Hacking Gamecube Isos on Wii

[Sargentcrunch]

Hey everyone I recently obtained a Wii (a little late I know ) But I am interested in playing gamecube games on it. I have done a lot of research the past few days on how this works but I still have a few questions about it.

1. Are SD Cards better then USB drives/External HDD? Or Vice Versa?

My second question is, is this the right way to mod my Wii?

Install Homebrew Channel
Install Wad Manager
Instal Dios Mios with Wad Manager
Place games in USB drive (games/GAMENAME/game.iso)

I feel like I am missing something? I have read tons of tutorials, and they all seem different to me lol. I am not a complete noob to modding systems(I have an account here from modding a DS). But some of this Wii lingo is throwing me off. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I just want to make sure I do this right the first time and don't mess up my Wii.

Thanks!!

-Bryan

 

[the_randomizer]

SD cards have a slower read/write speed and a limited no. of reads/writes. If you don't have a lot of games, a class 10 SDHC card should be fine, but even then, it can be slower.

 

[Sargentcrunch]

Ok, will a micro-sd card in a usb stick be slow? I'd imagine it would be, because I have a 16gb micro-sd card and the T-Flash usb converter that came with my DS R4.

 

[Nakamaphil]

The Hdd or usb stick that you use has to be in fat 32 format with 32k clusters. You can use Ease Us Partition master to format or take a current hard driver make a partition.
What I did was made three partitions for 1 hard drive. The first of the fat32 for gamecube games, a wbfs to load the isos for wii using wii manager 4.0 and the last as ntfs. The easiest way to mod your wii is using the letterbomb way just google it.
Also for gamecube games have to made in to special format that needs to be on the fat32 hdd or usb. You'll need a program called DiskEx. Your are also correct on the game folder needing to be called games on the root of your hdd.

Here is a video tutorial

 

[naddel81]

@ randomizer:

SD cards are way faster compared to the mini-DVD they are coming from!

in regards of loading times the GameCube had no problems because most of the games were optimized by Nintendo. the GC was Big Ns first console with optical media and they did not go there with the PSX (SNES CD addon) because of the slow loading times. Miyamoto once said he never wanted the player to see a "please wait.-. now loading" while enjoying a nintend title. so they did everything they could to keep loading times low on the GC. and they did. I cannot remember a single game that forced long loading times. Zelda, Mario Sunshine etc. were all without annoying loading screens. very fast!

conclusion: every media that is faster than mini-DVD will do fine.

and an SD card has way faster access times (that is what counts in games) and even way faster transfer times than a mini-dvd. regarding loading times it is even better than an HDD because the access times count. not the transfer alone. that is why your average SSD is way faster than an HDD even though the transfer rates are "only" 2x/3x as high compared to a fast HDD.
the access times of an SSD (840pro) are about 200 faster than an average HDD.


BTW: you can read a flash chip as often as you want. you will never see it wear out as long as you live. writing is a different thing, but do games write data? (except for save games which are extremely small and do not write continuously) No, they don't. So don't worry about writing life cycles of a flash drive/SD card because games do not do that very often. Reading access is the culprit of games' loading times.

 

[Sargentcrunch]

I watched the letterbomb tutorial, do I have to put the files on the SD card or can I use USB? I don't have an actual SD card laying around, I have some SD adapters for micro SD (Several Sandisk 16gb microsd cards, a Samsung adapter, and a pny adapter) Will any of these work? I want to get all the materials 100% correct before I attempt this hack so I don't mess anything up.

 

[brausm08]

USB will not work for letterbomb...

micro SD has less compatibility than standard SD, but they'll probably work...try them. either it'll work or it won't; no harm done if it doesn't.

if you really want a full, start to finish mod tutorial with step by step instructions for your particular wii, check out modmii. the link is below in my sig....runs on your PC and downloads everything you need to get it done with the features you want.

 

[Sargentcrunch]

Ok thanks brausm08! I will download that, just found out my Wii won't be here today like it was supposed to be......USPS sucks lol, its shipping from a town 2 hours away from my house and they say it won't get here until next monday, even though it should of shipped last friday.

Wiibrand doesn't work for me. I click on the letter in my mailbox and the screen goes black and then it goes back to my homepage, what should I do?

Nevermind, I tried a different micro-sd adapter and it worked.

Sorry for the quadruple post but Modmii is great! Everything went smooth, very well documented guide, if you do exactly as the guide says you will have no problems at all. Thanks!