Hacking ISO Loader Vs. Backup Play and the effect it will have on Modchips.

[Jran Sakarra]

I have been looking into the pros and cons of each of the choices of playing backed up games and have wondered what will the affect be on the value of modchips and modded and un-modded Wii systems.
The first thing I look into was the disc speed of playing a backed up gamed using a game backed up onto a Disc.
The game would only play a a 3x speed and would most likely slow down during cut scenes and in some large amounts of the game. The same can be said for a ISO player because I am almost for sure playing a large game from a USB port would not be any faster. The space a HD or Memory stick would take up would be a torn to ones eye for the ISO loader. While with a backup player you would have nothing but a burnt disc to put into the Wii to play. In my point of view the Backup player would be the best bet at playing a backed up game with out a modchip.

As for the price of modchips once this homebrew comes out (I have no doubt it will come out) the value of a modchip might only drop 10-15 dollars depending how well the homebrew takes off. Giving some of use a reason to just go on and get a modchip and a 2nd Wii to mess around with.

The Homebrerw would be a choice for those of us that have naught the time or skill with a soldering gun to mod there Wii.(I can say I am getting there and I have the burns to prove it!

)

As for all of you freaking out that this might kill Nintendo I doubt it will.
I mean The reason to get a Wii would increase bring in more money for Nintendo plus the money it cost for the people who messed up there Wii to get another one.
People who hear about being able to play back up games would go out and buy one before they know what they are getting into.

Kids who do not have Modded Wiis will still get the games, so Nintendo does not loose out because of Kids, Fanpeople, and hardcore Nintendo Gamers.
Nintendo did not die from flashcarts

, slot1 devices

, AR (Yes I hate the AR!), and last but not least Emulators.

As for the value of modded Wiis I only see them going down 10-50 like I said depending on how the homebrerw takes off.

This is juts my point of view on the popular subject and I would like to hear yours and how I might be wrong or right.

For me I am waiting to get another Wii to get a mod chip so I don't risk my 1000 pokemon in Pokemon Ranch.
If you are unsure of you Softmod skills then stay away from hacking till you get some skills using a Xbox or PSP.
If you are unsure of you soldering skills then work on them till you can soldering somthing on a circuit without messing up and stick to soft mod.
If you can do none of the above then by a pro-modde system.
and if that does not help then buddy you are better off with a 360 and Master Chief Helmet on top of your TV then a IR Bar.

 

[bloodliketheatla]

I think you're right about an ISO loader being a waste of space. Who wants to waste 4.7 gigs of a drive for a Wii game they will have to keep on there as long as they want to play it. And if you collected enough games, you'd have to start deleting some to make space. A DVD will always work as a backup. (I know this doesn't apply to you people that have 1000's of free gigs and don't care.)

I don't understand why so many people are so interested in using the ISO loader or the softmod backup loader. It would be nice if you could burn the straight ISO without having to patch/modify it. But from what I can tell it's not going to work that, at least not now.

I also don't understand why so many people on this board are curious about hacking there Wii and have done everything they can do except by a modchip. There are *so* many of these people! A modchip should be affordable to almost anyone who can drop $250 on the Wii. I know there are exceptions where kids can't get their parents credit card and have no income. But modchips are cheap, readily available, and easy to install. So why not just save yourself the trouble of begging about a modchip-less solution? Once installed, a modchip will play any game you want with 100% compatibility from your region and damn near close to 100 with other regions if you work at it a little.

 

[HowardC]

I don't understand why so many people are so interested in using the ISO loader or the softmod backup loader. It would be nice if you could burn the straight ISO without having to patch/modify it. But from what I can tell it's not going to work that, at least not now.

I also don't understand why so many people on this board are curious about hacking there Wii and have done everything they can do except by a modchip. There are *so* many of these people! A modchip should be affordable to almost anyone who can drop $250 on the Wii. I know there are exceptions where kids can't get their parents credit card and have no income. But modchips are cheap, readily available, and easy to install. So why not just save yourself the trouble of begging about a modchip-less solution? Once installed, a modchip will play any game you want with 100% compatibility from your region and damn near close to 100 with other regions if you work at it a little.

People are interested in it because aside from being able to play backups without a modchip, it allows for larger homebrew. The dvd library currently released still requires the app itself to be on the wii, which means you essentailly have the same problem as before (only 512mb for apps).


Modchips are unnecessarily expensive, (I can personally attest to the fact that a modchip has about 7 bucks in parts and yet they still sell for as high as 60 bucks a pop), difficult to install, and more importantly require you to open your wii and potentially damage it. It's common sense quite frankly to want a softmod instead as there is 0 chance to ruining your wii.

Quite frankly I can't understand why so many people are fighting tooth and nail denying the fact that a softmod is infinately more useful and better for the community than a modchip-based solution.

 

[night_chrono]

I imagine that the backup loader will be optimized to run at full speed. We are still a few weeks off from a release, and i think it is a safe assumption that they are working on it.

As for HDD ISO loader that is feasible at full speed, but only if USB 2.0 gets unlocked. The hard drive loader seems more practical to me for various reasons.
1. No burning of discs
2. Can't destroy your laser with a bad burn/dual layer usage.
3. potentiality faster then the DVD drive. Might help with loading times.

So yea that is my 2 cents.


P.S. Because I know someone will argue that USB 2.0 isn't fast enough;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD Scroll down to a table about drive speeds. The Wii reads at 6x

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB for USB speeds

 

[Jran Sakarra]

There we go.
Two points of view heading in another direction from the other.

You do have a point about being able to run apps off of disc then the on board 512mn flash memory, but the SD card provides me 2gig of space for my apps thus crossing out the need for disc till a huge app is made of back-ups are playable at a reasonable rate of speed.

You they are over priced for the time being,but as this progresses I see the price coming down like I said up to 10-15, but if this works better than expected then who knows at best 20.

While Homebrew requires less cost it also as far as we know not play back-ups at a full speed and to me that in it self pays for itself in the long run.

We are not really paying for the parts on the chips as much as we are paying for what they can do, that we could not make on our own.

 

[mk123a]

A softmod will never replace a hard mod like a mod-chip. The need to patch a game and then load through backup loader via the Homebrew channel is pretty inconvenient and not to mention the fact that it can be patched by nintendo. The mod-chip or actually it should be called a drive-chip allows the wii to read 1:1 backups on DVD+/-R's.

And lets not talk about the price of mod-chips - seriously what is the cost of one Wii game - compared to the cost of all the Wii games ppl will pirate... Its sad that ppl are complaining about the price of a modchip when compared to actually buying games.

If the materials only cost $7 then build your own mod-chip. There are free builds like YAOSM, which btw only cost me about $9 to make the chip along with the programmer. If you don't have the technical know how to do it...then don't freaking complain about the price of retail chips...

 

[Jran Sakarra]

I imagine that the backup loader will be optimized to run at full speed. We are still a few weeks off from a release, and i think it is a safe assumption that they are working on it.

As for HDD ISO loader that is feasible at full speed, but only if USB 2.0 gets unlocked. The hard drive loader seems more practical to me for various reasons.
1. No burning of discs
2. Can't destroy your laser with a bad burn/dual layer usage.
3. potentiality faster then the DVD drive. Might help with loading times.

So yea that is my 2 cents.


P.S. Because I know someone will argue that USB 2.0 isn't fast enough;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD Scroll down to a table about drive speeds. The Wii reads at 6x

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB for USB speeds

Yes! Someone brings in facts and links.
Time plays a key in this matter as in the saying "Only time can tell.", I find to apply to this matter more than anything else.

One majore thing that the Wii has had a problem with is the DVD laser reading disc.
I have had it happen to 2 of my friends with the SSBB thing.
If the DVD lasor plays out you can still send it off to nintendo for a fix (After you remove all of the homebrew and stuff).
WHile the ISO Loader may out show this due to the facts that was just brought in but the may keyword here is if they unlock the USB 2.0.
Once they start to unlock it then the matter of is when it is stable.

 

[Jran Sakarra]

A softmod will never replace a hard mod like a mod-chip. The need to patch a game and then load through backup loader via the Homebrew channel is pretty inconvenient and not to mention the fact that it can be patched by nintendo. The mod-chip or actually it should be called a drive-chip allows the wii to read 1:1 backups on DVD+/-R's.

And lets not talk about the price of mod-chips - seriously what is the cost of one Wii game - compared to the cost of all the Wii games ppl will pirate... Its sad that ppl are complaining about the price of a modchip when compared to actually buying games.

If the materials only cost $7 then build your own mod-chip. There are free builds like YAOSM, which btw only cost me about $9 to make the chip along with the programmer. If you don't have the technical know how to do it...then don't freaking complain about the price of retail chips...

Oh something I missed in bring up and I thinak you, is that Nintendo can patch this with a software up date in a new game that could over write all that you have done till the next version comes out.

One that about firmware thou is that there is always a hole in whick you can wiggle into and exploit it in ways to making it bigger.

 

[telefunkin]

A softmod will never replace a hard mod like a mod-chip. The need to patch a game and then load through backup loader via the Homebrew channel is pretty inconvenient and not to mention the fact that it can be patched by nintendo. The mod-chip or actually it should be called a drive-chip allows the wii to read 1:1 backups on DVD+/-R's.

And lets not talk about the price of mod-chips - seriously what is the cost of one Wii game - compared to the cost of all the Wii games ppl will pirate... Its sad that ppl are complaining about the price of a modchip when compared to actually buying games.

If the materials only cost $7 then build your own mod-chip. There are free builds like YAOSM, which btw only cost me about $9 to make the chip along with the programmer. If you don't have the technical know how to do it...then don't freaking complain about the price of retail chips...

Oh something I missed in bring up and I thinak you, is that Nintendo can patch this with a software up date in a new game that could over write all that you have done till the next version comes out.

Or you could just download an ISO of said game that has been scrubbed of the update.

 

[mk123a]

nope that won't work eventually as some games will eventually require the newer update in order to run...i.e even if you brickblock the region update and start the game, all you will see is a nice black welcoming screen.

 

[zidane_genome]

Well, your half right...

While the game can force you update to a new firmware that will disable the softmod, in the process of fixing the ISO to run on the softmod, you can strip out the update, and enjoy it update free!

 

[mk123a]

Stripping out the update won't do...some games REQUIRE certain files from the update to run. A good example is SSBB and the need to update to at least 3.2 in order for it to run... thats why so many ppl have done the 15% update-unplug your wii trick...as while the full update didn't go to 100% to update the wii completely, it did install the required files needed for the game to run..otherwise all you will see this the black screen. The update is there not because the game is checking to see if you have the newest updated firmware. It's there because some games require certain files to be installed from the update.. Try playing Mario Kart Brickblocked on a non 3.2 Wii...it won't run.

 

[telefunkin]

Stripping out the update won't do...some games REQUIRE certain files from the update to run. A good example is SSBB and the need to update to at least 3.2 in order for it to run... thats why so many ppl have done the 15% update-unplug your wii trick...as while the full update didn't go to 100% to update the wii completely, it did install the required files needed for the game to run..otherwise all you will see this the black screen. The update is there not because the game is checking to see if you have the newest updated firmware. It's there because some games require certain files to be installed from the update.. Try playing Mario Kart Brickblocked on a non 3.2 Wii...it won't run.

So they tried a mandatory update, for at least two games, and a workaround was found. I guess I was stupid for thinking that new firmware updates could be patched.......

 

[night_chrono]

I have friends playing brawl on 3.1

 

[Jran Sakarra]

So what are they having trouble with unlocking the USB 2.0?
Is it just they don't know how to unlock it or is it that they can't get it to run the right speed?

 

[teq]

So what are they having trouble with unlocking the USB 2.0?
Is it just they don't know how to unlock it or is it that they can't get it to run the right speed?

This thread is a disaster. Why bother weighing one against the other when it's just as feasible to have both?

Ideally, you'd be able to cache most of the data to the hard drive, while streaming audio and video from the disc. This would provide fast load times without sacrificing space.


To answer your question, though, the reason USB 2.0 hasn't been enabled is because Starlet controls it. I am not aware of any peripherals that are USB 2.0 enabled, which means we're just waiting on Nintendo to release a peripheral and a patch.

 

[Lord Kanti]

My wii currently has a 1 TB hard drive attached. Backup loader is cake and running homebrew from HDD is also quite enjoyable. the day 2.0 is unlocked and iso loading becomes feasible as well as NTFS support for both iso loading and homebrew .... it'll be like the day segregation was outlawed....