wii emulators

[teraflop122]

Us folks at the Earth and Beyond Emulator website cracked industry-standard 512-bit encryption in a number of weeks using distributed computing ala Seti@Home. A few dozen home PC's acting as one represents quite a bit of code-cracking power. I'm sure a similar venture could break whatever it is from Nintendo which must be broken

Speaking of all that, anyone have news on loading downloaded roms to the Wii for virtual console use? I'd be much more interested in that than attempting to emulate the Wii on a PC.

[EnterTheHatrix]

Us folks at the Earth and Beyond Emulator website cracked industry-standard 512-bit encryption in a number of weeks using distributed computing ala Seti@Home. A few dozen home PC's acting as one represents quite a bit of code-cracking power. I'm sure a similar venture could break whatever it is from Nintendo which must be broken

Speaking of all that, anyone have news on loading downloaded roms to the Wii for virtual console use? I'd be much more interested in that than attempting to emulate the Wii on a PC.

The Wii contains its own list of what can be installed on it. This list is updated via Nintendos servers to include the game you're allowed to download. Nintendo's servers apparently have their own list too, but that hasn't been proven.

Essentially, your Wii makes an archived image of the virtual console game and deletes the files for the game from the Wii's file system (believed to be a modified ext3 file system, but unproven) and keeps a check list. When the game is put back on the Wii, the check list extracts the files to their appropriate location. This means if you don't own the game, you can't put it on the Wii.. The Wii's"check list" would have to be edited to give you that ability, but it's still got RSA encryption which means we can't get to the file system, let alone edit it or its contents.

This also prevents the Wii VC ROM archives from being edited, altered or manipulated with any additional data that could be malicious or unsigned. Each file has a file size, and when archived, the data has an internal checksum which prevents the files being altered, and when put back on the Wii, the Wii will reject the file or any oblivious data that isn't meant to be in the archive. That pretty much means without cracking encryption and finding a way to read and write to the file system (after finding out the structure of the file system), homebrew isn't possible, and illegal virtual console games isn't possible.

[Reaperman@home]

I don't know about homebrew not being possible. how are the GC and Wii sides of the house connected in there? GC homebrew works fine so maybe there's a way to extend this to at least some of wii's extra features.

nintendo seems to have gotten very clever this time around. Who could blame them after GBA and DS levels of piracy? Of course all the work put into keeping the wii from running unsigned code hasn't stopped the easy duplication of this code in the form of 'backups'

[teraflop122]

I'm not interested in an in-depth technical explanation of why something isn't possible- I'm not the one who will make it possible. The Wii's security features, no matter how intricate, are merely a challenge to be overcome by clever hackers.

Despite everything, I somehow doubt I will ever actually own a Wii

[EnterTheHatrix]

I don't know about homebrew not being possible. how are the GC and Wii sides of the house connected in there? GC homebrew works fine so maybe there's a way to extend this to at least some of wii's extra features.

nintendo seems to have gotten very clever this time around. Who could blame them after GBA and DS levels of piracy? Of course all the work put into keeping the wii from running unsigned code hasn't stopped the easy duplication of this code in the form of 'backups'

Gamecube mode is completely isolated from Wii mode, making it impossible to use any of the Wii's functions. The only way to get back to Wii mode from Gamecube mode is through a hard reset. This is to prevent GC homebrew from exploiting the Wii's software and hardware for malicious acts.

The DS had something similar, where you couldn't get to DS mode via GBA mode, the difference is you can cause a lot more damage and change settings etc, to the DS via GBA mode.

Wii backups are a completely different matter to homebrew. Because of the Wii's backwards compatibility with Gamecube games, Nintendo couldn't change the drive code as that would prevent Gamecube discs from being recognised. This meant that a known exploit from the Gamecube was still available in the form of drive code replacement.
The drive code is really basic and allows the disc to be read in both Gamecube and Wii mode. Patching it the same way the Gamecubes drive code was patched will bypass disc recognition in Wii mode allowing signed Wii games to be played. Unsigned code can only be run in Gamecube mode, but is restricted from the chip.

The only real modchips available on the Wii are for backups only. The chips are updated via DVD in Gamecube mode since the Gamecube mode can access the DVD Drive, and can run unsigned code (update software).

Now, before someone says "But what about the SD card dumping software to rip Wii games?" This is done in GC mode, and it doesn't interface with the Wii's internal SD card adapter. You have to use a Gamecube Memory card SD card adapter to dump to SD card.

The only way Nintendo could have prevented piracy would have been to not allow GC discs to work on the Wii.

Need proof that Wii hardware doesn't work in GC mode? The Wii remote doesn't turn on when you're in GC mode, and reset only resets it in Gamecube mode, it doesn't take it back to Wii mode. That means any malicious code in the memory has to be removed by a hard reset (where all memory is wiped).