Hacking Gamecube Backup Loading development

[smf]

In GC mode can you use the internet lan adapter connected to Usb to play Phantasy Star Online?
And if you can, wasnt there a hack to play backups

No, you can't go online with GC games on the wii.

The answer to this is probably in the HW_AHBPROT register.
It wouldn't suprise me if that controls how much memory the PPC can access, as well as whether the PPC can communicate with starlet.
You could use the PPC to talk to USB but it's probably easier to get starlet to do it.

There might not be much code necessary to actually get the Wii into gamecube mode, so it might be easier to pull the code from MIOS into an IOS rather than the other way round.

First step is probably to write an mload module that can boot a GC game.

 

[WiiPower]

We can get full hardware access on the ppc with BootMii. But hardware access on GC mode involves register stuff i don't understand. But i assume when the wii is in GC mode, the commands to access the hardware are different from the commands in BootMii mode. If they would be the same, it would be "easy", just write a BootMii gc loader that's MIOS independent and get the clock speed to GC speed.

In GC mode can you use the internet lan adapter connected to Usb to play Phantasy Star Online?
And if you can, wasnt there a hack to play backups

I would say: Stop dreaming. That would require to emulate the GC LAN adapter with the wii LAN adapter. That may be possible when usb loading and stuff is figured out, but it would require somebody very skilled to write it, and what for? 2 games? Even if we get an usb GC loader, don't expect this.

 

[VashTS]

when a gamecube game wants to get data from the dvd, it talks directly to the dvd drive. so you need to do 2 things to get it to work. first, you need to add a way to access the usb drive into the equation. and second, you need to direct all dvd assess to the usb instead of the dvd drive.

obviously WODE and flatmii do this the simplest way. just put a usb device in place of the dvd drive. this action takes care of both requirements. to do this without hardware modification means that you must patch the gamecube game, since, out of the 2 choices, it is the only one that is software. and there are apparently 2 choices for enabling the usb access. its either use GC mode and somehow enable the usb drive to work, or use an ios to play the gamecube game.

what wiipower is saying is this..
using the usb while in GC mode would require less patching to the GC game. since the only thing you need to patch are the DVD access commands. The rest of the commands in the game can do what they normally do.

using an IOS to play a GC game means you would have to patch every command in the game that was accessing hardware that the PPC cannot access in wii mode.

So my thoughts on that are,
1) if you were to somehow enable USB to work in GC mode, it would need a whole usb driver to be written and running on the ppc. you couldnt just use the stuff that already exists for the arm.

2)if you do take the other route, and decide to use a IOS to play wii games, what other commands need to be patched besides the DVD drive stuff? network stuff doesnt work for GC games anyways, so you dont need to patch those. you can already access the GC memory card slots while in wii mode. obviously we can access the controllers. we can already access a big chunk of the memory also. the only other commands are the video output, right?

3) since using an IOS would require more patching to games, it would mean that there is more of a chance that a certain patch or combination of patches wont work for certain games. So game compatibility would have to be less than using the other method.

If you don't know sorry I asked, but do you know how complicated a GC game when it comes to patching the commands to read from DVD? I'm just curious to know. Of course certain games would do this differently I assume, and in that case it makes really difficult to patch each game...however if the loader was to redirect this, couldn't that be sufficient? Kind of like a software DVD emulator? Maybe thats absurd, I don't know.

 

[adamnewy]

Someone should try and port over Dolphin the gamecube emulator

 

[giantpune]

i know absolutely nothing about patching any sort of dvd commands. or any other commands the game might make. i just know that it would have to be done.

 

[OOPMan]

Someone should try and port over Dolphin the gamecube emulator

Yes, because emulating a GameCube on a what is essentially a GameCube 1.5 (WRT to most hardware specs anyway)
is an incredibly intelligent idea. Especially considering Dolphin is written for x86 while the Wii is a PPC device.

Seriously, stupid ideas don't help.

 

[smf]

We can get full hardware access on the ppc with BootMii. But hardware access on GC mode involves register stuff i don't understand. But i assume when the wii is in GC mode, the commands to access the hardware are different from the commands in BootMii mode. If they would be the same, it would be "easy", just write a BootMii gc loader that's MIOS independent and get the clock speed to GC speed.

First thing to do is find out if you can keep starlet running while GC is running. Maybe blink the led or something.
Then see if you can get the PPC to talk to starlet, preferably through the HW_IPC_PPCMSG, HW_IPC_PPCCTRL & HW_IPC_ARMMSG registers.
Which might be locked out in gamecube mode, but it might be possible to enable them by messing with HW_AHBPROT.

Using bootmii to get the hacked MIOS running is probably as good a way as any to start with, effectively doing the same as cboot2.

 

[toejam316]

Well, since this is all currently theoretical talk, why not take it into practical?
Someone with the time and skill is required, obviously, but here's what I think needs to be done before the practicality of USB loading could even be considered.

First, we'd need to get all the commonly used hardware access commands (like accessing the DVD Drive, accessing the controllers, accessing the GPU, et al) from both Wii and Gamecube mode, and compare them. See how exactly they differ - if there are enough similarities in these, then the easier method could be to re implement gamecube support in Wii mode, with either manually patched discs or on the fly patching (manually patched discs would be easiest and make more sense). This is obviously not going to lead to very good compatibility, but it'd be enough for a proof of concept to motivate people.

If the differences are too great, the next easiest method would be to implement a USB driver in gamecube mode (I'm not sure how we'd go about accessing the hardware though, would we need any specific patches made, or do we already have the access?) - it could be based on the Wii driver, but we'd need to minimize the footprint whereas possible, and somehow make sure it is able to run along side everything else (it doesn't matter if it causes slow downs, or crashes, as it'd just be a PoC). Another idea (of course, I have >NO< idea on how well this would work) is creating a driver and chainload the game from USB - leaving the system as unpatched as possible, and using a universal disc to load the usb driver and wrap that around the .dol from the game.

I have >NO< idea on the feasability of these ideas as I cannot code to save myself, but hopefully I've at least given some sensible ideas.
If not, disregard this post, for it is spam.

 

[WiiPower]

I would start with 2 BootMii apps, one running on the arm, one running on the ppc and load a retail GC game with that. With BootMii we have full access to all the hardware on the ppc(yes ppc) and maybe on the arm too. So it should be possible to manually set the necessary registers to switch into GC mode. Once we have this, we would have at least a gc launcher that's MIOS independent and doesn't require to modify the MIOS anymore. And we would also have(well the one who wrote this) the info if the arm is still running, what memory can be accessed and what hardware and which processor. In my eyes, that would be the starting point for any enhancements to GC loading that are wii hardware related.

 

[tueidj]

First thing to do is find out if you can keep starlet running while GC is running. Maybe blink the led or something.
Then see if you can get the PPC to talk to starlet, preferably through the HW_IPC_PPCMSG, HW_IPC_PPCCTRL & HW_IPC_ARMMSG registers.
Which might be locked out in gamecube mode, but it might be possible to enable them by messing with HW_AHBPROT.

Using bootmii to get the hacked MIOS running is probably as good a way as any to start with, effectively doing the same as cboot2.

MIOS already disables AHBPROT, otherwise gamecube games wouldn't be able to talk to the dvd drive directly. No need to mess with bootmii for anything.

 

[adamnewy]

Someone should try and port over Dolphin the gamecube emulator

Yes, because emulating a GameCube on a what is essentially a GameCube 1.5 (WRT to most hardware specs anyway)
is an incredibly intelligent idea. Especially considering Dolphin is written for x86 while the Wii is a PPC device.

Seriously, stupid ideas don't help.

No need to be a ass hole about it

 

[FenrirWolf]

It's an incredibly naive idea, especially considering that the Wii is only just beginning to emulate N64 games

 

[fgghjjkll]

With GC Mode, If everything is blocked out and you change the MIOS' how would that help? Wouldn't the extra power and hardware still be unaccessable to the GC Mode?

 

[WiiPower]

With GC Mode, If everything is blocked out and you change the MIOS' how would that help? Wouldn't the extra power and hardware still be unaccessable to the GC Mode?

The main idea how to get GC usb loading is to get into a mixed mode that allows GC code to be run, but the wii hardware still being usable.

 

[fgghjjkll]

With GC Mode, If everything is blocked out and you change the MIOS' how would that help? Wouldn't the extra power and hardware still be unaccessable to the GC Mode?

The main idea how to get GC usb loading is to get into a mixed mode that allows GC code to be run, but the wii hardware still being usable.

Wow. You can do that? So it can utilise the MIOS and IOS at the same time! Faster Clock speed = fast forward

 

[9th_Sage]

Wow. You can do that? So it can utilise the MIOS and IOS at the same time! Faster Clock speed = fast forward

Pretty sure no one can DO that (or at least if it's possible no one has done it), but that would be the idea if such a thing were to work...you'd have to be in some sort of mode like that.

 

[WiiPower]

With GC Mode, If everything is blocked out and you change the MIOS' how would that help? Wouldn't the extra power and hardware still be unaccessable to the GC Mode?

The main idea how to get GC usb loading is to get into a mixed mode that allows GC code to be run, but the wii hardware still being usable.

Wow. You can do that? So it can utilise the MIOS and IOS at the same time! Faster Clock speed = fast forward

idea

 

[Taleweaver]

Wow. You can do that? So it can utilise the MIOS and IOS at the same time! Faster Clock speed = fast forward

I can already see it happen. Loading F-Zero GX even faster! Having the menu music at about double speed (which'll make it sound a bit like waninkoko's installer music). Not having it counting down in a cool, booming "3...2...1...GO!" but in a high-pitched "3-2-1-GO!" squeal. And it'll allow you to trash your car against the wall or going off-track even FASTER than usual!

Though I admit this scenario is a bit unlikely, it tends to happen that programmers just grab all the horsepower the computer can deliver. So if this can be done, it could both lead to a better FPS ratio, but also to rather unpredictable game quirks.

 

[TeenTin]

idea

I love your idea, and dying to see it coming true.

 

[Skizzo]

Given the rash of shit games developers are willing to unleash upon the masses just to try and make a buck, doesn't it seem logical that IF it were possible to play GC games from within Wii mode then we would have seen many developers re-releasing many of their GC titles as-is (i.e. GC controller required, as opposed to just the few New Play Control titles we've got) on Wii DVD's, just for another quick buck? Unless that is something Nintendo itself won't allow developers to do?