HackMii

As you all know, Nintendo pushed a huge update yesterday. Turns out it’s a rather lame attempt to block, among other things, our installer. They also remove The Homebrew Channel and DVDX on every system menu startup, but for that they just hardcoded the used title IDs. So let’s play this silly game: let’s switch title IDs!

Beware: Everything installable with this installer works with every system menu version, you do not have to update to v4.2! We even advise you not to update! On the last article bushing wrote:

The [boot 2 update] code [from Ninty] is so buggy that we decided to write our own for the HackMii installer.

It’s really sad, but that wasn’t exaggerated at all. The first reports about bricks due to this official boot2 update are reported on Nintendo’s forums. Replies, which Ninty doesn’t like, are getting deleted. Anyway, it’s up to you if you want to risk it.

If you already updated to v4.2, this version is the only one that works. If you don’t have HBC installed, use e.g. Indiana Pwns to launch this installer.

If you want to update to v4.2, you should install HBC before updating. Because of the new title IDs, the HBC and DVDX version from this installer won’t get deleted on v4.2. Installing the new HBC before updating ensures that you have a working HBC afterwards.

If you updated to v4.2:

• BootMii/boot2 was wiped only if your boot2 version was v2 or v3. Just reinstall it.
• BootMii/IOS will still be there.
• DVDX got deleted, reinstall it.

General advice: Don’t use some random update application, just update through the system menu if you really want to update.

General note: If you install anything with this installer version, update all the components you have already installed. E.g.: BootMii required some changes too, so the HBC with the new title ID gets loaded.

Note about DVDX enabled applications: Because of the new title ID, all current applications will fail to load DVDX. libogc needs additional code that checks for the new title ID. All DVDX enabled apps need to be recompiled afterwards.

Because Ninty fails to deliver new features with the latest update, I guess we have to compensate for that. Focus on this release are the promised improvements for HBC.

The changelog:

HackMii installer (v0.5):

• New exploit to enable (un-)installation of all components on fully updated Wiis.
• Fix hangs on some setups (they’re all related to retarded IOS patches).

BootMii beta 4 (v1.1):

• Properly write the keys to nand.bin.
  This fixes the “NAND dump is from another Wii” issue on restoring beta 3 backups. If you don’t know how to fix those dumps, you have to backup the NAND again. Dumps from all other versions are not affected.

The Homebrew Channel v1.0.5:

• Faster startup.
• Prefer boot.elf over boot.dol when launching apps.
• New shiny fonts, tweaked to the last subpixel.
• Widescreen support.
  If your Wii is set to 16:9 in the system menu options, HBC won’t stretch the picture like it did on older versions. Unfortunately the fonts might look a little weird then, it really depends on the used display unit. Blame the lack of true widescreen support on the Wii for that.
• Grid view.
  Hit 2/Y while browsing applications to switch between the old and the new view. This shows 4 columns on 16:9 setups, 4:3 users only get 3.
• Device hot-plugging.
  You can remove and insert devices (front SD slot, USB mass storage, and SDGecko in both slots) at all times now without reloading HBC.
  To change to another device, hit 1/X to bring up a simple option dialog.
• Application sort order.
  You can now choose how to sort the shown entries. Current options: either by the name or by the release date.
  Note that for the latter sort order a valid release_date tag has to be present in the meta.xml file.
  Again, hit 1/X for the options dialog to set this.
• wiiload overhaul.
  On-the-fly compression: Uploaded files are automatically compressed on PC side: This makes it way faster, especially on bigger files. ScummVM, anyone?
  Improved USBGecko support: Faster uploads, and you don’t have to stop reading debug messages from the device while uploading files.
  libftdi support: Because ftdi-sio fails, especially on OSX.
  Note: Because of these improvements, older wiiload version and 3rd party upload clients are incompatible. Use the bundled v0.5, binaries and source code are included.
• Basic application management.
  To add apps: Just wiiload a ZIP archive, it will then get extracted to the active device. The ZIP file must be structured in a certain way, check this description for the details.
  To delete apps: There’s a new button on the application dialog.

DVDX:

• Allow PPC side hardware access.
  Also known as the magic HW_AHBPROT register.
• TMD version bumped to 2, in case anyone needs to check for e.g. HW_AHBPROT.

Either grab the new installer here, or use the HBC online update (a confirmation dialog should pop up when launching HBC).

As always: Please link to this post instead of mirroring the binary, thanks.

Enjoy.

As you can see in the latest Wiimpersonator log, Nintendo has released an update for the Wii software — “Wii Menu 4.2″.

Nintendo’s release notes state, rather blandly,

September 28, 2009
Wii Menu 4.2
Unauthorized Modifications
Because unauthorized channels or firmware may impair game play or the Wii console, updating to Wii Menu version 4.2 will check for and automatically remove such unauthorized files. In addition, there are some behind the scenes enhancements that do not affect any prominently-used features or menus but will improve system performance.

That’s the best they could come up with? Seriously? This is almost as bad as the first update (3.3) they did to (try to) kill the Twilight Hack, which they justified with “an enhanced Mii channel”. Don’t update. Seriously.
[Read more →]

Hey everyone. This is my first post here. Some of you may know me from the GameCube homebrew scene. Anyway, this post is not about the Wii or the DSi. It’s more of a vintage hardware hacking post.

The Nintendo Gameboy Color was released by Nintendo to the public in 1998. Since then no one had dumped its internal boot ROM (the first code that runs when you turn on or reset the system). After spending a few days glitching the GBC CPU voltage supply and clock input, I finally managed to get it to spew out the contents of this initial boot ROM.

Read all about it (as well as download the binary and an almost complete commented disassembly) on my website here: http://www.fpgb.org. The website is mainly a blog about my FPGABoy project, which is an attempt to design a complete clone of the original Gameboy hardware on an FPGA.

Or if you are too lazy to click on the GBC Boot ROM link on the right of the FPGABoy blog page, you can directly hop to it here.

I also dumped the Super Gameboy’s boot ROM about a week or so back, which you can also read about (as well as download) here.

I hope it’s at least mildly interesting news albeit being related to an ancient console.

Costis