading the file system. FAT32 is out, so that leaves NTFS as the next most compatible thing. Maybe you could do it on a FPGA (although writing your own NTFS read-only implementation from scratch would be hard) otherwise you'd move up to a SoC. In either case both are readily available, numerous companies make FPGAs and Samsung (among others) will gladly sell you ARM SoCs, however not necessarily at a price you'd like.

ViRGE, that file limitation of FAT32 isn't the biggest problem someone would face in that case, IMO... if you have the knowledge to implement all that I guess it's not that hard to write something that can access a split ISO on FAT32, no need to write your own NTFS driver.

I assume Implementing that logic in a FPGA at all is the hardest part here.

[tag: speculation, speculation]

True, you can split the ISO. Stitching it back together on the fly would be tricky however. It's not something I had considered, but perhaps I should.

 

[WiiMoosh]

Finding a supplier wouldn't be too hard. My working assumption is that something more complex than a simple DSP would be necessary for the task of reading the file system. FAT32 is out, so that leaves NTFS as the next most compatible thing. Maybe you could do it on a FPGA (although writing your own NTFS read-only implementation from scratch would be hard) otherwise you'd move up to a SoC. In either case both are readily available, numerous companies make FPGAs and Samsung (among others) will gladly sell you ARM SoCs, however not necessarily at a price you'd like.

ViRGE, that file limitation of FAT32 isn't the biggest problem someone would face in that case, IMO... if you have the knowledge to implement all that I guess it's not that hard to write something that can access a split ISO on FAT32, no need to write your own NTFS driver.

I assume Implementing that logic in a FPGA at all is the hardest part here.

[tag: speculation, speculation]

EDIT:
Post #600, yay.

Practically Yes! How and where in the world you are going to find a FPGA Suplier that Makes this kind of project for the Wii?!
I mean, first it's not that legal, second, would be expensive, third, Why don't start to make a Software that do this? A homebrew App or a loader? I mean the Loaders are already available, most of the games already Run on Them ,at least on the Gamma v3, still some work for the Tetha v1.0.

I know it's like hard, but not impossible! Like when everyone though DVD-Backup Loader were like the last thing to be done or the awesome thing for the Wii and its there! So there are already libfat32 libraries that can make the Wii read from External sources like USB Fat and Fat 32 and SD card and SD HC, USB guecko. What we need its to expand that library or make a new Hombrew that expand it so it can be used to support NTFS HHD or Fat 32 HDD starting from 1GB and then Expand it's size compatibility.

I know, even myself cannot do that rigth know, still need more years of experience in Programming, But some of you Coders/Experienced/Profesional/programmers can.

I hope this can help of something, its just an opinion don't take it personally!
Thanks