Hacking just thinking aloud.

[sonicsleep]

You know how the solderless mods connect in-between the dvd drive and the wii? Well I was just thinking wouldn't it be great if we could somehow have an extra usb port right there. homebrew could be coded to look for it.

Then, we could attach a small usb stick inside (it would fit I assume).
And there we have it.. an internal flashdrive

. And with nand emulation coming out we could use that to the fullest potential.

Now you may ask yourself why not just use the sd card slot?
Well the reason for that is it is meant to be removable! But you certainly can't remove it if you are running the system menu off it, same goes for a usb hard disk. Also there is a limit of 32gb using the sdhc method. external hard discs can be noisy, break easily and block out a usb port on the outside of the wii, looks ugly too

.

Just imagine it, you insert a game disc into the wii and it asks you "Do you wish to install ____ to the wii internal system memory?"
XD nawwhh wouldn't it be great? This + running gamecube from usb would almost make the wii perfect in my eyes.

anyone else got some awesome hacking ideas?

 

[oops_ur_dead]

Some guy once put a hard drive inside his Wii and had the wires poking out so he could plug it into the USB slot when needed. I guess that you could somehow take one of the USB ports and "submerge" it in the Wii somehow to prevent it being removed. But then you would only have one USB port.

 

[G0dLiKe]

This would be indeed a great idea, how much GB fits on a USB stick? 64? I´ve got a 16GB ATM...

But it would be a pain for many users to get their Wiis opened(Triwing) and when you´re not experienced at all with this stuff you could end up ruining your Wii...

But I love the idea.

 

[cwstjdenobs]

Now you may ask yourself why not just use the sd card slot?
Well the reason for that is it is meant to be removable! But you certainly can't remove it if you are running the system menu off it, same goes for a usb hard disk. Also there is a limit of 32gb using the sdhc method. external hard discs can be noisy, break easily and block out a usb port on the outside of the wii, [looks ugly too

.

I picked my HDD cause it looks decent sat next to my Wii

I can remember hearing that there's a spare usb port inside the Wii, if you could add a socket too it AND get waninkoko to make a cIOS that used this port for nand emulation that would be cool. Or if SNEEK ever gets released, and if it is still relies on GPL code or crediar decides to release it OSS, someone will probably add USB support in the long run. Then this idea would be really cool

 

[sonicsleep]

aah! yes I saw that!! http://www.tehskeen.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=11383

only problem though is he had to hack a lot of his cooling fins off and it blocks a usb port at the back. Only a 1.8" drive though, and they are hard to come by and are expensive.

I was originally thinking why not just have an internal card reader and put a card in? Well the problem with that is the maximum limit for sdhc cards has been reached (32gb) so it doesn't leave a lot of room to go up. SDXC cards will be available soonish which would fix that issue, but I hear a hardware change would be needed (so wii firmware couldn't make it work).

There would definitely be enough room. have a look at this

Those microsdhc cards go up to 32gb so even if that's the best we can do its bloody a lot better than the wii's 512mb. and eventually it'll be the same size for micro sdxc cards. I know in regards to usb sticks you can definitely get 64gb ones now, I think 128gb too.

that is a very nice hard drive cwstjdenobs

I am jealous.
I hope you're right about the spare usb port.. Still, that might require soldering which can get a bit messy. It's good to know with solderless stuff you can just unplug it to go back to normal.

 

[illinialex24]

Great idea.