Hacking USB Loader GX

[Cyan]

on the official website, in the issues tab, beta thread. This is where beta testers report found bugs.

 

[fmhugo]

Is it possible to put a savegame from the emu Nand back in the real Nand?

Use showmiiwads to extract the save of emunand and use Save game manager GX to install in real nand.

 

[Hielkenator]

Use showmiiwads to extract the save of emunand and use Save game manager GX to install in real nand.

No need for showmiiwads, all can be done from sgm gx

 

[fmhugo]

No need for showmiiwads, all can be done from sgm gx

You're right.

 

[VashTS]

hey Cyan, I did some more testing of the Japanese region banners. I posted a while back about this, but you mentioned Japanese region Wii games work fine, and they definitely do. For some reason, USB Loader GX will not play/cache the banners from Japanese region Wiiware for me. They are just blank, but the games function just perfect, so we can rule out bad install.

Wiiflow was seeing them just fine, so I set the custom path to Wiiflow's banner cache folder and now it sees the ones that are cached. It plays them just fine. Again its only for Wiiware from Japan region, Wii games from the region have no issues for me at all.

 

[Cyan]

If It can play the cached banners, then it's not a player's problem.
Maybe an extraction problem when trying to cache them.

Was it from both Real and EmuNAND?



Just a note about what I'm currently doing for the next rev:
* Fixed USB Initialization when using usbport 1
* Fixed compiling on Linux
* Added back support for WBFS partition without a partition table
* DML: Added Cluster size detection
* DEVO: un-hidden the Widescreen setting (it's present since r1203, but hidden to end users)
* Updated libntfs

I'm currently testing the new libntfs (I'm not sure which part I should put in mem2, as my tests are working fine with both mem1 and mem2. I'm indecisive and don't want to break things).
I noticed a problem with folder browsing on NTFS, there's no parent folder "..", only FAT32 has it. I'm currently trying to fix it.

 

[VashTS]

If It can play the cached banners, then it's not a player's problem.
Maybe an extraction problem when trying to cache them.

Was it from both Real and EmuNAND?

Only from EmuNAND. It is a weird issue, it will play the cache just fine, but it will not play them prior. Do you want to try an older rev maybe to see if we can narrow it down? Any other tests just let me know.

 

[wiifan_zangief]

Is it true, that only external disc drives in FAT32 work with Gamecube games?
My 1TB disc drive (by Western Digital) is devided into ca 500GB WFBS (which I can't access unless with my WFBS manager) and 500GB "normal space" (I guess that's FAT32), where I can stores everything (like a normal internal drive).


@Cyan: What do you mean with freezing is bad for the console? For the disc drive? Mine is already broken but I don't need it thx to Homebrew.
I've got more or less regular freezes in certain games. Call of Duty games freeze about once in 10 hours, usually during loading a map. Other games freeze seldom but then with a nonstop"beep" sound. So I have to hold down the turnoff button

 

[Cyan]

I meant that if it freeze while it's writing a save to NAND, it can corrupt that save file and you loose your savegame.
I don't know if it can also corrupt other files if it's freezing while updating the file allocation table (I don't know how NAND memory is working but there's probably one to tell which files are present or deleted, their filenames and locations etc.)


It's true that GameCube require FAT32.
Devolution works with any partition
DIOS MIOS (Lite) works only with FAT32 located on the first partition of the drive. So if you have WBFS+FAT32, it will not work. You needed FAT32+WBFS instead.

For DIOS MIOS, the FAT32 must be:
- First partition of the HDD
- Primary partition on a MBR
- FAT32
- 32k cluster size or less
- HDD must have 512Byte per sector

 

[PsyBlade]

if you have the wbfs first then the fat32:
there are ways to make them appear in the other order (use search)
or you could convert the wbfs one to another fat32 (sig)

@cyan
Unless mistaken I would change that to "HDD must appear to have 512Bytes per sector"
(rationale: there are 3 kinds of sectors: 512B, 4KiB and 4KiB appearing as 512B
currently a new drive will most likely be of the third kind
while they are 4KiB drives they should work afaik)

 

[Cyan]

DM works with such drives? The 512bytes is hardcoded in DM sources.

How do you check between the real and reported size?
I've read that it's done by the drive's firmware to report a size of 512 to the Host OS, but when does it know which size to report? if the drive is bigger than 2TB it reports 4KiB, and if it's smaller it's 512B? It's what I think as it seems logic for small drive to still use 512.

I don't know if USBladerGX reports the real size or the appearing size.
I'm checking the found value to allow or prevent DIOS MIOS from launching.
Maybe I'm not checking the correct value.

 

[Slanc]

Hey all i was wondering if any of you could help me out I have installed the latest USB Loader GX with DIOS MIOS for loading Gamecube games from the loader as well as wii games i was previously loading them from disc with neogamma but after attempting this i can no loanger do that i the 1st problem i had was that it wanted me to copy the game to the SD card instead of playing i solved that buy changing to the ISO250 Loader app i think it was but the problem i currently have is that Skies of arcadia which i know from compatability lists works also i have run it before in neogammer does not load the screen turns blue and it gives me this message - invalid TV format. in "gp_check.c" on line 651 address: Back Chain lR Save " - this is followed by about 8 lines of code and does not load i also tried loading Baten Kaitos: Origins and it ran perfect until i had to select to Start Game from the game menu then it all when black and didnt start please help me out if you can

 

[PsyBlade]

I don't know for sure that they work, but I see no reason why not

They simply report a sector size of 512B in all cases and do the neccessary conversion to/from 4KiB in firmware
(haven't heard of drives that allow turning it on and off)
to the os they appear as 512B drive unless the os checks for it with special methods
(eg "hdparm -I"s physical sector size, as opposed to its logical sector size, which is used for all comunication with the drive)
the work exactly like 512B driver exept a degradation im speed should the patrition start at the wrong place
(part not alinged to 4KiB or fs with clusterssize < 4KiB --> one read,modify,write cycle for every write issued to the drive)

compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format

 

[Slanc]

I read somewhere that the gamecube games load better with a FAT32 Formatted HDD with a 32k Cluster size so thats what my HDD is currently formatted to

 

[Cyan]

Slanc, your wall of text without punctuation is really hard to read.

It require NAND access to find the DIOS MIOS (Lite) version you currently have. using Hermes IOS without the proper tag in the homebrew channel result in the loader not finding the version (it can't access the NAND).
You can fix it either by using a IOS d2x, or adding <no_ios_reload/> or <ahb_access/> in the meta.xml

You should update both DIOS MIOS and the loader's version. (r1209 for the loader)

 

[Slanc]

I reinstalled dios mios and messed around by trying different region versions of the games, compressing them with GCUtility and DiskEx thanks anyway

 

[Cyan]

Anyone have a Korean game?
I changed the way the decryption is working and want to check if Korean game are still working.

Is there Korean channels too, or only Game Discs?

 

[damysteryman]

Anyone have a Korean game?
I changed the way the decryption is working and want to check if Korean game are still working.

Is there Korean channels too, or only Game Discs?

I have a few.

And yes, there are Korean channels that exist, but I do not have any of those though.
But then again, installed Korean channels are unencrypted on NAND, just like regular ones. Testing decryption for channels would only be needed during installation of such a channel.

 

[Cyan]

The internal WAD installation problem reported by users was partially caused by your code for Korean key (in the ticket the address 0x01f1, supposedly for Korean flag, is set to 0x01 for non-korean channels too, so it used the wrong key). I changed the detection to the GameID's region code, but I don't know if all Korean games and channels use "K" as region code or if there are different possible values (Q and T?).

I'll provide you a version with the new method to test Korean game disc. It's detecting only the "K" letter.

 

[KatieOoT]

Hi I'm trying to play The Sims 2 (GC) and it keeps freezing when you get into the game. All my other games I run through USB Loader GX work perfect, so why is this one freezing? The compatibility chart says it should work. :/