Wii Update 4.2 Tries (and Fails) To Block Homebrew

marcansoft writes "On September 28, Nintendo released a Wii update, titled 4.2. This update was targeted squarely at homebrew, performing sweeping changes throughout the system. It hardly achieved that goal, though, because just two days later a new version of the HackMii installer was released that brings full homebrew capabilities back to all Wii consoles, including unmodified consoles running 4.2. However, as part of their attempt to annoy homebrew users, Nintendo updated the lowest level updateable component of the Wii software stack: boot2 (part of the system bootloader chain). Homebrew users have been using BootMii to patch boot2 in order to gain low level system access and recovery functions (running Linux natively, fixing bricks, etc). The update hasn't hindered this, as users can simply reinstall BootMii after updating (it is compatible with the update). But there's a much bigger problem: Nintendo's boot2 update code is buggy." Read on for more details. "Boot2 had never been updated in retail consoles until now. During BootMii's development, its authors noticed that Nintendo's code had critical bugs and could sometimes permanently brick a console by writing incorrect or unchecked data to flash memory, so they decided to write their own, much safer flashing code. Now, Nintendo has pushed a boot2 update to all Wii users, and the results are what was expected: users are reporting bricks after installing 4.2 on unmodified consoles. Nintendo is currently attempting to censor posts and remove references to homebrew. It is worth noting that the new boot2 does not attempt to block anything or offer any additional protection or functionality. Its sole purpose is to simply replace current versions which may or may not have been modified with BootMii. Another interesting tidbit is that Nintendo is not believed to have any method to repair this kind of brick at a factory, short of replacing the entire motherboard."

Comments

Why is that legal?

[Tei]

You have buy a machine, not a license. If you want to open it, and mod it on any way you want. Is just a tiny mountain of chips and transistors. You could break it in pieces and use it to fix your refrigerator. Any law that let the creator of the machine perpetuate this locking trough anti-user changes sould get a fine, and any law that help then do that, sould be reverted, and the legislators of these laws be kicked in the ass with a boot.

Re:Why is that legal?

[Techmeology]

It's legal because the same people who invented the DMCA invented other laws too.

Re:Why is that legal?

[selven]

First, we should kick out the laws that fine the CONSUMER for daring to mess around with his own legally-bought electronics.

Re:Why is that legal?

[Jaysyn]

The Wii has never been sold at a loss, I don't have one & even I know that.

Re:Why is that legal?

[Rik Sweeney]

Someone will have to confirm this for me, but I'm pretty sure that on the box of the original Xbox, it states that you don't technically own the hardware, but have been given a licence to operate it which can be withdrawn at any time (if you don't agree then don't open the box etc.)

Re:Why is that legal?

[Nitage]

Traditionally console are sold at a loss. The Wii breaks with that tradition.

Re:Why is that legal?

[selven]

You can already sue if your house gets blown up because of your neighbor. But modding Wii consoles harms nobody.

Re:Why is that legal?

[ciderVisor]

An AC modded +3 Insightful for spouting nonsense ? Wow, just....wow !

Nintendo has always made a profit on its raw hardware.

Re:Why is that legal?

[Jurily]

But modding Wii consoles harms nobody.

That's what they said about Skynet.

Re:Why is that legal?

[zach_the_lizard]

Whether or not you sell my an item at a loss has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I now own that item, and am free to do whatever I want with it, so long as my use causes no direct physical harm to others. Modding a Wii does not cause any physical harm to anyone, so it should be OK. Or at least it would, if copyright/patent trolls didn't have the ear of legislatures.

If Nintendo sold Wiis at a loss (which they don't, IIRC) and discovered that everyone is now using them only for homebrew, they would jack up the price so they can remain profitable. I'm sure the other console makers would do the same.

Re:Why is that legal?

[commodore64_love]

You mean from the top.

The people sit at the top level of authority, and that power flows downward to the state government, then the continental government. By revolting the people are merely taking-back the powers/rights that were illegally stolen from them by the lower levels.

Re:Why is that legal?

[cwrinn]

... like Serial Numbers? :O That are tracked when they connect on WC24? :O That you register and are bound to your Wii Shop account? :O

Re:Why is that legal?

[drinkypoo]

What you're telling people to do is fraud, which is a felony. The serials won't match, so the switch can be detected trivially. Congratulations, you've incited people to easily-detectable crimes. Not very smart.

Re:Why is that legal?

[Yvan256]

For the longest time, if you bought a new computer they would practically throw printers at you.

Yeah, that happened to me. I had to go to the hospital, too.

Re:Why is that legal?

[bleh-of-the-huns]

The problem is, the law does not say you cannot mess with your electronics, the law says you cannot bypass security measures in place that protect the intellectual property of the item you are messing with.

That said, I agree the law is stupid, vague, and consistently abused to stifle innovation and peoples rights, but currently, it is the law, and while I would love for it to be repealed, the odds of that ever happening are very very slim.

Re:Why is that legal?

[Spazztastic]

>>>fraud, which is a felony.

Yes turning people's consoles into bricks IS fraud, and both the U.S. and EU governments should drag Nintendo into court and rape them for millions of dollars in punishment. BUT until that happens (if ever), we the people have a right to replace the consoles that Nintendo turned into trash, just the same as you have a right to shoot someone who stabs you in the stomach. It's called self-defense - protecting yourself from getting screwed.

Yes, but Nintendo has a defense that Average Joe Sixpack doesn't have -- a large team of attorneys and enough money to throw around to shut up anybody attacking them.

Re:Why is that legal?

[drinkypoo]

Look, I don't think it's wrong to do what you describe. If I did, I would have said so. I said what you did was stupid, which is another thing entirely.

If you were going to do something like this, it would be smartest to do it in person and with cash. The paranoid could buy in one store and return in another. This unfortunately shifts some of the load onto the retailer; if you bought your console at a big box store you can go and do this at the same kind of store with a fairly clear conscience IMO. After all, they should be helping you get the product replaced, because they sold it to you.

I promise you that my objection is not moral. It is logical :p

Re:Why is that legal?

[commodore64_love]

Actually your proposal is even dumber because you defrauded a store *in your own state* and *without the protection of Visa/Mastercard* to back you up, plus your standing *in their territory* where a security guard can grab you and drag you into a backroom for interrogation. My proposal which I did about a year ago when Sony bricked my HD Radio, and with no consequences, offers several layers of protection:

- interstate lines
- U.S. post office delivery confirmation ("Yes we returned the console")
- the law itself which states - if the consumer can provide proof-of-return, then the business must refund the money
- The credit card company

And if you used Paypal to make the credit card payment, then that's yet another layer of protection between you and the megacorp.

Re:Why is that legal?

[Sloppy]

turning people's consoles into bricks IS fraud

Legal fraud. Nintendo and their like have followed the rules of civility: they hired lobbyists to write the laws. If you want to counter their fraud with your fraud, then you need be civil too. Where's your legislation-writing lobbyist? Because without that, the only other tools you have at your disposal are your votes and persuasive words to get other people to vote too, and I think we all know how that works out: it's too much of a hassle for anyone to bother.

Re:Why is that legal?

[Goaway]

Too bad it turns out the people with guns are the ones that are the most happy to hand over their rights, just so long as they get to keep their guns.

Re:Why is that legal?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Your conjectures are nice, but they're purely theoretical

Not at all. I don't know about your country but in the U.S. the "people are at the top" principle is the foundation of this society. To say otherwise is to believe the lies of the politicians, and thereby make yourself a serf and them the ultimate masters. Don't just voluntarily become a serf.

Re:Why is that legal?

[KC7JHO]

Actually you should just do it the RIGHT way and send the bricked one with an RMA, only took them a week to put in a new MB and have my system back to me in good working order. I payed to ship to them, they payed to ship back to me. Provided me with tracking number and web site I could track the machine through their service department and everything. Give it a try before you attempt something that will get you arrested.

Re:Why is that legal?

[cwrinn]

Ever considered asking Nintendo? "Hey, I updated to 4.2 and my Wii won't boot... No, I don't have a mod chip... No, I don't have any homebrew.... So, can you help me?" Consider for a moment how customer friendly Nintendo was when Wii Remotes were being thrown at TV screens. Not only did they replace the Wii Remotes, but they replaced the TVs and reimbursed for some medical costs as well. And then they quickly released "fixes", for free, in the form of reinforced wrist-bands and protective coverings for the remotes.

Re:Why is that legal?

[EtherMonkey]

Actually your proposal is even dumber because you defrauded a store *in your own state* and *without the protection of Visa/Mastercard* to back you up, plus your standing *in their territory* where a security guard can grab you and drag you into a backroom for interrogation.

[blah blah blah]

Escalating the dumbness scale:

- interstate lines

That makes you guilty of Interstate Wire Fraud under 18 U.S.C. Â 1343, a crime investigated by the FBI and prosecuted in a United States Federal Court. Not a trivial offense.

- U.S. post office delivery confirmation ("Yes we returned the console")

Congratulates, you've now committed Mail Fraud, which is the parent of Interstate Wire Fraud, and carries the same penalties.

- the law itself which states - if the consumer can provide proof-of-return, then the business must refund the money

What specific law are you referring to? There's no law I'm aware of that requires a business (or any other entity) to refund your money for the return of something other than what they sold you. Furthermore, a business is able to stipulate terms limiting or forbidding the return of merchandise, impose penalties and fees or other conditions.

There is no legal right to a refund.

- The credit card company

That is the federal crime of Bank Fraud, also described in U.S.C.Title 18. A credit card company will not just accept your word for a dispute. They will also contact the merchant and decide on the information and evidence provided by the difference parties, and always with respect to the law. If the merchant responds that you returned a used, out-of-warranty, non-functional item in place of the new item you received, they will very likely rule in favor of the merchant.

And if you used Paypal to make the credit card payment, then that's yet another layer of protection between you and the megacorp.

PayPal protection only applies for items purchased from eBay. Otherwise, PayPal doesn't want to get involved.

And now, if anyone participating in this discussion actually takes your advice, you are both also guilt of conspiracy to commit fraud.

Re:Why is that legal?

[Jesus_666]

You mean a Wii from the bottom, of course.

Re:Why is that legal?

[TheSpoom]

There is zero chance of that passing muster in a courtroom. They just slapped that on there to discourage people from prying.

DRM

[Techmeology]

DRM DRM DRM DRM DRM DRM DRM.
This is to updates as DRM is to using stuff. It's all a big commercialistic manipulation attempt. People don't like to be manipulated. Thus it fails miserably. There's also that warm fuzzy feeling when the hacked version solves bugs too:D Bonus "learn your lesson" points if they have to replace the bricked consoles (which, under most consumer law, they should).

When will they learn?

[Mr0bvious]

It costs them a lot of money to try and stop modding etc, when they will fail every time.

Waste of time, money and reputation.

Re:When will they learn?

[sopssa]

Well they dont really fail. Sure, someone finds a way around it. But it gets harder to get the homebrew working again. I updated to 4.0 before and didn't know you couldn't get all the homebrew working again. I tried to downgrade a few times, but it failed always (and I followed the guides closely). Then I just forgot about it and didn't try again.

So in that case they won. And I'm pretty computer knowledgeable person myself, it would be even worse for someone who isn't.

Nintendo's Response

[Rick Richardson]

Hello,

Some of you have reported problems with your Wii console after updating to the Wii System Menu 4.2. The symptoms most people are describing usually occur when the Wii has been modified. However, some of you also mention your system has never been modified.

We'd like to help get your system working properly again. If you're experiencing problems with your Wii console after downloading Wii System Menu 4.2, and you believe your system has not been modified, please give us a call. If we find that you have a normal system and the update caused your system to not work, we'll repair it at no charge.

Please call our Customer Service Department at your earliest convenience, 1-800-255-3700. We are open 6 AM to 7 PM, Pacific Time, 7 days a week.

Thank you,
NOA_Tech_Jane

Dear Nintendo,

[Narcocide]

Please stop making me cry.

Sincerely,
Your loyal non-modding customer.

P.S. Please spend all this time and effort addressing the cheating hackers plaguing the Mario Kart Network instead.

Re:Dear Nintendo,

[Anonymous Coward]

We often look at the past with rose-tinted sunglasses.

When we were children, some of us grew up with Nintendo. The NES gave us incredible gameplay. We fell in love with the company.The SNES brought even more to the table. Many of us are also plagued by the Tetris theme, thanks to the Gameboy.

Unfortunately, the reality is much more bitter. Nintendo has done some pretty rotten things since the very first version of their system. Whether it was the 10NES lock-out chip, their censorship policies, their anti-competitive attitude (which landed them fines in the European Union in 2002 thanks to how they ran their business from 1991-1998), Nintendo has a long track-record of "doing evil". We only never realized it because, at the time, most of us were children and only cared about getting that next fun game.

Compared to the way things were then, all of this is unsurprising.

Re:Dear Nintendo,

[Arimus]

So was Azrael and look where he ended up...

Think while MS and Sony are demons, Apple, Nintendo, Google are all well along the path to being fallen angels.

Re:Dear Nintendo,

[TJamieson]

Game Genie. They tried to sue them into the ground more than once, iirc. For something that merely redirected or altered memory contents.

Re:Dear Nintendo,

[daid303]

Note that the cheating is done trough Homebrew software. And thus blocking homebrew could help in stopping cheating a bit. But stopping homebrew is like trying to stop the sun shining, the people who are working to hack the Wii are smart and persistent. And those people don't do it for the cheats or the piracy, they just want an open platform to toy with.

Cheating in online games is always hard to beat, but the current state of the Wii is like early counterstrike and UT. The games are not build with cheat protection in mind, and thus the cheaters can run free. Times will change, but Nintendo is not known to change fast.

It's a real shame that Homebrew is being (ab)used to cheat online and to pirate games.

-Daid (writer of the Guitar Hero clone GuitarsOnFire for the Wii homebrew)

Also why are they doing it?

[Nursie]

I'm not aware of it even being used for piracy. I have the Homebrew Channel installed and it's great fun to play a few things on, plus occasionally turn the Wii into a media player.

IIRC it can be used to play out-of-region games. Which is a GOOD thing.

What exactly do they have to gain here?

Re:Also why are they doing it?

[Bert64]

They want to enforce region locking, or they wouldn't have implemented it to start with...

Region locking hurts legitimate users, and is used to screw them out of more money... Region locking should be illegal. It does absolutely NOTHING to benefit the consumer.

Re:Also why are they doing it?

[CODiNE]

I'm not aware of it even being used for piracy.

Well it is. I was at a buddies house, he had a USB HD plugged into his Wii, all kinds of games on it. Apparently the Mario Galaxy he downloaded had a few bits flipped somewhere in it's image so he played it all the way to the last few planets and then couldn't finish it. Some of the games he actually owned so... I think it's great to be able to back up games to a HD and play off them. When you share the Wii with someone and they get up to play Wii Fit every morning... and I'm working my way through Zelda. Swap swap swap.

Also he had this media center software running on the Wii, sorta like having XBMC or something. Then he uses his iPhone to change the tracks, watch movies, etc... pretty sweet.

Nintendo should just sell a media center channel and let millions of Wii owners plug HDs into those babies.

Re:Also why are they doing it?

[Eraesr]

What a preposterous comparison. If I wanted to import a crate of Coca Cola from the US, then I'm damn well able to open the bottle _and_ drink it's contents. I don't see how region locking protects the average user either. Technically speaking, there doesn't have to be a difference between a NTSC-U or PAL release. It's also a "problem" that PC games or even Nintendo DS games never had to deal with. There's no region locking on either platform. So why would it be necessary for the Wii? If Nintendo is truly worried about me putting an NTSC disc in my PAL Wii, then at most they could show a message telling me that I'm attempting to play an NTSC disc and that it may differ from a PAL release of the same game. "Do you wish to continue? Yes or No?" The only real advantages to region locking are for the producer of the product. They can put up different price points for different markets and prevent consumers from tapping into a different market (region).

Re:Also why are they doing it?

[AK Marc]

I grew up in Texas. There are a lot of Mexicans there. One thing that some Mexicans missed is Coke with sugar. Despite the television adds to the contrary, it corn syrup isn't indistinguishable from sugar. So I've been in markets that sold the Mexican Coke next to the American one. There was no confusion. If there was, you read the ingredients and you'd know the difference. Coke may sell different stuff in differnt places for regional taste, but they don't (and can't) sue people that resell it. But for some reason, you think doing that with software makes sense?

Re:Also why are they doing it?

[PhrostyMcByte]

I'm pretty sure they sell the Corn Syrup version in the US because we've got a huge tariff on importing sugar, not because of some sort of regional taste.

Re:Also why are they doing it?

[Urza9814]

It's not just a Texas thing - you can find the Mexican Coke in some standard supermarkets (specifically, Wegmans) even up here in central Pennsylvania. I bought some not too long ago - it was good stuff. And it's not just people who are used to having that kind who buy it. Clearly people are willing to pay a premium for it, and buy enough of it that it's worth keeping in stock. I'd imagine people would be willing to pay a premium for video games from other regions as well if it was possible to play them....

Re:Also why are they doing it?

[Moryath]

It can also be used to play legal ports of games that have been open-sourced - for example, Doom and Quake have fabulous ports on the system (the Wiimote makes a very interesting interface for Quake).

But Nintendo doesn't want that, either. Nintendo has always had a bug up their ass about "piracy"; they claimed the "security" chip in the original NES (which was actually about stopping companies from Tengen from making cartridges and was the reason you got the "blinky blinky" power problem so often) was to ward off "piracy" (which back then meant "guys in brazil putting out copied cartridges in a little factory"). They stayed with cartridges rather than CD's for the N64 out of fear of "piracy" (and got absolutely stomped by the CD-using Playstation). They made the Gamecube drive spin backwards and use rinky-dinky discs with stupid little plastic blockers to stop insertion of normal sized discs, and didn't release the DVD-player combo unit anywhere but Japan, out of fear of "piracy."

Of course half the time "Piracy" is just a red herring; for instance, the "anti-piracy features" of the NES/SNES/N64 also ensured that companies had to use Big N's "licensed factories" to have the cartridges made, and Big N decided how many you got in each production run or if you could even publish in a given market at all (you had to meet their censor restrictions in the US, for instance). It got bad enough that a number of companies made fake-name shell corporations in the US just to get around the restrictions so they could get all their games published. Small wonder that they all jumped ship and Big N were pretty much left with just the Shovelware vendors for the N64/Gamecube days (and some of that still goes on today, seen the piles of "my god this crap just won't sell" marked for $10 per brand-new sealed copy in the Wii section of a Gamestop lately?) when Sony offered an alternative console, no content restrictions/censorship, and didn't care what production run they did as long as they used a black-colored plastic disc and paid their licensing fee.

They got lucky with the Wii when it actually sold, as opposed to the N64/Gamecube which were incredibly poor sellers, and they haven't realized yet that "piracy" is simply not a big deal. The number of people who do it are an incredibly small portion of the userbase, and you're never going to stop them: the best you can do is slow them down for a day or two. Meanwhile, my Wii isn't going to get updated through Nintendo, because I don't feel like losing the ability to back up my system, to back up the save files that they tried to block off (WHY, oh why, do they not want me to move my Super Mario Galaxy savefile to SD card?), and to play legitimately ported titles like Quake.

Re:Also why are they doing it?

[VGPowerlord]

We used to have a huge tariff on sugar, that is. I believe it was lifted in 2006.

Coke gradually switched from sugar to corn syrup during the late 70s/early 80s. By the time New Coke came around, Coke products were made exclusively with corn syrup. Snopes has more details in its New Coke article.

Re:Also why are they doing it?

[coaxial]

It's a subsidy on corn. There's no tariff on sugar.

Re:Also why are they doing it?

[FireFury03]

THIS is the point of region locking. In some regions, that $50 disc is sold for the equivalent of $5. The region locking isolates each region so that shit like this can happen.

So let me get this straight - you think it's ok for vendors to prevent you importing their products in order to get them cheaper, but at the same time offshoring their workforce in order to get it cheaper?

They shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways - if a vendor wants to take advantage of the global employment market they shouldn't be allowed to restrict the global product market.

What year is this?

[Waccoon]

No checksums before flashing? Really?

Even at launch I was hearing about bricking problems. Glad to see things are improving after taking in all that cash.

On another note...

[zlel]

The Refrigeration Industrial Artists' Association has decided that you will need to pay an "iFrigement use fee" if you put any food item with an energy content of more than 1000 kCal in your fridge. Your fridge comes with a Healthy Home Edition license - I'm afraid you need to upgrade your kCal licenses for your level of consumption.

Re:Update by choice or forced?

[zer0keefie]

It's optional, provided you don't want to use the shop channel. So far, that's the only time I've gotten complaints from my Wii about the update.

Re:So, as someone with the homebrew channel instal

[ragethehotey]

Just DONT accept the 4.2 update when the Wii asks if you would like to upgrade. Simple as that. Unlike the XBox 360 / PS3 they have no way to "force" you to take the update.

Re:So, as someone with the homebrew channel instal

[Eraesr]

Wii forces you to update as well through some (first party) games. Mario Kart or Wii Fit for instance won't run if you don't install the updates included on their discs. So if you don't stay up to date, you will lock yourself out of an increasing number of games for the platform.

Sitting on the fence

[Rik Sweeney]

We (Parallel Realities) have written a bunch of games and I was recently looking into porting these onto the DS and Wii via Homebrew, because I think people would enjoy playing them (on the move in the DS's case), so I'm all for Homebrew.

What I am against though is modding your games machine just so you can download the games off the web without having to pay for them, which I think is what Nintendo is actually annoyed about.

However, getting around region locking does mean that one can play games only released in Japan (or the US if you live in Europe). In this instance I could understand a gamer's frustration and why they might download it off the web (because they can't a company willing to ship overseas).

Re:Sitting on the fence

[Nursie]

It's not just that either - I go on holiday to various places around the planet. Sometimes I go into a music or games shop whilst I'm there and buy one or two things to take home.

Why should I not be able to play them when I get home?

And yes, some games (the original Katamari Damacy, for instance) are not released in some markets and as a result are hard to get hold of, even if you've soft-modded the console to play other regions.

It often seems to me that the benefits of a global economy are reaped by companies by employing labour and sourcing materials where they like, but they try their damnedest to stop consumers doing the same.

Re:Sitting on the fence

[Gramie2]

About the region locking: I used to live in Japan, and my kids have many Japanese games for the Wii. Now that we live in Canada, we were faced with not being able to play any games sold here. I got a chip that makes the Wii region-free, but to make Rock Band work, I had to replace the entire OS with the North American version (it can still play Japanese games, thanks to the chip).

We've never played games that we haven't bought or rented, so the only effect of trying to kill homebrew, to us, is to potentially destroy our machine (no, we haven't upgraded to 4.2).

Thanks, Nintendo.

Re:Sitting on the fence

[marcansoft]

FWIW, 4.2 is reported to completely kill modchip region-free functionality. If they've done what I think they've done (started to check the region on the TMD, which is cryptographically signed), region-free via modchip is dead and won't be coming back.

Two words: Virtual Console

[gmarsh]

I'll fess up. I've got a SD card in my Wii with old NES games, and I run Homebrew Channel and FCE Ultra on my Wii.

Mind you, I own most of the games (SMB games, Mega Man games, TMNT2, etc) on NES cartridges. I do have an old NES, but I just can't be arsed to drag the thing out, wire it up to my TV and spend 10 minutes wiggling cartridges until they work. And I couldn't be arsed to buy games I already own on Virtual Console so I can play them again. Even though they're only $5/game, it's a principle thing.

But not everyone has a closet full of old video game equipment to use as lame justification. And Nintendo is probably losing a good bit of money because of kids telling their friends how to exploit the Wii and install FCE Ultra so that they don't have to buy the Virtual Console games. So, I kinda understand the whole anti-homebrew thing from that direction...

coke with suger

[Anonymous Coward]

Regional tastes have nothing to do with it.

American sugar producers lobbied and got a protectionist tariff on sugar that increased the cost significantly which made it cheaper for all the soft drink companies to switch to corn syrup. Elsewhere in the world sugar is cheap enough that it can be used with out driving up the cost of the product prohibitively.

My sister went to Korea some years ago and the coke there also was made with sugar. It's pretty much only in the US that corn syrup is used. Heck, in South America they use sugarcane as feed stock for the ethanol plants to produce fuel for cars.

Re:coke with suger

[xtracto]

That, or the fact that The USA has high subsidies for corn.

As a Mexican, I also prefer Sugar-sweetened Cola. I have tried the Corn-version of the drink and it tastes weird. I also read somewhere that cane-sugar is more healthy than corn-syrup [citation needed].

How About Punkbuster Instead?

[Kartoffel]

How about some anti-cheat measures? Playing online Mario Kart is still fun, but it is less fun when there's some griefer with infinite red shells.

Re:They can probably recover at the repair depot

[marcansoft]

You tell me how they do that. Not software - the ROM bits have no recovery functionality. Hardware? Massive props for you if you can find any kind of JTAG or similar port on the board, because quite a few people have wasted lots of time trying and failing to do so. As far as we can tell, they preflash the NAND chips before soldering, and I'm not aware of anyone who hasn't just had their motherboard replaced after this kind of unrecoverable brick.

Here's a pinout diagram of the Hollywood with everything that's definitely not a recovery port marked. Let me know if you find any flashing/recovery functionality on the remaining pins ;)

Re:They can probably recover at the repair depot

[Burpmaster]

You can flash chips without removing them from the board if the board designer was thinking intelligently. In my company's HW dev labs they re-flash bricked system boards all the time

Those boards weren't designed to prevent modding. No, I bet Nintendo has to replace the whole circuit board containing the flash chip due to their own paranoia.

Re:one datapoint

[marcansoft]

Oh, it's going to work fine for [b]most[/b] people, but the bricking rate is still going to be much higher than normal. The boot2 flashing code isn't completely borked (I've successfully used it to flash early versions of BootMii 10-20 times), but the fact of the matter is sometimes it'll botch. I'd expect a sizable number of bricks, much higher than for "normal" system updates.

Re:Arbitrary code?

[marcansoft]

If they don't like it, they're idiots. They make a profit on Wiimotes, why would they be against using them on computers?

Region locking can help consumers

[langelgjm]

The only real advantages to region locking are for the producer of the product. They can put up different price points for different markets and prevent consumers from tapping into a different market (region).

Depends on how you look at it. If the manufacturer can't price discriminate between different market segments, they will price the product beyond the reach of a lot of people who might want it. In that case, region locking can actually help the (poorer) consumer, since they will be able to purchase a product that otherwise would have been too expensive for them. Meanwhile the manufacturer avoids the risk of arbitrage.

At least, that is how it's supposed to work in theory. In reality region locking is used for a lot more than price discrimination, and it's just pointless and annoying when the product isn't even sold in multiple regions.

they convinced me

[amoeba1911]

I had a modded Wii and I was prolifically downloading Wii games for free from all kinds of pirate sites at Nintendo's expense. It all changed as soon as this patch came out, it suddenly turned me from being a dirty pirate to a legitimate customer! My pockets which had previously been devoid of anything other than pocket lint are now somehow filled with cash that just materialized out of thin air. I use that money to buy games legitimately, giving the company the profits it deserves. Their share prices have quadrupled in the past 3 hours. The company is worth more than Microsoft now. Hot Japanese anime girls are waiting to blow all of the company executives who came up with this wonderful anti-piracy patch that fixed everything.

This is what they've been waiting to hear... let's lie a little bit so they can feel good about wasting millions of dollars on this patch.

Re:They can probably recover at the repair depot

[marcansoft]

Their system doesn't appear to be designed to accept external driving of the flash. The Hollywood boots and tries to talk to it as soon as you power it on. External NAND flashers need to overdrive the Wii's outputs very hard to properly do their jobs. As far as we can tell, the control outputs to the NAND Flash do not have tristate capability (they always drive hard high or low, even when the system is uninitialized or idle). The NAND power rail is also the 3.3V Hollywood power rail, so it is impossible to power the NAND Flash without powering up the Hollywood.

Nope, pretty sure that's not how they do it.

Re:They can probably recover at the repair depot

[marcansoft]

And what you're trying to say is...? Do you see a socket anywhere? I don't know about you, but we've never seen a repaired Wii with obvious signs of SMT reworking. Using a chip clip to program in-system is problematic and deinitely not the way the system was designed; see above reply.

Re:So, as someone with the homebrew channel instal

[Spykk]

Simply update your copy of the homebrew channel. The latest version will not be removed by 4.2. Nintendo simply looks for a channel with the homebrew channel's ID to decide what to remove. The latest version has a different ID.

Re:Wii vs. Mac mini?

[Nursie]

Umm, it's far, far cheaper and I already have one set up under the tv.

I don't want to go spending more money when I already have something with a tv output, an optical drive and wireless networking. It doesn't do it better. It does it at the same time as being a wii and for no more money.

Re:They can probably recover at the repair depot

[marcansoft]

I don't know about their hardware engineers, but my opinion of their software engineers has been steadily decreasing. Call me a dickhead if they want, but they fail at almost everything they do as far as system programming. Their system architecture is archaic and they've locked themselves out of many of the features and improvements that their compatitors are able to add. They tried twice to stop a certain savegame exploit and failed disastrously - yes, there were critical bugs in the anti-exploti code, as small as it is. I've disassembled a lot of their code and the list of WTFs would span hundreds of pages. Their "secure" IOS security is dismal. They implemented a homebrew crypto layer and completely screwed up the very core of RSA verification, resulting in the very first exploit to run homebrew. They appear to have never heard of things called "code reviews". They're using a scheme of forking IOS for each minor addition that makes it very difficult to maintain security fixes in the future, nevermind that older games will never get new features or improvements. Then there's the hugely botched boot2 update that this article is all about, and which they clearly didn't test well enough (I mean, come on, we can find it with a handful of Wiis and some minor testing and they can't?). They have to resort to stupid hacks like copying SD channels to NAND to play them because they never even attempted to develop an even slightly sane storage layer for IOS - access to everything goes through different APIs. The division of functionality between ARM and PPC code is chaotic: the USB stack is in IOS, the Bluetooth USB device driver is in the PPC but the Keyboard/mouse drivers are in IOS, the Bluetooth stack is in the PPC while the TCP/IP stack is in IOS, half of the SD driver is in IOS and the other half in the PPC, the NAND filesystem driver is in IOS but the FAT filesystem driver for SD is in the PPC, etc. The WiFi drivers are notoriously unreliable (Broadcom is probably to blame for that). They left in DVD-Video mode code and functionality that is what enables softmods - and when we tried to report it to them them before Wii piracy via homebrew existed, they harassed us and refused to let us speak with an engineer! Softmods, predictably, came later, when other people discovered that code.

As for their hardware engineers, they at least have horrible power management inside the Hollywood to blame for the WC24 heat issues causing GPU failures. The software guys also helped, though, by making IOS have a busy-wait idle thread. IOS uses 100% of the Starlet CPU during idle mode, while the fans are off and the system is slowly getting cooked.

Again, feel free to look for a flashing mechanism too, but our experiences and attempts, evidence from people who send in their Wiis for repair, and our generally bad opinion of Nintendo's engineers all point towards there not being one.

Re:If it's bricked and they Nintendo can't recover

[marcansoft]

They just reauthorize those games online on your new console (via the serial numbers). When the system is totally bricked you lose your saves. They only notice homebrew or warez when they get "bricked" consoles that display an error message (which indicates System Menu operation), which they can usually fix by reinstalling stuff with their rescue mode DVDs and a small "flag" tool inserted into a memory card slot to put the menu into recovery mode.

Re:Wii without the discs

[RobDude]

"Waninkoko has released a new build of his SD/USB backup loader for the Wii. This loader will allow you to play backups from an on screen menu using a USB mass storage device or SD card."

^^^^ That should get you on your way. I'm a big fan of not having to use physical disks to play games and when I heard the USB hard-drive would load games faster than the physical disks - I totally wanted to do it.

It didn't work for me though. When I ran it - it didn't recognize my USB drive. The advice I was given was 'Umm, try another USB drive' but I only have the one. Lots of people have more luck.

All of the HomeBrew stuff is....well....buggy. The back-up loaders work pretty good; but not perfectly - so some games don't work and some games fail at certain spots. So, it can be very frustrating if you don't sort of enjoy the headaches and searching the web and trying different things to get the game to work.

Re:Wii without the discs

[marcansoft]

You're confusing homebrew with warez. Homebrew usually works pretty well, and HBC has a near zero chance of bricking your console. Applicaions vary in functionality and robustness, but they're safe since they're just applications that won't modify your console.

Loaders, on the other hand, besides typically illegal (they like to ship around chunks of IOS), are very dodgy and unreliable. System modification is required to install loaders, so it's an inherently risky activity. About 50% of the reports of permanent bricks I get from people are due to using Waninkoko's stuff. Stay far away, he never learned what that 'int' thing before function prototypes is for.

Re:They can probably recover at the repair depot

[marcansoft]

Good luck breaking the massive ground planes that connect every ground together.

Re:Wii without the discs

[RobDude]

Homebrew is home-made software. Homebrew for the wii is software for the wii that wasn't produced by an officially licensed source.

When someone writes a 'loader' that loader is a homebrew application. Whether or not it is available via the homebrew channel.

The homebrew applications I've used (media players, and emulators) were all quite buggy and have locked up my wii many times. The usb loader I've got also seems buggy as it fails to recognize my USB drive. But either way, nothing about a loader requires warez...you can own the software legitimately and want to run it from the USB.

Re:They can probably recover at the repair depot

[marcansoft]

And again, I'm saying we've looked for JTAG all over the place and can't find it. The Wii has a gazillion test points, yet none of them seem like candidates for JTAG. There's a set of 8 cutely arranged testpoints going straight to Hollywood, but those turned out to be a debug GPIO port (I've used it to drive an LCD display and the like). Everything else is spread around the board, and we've gone and mapped almost all of the Hollywood ball-out with no success. About the only thing I'd imagine they could have pulled off to throw us off would be to spread the JTAG testpoints around the board using traces buried into the inner layers, but I doubt they're that smart.

Re:Could this be why my Wii acts wierd ?

[kimvette]

Much like the myCube, that light confirms that it's off. ;)