Hacking New to the Wii scene...

[MSIiswin]

Okay, so I installed the HBC channel yesterday and today I've been busy setting up my Wii. So far I've done these things:

1. Used AnyRegion to downgrade (or in this case upgrade since I was on 3.1U) to 3.2U
2. Installed the 0.3 Gamma loader and the newest cIOS
3. Installed all of the Starfall hacks, dvdx, and updated the Wii Shop Channel.

Basically making this topic to make sure I've done all of the important system modifications. Is there anything else that needs changing?

And I'm also wondering if there is a good website where I can read up on what all these Wii terms mean. I've been using Wiibrew for a lot of things, but it seems to me that they try to stay clear of controversial things like cIOS and backup-loaders. Thanks for any help.

 

[FAST6191]

Your current setup is the best available to the softmod crowd as far as I can see.

As for terms if you want to make a list someone should be able to tell you what is what, still

IOS: the wii has firmware modules called IOS that are used to talk to the hardware, verify stuff and generally run the shop. You can almost think of them as tiny operating systems, now there are about 30 presently available and different apps use different ones. The hardware has not been fully reverse engineered so most homebrew apps still use them for some things.
cIOS is a custom IOS, originally an existing IOS was hacked but this was risky so an entirely new (some say made from Nintendo code hence their being banned here, installers are OK though) one for use with various applications.

Channel. The original wii system menu (there are a few hacks but no replacements) runs things from channels, you can launch homebrew code with the homebrew channel, the twilight hack, with a disc if you really want (may take some doing and a modchip) and you can also add homebrew apps as channels (storing them on the internal wii memory*)
*there is a trend right now for launchers for things like linux which can not be stored on the internal memory.

WADs: the storage method of choice for channels, the wii has very little in the way of error protection so a bad wad can mess things up. Quite in fact it is the most common cause of bricking. Wiiware titles, VC titles and hacked versions thereof (or different games injected into the VC titles), IOS modules/other system stuff and homebrew come in this form. Usually installed using wad manager.
VC/wiiware titles (although starfall should render it unnecessary) can be hacked to support a different region.

NAND: this is the internal memory. You have 512 megabytes although some is used for the IOS modules and few other things (about 12 megs I think).

backup loader: the wii has disc authentication in the drive which is what modchips bypass. Things like DVDx were made that exploited a bug that allowed slow read speeds (3x, the usual speed is 6x though current loaders are nearly the same speed (in terms of data per second) owing to some clever coding) without a modchip that were then turned into loaders for copied games. Modchips are still better though and they can play gamecube games.