Wireless USB Stick and WBFS Path

haphazardrick · Mar 2, 2011

Was wondering if anyone had an idea on if there is a way to get this to work. I recently got a hold of a device called a Wireless Media Stick from HSTi. Great little device that plugs into the USB port and then connects via wireless to any shares I have on the network. So I had this brilliant idea, let's store all of my games and homebrew on a network share and use the Wireless Media Stick to access it over the network. Saves me the trouble of moving the external hard drive around anytime I need to load something new. Well I bought one and it's not working as I had hoped. Go me for not researching this a bit more. lol

The problem is with how the Wireless Media Stick mounts and presents shares to the device it is plugged into. For example, if the share on my network is \\server1\wbfs then the Wireless Media Stick would present it as \server1\wbfs\ (if plugged into a Windows machine). Whatever it is plugged into it always uses the folder structure of "hostname\sharename" which puts the wbfs folder way too low. I've already asked support if there was the remote possibility of adjusting how the Wireless Media Stick present shares and there wasn't much they could do.

So I guess the question at this point is this: does the wbfs folder have to be in the root and there is a way to change the path that my Wii uses to look for games? I'm currently using the Configurable USB Loader but I am willing to change to anything that might help me out. I've looked around GBAtemp as well as other Wii related sites but have come up empty so far.

Hells Guardian · Mar 2, 2011

Why the hell would you need that for a system with a built in wirreless network adapter? The wii can actually have most of the stuff transmitted from network shares already. Wii game no but most everything else yes. Wii games cant transmit fast enough over a wireless system to play at reliable or for that matter functional speeds. Trust me the extent of the wireless use on this system has been done.

Also note that that media stick will not work with wii in most cases. It might work with Wiimc but that already supports wireless network shares.

haphazardrick · Mar 2, 2011

Thanks for the quick reply. The original idea was to be able to access all of my Wii games from over the network instead of having to deal with an external drive each time I need to load something new. I know the built in wireless cannot even think of reaching the speeds needed to stream an ISO over the network, that’s why I thought the Wireless Media Stick could work since it is 802.11n capable. As far as streaming everything else (pictures, movies, etc), I honestly don’t care since I have a HTPC built for that.

It may be a fool’s errand at this point, but my original question still stands… is there a loader out there that I can point to look somewhere else other than the \wbfs\folder?

Hells Guardian · Mar 2, 2011

you can always edit the source for your favorite loader to look in a different folder. but no not at this time there is not. If you wish to try best of luck to you I still don't see this working but then I also have never worked with that particular piece of hardware.

haphazardrick · Mar 2, 2011

I kind of figured I would need to delve into some source code somewhere, just thought I would see before I go to the trouble.

Thanks for letting me know and thanks for wishing me luck, I know I'll need it.

PsyBlade · Mar 3, 2011

seeing that the device seems to appear as a fat32 usb mass storage device hacking a loader to support a different path might do it
problem is it might appear to be multiple devices (to eg allow configuring it...) then it would not work with cios' hub restriction

I have a idea of how to try it:
name the server wbfs and export a game directory

btw does this thing support writing?
I see how one can emulate a readonly fat32 blockdevice from a directory
but thinking about how to write to it gives me headaches

Hells Guardian · Mar 3, 2011

Well unless you plan on using it to install games you won't need to enable it to write to the stick anyways although changing the read/write directory should be all you need if it only presents as a storage device and not a wireless adapter. although like I said it may not be able to obtain decent enough speeds to work very well if at all. Wireless network speeds are minimal compared to wired and on top of that if I recall correctly the last loaders based on a network streaming (this was for the Gamecube with a BBA) They never did manage to come up with a solution that would make games playable in such a manner. the loaders were either slow and stable or quick and very unstable. Either way it's just not a reliable solution. Like I said if you wish to attempt this then best of luck to you and please share your findings.

haphazardrick · Mar 3, 2011

Quoted from PsyBlade:

I have a idea of how to try it:
name the server wbfs and export a game directory

btw does this thing support writing?
I see how one can emulate a readonly fat32 blockdevice from a directory
but thinking about how to write to it gives me headaches
Click to expand...

Good idea on the game directory. I should be able to create a share name that matches one of my games. I should be able to give it a try this afternoon.

As far as writing, I plugged into my laptop and gave it a try. It actually looks like the file is written to the folder but in thruth it does not. So it's read-only.

tueidj · Mar 4, 2011

Quoted from Hells Guardian:

Why the hell would you need that for a system with a built in wirreless network adapter? The wii can actually have most of the stuff transmitted from network shares already. Wii game no but most everything else yes. Wii games cant transmit fast enough over a wireless system to play at reliable or for that matter functional speeds. Trust me the extent of the wireless use on this system has been done.
Click to expand...

You're talking about the wii's built-in wireless adapter, which is basically a piece of crap and can barely reach 700KB/s. A proper wireless network adapter using USB2 would have plenty of bandwidth to run a game at full speed.

ChaosEnergy · Nov 25, 2012

sorry for reviving this old topic, i just saw that such a stick exists, and it would be very interesting if the stick has run in any usb loader

if so, i can free one of my hdd, as i m to lazy to carry hdd between 2 wii

Just bought the stick
Wii works perfectly with it, except usb loader
they detect 1tb fat32 device, but cant find games, as the stick will always emulate the shares in a subfolder way
so PCNAME\SHARENAME
and as all usbloader seem to search for wbfs folder in root, it does not work, as i only can configure wbfs as subfolder of my pcname MyPC\wbfs

Hopefully loaders will get configurable, then i can use the stick also for gaming, on more than one wii, freeing my 2nd hdd and so on

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Wireless USB Stick and WBFS Path

Wireless USB Stick and WBFS Path

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