Hacking Getting Triiforce to work via USB & Show Me Wads Questions

[melodical]

I thought this may be a bit lengthy to add to the triiforce thread therefore I thought I would create a separate thread.

Could someone please offer me some assistance and answer the 5 questions i have regarding triiforce? (see 5 Q's below)

I 've read lots of different guides to get triforce working.

Im trying to use my external hardrive which has 3 partitions, a fat (set to active via windows), WBFS for my games, and ntfs which holds my personal stuff and music.

I would like to run my emulated nand from my usb drive fat partition which is 2gb.

SPEC:
PAL 4.1 E
2GB non-SDHC card
Waninkoko's cIOS 38rev14 as 249
HBC 1.03, Bootmii as boot 2 & preloader 0.29

I understand that i will need to use the following for best results:

* fsdumper 0.2
* triforce beta7
* show me wads 1.2

I have currently done the following:

* I have already got a full nand.bin backup via bootmii.
* I have run fsdumper 0.2 via hbc and now have these folders on my sd: import, meta, shared1, shared2, sys, ticket, title and tmp

This is the part where i have got a bit stuck!!!

QUESTIONS:

1. do i need to use a bootmii nand.bin (560mb) in conjunction with the fsdumper nand, which is 72mb, or do i just need the nand emu/emu folders that fsdumper dumped to my sd card?

2. Is it best for me to leave all the folders that fsdumper creates on the sd and simply create a 'wad' folder on the root of my usb drive as i have heard that you need a source and destination place for this to work?

3. Do i need to mirror the folders which fsdumper creates on my usb drive root?
3b. Do the folders that fsdumper creates have to remain on sd permanatly or can they be removed from sd and placed on usb instead?

4. Does anyone know or have come across a decent or diffinitive guide to get this working via usb. (including instructions to use showmewads to install the wads to usb drive via windows 32bit GUI as most guides are sd card specific. It's mainly the show me wads bit that's confusing me the most!

5. It is said that I can use any region wads with triforce, can i mix and match them?

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I think i've fried my brain a bit lately trying to get this, rawksd, custom gh3, custom we sing's and hairy ballsagna's stuff working so any help or suggestions on this issue would be higly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Kovani]

Here's a little tutorial I wrote for you.

What you need

- WAD Manager 1.5
- cIOS38 rev14
- Dump created by Simple FS dumper 0.2
- SD card and USB device
- Triiforce or Triiforce MRC

Preparing your SD card

Put your VC/Wiiware WADs on the wad folder of your SD card.

Preparing your USB device

Put your 8 folders created by Simple FS dumper 0.2 in the root of your USB device.

Installing your VC/Wiiware games

Open up WAD Manager and select IOS249. Use USB 2.0 Mass Storage Device as the NAND emulator device and use Wii SD Slot as the source device. Install your VC/Wiiware games one by one. You have to exit WAD Manager once a game is installed and run WAD Manager again if you want to install another one.

Play your VC/Wiiware games

Open up Triiforce and use USB-NAND. Select your game and enjoy! If you want to launch an NTSC game on your PAL console, you can change the video mode on Triiforce.

It is not really recommended to use ShowMiiWads and/or wad2nand. You'll have a problem to launch your games, because they will not create the required files on the shared1 folder. If you want more information, I'll help you for sure.

 

[crezwell]

Cheers for the info Kovani, useful for me too.
I think ive got a bit further than melodical but the majority of Wads run from my USB return "An error has occurred" screen. I have read about cleaning out my Nand, etc on various threads but nothing seems to improve performance. usb wad loading seems hit and miss for me, more miss than hit tho. Im aware i probably need a new clean nand dump but virginising my wii just to get a nand dump is a bit extreme, for me anyway.

Im going to give Wad Manager 1.5 a go tho, ive used wad2nand and more recently showmiiwads, everyone seems to have an opinion on which works best. may aswell try the whole set...
Just one question tho, any Wads not my own region am i best changing them to region free or my own region? ive been using showmiiwads to do this but with little success.

 

[melodical]

Thank's Kovani for your help and I really appreciate you talking the time to write the guide for me. I had a headache about an hour ago and already it's clearing up

Your guide will hopefully help a lot of other gbatemp users by simplifying this process as i have not been able to find any clear and concise guides on gbatemp so far!

In my opinion, I think your guide warrants this thread be stickied although i probably get shot down for suggesting this by someone on this forum! I've seen it many times before!!

I'm going to follow your instructions later on but can you just clarify a few small details for me.

once i have installed the wad from the sd to the usb nand can i then delete the wad file from the sd card to free up space?

I have heard of problems with the wii crashing when exiting wad mager 1.5 after installing a wad, when i test this should i expect this to happen?

can i remove the fsdump folders from the root of the sd once i have copied them across to the root of the usb (fat partition).

Thanks again, beers on me!

 

[Kovani]

once i have installed the wad from the sd to the usb nand can i then delete the wad file from the sd card to free up space?
Yes, you can delete the WADs from the SD card to save space. They are installed on your USB device so you don't need the WADs anymore.

I have heard of problems with the wii crashing when exiting wad mager 1.5 after installing a wad, when i test this should i expect this to happen?
Yes, this is why you need to launch WAD Manager again if you want to install another game.

QUOTE

can i remove the fsdump folders from the root of the sd once i have copied them across to the root of the usb (fat partition).

Yes, because you'll use USB-NAND instead of SD-NAND.

@crezwell

Maybe your UID.sys is corrupted and/or missing files in the shared1 folder. Make a fresh NAND dump and install your VC/Wiiware games again using WAD Manager. Also, you can use region free games or set the video mode on Triiforce if your games are not from your region.

 

[melodical]

Thanks again dude! You the man!!!! I'll post an update here when its all up and running!

 

[melodical]

No luck getting a chance to try earlier this evening!! BUT! No luck so far,

The 1st time i installed wad using wani's WAD Manager 1.5 it would only let me install to real nand! (tetris party pal) Probably because its the first wad/channel i've ever installed. None the less i have the first working wad/channel on my wii apart from the original ones on the wii menu which is in a way, very comforting!!

I then tried the same again as it gave me the option to save to nand emu on usb, an option i did not have on the previous attempt!!

The next time i ran WAD Manager 1.5 it offered me the oppertunity to install to nand emu as 249 on usb, so i selected usb mass storage and selected a different wad which was in the 'wad' folder of my sd (bomberman blast PAL).

I get the error ret-1 which, i've read means the wad has been successfully installed in most cases but when i try to run it i get:

TriiForce beta 7

Use USB-NAND (highlighted and selected via the wiimote plus the obligatory crash on this menu!

Loading...Error: could not get dir entry count! (result: -1)
Reading folder /title/00010001 failed
Error getting the title list
Press any button (does not allow this hard reboot only)

both wads have been verified by others as working and they are both in my wii's region! Tetris Party installed to real nand 1st time around on my wii and works great!!

Any suggestions????

 

[xzxero]

its your NAND dump
try using FSTOOLBOX to dump your whole NAND
then use Showmiiwads to install the WADS to your NAND path

http://sites.google.com/site/completesg/us...ols/showmiiwads

 

[melodical]

Cheers xzzero, for the input!

Any specific version i should use? What's the latest version to look out for? Gbtemp search is returning old stuff pre november 09 stuff when i search!

Also, the link you provided has no mention of a usb guide when reading the guide and doing a edit>find on the page in mozilla there is no mention of usb. I checked all links in the navbar too!

Is there any usb specific guide you know of as i'm a bit purplexed as to how this thing operates. I am a windows based techie but the wii's coding and the writing and understanding of how the apps created for it totally throws me!

Cheers!

 

[Kovani]

Loading...Error: could not get dir entry count! (result: -1)

It seems that your USB device is not compatible with cIOS38 rev14 if you get this kind of error with both WAD Manager and Triiforce.

[Edit] Did you try to put your USB device on the other slot?

 

[melodical]

Loading...Error: could not get dir entry count! (result: -1)

It seems that your USB device is not compatible with cIOS38 rev14 if you get this kind of error with both WAD Manager and Triiforce.

Kovani, thanks for your previous advice but, i think you are probably right on that! I'm using a Freecom 500gb external usb drive with a internal samsung 500gb drive running inside it. My three partitions (fat,wbfs & ntfs) have always run games through wbfs & movies, mame roms, n64 emulated games through the fat partition but i never saw anyone previously rating my hd in gbatemp's 'usb compatibilty matrix' page so im not sure if it's capable.

I thought getting ret-1 with wad manager meant everything installed ok but i must have mis-read somewhere along the line! I think i confused it with the rb2 hairy ballsagne hack! My brain is fried at the mo!

I have a a few 1gb usb sticks, I'll try those instead and report back with the details but i think i try that in the morn as it getting late here in not-so-sunny-Wales.

Thanks again for your help!

 

[VashTS]

You should use Showmiiwads to install wads to your emulated NAND, its easier and its faster. The interface of the program is really simple. Just point it to where you NAND is located, then point to your wad directory and click which ones you want to install (you can even do multiple wads at one time). Its so easy just make sure you dump your nand using fstoolbox and put it on the root of the device

 

[Edwii]

i have this posted on an other thread but this one might be a better place to put this:

a day later here is where i am at, made a nand using Sinyk's 2nd method (first one cause some messages in simple dump fs like -114) using bootmii extracted it, loaded 514 .wad's (using showmiiwads) in it put all the folders in a folder called nand it in my fat32 partition, loaded up triiforce auto usb with HBC, it says it cannot find it and ops to go back to HBC. so then i took all the extracted nand folders out of the nand folder in the root of the hdd and placed the folders directly in the hdd root. same problem.

i do not know what i am doing wrong any more, Sinyk's guide was ment for SD cards but i thought i adapted it correctly for the usb hdd, maybe not.

could i be missing a cios, i have 202 222 223 249 and 250? (the hole cios thing is still new to me)

 

[MyGen]

As I understand it, Triiforce has a limit of 256 WADs currently.
Start by just installing one or two wads until you get it working.
Stick every folder created by SimpleFSDumper on to the root of your FAT HDD, install some WADs to it with ShowMiiWads, and choose USB-NAND when starting up Triiforce.
If it fails to load, then I'm fairly certain the problem is your HDD.

 

[Edwii]

As I understand it, Triiforce has a limit of 256 WADs currently.
Start by just installing one or two wads until you get it working.
Stick every folder created by SimpleFSDumper on to the root of your FAT HDD, install some WADs to it with ShowMiiWads, and choose USB-NAND when starting up Triiforce.
If it fails to load, then I'm fairly certain the problem is your HDD.

the hdd works perfectly for usb loader one the wbfs partition, i would guess that should mean it should work for triiloader....?

u say fat hdd, i though i read a few times it should or can be fat32 i have mentioned i am using fat32 all the time and no one has corrected it.

i shall start by weeding out a bunch of the wads. unless i also need to reformat the other partition too?

 

[G0dLiKe]

As I understand it, Triiforce has a limit of 256 WADs currently.
Start by just installing one or two wads until you get it working.
Stick every folder created by SimpleFSDumper on to the root of your FAT HDD, install some WADs to it with ShowMiiWads, and choose USB-NAND when starting up Triiforce.
If it fails to load, then I'm fairly certain the problem is your HDD.

the hdd works perfectly for usb loader one the wbfs partition, i would guess that should mean it should work for triiloader....?

u say fat hdd, i though i read a few times it should or can be fat32 i have mentioned i am using fat32 all the time and no one has corrected it.

i shall start by weeding out a bunch of the wads. unless i also need to reformat the other partition too?

The fat32 partition needs to be set to active to work with Triiforce.

 

[Edwii]

The fat32 partition needs to be set to active to work with Triiforce.

i thought i read that before too, i just cant find the option to do it in windows xp manager, any sugestions, and thanks.

(i loaded my current nand with around 250wads)

 

[G0dLiKe]

The fat32 partition needs to be set to active to work with Triiforce.

i thought i read that before too, i just cant find the option to do it in windows xp manager, any sugestions, and thanks.

(i loaded my current nand with around 250wads)

I am using Partition magic for this.

 

[MyGen]

Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management

Then right click on your FAT32 partition, and set it to active.

If you havent done this, that'll be your problem right there.

 

[Edwii]

Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management

Then right click on your FAT32 partition, and set it to active.

If you havent done this, that'll be your problem right there.

i tryed doing this when i first started every thing, it will let me do this for my onboard sata drives but this usb drive it will not show the option when i right click it.

right click > (w
Open
Explore
Change Drive Letter and Paths...
Format
Delete Logical Drive
Properties
Help

Partition Magic also will not let me set it to active, the option is greyed out.

thos are all the options it gives me when i click on it.

also i pluged it into a vista laptop and same problem... google isnt being very helpful with the key words im using (set active usb hdd) please help.