Hacking USB Loader GX

[dingdongsong]

I am at my wits on trying to get this properly working. I listed the steps I took as throughly as I could. If I missed a detail please let me know.

Problem:
When I run usbloadergx (forwarder channel) when I am in neek emunand it keeps mounting the first game in alphabetical order (in my case Donkey Kong Country Returns) no matter what game I choose in usb loader gx.

How I prepped my usb/sd drive:

1. have usb drive formatted in fat32mb
2. installed wii discs with usbloadergx which put themselves in wbfs
3. Used Modmii, chose Sneek installation, option 3 complete, rev 96, uneek+di, 4.3u, yes on prilloader and cios249, added usbloadergx forwarder wad, typed in proper serial, no themes
4. copied the sd and usb files created by modmii into their respective drives
5. copied over my nand shared2 folder and sys/cert.sys over to the usb drive in usb:/nands/pl_us
6. have priiloader autoboot nswitch 4.2

it reads:
nSwitch v.4.2 (c) 2011 - 2015 OverjoY
Built: Jan 16 2015 22:30:03
Checking patches… Done!
Mounting USB device… done!
Checking MBR…
Found “Fat” partition (55aa)
Checking for kernel.bin… found!
kernel.bin size: 220792
Loading kernel.bin into memory….
Patching ES module… Done!​

It then I believe boots into neek2o? The disc channel shows “wii system update.”

(alternatively i also booted to neek using boot2 method, same results)​

Lastly, I open usb loader gx in settings > custom paths: i set nand emu path and nand emu channel path both to usb:/nands/pl_us


additional notes:

• I put gxloaderusb in both the /apps/ folder of the sd and usb for now because nothing was working and was just trying it out through trial and error.
• if i press 1: uneek20+di menu shows up. first game is Donkey Kong Country REturns (wbfs) which is the game that runs whenever I choose any game within USB Loader Gx.
• i am on usb loader gx. v3.0 rev 1262 and have set loader to ios 58 and game ios slot 249 (cios base 56 v10 beta52)
• everything works normally in realnand and usbloadergx properly loads different games however unable to properly swap games in neek

 

[GreyWolf]

There is no operating system so the only "drivers" are what is in the IOS the current app is running under. There are no file system drivers in any of them so all of those have to be linked to the app when it's compiled. When a title is running on cIOS it will only have access to what file systems the cIOS supports. (d2x does FAT32, NTFS and ext2)

I have a 1 TB drive that is one MBR/FAT32 partition. It has only Wii games (split at 4GB boundary) and GC games on it. All channels and saves except GC ones are on a 32GB SD card.

The one advantage I can think of in using FAT32 is that libfat in devkitPro is still maintained and updated. libNTFS and libext2 seem to be defunct.

@dingdongsong Unless you have a need to run Wii disc games under NEEK then skip the DI version. It sounds like it's trying to automount one of your game discs.

 

[bengalih]

I have a 1 TB drive that is one MBR/FAT32 partition. It has only Wii games (split at 4GB boundary) and GC games on it. All channels and saves except GC ones are on a 32GB SD card.

Can I ask your reason for storing those on SD? It it to make them more easily transportable to another Wii?

Personally I moved everything off SD in my last build because I figured it was unnecessary now that 95% of stuff could be run from FAT32 USB.
However after doing some testing with Guitar Hero and Just Dance with lots of DLC I found that having the emuNAND stored on the SD card seemed to be more stable (less crashes in game) and quicker.

I'm not sure if it because the SD has faster read speed, or simply because it is a different drive so the game isn't force to read both itself and the DLC from the USB simultaneously. IOW, by keeping the DLC in an emuNAND on the SD, it more replicates how the Wii would normally read this data (from solid state memory rather than a disc).

The one advantage I can think of in using FAT32 is that libfat in devkitPro is still maintained and updated. libNTFS and libext2 seem to be defunct.

Yes I think I read that in another thread. I doubt that many fixes are still going into libfat in recent memory, but I suppose it does have its advantages.

I may try to do a quick test with some loading times on both FAT32 and NTFS before I make up my mind.
Anyone have a suggestion on what might be a good game to test that with?

 

[GreyWolf]

I haven't done anything to measure it but it seems like keeping the Wii save emulation on a separate drive makes it take less time to load from the NAND files. As for the channel titles it doesn't seem to be any slower as they're mostly resident in memory after they're loaded. They aren't allowed to have extra dol files or relocatable modules so the most they read is their data .app files.

in reference to libfat: it had a big version update earlier this year with the release of dkPro being updated to GCC 6.3.

 

[bengalih]

in reference to libfat: it had a big version update earlier this year with the release of dkPro being updated to GCC 6.3.

Yeah - ok. I meant a lot of it is "theoretical/academic" in terms of this. Meaning will your libfat update, assuming it is incorporated into your next version of GX really make anything better within GX itself? And, if so, that wouldn't really matter to NTFS users who might not have had that issue in the first place.

You're right of course, that continued dev. is better than no dev., but I don't know if it is the primary factor on determining which one to use based on other considerations.

I'm going to do some neek boots and some game boots and see if there is any difference. If I can notice anything more than a 1% speed increase with NTFS I might stick with that, otherwise I'm leaning towards FAT32.

I guess my last worry is (that you didn't specifically address) you never have any issues with FAT32 corruption if power is cut whilst accessing? For instance if you hard power off while a game is running (or hung), or neek is hung, etc... ?

 

[GreyWolf]

No, that's one of the reasons I try to keep saves and stuff that's written to on a separate drive. If there's a hang, which I generally only get when testing my loader builds, there are no files open for writing on the USB drive so no corruption.

You're wanting to use the latest version of a maintained loader so that must be a factor to you somewhat.

 

[bengalih]

No, that's one of the reasons I try to keep saves and stuff that's written to on a separate drive. If there's a hang, which I generally only get when testing my loader builds, there are no files open for writing on the USB drive so no corruption.

Hmm...good idea. Even though most times I have issues I don't think saves would be happening, it is a good protection mechanism.
I'll have to break up my channel emuNANDs from my saves and use the discrete settings in GX here.

You're wanting to use the latest version of a maintained loader so that must be a factor to you somewhat.

Lol...certainly, but a lot of the core functions (like disc access) are probably not being updated for use with the loader these days. Only those great new features like "sort by" that you are working on (hehehe)

 

[dingdongsong]

@dingdongsong Unless you have a need to run Wii disc games under NEEK then skip the DI version. It sounds like it's trying to automount one of your game discs.

I thought UNEEK+DI version is the one that disables the dvd drive no? And regular NEEK enables dvd-drive? Either way it's not automounting a disc that's inside a drive. It's empty. It just simply mounts the first game that's in my external usb in the alphabetical list. And whenever I choose a different game in usbloadergx, it still manages to always mount donky kong.

 

[bengalih]

I thought UNEEK+DI version is the one that disables the dvd drive no? And regular NEEK enables dvd-drive? Either way it's not automounting a disc that's inside a drive. It's empty. It just simply mounts the first game that's in my external usb in the alphabetical list. And whenever I choose a different game in usbloadergx, it still manages to always mount donky kong.

According to ModMii's summary:

UD = UNEEK+DI
* Emulated Wii nand/memory is on FAT32 External Hard Drive
* Load Wii games off your FAT32 External Hard Drive
* You can load apps off an SD Card via the Homebrew Channel
* DVD-Drive access is disabled for games while running UNEEK+DI
but can be used in apps (ie. WiiXplorer)

U = UNEEK
* Emulated Wii nand/memory is on FAT32 External Hard Drive
* You cannot load any games off your Hard Drive
* You can load apps off an SD Card via the Homebrew Channel
* DVD-Drive access is enabled
* Backup disc loading requires DarkCorp installed on emulated nand
(Newer Wii's have a DVD-Drive that prevents backup disc loading)

I don't know how accurate that is, but it sounds like without +DI you can't use your USB drive at all.
That would mean all games would have to be on an SD I suppose ... ?

 

[dingdongsong]

According to ModMii's summary:

UD = UNEEK+DI
* Emulated Wii nand/memory is on FAT32 External Hard Drive
* Load Wii games off your FAT32 External Hard Drive
* You can load apps off an SD Card via the Homebrew Channel
* DVD-Drive access is disabled for games while running UNEEK+DI
but can be used in apps (ie. WiiXplorer)

U = UNEEK
* Emulated Wii nand/memory is on FAT32 External Hard Drive
* You cannot load any games off your Hard Drive
* You can load apps off an SD Card via the Homebrew Channel
* DVD-Drive access is enabled
* Backup disc loading requires DarkCorp installed on emulated nand
(Newer Wii's have a DVD-Drive that prevents backup disc loading)

I don't know how accurate that is, but it sounds like without +DI you can't use your USB drive at all.
That would mean all games would have to be on an SD I suppose ... ?

Yeah the verbiage there seems to indicate that I DO want UNEEK+DI if i want to load games off my usb drive.

 

[bengalih]

Yeah the verbiage there seems to indicate that I DO want UNEEK+DI if i want to load games off my usb drive.

What I don't know is:
Does that verbiage simply mean that UNEEK by itself can't load games (like from the neek menu), but if you run a loader under it, then the loader can run them?

Or does it mean that it simply can't access them at all (since the nand is running off the HDD, maybe it can't access the HDD as a resource)?

I've been confused about that myself, but I gave up on trying to run uneek/sneek as my primary for launching games as it was just to slow/unstable. I now use my emuNANDs for launching WiiWare from GX and storing DLC.
I understand the theoretical appeal somewhat of not wanting to touch your real NAND at all, but I don't see the practical advantage.

 

[dingdongsong]

What I don't know is:
Does that verbiage simply mean that UNEEK by itself can't load games (like from the neek menu), but if you run a loader under it, then the loader can run them?

Or does it mean that it simply can't access them at all (since the nand is running off the HDD, maybe it can't access the HDD as a resource)?

I've been confused about that myself, but I gave up on trying to run uneek/sneek as my primary for launching games as it was just to slow/unstable. I now use my emuNANDs for launching WiiWare from GX and storing DLC.
I understand the theoretical appeal somewhat of not wanting to touch your real NAND at all, but I don't see the practical advantage.

I guess I just don't want to deal with running out of storage space for saves while being able to store a large number of VC games. I'd like to always just autoboot to emunand and forget about it without having to switch back and forth between emunand and realnand.

 

[bengalih]

I guess I just don't want to deal with running out of storage space for saves while being able to store a large number of VC games. I'd like to always just autoboot to emunand and forget about it without having to switch back and forth between emunand and realnand.

I think you need to look into the emuNAND features of GX then as you can do all of that.
You don't need to boot into enuNAND for what you are talking about.

All you have to do is have an emuNAND on your disk and GX can save all your games to it even though you are launching them from normal NAND.
Same for VC games. You can direct the loader on real NAND to look to a emuNAND and it will enumerate all your WiiWare/VC from there and show it in the loader.

There is really no need to ever boot to a full sneek/uneek/neek2o NAND. For those VC/WiiWare titles that don't work without full neek2o, GX can be configured to boot into full "neek" mode, but it is still transparent to you and you would never see the emuNAND sysMenu and would be returned back to normal NAND.

 

[GreyWolf]

NEEK without the DI patch uses the original disc interface and accesses the physical optical drive. the +DI patch redirects the environment to the disc image you selected. If you're using NEEK+DI it may think you have an image mounted already and be trying to boot it.

There are only one or two disc-based games that require a NEEK environment to run (Tintin is the only one I can remember) so it's better to use the non-DI version and just run disc games under a cIOS. They take less time to boot and NEEK takes less time to boot as well because NEEK+DI scans your games folder when it starts.

As for save emulation all disc-based games except for Metroid Prime Trilogy and Skyward Sword should work with emuNAND saves. Those freeze if they're not set to save on real NAND.

 

[dingdongsong]

NEEK without the DI patch uses the original disc interface and accesses the physical optical drive. the +DI patch redirects the environment to the disc image you selected. If you're using NEEK+DI it may think you have an image mounted already and be trying to boot it.

There are only one or two disc-based games that require a NEEK environment to run (Tintin is the only one I can remember) so it's better to use the non-DI version and just run disc games under a cIOS. They take less time to boot and NEEK takes less time to boot as well because NEEK+DI scans your games folder when it starts.

As for save emulation all disc-based games except for Metroid Prime Trilogy and Skyward Sword should work with emuNAND saves. Those freeze if they're not set to save on real NAND.

Thanks for the clarification.

I think you need to look into the emuNAND features of GX then as you can do all of that.
You don't need to boot into enuNAND for what you are talking about.

All you have to do is have an emuNAND on your disk and GX can save all your games to it even though you are launching them from normal NAND.
Same for VC games. You can direct the loader on real NAND to look to a emuNAND and it will enumerate all your WiiWare/VC from there and show it in the loader.

There is really no need to ever boot to a full sneek/uneek/neek2o NAND. For those VC/WiiWare titles that don't work without full neek2o, GX can be configured to boot into full "neek" mode, but it is still transparent to you and you would never see the emuNAND sysMenu and would be returned back to normal NAND.

I was under the impression I had to be in full uneek NAND in order to save to emuNAND. This saves me so much trouble. Thank you for this!

 

[Magnus87]

Some day I could play VC and Wiiware games on USLGX

I hate that black screen D:

 

[Duncan Idaho]

Hmm, @GreyWolf your version crashes when I attempt to use the GC-Channel mode.

 

[tswntk]

No, I got Trilogy to work without crashes, its the original MP3 Corruption that came before trilogy that's crashing on Norion 100% of the time.

MPT uses ios 35, not sure if the individual games will change that.
Anyway, if you set block ios reload to on or auto (I have it always on auto), then only the cios used to load the game matters (and i used base 56).

There are quite a few places that can test your patience, just keep trying. Sometimes I use dolphin's savestate feature and set the frame rate lower to help ease the pain. After that I will switch back to the Wii as nothing beats the original hardware's experience.

was trying to tell how I beat the game without "using cheat" especially the moonjump one (well using dolphin is kinda cheating too.)
The block ios reload statement should hold true for most games.

Just curious: Is MPT working before or after defrag? Helps me to confirm my theories. Thanks

 

[Duncan Idaho]

was trying to tell how I beat the game without "using cheat" especially the moonjump one (well using dolphin is kinda cheating too.)
The block ios reload statement should hold true for most games.

Just curious: Is MPT working before or after defrag? Helps me to confirm my theories. Thanks

Before the defrag. Afterwards the file became damaged and I had to pop a new one in the drive (failed SHA-1 check)

 

[tswntk]

Before the defrag. Afterwards the file became damaged and I had to pop a new one in the drive (failed SHA-1 check)

Thanks, wouldn't think 7 fragments should matter anyway.

Just checked geckocodes.org and the comment for moonjump is "works only on collector's edition!". Something ULGX never shows - kind of inconvenience but don't want to cluster the cheat screen either.
@GreyWolf or @Cyan would it be easy to show the comment when hovering on a cheat (the same way how ULGX shows a game's title over a cover in the main screen) ? Just a random thought, no rush. I seldom use cheats anyway.