Hacking neek2o on vWii? Guide?

[Muyfa666]

Can neek2o run on vWii? Are there any good guide for it? I never used Sneek or neek2o...

Can it co-exist with a regular vWii softmod?

 

[jammybudga777]

no unfortunatly it is not up and running on vwii at the moment and possible wont be for sometime if at all. you can use an emulated nand with usbloadergx or wiiflow and it will load all vc and wiiware games but not with sneek or neek2o

 

[Muyfa666]

I am using a emulated nand with USB Loader GX, but 2 out of 3 games that matter to me won't run - Castlevania: ReBirth and Zelda: Majoras Mask. Are you sayinh these two could be made to work with USB Loader GX?

 

[jammybudga777]

I am using a emulated nand with USB Loader GX, but 2 out of 3 games that matter to me won't run - Castlevania: ReBirth and Zelda: Majoras Mask. Are you sayinh these two could be made to work with USB Loader GX?

maybe ask cyan from this site about usbloader gx. im sure it can but the security is abit different exc.
i use wiiflow myself and both zelda ocarina of time and majoa's mask wads work. maybe get the wads from somewhere else and try them. but if you have no luck then PM cyan he can probable help you or try out wiiflow

 

[obcd]

Nobody tested it yet, but is there a reason why it shouldn't work?

Obviously, you will need the files from your vwii nand. Bluedump should be able to produce usefull nand files.
You should find the correct one in the wiiu modding stickies.
Next, you will need to make a vwii kernel.bin. I already tested the existing elfins and ioskpatch programs from crediar.
They both seem to run fine on the app file from the vwii system menu. You will need the 0000000d.app from the 00000001/00000050 folder. (50 hex = 80) so we are looking at ios 80. Obvious you will need to alter the cmd files to create kernel.bin from 0000000d.app instead of 0000000e.app
The homebrew program that could launch neek on the wii should still work in vwii as well.

You will need a neek build environment. Be aware that only specific arm-eabi compiler versions produce working code. The build environment comes from crediar's original sneek project. If you have esmodule.elf from the es folder, iosmodule.elf from the fs folder and fs-usb folder, you won't need to compile those yourself. Nothing needs to be installed on the vwii nand, so the risk in testing this is minimal.

If someone sees possible problems in this method, please respond to this. I don't have a wiiu, so I can't test it out.

 

[jammybudga777]

its sounds like it would/could work but im not up for risking it for a biscuit when everything works fine for me how i do it. but if you think about how sneek and neek2o work!! on a normall wii they load directly into the emunand when the console is turned on (which im sure the wii u cant do because it loads the OS before you would load into vwii) or you would have to install the sneek wad to then make it access the emulated nand by pressing on the wad in vwii which im still not convinced it will go as smoothly as we would hope. ive got no proof just a hunch

 

[obcd]

On a normal wii, they don't load directly into the emunand. It originally replaced the bootmii armboot.bin on the sd card. So, if you had an old wii with bootmii @ boot2, it ran that armboot.bin at bootup. The modified armboot.bin loaded the neek kernel.bin which is basically ios80 with the es and fs modules replaced. Since those modules are replaced, they search for the nand contents on sd card or usb drive.

So yes, there was a channel to launch neek2o, but there was also a homebrew dol that could be launched from the homebrew channel to run armboot.bin. Even if you simply select run mini in the hbc, it will switch into neek mode if the sd card bootmii/armboot.bin is replaced by the neek one.

So there is no need to install the sneek wad for testing. People that doon't have bootmii @ boot2 might be able to confirm that their wii doesn't boot directly into neek. There are exceptions. You could set priiloader to make it boot directly into neek, and you even can install the neek kernel.bin on your real nand as ios80.
!!!!!! Never try this if you don't have bootmii @ boot2 so that you can restore your nand if things go wrong!!!!!!

vwii isn't using boot2 anymore, and there are no reports of people who have bootmii @ boot2 on their wiiu.
So basically, 2 switch to neek mode you will have to run bootmii with the neek armboot.bin in the sd card bootmii folder.

The homebrew dol program used to switch into neek2o mode loads armboot.bin into memory and uses ios254 (bootmii ios) to launch that. Due to the fact armboot.bin is embedded in the dol file, it doesn't need it from the sd card bootmii folder. As a result, neek and mini could coexist happily together.

 

[Muyfa666]

Wow. This got advanced way too quick.

I've dumped the nand through USB Loader GX and have tried my wads installed to it. OoT works, Castlevania and MM does not. Castlevania black screens, and MM get stuck on the N64 logo at the intro...

 

[boomario]

Wow. This got advanced way too quick.

I've dumped the nand through USB Loader GX and have tried my wads installed to it. OoT works, Castlevania and MM does not. Castlevania black screens, and MM get stuck on the N64 logo at the intro...

This is common and the only solutions for that games are:
1° Running using NEEK (not possible on Wii U)
2° Installing and running on real nand, i don't think anyone likes that but have 100% compatibility
3° In case of majora's mask, you can get the Not64 Emulator or gamecube collectors edition to make it playable.

 

[Muyfa666]

This is common and the only solutions for that games are:
1° Running using NEEK (not possible on Wii U)
2° Installing and running on real nand, i don't think anyone likes that but have 100% compatibility
3° In case of majora's mask, you can get the Not64 Emulator or gamecube collectors edition to make it playable.

I see. Not much to do then. :-(

 

[obcd]

Ok, maybe I was a little 2 optimistic.
If the wiiu ppc get's reset it run's it's boot code that decrypts the famous 1-512 in memory.
In case of the wii, it was just running the ppc code being either priiloader or the system menu.
This means the ES ppc launch id different if I understand correctly, and that's a piece of code we replace in the ios.

So, at the moment, it won't work. It will require reverse engineering of the wii ios80 code and vwii ios80 code to find the differences in it's es module and
port those over to the neek es module.

If anybody could think of another technical issue, please report.

 

[jammybudga777]

Ok, maybe I was a little 2 optimistic.
If the wiiu ppc get's reset it run's it's boot code that decrypts the famous 1-512 in memory.
In case of the wii, it was just running the ppc code being either priiloader or the system menu.
This means the ES ppc launch id different if I understand correctly, and that's a piece of code we replace in the ios.

So, at the moment, it won't work. It will require reverse engineering of the wii ios80 code and vwii ios80 code to find the differences in it's es module and
port those over to the neek es module.

If anybody could think of another technical issue, please report.

like i said with out all the tecknikall chat that means "nothing to most" especially to the noobs asking the questions. i had a hunch it would'nt work or not yet anyway!! but i no my wads of majora's mask and ocarina of time work on the wii (with out sneek or neek set up) i literally have them set to my emunand and wiiflow plays them. ive not had chance to test out on the wii u properly yet but im sure it will work

 

[obcd]

It's the technical chat that might make it possible in the future.
Sometimes you have to post half truth's to see what comes out of it.
If you are lucky, people who know the truth will be annoyed and correct you. In this case, it did it myself this time after an overnight sleep.
Things are not possible until somebody steps out and make them happen.

After all, the initial question is neek2o on vwii? Guide?
usually people asking about neek with 301 posts on the forum aren't absolute noobs anymore.

 

[Cyan]

For N64 games, EmuNAND from cIOS often require that you use an old one (Waninkoko cIOS rev17 and rev19), which is not possible to install on vWii.
d2x cIOS has a "rev17-mode" but I think nobody tested it, and loaders don't have settings to use this mode.
If I find time, I'll check d2x sources to see how to enable this compatibility mode and if it's usable/stable.

 

[Maxternal]

Ok, maybe I was a little 2 optimistic.
If the wiiu ppc get's reset it run's it's boot code that decrypts the famous 1-512 in memory.
In case of the wii, it was just running the ppc code being either priiloader or the system menu.
This means the ES ppc launch id different if I understand correctly, and that's a piece of code we replace in the ios.

So, at the moment, it won't work. It will require reverse engineering of the wii ios80 code and vwii ios80 code to find the differences in it's es module and
port those over to the neek es module.

If anybody could think of another technical issue, please report.

It still MIGHT be possible if ES is actually not actually the one loading the 1-512 title. ES is userland code and at least the part that resets PPC has to be done from the kernel (I tried from ES directly ... didn't work) so ES has to request that with a system call to the kernel. If the kernel is loading it from NAND it might work as long as that kernel.bin happens to include that code. If not, and ES is expected to preload 1-512 for the kernel before requesting a reset, like you say, then it might still take some more programming to get it working.

 

[obcd]

Good point Max. If you are interested we could have a deeper look into that. I won't make it on irc this evening but might find some time monday evening.
It would be a small intermezzo of your 3 core linux work. With a bit of luck we might even get some help from crediar. There is no harm in being optimistic, is it?

 

[jammybudga777]

i no my knowledge is'nt as much as what you guys have.
but im up for taking part if you do take a side track with this and i dont mind possible testing things within reason

 

[obcd]

Es seems to use Syscall 0x41 ppc_boot() to start ppc code. So Max is right in saying that things are handeled in the Ios kernel.