World's First Custom Firmware For Wii Released 165
Croakyvoice writes "Waninkoko has released the world's
first custom firmware for the Nintendo Wii, which is installed using the twilight
hack; among its features is the ability to allow writeable DVDs to be read
in emulators. From the readme: 'The Custom Firmware installs as IOS249 and it does not modify
any other IOS so it is secure to install and has been made to be used ONLY with
homebrew
software. This is a custom IOS, an IOS modified to add some new features not
available in the official IOS.'"
Re:I just don't understand. (Score:5, Informative)
There is the Mt Everest answer and there is the "it isn't as weak as you make it out to be" answer. I don't plan on installing this firmware (not till the first wave of guiniea pigs test it for me ^_^), but I do have several Wiibrew games installed, some of which are WiiPorts of old games that have been released to the wild (GPL'ed or put in the public domain) and though the Wii homebrew scene isn't quite as polished as say the DS homebrew scene, they still have some impressive things out already.
In the end though, the real question is "why not?" Do you only drive your car from home to work and back again? Sometimes something doesn't have to have a strict utility or direct benefit to have fun doing it.
Re:I just don't understand. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually no you can't. It was even stated in the summary this only works for homebrew software, not comercial rips, and on purpose. The people who are doing most of the cool stuff in the Wii Homebrew scene are fairly ethical folk.
What this should mean however, is now people can start making DVD's of their homebrew software and popping it in like a normal game instead of having to cram everything in a 'small' memory card.
This is not the first custom firmware for the Wii (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is not the first custom firmware for the W (Score:3, Informative)
Re:But can it... (Score:5, Informative)
Let's get this straight.
The drive in the Wii is NOT a DVD drive. In a DVD drive, the speed changes so the laser reads at the same speed all throughout the disk. This puts a strain on the motor (different speed and etc)
A Wii drive does NOT spin at different speeds, only one. The laser reads at variable speeds all throughout the disk. This makes the drive like a tank.
One is not the other, at least not without a firmware mod.
Re:IT'S ABOUT TIME (Score:5, Informative)
Jail? Your not serious are you?
Just in case your not kidding, it is not illegal or even close to anything remotely criminal to put custom firmware on ANY PIECE OF ELECTRONICS THAT YOU OWN.
That may just be what Sony is trying to push with their PR campaign throughout the world, which is that they have complete and total control of their equipment everywhere and to go against that is a crime... and kills puppies.
Re:But can it... (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong. The Wii spins the disc at Constant Angular Velocity, which means that it is far better designed for constant reads. DVDs are spun up and down at Constant Linear Velocity. Which makes the electronics simpler, but puts a lot more wear and tear on the motor. Thus the PS2 drives that failed during its early lifetime vs. the low rate of Wii drive failures.
Re:But can it... (Score:4, Informative)
Which is why the Wii has proper ventilation. There are large vents out the back and bottom of the unit. These allow heat to be dissipated while hiding the bottom vents with a stand underneath the unit. (Check it out sometime. The stand has a huge hole in it and notches on the side.)
Heat with the Wii is primarily a problem when it's "turned off" in WiiConnect24 mode.
Re:But can it... (Score:3, Informative)
Uh. Wii carries Dolby ProLogic 2, like the GameCube.
Re:But can it... (Score:3, Informative)
A PAL DVD is 576p.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I just don't understand. (Score:3, Informative)
Having not used it, I can't attest that it works perfectly. But you don't need this firmware to do that, there is already a homebrew 'region free' app out there.
This firmware isn't what is needed to run custom code, it's just an additional layer of the onion being pealed back to allow people to do more with their Wii.
If you aren't familiar with the state of homebrew on the Wii, here's a quick and only partially informed synopsis. I'm not hooked in sufficently to have history book accuracy.
Near the begining of the year, folk discovered a bug in Zelda:Twilight Princess that allowed them to do a stack smash and allow them to bypass the code that prevents 'unauthorized' programs from running. However, at that time you had to use the bug each time you wanted to load a program.
About a month ago, a team of coders released a custom built channel (The Homebrew Channel - HBC) that could be installed using the TP hack. The channel allowed you to launch homebrew apps from your memory card directly, (i.e. once installed you didn't need the TP hack).
Thats when alot of the programs avaliable right now took off.
This firmware is the next level. Another layer of the onion being pealed back. As I understand it, the Wii actually keeps a copy of all the versions of firmware that are installed on it, for compatibility purposes, and loads the version games specificly ask for. So this doesn't actually do anything directly except allow programs that are written to ASK for the new firmware to enjoy the new level of access provided. That's why you can't use this to play copies, because the copy of the game would still be asking for the offical Nintendo firmware, which would then detect that it's a copy.
I'm at work right now so I can't look up the name of the region free program. I believe it's something similar to "Gecko Region Free".
From reading about it, it sounded as if you just launched the program, then inserted your imported game and hit a button to reset the machine. From there, you were good to go as long as the game didnt' try to install region specific stuff (i.e. like the WiiFit channel or system updates from Smash Bros) and even then there were work arounds.
There is so much factually wrong in this story... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:IT'S ABOUT TIME (Score:3, Informative)
There's no VM -- I'm not sure what you think you're on about. Maybe you should look at the IBM SDK documentation or the kernel development logs from the patches submitted to make things work on it.
Yes, there's hardware restrictions in place, but you're running right on the hardware as far as the CPU's concerned. You get access to USB and the hard drive through kernel level drivers to the hardware through Sony's hypervisor, yes, and your video access is somewhat limited although despite Sony's not providing one, some people have had success with an accelerated 2D driver on the RSX.
Re:IT'S ABOUT TIME (Score:3, Informative)
Re:But can it... (Score:3, Informative)
It can't, unless you have a modchip and are willing to develop a DVD-playing application. There's rampant misinformation on this, as usual.
Let's set a few things straight:
We released a legal open source firmware patcher [hackmii.com] some time ago. Approximately three days before this purpoted "custom firmware" came out, svpe had added the DVD restriction removal patch to it (this was in response to an outright modification to an older firmware, released with the original code and hence illegally, by nitrotux, which he distributed with a disc dumper, but our patcher patches all of the recent versions of the firmware which use a completely different subroutine for the check, so the patch is different even though the result is the same). The first revision of Waninkoko's "custom firmware" was so hastily done that it was basically a PPF patch over the original firmware. Except it's encrypted. And he even changed the key. Hence, the patch was useless and he ended up distributing the entire patched-and-reencrypted file in the form of the patch (the entire patcher was 2MB, which is the size of the entire firmware). The fact that he made this trivial mistake makes me think that he did this very quickly and stole the patches from the open source patchmii (the DVD patch is identical except for the actual number involved in the restriction, and the signature check disable patch, which is relatively hard to find and there are several ways of doing it, is exactly the same). He later released a newer version without the blatant patch fuckup which is presumably legal to distribute now, although it still requires people to rip the original firmware from a recent game (whereas our open source patcher automatically downloads it from Nintendo's servers).
Now onto the news. Recently, we actually did figure out a way of reading DVD-Rs without a modchip (!). Since this can be used for piracy (and could potentially cause quite an increase in it, since a free simple non-warranty-voiding pirate-game-playing hack is very appealing compared to the current modchip situation), we have tried to contact Nintendo about it (privately and publicly [hackmii.com]). If they ignore us, then we'll probably release an open source library and tools that will let Wii homebrew read information from a DVD-R on any Wii, modchip or not.
For anyone trying to draw parallels between the PSP and the Wii, I suggest this article. As for the PSP emulator, I'll believe it when I see more than a single screenshot.