Hacking Nintendont

[ntnavy]

Those are good. I'll check my copy tonight and see if it does anything strange.

Bro did you check your copy to see if you have the problem too?

 

[Clutz450]

Partially supported. Currently, GPT works as long as your FAT32 partition starts and ends within the first 2TB. The major limitation is that both libcustomfat and FatFS use 32-bit sector values. This needs to be changed to 64-bit. Also, the USB code is only retrieving a 32-bit sector count. I'm not entirely positive how to change this to retrieve 64-bit, but will be working on it later.

There's also a report of issues when using Hybrid MBR (e.g. a Macintosh-formatted GPT drive). I'm waiting for the user to respond to the issue with the necessary MBR data: https://github.com/FIX94/Nintendont/issues/202

Summary of GPT limitations in Nintendont at the moment: (version 386)

• Only the first 4 partitions in the GPT are checked. I'm testing some patches locally to check all partitions in libcustomfat (loader), and then will be porting this over to FatFS (kernel).
• Partitions must be within the first 2 TB of the drive for 512-byte sector devices.

I have a 3 and 4 TB hard drive that I've used on my Wii and Wii U and haven't had any issues. I have the entire thing formatted as FAT32 with 64k clusters and no other partitions. I only use USB Loader GX, Nintendont and neek2o. I have no problems launching or playing any game (Wii, GameCube, WiiWare or Virtual Console) from that setup.

Not sure if what you said it's related but I just wanted to let you know about my experience with drives over 2TB and that they work for me in case that means anything to you.

 

[tswntk]

I have a 3 and 4 TB hard drive that I've used on my Wii and Wii U and haven't had any issues. I have the entire thing formatted as FAT32 with 64k clusters and no other partitions. I only use USB Loader GX, Nintendont and neek2o. I have no problems launching or playing any game (Wii, GameCube, WiiWare or Virtual Console) from that setup.

Not sure if what you said it's related but I just wanted to let you know about my experience with drives over 2TB and that they work for me in case that means anything to you.

did you fill them up with GC/Wii games pass the 2TB boundaries? If yes, have you ever run those games?

 

[GerbilSoft]

I have a 3 and 4 TB hard drive that I've used on my Wii and Wii U and haven't had any issues. I have the entire thing formatted as FAT32 with 64k clusters and no other partitions. I only use USB Loader GX, Nintendont and neek2o. I have no problems launching or playing any game (Wii, GameCube, WiiWare or Virtual Console) from that setup.

Not sure if what you said it's related but I just wanted to let you know about my experience with drives over 2TB and that they work for me in case that means anything to you.

You probably have a 4K-sector drive, in which case a 4TB drive would have ~1.073 billion sectors. (2^30; about a quarter of the 2^32-1 sector limit.)

Is it still working with Nintendont r386? I assume it's partitioned using MBR, not GPT.

 

[Clutz450]

did you fill them up with GC/Wii games pass the 2TB boundaries? If yes, have you ever run those games?

Yes I did. However, I think when I copied my games over I copied over my GameCube games first and I don't think all those games totaled over 2TB. But I'm pretty sure my Wii games are passed that point and they all work fine. Is there a way for me to tell which games are placed before the 2TB mark and which ones are placed after?

You probably have a 4K-sector drive, in which case a 4TB drive would have ~1.073 billion sectors. (2^30; about a quarter of the 2^32-1 sector limit.)

Is it still working with Nintendont r386? I assume it's partitioned using MBR, not GPT.

I haven't updated Nintendont to the latest rev yet but I will do that when I get home from work and try it out. I don't know much about hard drives but 4k sector and MBR sound very familiar to me so I think that's what I have. Is there a way for me to check so I can get back to you with the right answers?

 

[hazymaze]

Sorry for late respond, if you're using a regular Wii go for WD My Passport it's been working great with me for years, if you use a Wii U then get one with its own power cord or a y-cable, Wii U is different than regular Wii just so you know.

also it's recommended if you go with My Passport to make the "update" as it saves you the headache of it going sleep, you can try My Essential as it seems to automatically have sleep mode disabled which is convenient.

One more thing, I don't recommend using a 500GB as it's too small and you will probably run out of space soon, get a 1TB or 2TB as those are confirmed to run flawlessly on regular Wii.

I need a majority vote please. What is better? A powered 500G MyBook or an unpowered 1TB MyPassport?

 

[sonictopfan]

I need a majority vote please. What is better? A powered 500G MyBook or an unpowered 1TB MyPassport?

If you can handle using a powered HDD go for it, those shouldn't go to sleep mode and they should work fine on Wii and Wii U.

 

[GreyWolf]

@hazymaze I would recommend picking up a USB enclosure locally and putting your own drive in it. That way if it doesn't work it's easier to return and a simple enclosure would be less likely to have anything like drive encryption, etc. that could cause issues.

There's a company called Acomdata that makes inexpensive ones with USB and eSATA that I've always liked.

 

[Shubkin]

del

 

[SMVB64]

Hey, I tried getting my Gamecube memory card (dumped with GCMM) to work with Nintendon't but I'm not sure what this means?

Method1
Rename the full memory card dump create by GCMM as .raw put it in your /saves/ folder)

Does it supposed to have a certain name? I placed the .raw in the saves folder, but Nintendon't will ignore it and make a new save with the game's ID. Any ideas?
Thanks, SM

 

[Roxas012]

Hey, I tried getting my Gamecube memory card (dumped with GCMM) to work with Nintendon't but I'm not sure what this means?

Does it supposed to have a certain name? I placed the .raw in the saves folder, but Nintendon't will ignore it and make a new save with the game's ID. Any ideas?
Thanks, SM

Rename it to "ninmem.raw". Then go into Nintendont's settings and change the memory card emulation to multi.

 

[SMVB64]

Rename it to "ninmem.raw". Then go into Nintendont's settings and change the memory card emulation to multi.

Thanks! Nintendon't picked it up. Only issue is that it said the memory was corrupted, so I just transferred my saves over to Nintendon't .raw using dolphin

 

[sonictopfan]

Thanks! Nintendon't picked it up. Only issue is that it said the memory was corrupted, so I just transferred my saves over to Nintendon't .raw using dolphin

This works too, as for the raw file being corrupted not sure why this happened, could be your dump was bad or maybe you're using a very old version of Nintendont, anyway glad it worked out for you and welcome to the club of Nintendont fans.

 

[hazymaze]

@hazymaze I would recommend picking up a USB enclosure locally and putting your own drive in it. That way if it doesn't work it's easier to return and a simple enclosure would be less likely to have anything like drive encryption, etc. that could cause issues.

There's a company called Acomdata that makes inexpensive ones with USB and eSATA that I've always liked.

Too many people telling me different options. I really need to know what is best. And no, I am not using the drive I already have, thats in my laptop. Option 3 is out the window. So what is better? Powered drive or unpowered?

 

[pedro702]

Too many people telling me different options. I really need to know what is best. And no, I am not using the drive I already have, thats in my laptop. Option 3 is out the window. So what is better? Powered drive or unpowered?

It depends on you, if its just to use at home on your console or home pc a powered drive is the best option since you are home and there is enouh power plugs around, if your thinking on taking the hdd with you outside or on vacation to use with your laptop a unpowered drive with an y cable its the best option.

 

[hazymaze]

If you can handle using a powered HDD go for it, those shouldn't go to sleep mode and they should work fine on Wii and Wii U.

It depends on you, if its just to use at home on your console or home pc a powered drive is the best option since you are home and there is enouh power plugs around, if your thinking on taking the hdd with you outside or on vacation to use with your laptop a unpowered drive with an y cable its the best option.

THANK YOU finally a clear answer thank you so much Pedro.

 

[Subscriber0101]

I have two questions here:

1) Can you implement the ability to change from SD to USB (or vice-versa) without resetting the whole program?

2) As I've asked in this thread, is there any way to set partial L-Press, full L-Press, partial R-press and full R-press to four separate buttons (to compensate for controllers like the DS2 which have no analog shoulder buttons)?

Thanks.

 

[ccfman2004]

I have two questions here:

1) Can you implement the ability to change from SD to USB (or vice-versa) without resetting the whole program?

2) As I've asked in this thread, is there any way to set partial L-Press, full L-Press, partial R-press and full R-press to four separate buttons (to compensate for controllers like the DS2 which have no analog shoulder buttons)?

Thanks.

2: Yes there is. On the Dual Shock 2 press and hold the L1 button. It will treat the L2 and R2 as a half press.

 

[GerbilSoft]

1) Can you implement the ability to change from SD to USB (or vice-versa) without resetting the whole program?

I've been looking into the menu code to add some extra diagnostics like displaying the device size, sector size, and partition information in the menu. This shouldn't be a difficult thing to add; simply have the Home button go back to the previous menu instead of exiting.

I submitted a pull request as a followup to my GPT code earlier. There was a bug in my 64-bit byteswap function that prevented GPT drives larger than 8 GB from being detected properly. I used a 4 GB SD card during testing, so this didn't show up then, but I tried to load up Nintendont with my 500 GB Wii HDD and it failed to find the FAT32 partition because of this bug.

 

[sindrik]

I've been looking into the menu code to add some extra diagnostics like displaying the device size, sector size, and partition information in the menu. This shouldn't be a difficult thing to add; simply have the Home button go back to the previous menu instead of exiting.

I submitted a pull request as a followup to my GPT code earlier. There was a bug in my 64-bit byteswap function that prevented GPT drives larger than 8 GB from being detected properly. I used a 4 GB SD card during testing, so this didn't show up then, but I tried to load up Nintendont with my 500 GB Wii HDD and it failed to find the FAT32 partition because of this bug.

Nice addition!