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Wii Homebrew Takes Several Leaps Forward

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 25, 2008 05:43 PM
from the make-it-and-let-your-fans-make-it-better dept.
Wii (Games) Games
Croakyvoice writes "Fans of Homebrew on the Nintendo Wii can celebrate with an explosion of releases today, in just a few hours there has been a release of a proof of concept version of Linux for the Wii, an MP3 Player, the Super Nintendo emulator Snes9X has been ported and a converter that converts Gamecube Dol files into Elf for usage on the Wii (Which opens up a multitude of emulators and homebrew games and applications). A tutorial on how to get homebrew working with the Twilight Hack will help those interested."

Related Stories

[+] Wii Hacked for Better Homebrew Games 196 comments
arbourp writes to mention that hackers Michael Steil and Felix Domke have demonstrated a way to hack the Wii that makes running homebrew code much easier. "The hack advances the possibility of running homebrew code with access to full system resources on the device, not just programs that Nintendo has sanctioned. Such games might be developed to run from a DVD drive, at least in theory. No such games are available as yet and Nintendo may respond by attempting to revoke compromised encryption keys. However history shows such countermeasures are likely to ultimately prove futile."
Firehose:Wii Homebrew Explosion by Croakyvoice (986312)
[+] Hardware: World's First Custom Firmware For Wii Released 39 comments
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.'"
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  • I understand Grandpa brewed his own during prohibition, and though he heard rumors that the police were polluting some brewer's beer with Wii, he said tey never got hold of his brew.

    Can you Wii while you're leaping? I mean, without getting wet?
    • Oh hell I made first post. What's worse, it makes reference to... I can't beer to say it...

  • Given that Nintendo has already blocked Freeloader (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Channard (693317) on Monday February 25, @05:49PM (#22551136)
    .. it wouldn't surprise me if their next system update doesn't block this too. Though the main difference between this and the 360 exploit would seem to be that the Wii doesn't, as yet, force you to update in order to get online. The part of this that interests me the most is the SNES emulator - hopefully this might cause Nintendo to look at their pricing plan for the Virtual Console games. Seven quid for an unenhanced SNES game seems a bit pricey.
    • I don't care about an SNES emulator. I just want a Divix player.

    • Re:Given that Nintendo has already blocked Freeloa (Score:5, Insightful)

      by flynt (248848) on Monday February 25, @06:02PM (#22551288)
      If 7 dollars is too much for an unenhanced SNES game, what do you think a fair price is, 6 dollars? They can only go so low. I spent 7 dollars on a McDonald's value meal at O'Hare this weekend. I spent 6 bucks on a coffee this morning. THOSE are outrageous prices. Getting to play ActRaiser/SMW/Mario Kart/etc. again sure as hell gives me more value for my dollar than that Big Mac did. If you won't get 5-7 dollars worth of enjoyment out of it, don't buy the game.

    • Re:Given that Nintendo has already blocked Freeloa (Score:5, Informative)

      by marcansoft (727665) on Tuesday February 26, @01:22AM (#22555258)
      I'm involved fairly closely with the creators of the original exploit, so I know a bit about Wii security.

      The way it's currently implemented, as soon as we start hacking the firmwares they put out, we've effectively won the battle for current consoles. Wiis contain a separate security ARM processor unofficially dubbed the "starlet". It is here that all of the interesting security takes place, and it is also responsible for most of the wii-specific hardware that the gamecube lacked. Ultimately, the consoles carry an unmodifiable boot ROM which loads an also unmodifiable boot1 bootstrap loader (unmodifiable because, although it sits in flash, it is checked against a hash stored in OTP memory). Boot1 is buggy. Boot1 loads Boot2, and we'll probably start hacking boot2 and the next step (the actual operating system and drivers that run on the starlet). This is going to be similar to the PSP scene, most likely: Nintendo will put out updates, but we'll work around them. We can also modify the existing firmware to prevent updates from happening.

      However, new consoles can come with an updated boot1 (the OPT hash is programmed at the factory). Those might be impossible to hack the same way. However, the OS is buggy and other hacks can be found.

      Their next system update may block this, but people just have to hold off until hacked firmwares come out. Worst case, you can always apply the hack to current consoles by directly modifying the Flash memory in the Wii.

      All this only applies to the security system though, and the bug that was used for the demo at 24c3. It is rather unlikely that Nintendo will patch the Zelda bug (which is what we're using to boot current homebrew, not the meaner more powerful 24c3 bug) from firmware somehow, so there is a very good chance that we'll always have options for booting homebrew. Besides, we can find exploits in other games, easily. The 24c3 bug lets us get total system access, but even if they lock that out in newer consoles, we can still get homebrew running via game exploits.
  • Have to commit Seppeku.
  • ...they're getting there. Meanwhile, game programmers have been working with the (admittedly limited) Opera Browser to produce games designed for the Wii [wiicade.com]. WiiCade is even paying for games [wiicade.com] now, something which you won't find out of other homebrew ventures.

    It's not a perfect solution, but it does work, and it works well enough to play some pretty cool stuff. And you can even get paid to perform your hobby! How cool is that? :)

    Disclaimer: I am associated with WiiCade. So take this with a grain of salt.

  • Unfortunately (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sabz5150 (1230938) on Monday February 25, @05:55PM (#22551200)
    It seems that their attempts to host a website on a Wii has failed.
  • ... can it run Vista?

    No?

    Awesome.

  • PS3 Linux Wide Open (Score:5, Informative)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Monday February 25, @06:36PM (#22551694) Homepage Journal
    The PS3 has been running Linux on its Cell CPU's PPC core [psubuntu.com] for several releases now, including several official Ubuntu PS3 releases. Sony does lock out the RSX graphics chip to Linux, but the Cell's 6 SPUs (pipelined DSPs) are wide open for development. And now that developers have ported video drivers to the SPUs [psubuntu.com], the PS3 is a hot little multimedia PC. I watch downloaded 1080P HD videos (and regular upsampled MPG/WMV/AVI/etc) right on the same 50" HDMI TV I surf the web (and watch Blu-Ray discs) and program with. And when Sony releases the PlayTV [wikipedia.org] 2-channel DVB TV tuner for PS3 next month, I expect my Linux PS3 will beat TiVo at its own game, too.

    The Wii is just getting started as "homebrew". Its HW isn't nearly as screaming as the PS3, nor as designed to be open for Linux. Hacking it sounds like a fun toy, which is why people buy the Wii. But the PS3 is already starting to be a Linux platform more interesting than even its gaming. A few more leaps forward on the PS3 and the Wii will look so 21st Century.

      • Re:PS3 Linux Wide Open (Score:5, Informative)

        by tlhIngan (30335) <slashdot@NOspAm.worf.net> on Tuesday February 26, @12:36AM (#22555028)

        Have you tested it with 720P and/or 1080I MPEG2 files like those one would get from an ATSC tuner? That's what I need in a Myth frontend. I use a AMD X2 box to do it now, but if I can make a PS3 do it well, I would buy one. With blu-ray and games available in the same box, that's worth $400 if they can get Myth playing ATSC files deinterlaced with a 720P output.


        You can, but don't expect Linux to do it. If your Myth box can do DLNA and export compatible h.264 videos, it'll stream over the network just fine.

        The problem is, everyone thinks PS3-Linux runs "on bare metal" when it's really running on a virtual machine. The VM allows access to 6 of the 7 available SPEs (PS3's OS reserves one for its purpose, and one of the SPEs is disabled in the silicon). The VM disallows access to the RSX chip - it's a rather expensive framebuffer operation to update the screen (update memory, trigger interrupt to get VM to update RSX's framebuffer). Hard drive, card slots are virtualized, as well. Access to Bluetooth and WiFi are disabled. Access to the Blu-Ray drive is limited to insecure ATA commands only. Hard drive (SATA), Blu-Ray drive (IDE) and card slots are exported as standard SCSI devices without using any IDE-SCSI type emulation. A bad sector on the disk leads to strange errors (I know - my first drive upgrade had a bad sector, and the disk kept giving me strange ext3 errors).

        Stupid framebuffer kernel thread also runs all the time...

        I can't get the PS3 to play back a DVD upscaling to 1080p without Xine complaining that it has to drop frames. The X server is the Xfb framebuffer server. Xrandr, yes, Xv, no.

    • Re:Get 'em Tiger! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Abcd1234 (188840) on Monday February 25, @05:57PM (#22551226) Homepage
      Linux + mythfrontend + wiimote sounds like a pretty killer multimedia option. And that's just the first thing that came to mind.

        • Re:Get 'em Tiger! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Abcd1234 (188840) on Monday February 25, @06:04PM (#22551326) Homepage
          Yeah, if you're jonesing for standard resolution videos only

          Sounds great to me. I don't have HD, nor do I plan to upgrade any time soon (I have no desire to have my livingroom dominated by a 40"+ monster, and given the viewing distances in my livingroom, HD would be a waste on anything smaller).

          • Re:Get 'em Tiger! (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Scyber (539694) on Monday February 25, @06:55PM (#22551936)
            I am not questioning your desire to get a new TV, but I find it somewhat contradictory to think that your living room would be "dominated" by a 40+" TV, but yet the room is too large to get any benefit from HD on a smaller TV. Especially in my experience where I went from a 27" SD set to a 46" HD LCD and the TV is actually less "dominate" than the old TV. It is pretty amazing how the flat panels can actually blend right into a room, much moreso than older CRTs.
            • higher res tv is much better to watch no matter what the viewing distance. wether the price tag on current sets is worth it to you is a different matter.

              • Re:Get 'em Tiger! (Score:4, Insightful)

                by Abcd1234 (188840) on Monday February 25, @06:33PM (#22551642) Homepage
                "higher res tv is much better to watch no matter what the viewing distance"

                If you believe that, you don't understand the physics of human vision.
                • Sure, the poster was wrong about the distance issue, but in normal viewing situations, HD resolutions make a lot of sense for TV and movie watching (not to mention the increased audio quality).

                  I've seen the charts that show the supposed ability of the human eye to distinguish certain resolutions, and they all fail to take into account how the brain processes the signal over time as your eye moves (giving you a much higher resolution of vision).

                  Sure, if you watch a 17" screen from 10' away, its doubtful you can tell if its running at 640x480 or 1920x1280, but you wouldn't watch TV like that in the first place, would you?

                  Under most circumstances, I can't imagine (these days) configuring myself a MythTV like box without HD output capabilities.

                  PS, I use a PS3 with its DLNA UPnP features to watch my downloaded / ripped shows and movies in HD or upscaled on a 30" 1080i CRT.

    • Re:Get 'em Tiger! (Score:4, Informative)

      by meringuoid (568297) on Monday February 25, @06:22PM (#22551528)
      In regards to the Linux, I just have to wonder at the utility of it all... I've got some old slot 1 Pentium 3s in my garage that would provide more 'oomph' then the Wii can provide.

      It has built-in wireless, comes with a remote control, is small and pretty, and now with a bit of luck hopefully it can run mplayer. That means DVD and stuff from your media server. I have a whole bunch of anime on my PC upstairs which I'd prefer to watch on the big screen from the sofa instead. Linux on Wii will make that possible.

        • Re:Get 'em Tiger! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by RedWizzard (192002) on Monday February 25, @06:45PM (#22551798)

          A properly configured microatx board destined for recycling would do all that and more with a few addins and a nice case.
          Yes, but I already have a Wii. Why the hell would I want to add another box if the Wii would serve?

        • Re:Get 'em Tiger! (Score:5, Informative)

          by AKAImBatman (238306) <akaimbatman@gmail . c om> on Monday February 25, @06:48PM (#22551860) Homepage Journal
          It's not the laser that would die, it's the motor. Normal DVD reading requires that the motor step up and down its speed depending on the track being read. The Wii works differently. Instead of stepping up and down the disc velocity, it keeps the disc speed constant and steps up/down the decoding rates on the disc. As a result, GameCube and Wii games get a higher transfer rate near the edge of the disc.

          (My understanding is that one of the classic optimizations for the GameCube was to organize the data on the disc to provide the highest transfer rates during game loading.)

          This design is why GameCubes had very few drive failures in comparison to the PS2. Nintendo builds systems like tanks. ;-)

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