New Ways to Void Your Warranty – DVD Bypass
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 7:17pm by Sean Buckley
When it comes to homebrew without a modchip, the Nintendo Wii is second only to the Dreamcast. While the infamous Twilight Hack remains the only way to run unsigned code without cracking open your Wii, FlatMii offers a mod-chip free alternative that, while still voiding your warranty, might not break your console.
Modchips typically introduce new code into a systems bios, or a microprocessor to disable the console’s copy protection – allowing the user to deliver and run unsigned code from a DVD-R. It sounds simple enough, but mod-chipping poses two risks: it can void your warrenty, and break your console. Although mod-chips themselves might not break your console, installing them is risky business – often requiring one to solder more than a dozen wires to various parts of the motherboard.
Opening your WIi to install FlatMii will still void your warranty, but requires no soldering, no wires, and supposedly, no hassle. The FlatMii device aims to bypass the Wii’s DVD drive, substituting data streamed via USB from your PC directly to the DVD drive’s input port on the Wii’s motherboard.
After all is said and done, running unsigned code on your Wii is as simple as plugging in a USB cable, and clicking a button on your computer. While it’s interesting to see the workarounds offered by mod-chips, the Twilight Hack, and FlatMii, these innovations are more easliy used for running “backups” and pirate copies of commercial videogames than they are for legitimate homebrew. Flatmii’s own demonstration video shows a Wii running two such “backups” from a PC hard drive. Regardless if it’s eventual use, FlatMii has found a new an interesting way to bypass Nintendo’s copy-protection protocols.
January 3rd, 2009 at 8:18 pm
OH MY GOD… INFENDO TOTAL MODDING BLOG.
January 3rd, 2009 at 8:41 pm
I like the system out of the box and I don’t mind supporting the companies that make great games. I can’t imagine why people would want to risk breaking their system just so they can potentially do something illegal.
But whatever, everybody has their own thing, I suppose.
January 3rd, 2009 at 9:13 pm
i prefer to hack my wii thru twilight hack and not take it apart in any way
January 3rd, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Yeah you can practical do a lot of useful soft modding techniques that equal what this product claims it can do, without the fear of actually permanently damaging your system.
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:10 pm
The homebrew scene fascinates me, and some of the applications the community develops are quite neat, but advances on the homebrew front have the side-effect of enabling pirates – something I’m not so enthusiastic about. Regardless, I found this to be an interesting and unique solution to the homebrewer/pirates’ “problem.”
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:22 pm
I’m kind of surprised that Nintendo hasn’t actually added a firmware update that actually removed “un-official” channel titles. Since the Homebrew channel runs off a unique channel not affected or used by any official channel.
But I believe that even though there is a Homebrew scene on the Wii that has pirating potential, there is still a lot of loyal fans that will still support Nintendo even though they can pirate and install games.
Plus the install base is much larger then the PSP anyway, and it wouldn’t go the way of the PSP.
It’s just pretty funny that the Wii and the PSP have been fully broken open, unlike the Xbox360, and PS3.
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Why won’t they hack the PS3 already, the potential for emulators is great, I’m thinking a PS2 emulator please, gimme the backwards compatibility everyone wants.
As for the wii, the twilight hack is good enough for me, I’ve never been interested in playing copies of wii games so the homebrew is enough for me, some pretty cool apps out there for wii at the moment!
January 4th, 2009 at 1:28 am
I don’t see why Nintendo doesn’t nip the whole thing in the bud and release some sort of official modding tool. Maybe have Sun develop a Java virtual machine or Adobe make a Flash disk. They could even make it WiiWare. Flash is less than 43 Mb, right?
I use my DS as a personal organizer, an e-book reader, a picture archiver/viewer and a video player, all through homebrew and my Games ‘n’ Music cart. I don’t want to steal games, and I don’t want the viruses that come with downloading ROMs.
If there was an approved development tool, I’m sure valid homebrew-ers would use it. Since there isn’t, they are stuck with the flash carts and homebrew channels.
It was the fact that anyone could program for it that gave the PC the market share it has over Apple. Why can’t the console makers see that?
January 4th, 2009 at 1:54 am
Wii modchips are not soldered to the Wii motherboard, they are attached to the Wii DVD drive controller board and they only need 6 wires now. Not that scary. Still, FlatMii sounds very cool indeed. I hope they release a version that can use an external drive, and not need a pc for loading the ISO’s. Arrrrrrrrr.
January 4th, 2009 at 2:04 am
hmmmm… looks like modchipcentral.com will have them around Jan 12th..
Price: $69.95 (€ 52.46)
January 4th, 2009 at 2:11 am
Will and Targetboy: I have to agree with both of you – I’m surprised Nintendo hasn’t tried to implement authentication procedures for channels, or found some other way to attack unofficial channels directly. And on the flipside, i’d love to see a hobbyist SDK become available for Nintendo consoles. Modernizing the concept of “Family Basic,” the programing language/system available for the Famicom in Japan back in the day.
@Jeff:
Modding really isen’t my scene, so I had to go off of what I found. The “Wire Galore” photo is from a forum discussion about proper modchip installation for the Wii – but I understand that newer modchips often come out that are simpler than before. Perhaps the source I used was incorrect in the first place. I apologize for any incorrect information. In any case, the examples I found seemed to use more than six wires.
January 4th, 2009 at 4:05 am
I know a lot of you frown on modchips, I also believe its wrong, but think of it it makes lots of consoles sell and I don’t think I ever heard that a game developer lost and closed its doors because they lost money to illegal copies. Thinking of it, people who actually install modchips are the ones who were not going to pay for the game in the first place, so game developers can think this is kind of charity I guess.
Now what good a modchip is for, its simple, games that are not worth buying and you want to check out, crap-ware on the wii and short games that end in 4 hours are not worth full price even for $10.
I will have to ask, does modchips stop you from buying from wiiware?
January 4th, 2009 at 5:50 am
@Jamie
Consoles aren’t just hacked with the snap of a finger. The PS3 and 360 have some seriously tight security against hombrewers. The 360 is almost powerless to stop piraters. They aren’t living easy, but they’re living on that system. There’s been progress made on the PS3, I havn’t checked on it in months though. they should be much further now.
January 4th, 2009 at 6:07 am
The only thing that the PS3 has is if you were to install Linux you can run some Java emulators for the NES.