I just did a trade for this Wii U CAT-DEV unit and I have a few questions. First off, I have no experience in game development, but it's something I've always been interested in. I had an opportunity to trade for this Wii U CAT-DEV unit and pulled the trigger because I thought it was interesting and wanted to learn more about it. So, the only thing I have is this box.. Would I need the custom console and pad that it would have come with in order to fully use this? Or is there anyway I could use a regular pad/console with this? Also, what all would I need to get this thing running and test it out? Any information and input is greatly appreciated. I realize I may be jumping into something that's a bit over my head, but I'm trying my best to learn and any info helps.
**Edit: So I've found out that I do in fact need the matching pad/console in order to really do anything with this. So now I have a really cool paperweight until I find the matching hardware. Wish me luck!**
Hey,
Sorry I don't check gba-temp often, but this cat-dev could contain useful items on it, even if it doesn't contain games. Also your edit is not correct. Your cat-dev will be able to pair with any gamepad that is the same region as it. Retail, or dev (source: I have 3 cat-dev's, and all of them can pair with dev & retail gamepads as long as the regions of the two devices match).
This device may contain deleted archives, but it's gonna be pretty rare to have full games in it. The Cafe SDK heavily discouraged adding files directly to the CAT-DEV, and instead using something called "PCFS" where the filesystem of the wii-u was entirely read from a PC setup with the SDK for the wii-u. Still! It may contain useful items.
The big problem you're going to run into is, booting one of these devices, normally requires a full setup of Cafe SDK (something that can be hard to retrieve, and requires a very long laborious setup process). I've personally been working on a series of tools to help fix this gap, so cat-dev's don't just become e-waste, and hopefully we can improve dev experiences in general. This project is called Sprig ( rem-verse/sprig on github ). Here you'll be able to boot the device into SystemConfigTool (regardless of which mode your device is in), find the region, and pair it with a gamepad. You can also start working on dumping things.
Please reach out to me with any questions either here, on discord (DMs or in some place common like RGD), or otherwise if you need any help. Sprig is still very early days so the process would be:
1. Choose how you want to install Sprig.
- If you want to use the prebuilt packages, they haven't been tested much , and may be kinda buggy but the "msi" on the latest build of Sprig (if you're using windows), or the appropriate packages on the build page should download, and install all the binaries.
- If you want to build the package from source:
- Download and setup rust if you haven't already (the language sprig is written in) (lookup "rustup")
- Download and setup git if you haven't already.
- Open up "git bash" on windows, or a normal command prompt on any other OS, and run `cargo build` inside a git checkout of sprig.
- Prepend all commands with `./target/debug` so for example if a step says run: `bridgectl ls`, actually run `./target/debug/bridgectl ls`.
2. Power on your cat-dev and connect it to the same network your PC is on (the cat-dev should use a hardwired ethernet cable, the host pc can be wifi or ethernet).
3. Run `bridgectl ls -t` which will print out the information about the cat-dev that is powered on your network.
4. Run `bridgectl boot <ip address of bridge> --boot-without-pcfs` (e.g. if your cat-dev ip was: 192.168.1.1 run: `bridgectl boot 192.168.1.1 --boot-without-pcfs`).
5. The device should boot into SystemConfigTool by default, unless the host has overriden it (very rare, and very likely this console will contain builds we want).
6. Move both switches on the front of the cat-dev to "wireless" over "wired", and hit the sync button on the front (you may have to hit it once or twice).
7. It will take you to the sync page, and give you a password you can enter, and should tell you what region the console is in.
If you also were willing to share dumps:
- Go to: `<bridge ip>/update.cgi` in your browser on your laptop while the cat-dev is on, and connected to the network (again if your bridge ip is 192.168.1.1 go to: 192.168.1.1/update.cgi`). Look at the FW version, we call this the "MION Version". If it's anything other than `0.00.13.58`, `0.00.13.74`, `0.00.14.70`, `0.00.14.77`, or `0.00.14.80`, please please please dump this firmware version. You can do this with sprig, run:
- `bridgectl mion dump-eeprom <ip of cat-dev>`
- `bridgectl mion dump-firmware-from-memory <ip of cat-dev>`
- This will place two files down in whatever directory you're command prompt is actively in, please save these, or send these to someone who can archive them.
- I'm working on a tool to remote dump the cat-dev, but it's still going through some bug fixes. If you're not willing to open the device, please don't write any games to the hard drive until I have a chance to finish the remote dumping tool, and we can fully dump the hard drive contents of your cat-dev.
