Hacking Modchip vs. Softmod

[mk123a]

To answer your question, all newer wii's cannot read DVD's of any form whether they are +/- R. Here's a brief history on Wii DVD drive revisions: The launch Wii's and Wii's before the "D2-nothing" drives all allowed for a modchip to be installed in some form. The modchip fools the DVD drive into thinking that the DVD-R backup was a legit Wii Disc -- therefore games ran at 6x, the speed that Wii games run at. Once the DVD drive controller was remove in the D2-nothing's, modchip companies released the drivekeys. They interfaced between the DVD data ribbon connector to the Wii. DVD-R backups were detected as a DVD disc in the DVD Drive, but the drivekey told the Wii to ignore this and run it anyway. This imposed the 3x speed limit as the backups were no longer seen as real Wii Discs. Softmods such as the backup loader used the same principle and therefore were subject to the 3x speed limit too. The newest revisions of Wii have a D3-2 drive which basically has all DVD read functions removed. Therefore putting any disc that wasn't a legit hardpressed Wii disc in the drive, triggered a red flag and told the wii to halt and stop reading the disc.
Hope this helps

incorrect..

newer wii's like these cannot read dvd-r's at all, unless it is a modchip [excluding flatcable mod like drivekey or flatmii]
but usb loaders work just fine.

softmods: dont have to change any hardware or install anything extra, just change and add to the wii's operating software and you can accomplish what modchips do.

hardmods: dont not have to do anything whatsoever besides install the chip correctly onto the wii. They're pretty sick if you know how to do it. It enables dvd+-r's to read at 6x

that's what i figured wiipower meant, just got confused... still one Q though, can the new wii's still play backup games using a DVD+R disk?

 

[mattjd]

@mk123a

That is a very good explanation

 

[jazvdb]

One game that I know that you can clearly see lag from burned disk is House of the Dead: Overkill....

 

[WiiPower]

To answer your question, all newer wii's cannot read DVD's of any form whether they are +/- R. Here's a brief history on Wii DVD drive revisions: The launch Wii's and Wii's before the "D2-nothing" drives all allowed for a modchip to be installed in some form. The modchip fools the DVD drive into thinking that the DVD-R backup was a legit Wii Disc -- therefore games ran at 6x, the speed that Wii games run at. Once the DVD drive controller was remove in the D2-nothing's, modchip companies released the drivekeys. They interfaced between the DVD data ribbon connector to the Wii. DVD-R backups were detected as a DVD disc in the DVD Drive, but the drivekey told the Wii to ignore this and run it anyway. This imposed the 3x speed limit as the backups were no longer seen as real Wii Discs. Softmods such as the backup loader used the same principle and therefore were subject to the 3x speed limit too. The newest revisions of Wii have a D3-2 drive which basically has all DVD read functions removed. Therefore putting any disc that wasn't a legit hardpressed Wii disc in the drive, triggered a red flag and told the wii to halt and stop reading the disc.
Hope this helps

Replace DVD by DVD Video in a few places and your text would be pretty much a complete info about modchips and backup disc reading. But the softmod was developed before the flatcable mods.

The 3x speed stuff comes from the fact that nintendo planned to add DVD Video support to the Wii, but with reduced speed. The softmods and flatcable mods trick the drive to think the Wii is playing a DVD Video. Since nintendo has given up on the DVD player stuff, there's no need anymore to build drives that accept DVD Video.

 

[FenrirWolf]

Killing disc piracy in new models probably was a perk as well. Too bad for them that USB loading came out.

And while it's true that maintaining a softmod requires a bit more work than most modchips, softmodding is quickly becoming more resilient than even chips are now. For example, 4.2 killed chips' ability to play region free games while softmod loaders haven't lost that ability. Maybe a firmware update for the chips can fix it, but it hasn't been done yet as far as I'm aware.

 

[WiiPower]

Killing disc piracy in new models probably was a perk as well. Too bad for them that USB loading came out.

And while it's true that maintaining a softmod requires a bit more work than most modchips, softmodding is quickly becoming more resilient than even chips are now. For example, 4.2 killed chips' ability to play region free games while softmod loaders haven't lost that ability. Maybe a firmware update for the chips can fix it, but it hasn't been done yet as far as I'm aware.

It really kills region free? Sure it does not just block all not correctly signed discs? Region patched discs are notcorrectly signed, patching on-the-fly as modchips do is patching.

Or asked differently, on 4.2, with trucha enabled IOS, do import games still not work from disc channel?

 

[FenrirWolf]

I don't have a chip myself, so I can't test that out. But I've seen plenty of posts on here where people who updated their chipped consoles to 4.2 can only play in-region backups through the disc channel.

 

[mattjd]

4.2 kills wiikey region free playing

Luckily I do USB Loading now

 

[mk123a]

Nope imports don't work even with trucha enabled IOS on 4.2. Some how I think the 4.2 sysmenu has some added region security where on the fly patching from Modchips dont work nor region patched discs via regionfrii. Gecko Os and other softmod based loading methods aren't affected w/ regionfreeing

Hmm maybe I should switch to USB loading once I decide to get a decent external, but man will it be a pain in the ass to convert my disc based backup collection.

Killing disc piracy in new models probably was a perk as well. Too bad for them that USB loading came out.

And while it's true that maintaining a softmod requires a bit more work than most modchips, softmodding is quickly becoming more resilient than even chips are now. For example, 4.2 killed chips' ability to play region free games while softmod loaders haven't lost that ability. Maybe a firmware update for the chips can fix it, but it hasn't been done yet as far as I'm aware.

It really kills region free? Sure it does not just block all not correctly signed discs? Region patched discs are notcorrectly signed, patching on-the-fly as modchips do is patching.

Or asked differently, on 4.2, with trucha enabled IOS, do import games still not work from disc channel?

 

[xzxero]

thats why theres no preloader or startpatch hacks for region free games, 4.2 has new offsets and encryption.