Slashdot Mirror
World's First Custom Firmware For Wii Released
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.'"
Can't believe this is finally happened! I wonder how long it will take Nintendo to retaliate and apply a patch. What does it normally cost to get out of jail with that above your head?
I really don't get why people go through all this trouble to hack up the wii to do things it wasn't meant to.
Maybe someone can explain with more than just 'because we can!' or 'because nintendo locked us out!'.
I could understand the xbox, and the ps3, as those are superiour graphical environments where you are getting great hardware at a significant discount. The wii's selling point is the great cool new interface to playing games. Hack that up all you want: Wiimote hacking is awesome. but why hack the hardware that talks to it, and isn't that much more advanced than the gamecube, to do things that it just isn't all that great at in the first place?
... play DVD's?
That's the only feature missing on the Wii, in my opinion, anyway.
this is total bullshit. We should run Waninkoko out of town so he can hide in a cave and fiddle with other people's code... Like he already does. THIEF. This is garbage. This is worse than E.T. for the Atari
They put an option right into the main XMB menu to "Install other OS", which automatically formats the system's hard drive. All the user needs to do is download a minimal Linux boot image from Sony's site, download a distro of Linux that supports the cell arch (which is usually the version for Mac PCs), burn it, and install it.
No exploits needed, an IQ of maybe 100 is needed, etc. I would be bored with that in a few minutes, I would rather hack a system NOT meant to be hacked :)
Why stop there?
The Wii channel interface seems to me to be the perfect GUI for providing access to the gigabytes of videos that I have on my home media server.
its missing the ability to play pirated games. or, it was...
I know of at least a couple that were released before.
There is an insurmountable disconnect between those that understand why these things are done and those that don't. It's fundamental to how each thinks. As much as you say you don't understand us, we don't really understand you. There isn't a good/convincing way to explain either position to the other, nor should there really need to be.
In a way, it's like asking someone why they like, say, raw fish, or really any other food one might find unpalatable. It's not a very useful question, because it comes down to individual taste. If the questioner doesn't already understand, they're unlikely to appreciate the merit of any particular response someone might come up with.
Those look more like applications for the Wii (WAD OR ELF's) more than a total custom firmware.
adventure-today.com
Generally vendors do not understand their products.
The most important use for a platform is frequently something the vendor never considered in either their software design, their marketing plan, or their business model. Or they considered it, and wanted to hold it hostage in the name of an ongoing revenue stream. Consider that most consoles are loss-leaders, with the money being made up on the licensing rights to put software on the box, with per unit royalties to ensure an ongoing revenue stream. The restrictions necessary to implement this business model disable a lot of the potential of the platform as a basis for other applications.
-- Terry
The "features" that this firmware enables that were not present in the official firmware..
These are not features. If your hardware can read the disc, then the manufacturer specifically disabled the ability to read from writable media. This firmware disables a form of DRM.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly with the intent of this firmware!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Let's see:
- The Wii has a nifty built-in remote that can do all sorts of things... and homebrew offers learning coders the chance to play with it and come up with innovative ideas and neat tricks.
- A codebase set up to allow you to run burned discs with homebrew will hopefully be expanded to allow using the old (and quite solid) emulators that ran on the Gamecube. Being able to run my SNES/NES/Genesis/etc libraries from a burned CD rather than wasting space in the Wii's highly-limited 512MB of internal RAM would be a major benefit.
In fact, word behind closed doors indicates that Nintendo is going to HAVE to open up something to allow games to read the external SD card reader as normal storage shortly. Anyone who's spent any amount of money in the Wii online store is getting pretty close to the limitation as-is even without the ever-expanding savegame files eating it up. It's one of the Wii's few major mis-design problems (the other being the incredible dead-zone that prevents the wii from detecting small motion, like trying to putt a short put in Wii Sports Golf, reliably).
- The Wii has more than enough power to become a pretty nice streaming media player (say, a MythTV frontend) if you can build it properly. The original Xbox is nearing the end of its usable lifespan (unable to handle 720p or higher content and a few of the newest and most processor-hungry video codecs with its processor) and both the Xbox360 and PS3 are locked in ways that opening them up for homebrew code is far more difficult than rewriting something (though rumors have it that PS3 custom firmware is being worked on). While it's true the Wii couldn't put out a true 720p signal, it could very likely process high-def content and display it in extremely pretty 480p, which would put it a step above the aging Xbox.
And before you say "but the PS3 allows you to run linux natively"... no. It doesn't. It allows you to run a very stripped-down Linux, and segregates hardware control to prevent Linux from being able to do most of the things that you'd want Linux and associated programs to be able to do. For example, the XBMC team (who are porting to both Windows and Linux right now) have already said that the PS3 will not allow them enough direct access (processor, video, RAM writes) to do what the software needs to do.
- The Wii is in more homes. That means that more people are able to enjoy the fruits of their work when they get the nifty home-brewed programs running.
Why limit piracy? Nintendo hates it all the same, so why limit the possible applications of said firmware?
Videogames are too expensive to purchase often. :P
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Waninkoko's "custom firmware" is just a ripoff of PatchMii with reduced functionality. PatchMii actually downloads the IOS from Nintendo's servers, patches and install it. It's even easier to use. Waninkoko has a bad reputation on the wiibrew community for stealing credits, and, as always, he releases a new tool days after someone else do all the hard work and release it for free under the GPL. PatchMii was created by bushing, one of the creators of the twilight hack. The unencrypted dvd read patch is by svpe based on an earlier patch for IOSes older than 30.
1. This is not a "custom firmware". It is a hacked copy of an official IOS. IOS is the code which runs on one of the sub processors on the wii, it has nothing to do with the main firmware you see that shows channels, launches games, etc
2. You still CANNOT read dvdr's on an unmodified Wii. On an unmodified Wii, this modified IOS lets you only do one thing: dump commercial wii discs.
3. To read dvdr's in wii homebrew, you need a drivechip (a modchip attached to the DVD drive in the wii)
Conclusion: This is pretty much useless for homebrew, unless you are in the small minority who installed a modchip for piracy, but are still interested in homebrew. Even then, burning DVDR's is much more hassle than using SD's.
sig? uhh, umm, ok
That the wiidev guys don't know where to start with correcting it. Seriously. For one thing, wanky borrowed these features from patchmii. Just as he borrows for everything he does. The version he released yesterday was almost 100% Nintendo copyrighted code. He cannot code. Fact. Sad slashdot, sad.
Mod parent up, he knows what he's talking about. Although bushing did say that Waninkoko was a nice guy, he also said he didn't think things through all the time, and I do notice that his new things come out right after someone else makes a breakthrough.
All your base are belong to Wii.
How'd he get the copyrighted code? Disassembly? I saw something about that on hackmii.com, but I didn't quite understand what it was talking about.
All your base are belong to Wii.