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.'"
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.
... play DVD's?
That's the only feature missing on the Wii, in my opinion, anyway.
Do you only drive your car from home to work and back again?
These days I sure do!
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.
I know of at least a couple that were released before.
Those look more like applications for the Wii (WAD OR ELF's) more than a total custom firmware.
adventure-today.com
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.
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.
and kills puppies.
You mean it doesn't?! Damn.
All that wasted time...
The enemies of Democracy are
Um, doesn't the DMCA make it illegal to circumvent the Wii's anti-piracy protection? I'm no lawyer but this seems blatantly illegal in the US.
> actively supports the installation of alternate operating systems
As long as you can live with a crippled virtual machine that only emulates a dumb framebuffer. No, I won't be buying a PS3 because they allow you to play in a sandbox. If I can't run accelerated 2D I wouldn't even ponder the notion. Notice that Xboxes make great MythTV frontends but the supposedly newer and 'Linux friendly' PS3 doesn't. And without full (3D) hardware access it isn't really an open platform.
Democrat delenda est
Good question. That would be a tough argument for the prosecutor. You own the equipment out right, as in TOTALLY YOURS. Your property.
I would say that completely overwriting the base software with your own is not "circumventing" anything and is not physically tampering with the hardware or software to *specifically* achieve the goal of bypassing copyright protection schemes. You would have to prove that the secondary effect of removing the copyright protection provided through factory firmware was in fact the primary goal that the person was trying to achieve. You would have to prove intent. A Modchip is a "blatant" attempt to circumvent copyright protection. You cannot interpret it any other way. Custom Firmware is not even in the same ballpark as a Modchip.
What you also bring up is an underlying misconception that many people have, which is that homebrew and custom firmware's primary goal IS to circumvent copyright protection to facilitate and abet piracy (copyright infringment).
The fundamental purpose of custom firmware is to use any given hardware *exactly* the way that you want to use it. It is not a criminally motivated behavior.
Custom Firmware != Piracy. Custom Firmware != Copyright Protection Circumvention.
In any case, if there was further legislation which provided punishments for you using the software of your choice with the hardware of your choice, I would say that the law itself is an unjust law. I would then wholeheartedly advocate civil disobediance with respect to that law. Yes, as you may already have guessed, I think the DMCA is unconstitutional and ethically bankrupt as far as laws go. However, I don't even think custom firmware for any game console is actually violating it in the first place.
Exactly!
I laugh myself silly anytime somebody says that Sony PS3 is an open platform. If THAT is an open platform than I can tell somebody that they can sleep over at my house.... in the backyard ... next to the trash cans, and still seem like a nice and hospitable guy.
Sony is as much an open platform as a public kiosk is a home computer.
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.
Nintendo has cracked down on piracy, yes, but they have NEVER stopped homebrew projects (and things like OoT2D don't count). They don't seem to really give a shit about homebrew, it's just that both are often lumped together thanks to people like you, asshole.
To be fair, even if it is completely crippled, it's still a lot more open than any commercial console for the last 10 or 20 years has been.
Saying the 360 is more open because it's been hacked is a little unfair, Microsoft in no way helped or guided anyone to hack it, it just so happens someone found a problem with the DVD-Rom's firmware that could be exploited fairly easily.
Same for the wii, it's only open because someone found enough glitches to be able to open it. It'll soon happen to the PS3 (Although it must be said, Well done Sony for lasting THIS long, they apparently learned from their PSP botch up) and then we'll all be able to take full advantage of it.
Personally, I can't wait for it to happen as the sheer raw power available in that console could make it the biggest hacker's dream for years to come.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
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.
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.
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.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
This doesn't circumvent anti-piracy. This only allows homebrew to access the whole contents of a DVD unencrypted. Normally you would need a modchip to do so. As there isn't any method of booting pirated games through homebrew, this doesn't help piracy at all, just lets homebrew read DVDs, which I'm hoping leads to a homebrew DVD player for Wii.
All your base are belong to Wii.
You are a total and complete fucking idiot and a coward. I don't care if that completely resets my karma on /. either. Fuck the anonymous posting, I will say it to your face.
You are the reason why some men have the ability to dominate others through fear and violence. Because you are a PUSSY and will not stand up for your rights, or SUFFER FOR THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS.
Thank the Heavens that Ghandi did not have your sentiment. That Martin Luther King did not stay home settling for a little fear instead of fighting for everyone's rights.
It will be people like you that lead us all to oppressive fascist totalitarian governments. Becuase people get the government they deserve, and if you are willing to live in FEAR and SETTLE than you don't DESERVE FREEDOM.
My god, fuck you. Seriously... Just fuck you. This has nothing to do with Sony or custom firmware either. Just your proposition that we live in fear rather than stand up for freedoms, or even our belief in freedoms, to gain temporary safety and security. Wow. Fuck YOU.
You sit at home you little PUSSY. The rest of real MEN (including some pretty awesome Women too) will be outside risking our lives, liberty, and property to make sure little fuckers like you have some freedoms left.