Hacking neek2o

[doveman]

Just had another go at getting Sneek+DI working from a 16GB SD with one game on it. Built it with the latest Modmii and it boots OK to the Home menu, showing Neek2o and Postloader channels. I thought I was meant to press 1 on the remote to load a game but that just pops up a choice of neek2o or postloader and says "ensure you're on the Home screen". When I select neek2o it just reboots the Wii. I can load Postloader OK if I select it's channel.

Any ideas where I'm going wrong?

 

[obcd]

Neither sneek2o nor uneek2o are initially intended to be able to run a wii game backup from the sd card. They expect the game to be on the first partition of the harddisk. (fat32 formatted with a 32kb cluster size) pressing the 1 button while in the system menu should bring up an overlay menu with the option to choose a game. That game will appear in the disc channel. Since you don't seem to have a game in the wbfs folder of your harddisk, none will show up in the disc channel.

The behavour of resetting the wii when you run the neek2o channel from within neek2o is normal. It's intended to work like that. It switches from real nand to neek2o, and from neek2o to real nand (trough a reset).

You can install VC / Wiiware on the emulated nand with showmiinand and launch that with postloader.
You can launch your wii games (from harddisk wbfs folder) with postloader as well.

 

[stfour]

Just note that postloader access to channels browsing directly /titles folders. So it is strange that it doesn't found the installed channels.

 

[doveman]

Neither sneek2o nor uneek2o are initially intended to be able to run a wii game backup from the sd card. They expect the game to be on the first partition of the harddisk. (fat32 formatted with a 32kb cluster size) pressing the 1 button while in the system menu should bring up an overlay menu with the option to choose a game. That game will appear in the disc channel. Since you don't seem to have a game in the wbfs folder of your harddisk, none will show up in the disc channel.

The behavour of resetting the wii when you run the neek2o channel from within neek2o is normal. It's intended to work like that. It switches from real nand to neek2o, and from neek2o to real nand (trough a reset).

You can install VC / Wiiware on the emulated nand with showmiinand and launch that with postloader.
You can launch your wii games (from harddisk wbfs folder) with postloader as well.

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. I did put a game on a USB stick in a folder named Games (I'm sure I read somewhere that this folder had to exist and have at least one game in it) but I didn't get a chance to test with the USB stick connected, so I'll rename that folder to wbfs for the next time I get to test it. Just to be clear, are you saying that with a game in wbfs on the USB stick/HDD, when I press 1 in addition to neek2o and the other option (I think it was postloader but I'm not sure) it will also list the game and selecting that will load it into the disc channel?

Would it be booting into neek2o mode by default with the bootmii folder on my SD card? I didn't notice any indication of whether it was in real or neek2o mode, so is there something that shows this on the Home screen?

 

[obcd]

It used to be that a game was needed in the games folder. With neek2o, a game in wbfs format in the wbfs folder should do the trick as well, and it should even work without the existence of those folders. Most magic is done with the diconfig.bin file. That one tells neek what games exist in the folders and also tells it which one to select and show in the disc channel. It's a good practice to delete that file if you changed some stuff in either the wbfs or the games folder. There also is an option in the neek2o overlay menu to recreate that file when the number of games in those folders has changed.

If you press the 1 button while running under sneek(2o) or uneek(2o), it should show you the neek overlay menu. You might need to wait 5 - 10 seconds in the home menu before this becomes available. If I create a modmii nand, I always choose a themed menu to clearly see the difference between neek mode and real nand mode.

Booting in neek2o by default will only happen if you have bootmii installed at boot2 (only possible with older wii's) It also requires to change the normal bootmii armboot.bin into the neek armboot.bin. (bootmii folder) You will also need the sneek folder on your sd card with kernel.bin in that.

Another option is installing the neek2o boot application into priiloader, and telling priiloader to always launch that application. postloader also comes with an application that has that purpose.

 

[doveman]

Ah of course. I did indeed choose a themed menu and it was quite clearly using that, so obviously was running in neek, not real, mode (yep, I've got boot2 installed).

I didn't see a "recreate diconfig.bin" option either and in fact it hasn't created that file but I imagine that's because it couldn't see the games folder on my SD card. I'll have to test again with the game on my USB stick/HDD but it looks like it should work OK

I seem to be having to resync the controllers quite a lot since starting to experiment with neek2o though. Is this a known issue and is there anything I can do to fix it?

 

[obcd]

It's normal that you have to resync once when you boot neek with a modmii created nand for the first time.
After that, the controller should be synced in real nand and in neek2o nand.
It's normal that the remote loses sync when for instance an ios is reloaded, but basically just pressing a button on it should reestablish the connection. (No need to do the sync procedure with the red button on the wii) There is one file that should have the same contents on real nand and neek emulated nand, but I forgot which one it is.

 

[doveman]

Yeah, I thought it would be normal the first time I used neek as it wouldn't have any settings saved in the emuNAND.

The controllers seem to be losing sync randomly at other times as well though. For instance, the Wii was being used in the week (not with sneek at all, only the normal softmod), but when I tried to turn it on with the controller on Sunday it had lost sync and was just flashing the lights until I resynced it with the red buttons.

Is the file you're thinking of the cert.sys?

I'm wondering whether I should try making an emuNAND from a dump of the real NAND. I've got an original dump, so I presume I'd use that rather than making a current dump from the modded Wii and using that?

 

[obcd]

Modmii nand's usually boot faster as they don't have much channels installed.
A backup of your original nand might already contain all your gamesaves.
So, both have their advantages and disadvantages.
You also need to know that the neek nand needs a different priiloader. It's basically just one file that needs to be replaced.

 

[doveman]

OK, thanks. Is there any way to strip out the gamesaves and channels from a dumped NAND?

 

[obcd]

You can extract channels with the showmiiwads/showmiinand program.
For gamesaves, you could use something like gamesavemanager_gx from dj_skual.
If it complains about ios 249 missing, simply install a legacy ios (56?) in that slot (on neek emulated nand)

 

[DaFees]

Alright, problem, I want it that when I launch my neek2o setup it will autoboot into postloader. I got into priiloader and initially (because it's what I use on my real nand) I installed priibootergui so as to autoboot that which autoboots PL. This didn't work though, one priibootergui loads it tries to mount my hard drive and just hangs on a countdown. I thought of autobooting to PL directly by installing that instead, except every time now I try to change the installed file priiloader just prodcues a stack dump. I don't have the numbers it puts out but if needed I can get them. Basically I just want my neek2o setup to autoboot to PL because I prefer it over the regular SM especially when the regular SM can only show so many channels.

 

[obcd]

I might have the perfect tool for you. I will upload it this evening (8 - 9 hours from now)
priibootergui is for real nand priiloader only.
You will need to set neek2o priiloader to "boot 2 system" you should be able to enter it by holding the reset button when neek2o starts.
The priiloader installed application can be manually removed from the emulated nand if it's causing problems.
If priiloader is set to boot the system menu, it shouldn't give you any problems.

 

[stfour]

Alright, problem, I want it that when I launch my neek2o setup it will autoboot into postloader. I got into priiloader and initially (because it's what I use on my real nand) I installed priibootergui so as to autoboot that which autoboots PL. This didn't work though, one priibootergui loads it tries to mount my hard drive and just hangs on a countdown. I thought of autobooting to PL directly by installing that instead, except every time now I try to change the installed file priiloader just prodcues a stack dump. I don't have the numbers it puts out but if needed I can get them. Basically I just want my neek2o setup to autoboot to PL because I prefer it over the regular SM especially when the regular SM can only show so many channels.

Remember that under neek2o you should NOT install priibootergui, that is intended for the real mode, but the neekbooter.dol that is available in package and can load postloader from ISFS (ie hdd) and SD.

 

[obcd]

You will find what you are looking for here:

http://code.google.com/p/janeek/

Plenty more will follow there...

 

[LWares87]

Just to ask... does sneek2o work faster with a 32kb cluster size formatted SD Card? Also... how do I have sd access whilst using the nand from the sd card. it's enabled, but not working though.

I wish to also ask... what applications are included in that pack which Shag provided?

 

[berbere]

Hello.

I can't make neek2o work with my Wii. I'm using a Western Digital My Passport disk (the one with the backwards compatible USB 3.0 interface) on which there are two partitions: the first, active and primary partition is FAT32 with a cluster size of 32KB. The second partition is NFTS.
I made a 4.3 PAL NAND with ModMii. I just want it for running VC and Wiiware so it's an UNEEK one, without DI, Joyflow and such.

On the FAT32 partition I placed the NAND and neek files:

| nands
|- pl_eu
|-- shared1
|-- sys
|-- ticket
|-- title
| sneek
|- kernel.bin

On the Wii I installed the neek2o channel, the one who doesn't need an SD card (from the google code downloads projet page).

When I launch the emulation, the screen goes black for a very long time, after which the Wii drive light starts blinking on/off forever (screen still black). After this, the only solution is to pull the plug from the wall.

I tried formatting the FAT32 partition with a cluster size of 16KB but the result was the same.

What am I doing wrong? Can somebody help me?

 

[OverjoY]

Check if folders like import, meta, shared2 and tmp are created in the folder where you placed the nand and if a file called nandcfg.bin is created in the sneek folder. If they're not it means that neek doesn't recognize your hdd.

 

[berbere]

Check if folders like import, meta, shared2 and tmp are created in the folder where you placed the nand and if a file called nandcfg.bin is created in the sneek folder. If they're not it means that neek doesn't recognize your hdd.

Ok, I'll check later on if these files are present or not.

According to this table my hdd should be compatible:
Confirmed Setups: Working w/NEEK2O & Uneek(+DI)
"WD 500 GB My Passport Essential (works for uneek+di)"

(mine is black)
Maybe it only works with uneek+di as written and not with neek2o?...

 

[OverjoY]

Well that doesn't mean that your WD 500 GB My Passport Essential is compatible. WD ext. hdd's come in a lot of different flavours. WD changes the hardware a lot without changing the name.