Hacking Hacking the WiiU: A Simple Progress Guide

[the_randomizer]

so what all do we know about the sd processes of the wiiu? I've read many a warning that you should only insert your sd after vwii loads up or it'll attack your homebrew. I however accidently left it in (while performing an update, no less) and everything still functions fine. Has anyone thorughly tested this out? Also, how are the usb ports set up? There are 4 and it doesn't seem to matter what port my hdd is plugged into, wiiflow detects it fine. Just a curiosity.

It only affects exploitable save files, but one you install the Homebrew Channel, the other apps, ROMs, etc are unaffected.

 

[drakorex]

If you go into wiimc from hbc and try to play a dvd it says it doesn't have access to the drive. But if you enter from wiiflow it says invalid dvd. If dvdx were installed would that make any difference?

 

[pcmantinker]

There's no need to actually Emulate anything, as the CPUs are similar enough, with the same basic instructionsets, that Gamecube and Wii Games run "on the metal" as it were, without emulation in the strict sense. it will most likely be the original code run under a "wrapper" that just translates things like the controller inputs and video modes to that of the WiiU.

once WiiU mode is hacked and we start seeing some GC and even Wii games on the eshop, we'll probably be able to take a close look inside the wrapper, and see if we can't do some nasty things to it like Gamepad support or increasing the resolution.


EDIT: mind you, take what I say here with a few thousand granules of crystalline sodium chloride, as we know absolutely NOTHING about how it all really works.

That's entirely possible. If the architecture is similar enough, it could be possible to run native GC code without emulation. According to Wii U Brew (http://wiiubrew.org/wiki/Wii_U/console), the Wii U's CPU is a tri-core PowerPC CPU with one thread per core. Each core runs at 1243.125MHz, just under twice as fast as the Wii's CPU which runs at 729 MHz (http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Wii_Hardware). GC also has a PowerPC processor which should make it easier to potentially run GC code on the Wii U.

Like you said though, not much is known about how the entire system works together yet so this is all speculation. Time will tell and I'm looking forward to seeing the maturation of Wii U homebrew.

If you go into wiimc from hbc and try to play a dvd it says it doesn't have access to the drive. But if you enter from wiiflow it says invalid dvd. If dvdx were installed would that make any difference?

DVD reading was removed from the DVD drive firmware with later Wiis and subsequently the Wii U. Therefore, DVDx can't be installed on the Wii U or later Wiis. Nintendo considered allowing Wiis to play commercial DVDs at one point, but the licensing fees cost too much to sell the Wii at a low price for consumers.

 

[kisamesama]

so this exploit is actually for wii-mode in the wii u right? wii u's kernel not hacked yet?

 

[pcmantinker]

so this exploit is actually for wii-mode in the wii u right? wii u's kernel not hacked yet?

That's correct. Wii U mode doesn't have a publicly released exploit yet.

 

[kisamesama]

is there a WIP for the wii U kernel or there's nothing found yet? useful thread though

 

[pcmantinker]

is there a WIP for the wii U kernel or there's nothing found yet? useful thread though

Evidence of a potential Wii U mode exploit is shown on fail0verflow's Twitter. There is no confirmed hack or release date though. I'm sure that fail0verflow is working on getting something eventually to the general public. Also, understand that the Wii U is barely over a month old. Exploits/hacks take time to discover and hackers don't want to release a hack too early in a console's lifespan otherwise the exploits can be patched with firmware updates, potentially leaving a console unhackable by the end of its lifespan.

 

[kisamesama]

ah ok yup i read about the exploit posted on fail0verflow twitter... when reading this thread and seeing the same pic posted on fail0verflow twitter, i thought the failOverflow exploit was for wii mode

 

[driverdis]

If you go into wiimc from hbc and try to play a dvd it says it doesn't have access to the drive. But if you enter from wiiflow it says invalid dvd. If dvdx were installed would that make any difference?

DVDX has been long deprecated for years now since AHBPROT replaced it.
also, DVDX and AHBPROT's dvd reading support both relied on the unused DVD commands Nintendo left on firmware of the older Wii Drives from when they planned to add dvd playback support. the DVD commands were removed in later drives and obviously, the Wii U drive also.
Installing DVDX would be a bad idea as we do not know how WiiMode will react to It. If DVDX was installed, the vWii System Menu would delete it as System Menu 4.3 checks and removes DVDX. even the Wii version of 4.3 does that.

 

[Maxternal]

Wow it would be awesome if dolphin could be emulated on here. Keep up the work guys. Awesome.

Devolution can already run GameCube games (and it's pretty much running them natively, not emulating.) The creator of Devolution, tueidj, is just working on the ability to use a Wiimote or Classic Controller to play it with, though, but he's already published a video of it working and at least loading up to a tittle screen that shows 3D rendered content. For now at least there's some limited controls available through a USB keyboard and mouse.

Loading of Wii U games is not possible yet and may not be for a while. Wii U mode hasn't been fully hacked yet and nobody has publicly dumped any Wii U games to disk.

Actually, they have dumped them. (Just not sure how they did it.) You can download the dumps and they're from traditionally reliable sources ... of course there's no way to PLAY the image to be sure it was actually dumped correctly.

 

[Cyan]

There are dumps?
I saw a VIMTO nfo, but not sure if it was legit (only in a pastebin, no other nfo website posting it?)

I'm curious how they did it, how is the data placed on the disc? There's no technical information on wiiubrew concerning the discs format.
Maybe it wasn't done from the disc?

 

[Maxternal]

hmm, good point,
I didn't actually TRY to download it (seemed like it would be a big file and a lot of wasted bandwidth to me for something that nothing could actually make use of yet.) and I just kinda naively trusted what the download CLAIMED it's source was.

MIGHT be true if someone found a BD drive that can dump them but I guess I believed that one too quickly.

 

[Skeet1983]

I read on other sites that the trucha bug needs to be restored to use Gecko OS channel cheats. Any way I can do this on my Wii U?

 

[Maxternal]

I read on other sites that the trucha bug needs to be restored to use Gecko OS channel cheats. Any way I can do this on my Wii U?

I think that's either IOS 236 or any of the D2X ones. They should have the trucha bug and should work for that.

 

[Skeet1983]

I tried installing IOS236, it said it was successful. Would I need to make system boot to that every time, or any other way to make it default?

 

[Maxternal]

Gecko OS automatically chooses which IOS is best for it when it starts up. (At least it does with IOS36 (which doesn't apply here) and IOS249. It's been a long time since I've used it and I didn't have IOS236 installed on my Wii at the time. It makes sense that it would also look for that one but I can't be sure.) If it's not doing that then it should be possible to tell it which one to use in the meta.xml file but I'm no expert on how to do that. You could also install D2X into IOS249 which should work as well.

 

[Skeet1983]

What is d2x? How do I use it?

 

[Skeet1983]

Gecko OS automatically chooses which IOS is best for it when it starts up. (At least it does with IOS36 (which doesn't apply here) and IOS249. It's been a long time since I've used it and I didn't have IOS236 installed on my Wii at the time. It makes sense that it would also look for that one but I can't be sure.) If it's not doing that then it should be possible to tell it which one to use in the meta.xml file but I'm no expert on how to do that. You could also install D2X into IOS249 which should work as well.

Can you walk me through installing D2X into IOS249 and what all I would need? Thanks in advance

 

[Maxternal]

What is d2x? How do I use it?

Can you walk me through installing D2X into IOS249 and what all I would need? Thanks in advance

It's the custom-IOS that backup loaders use to play Wii games off of an HDD but it ALSO has a lot of other features, including the trucha bug.
How to :
http://gbatemp.net/threads/simple-guide-to-install-cios-on-your-vwii-backup-nand-and-keys.339890/

 

[[Truth]]

There are dumps?

There are definitely no scene dumps out.