Guy Incognito's guide to modding your wii

So you want to mod your wii?

Whats required:

1. A wii w/ firmware version 4.2 or less. It can be done on 4.3, but not with this guide.
2. An SD card (any size)
3. A way to transfer files from computer to SD card.
4. An external usb hard drive (if desired)

What this will allow you to do:

1. Run homebrew software on your wii
2. Play backed up wii games from dvd-r. Theoretically could be used to play pirated games, though neither RIU nor I condone this activity. Stick with legitimate back-ups.
3. Back up wii games, or wii game back-up dvd-r/+rs, to an external hard drive and load the games from the hard drive - no need for a disc ever again after you load it onto the hard drive!
4. Play audio or video files located on hard drive through the wii. New jukebox/media center.

This is compiled from sources around the net. I spent a few nights researching wtf the deal was. Then when I dove in head first I ended up spending close to 15 hours of installing, researching the next step, downloading and transferring files, and just figuring out what was going on. Now that I have done it and have the files I could probably do the entire process again in 15 minutes. It will take you a lot longer because you will have to read through every step of the guides. I suggest opening each link and downloading all required files and putting them onto the sd in the appropriate folders before you install anything so you don't have to remove the sd card between steps.

The first link gives a basic overview of what homebrew is about. The second link instructs you how to install it.

http://nintendo.about.com/od/wiiliving/a/homebrew_overview.htm

http://nintendo.about.com/od/nintendowiibasics/ss/homebrew_setup.htm

Note: if you have a wii 4.2 the instructions deviate from the guide. Follow bannerbombs instructions for version 4.2, specifically "4. Press the SD card icon (for the SD menu). Then insert the card. It should either pop up Load boot.dol/elf? or freeze." Go back to the guide after that step.

Now use this guide and install bootmii: http://gwht.wikidot.com/bootmii
Make a back up of your wii onto the sd card, then take it off the sd card and store it in several locations, I suggest zipping it up and emailing it to yourself so you know you always have a copy of it just in case you fuck shit up on your wii and want to restore it.

Install neogamma from this link: http://filetrip.net/g25123270-Neogamma.html
Unzip the file and place the "apps" folder into sd:/apps
This is where your home brew applications will all be run from.

Install IOS236. Use this guide http://gwht.wikidot.com/ios236
Note: In the final step DO NOT choose play pirated games, it will delete the installation!
Remember, you aren't going to pirate ANY games, only dvdr back ups of games you own!

Install IOS249. Use this guide: http://gwht.wikidot.com/ios249

Install hermes-isos222-223 using this guide http://gwht.wikidot.com/hermes-ios222-223

Get hard drive. I got 2TB seagate for $109 today from microcenter.

I deleted the partition on the new hard drive. I partitioned off 200GB as the primary partition and formatted that as FAT32. I used http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/guiformat.exe to format into FAT32. This is where I store the images of the games. I formatted the remainder as NTFS for storage of video and other things through disk manager. I don't anticipate needing more than 200GB in FAT32 format for actual games.

I installed usb loader by following this guide: http://gwht.wikidot.com/usb-loader

There are lots more things you can do with your wii, but this is exactly what I wanted to use it for. I didn't discover the site http://gwht.wikidot.com/start until after I installed homebrew (as you can tell from my recommended links). That site was the most useful though.


Hope someone gets some good use out of this info!

Edit: Here is a program I used to convert an iso image into the proper format for the wii: http://filetrip.net/f11221-wbfs_file-Simple-Gui-1-0-9.html

Now you can rip games to iso using your computer, or download the iso, then convert it and manually add it to the fat partition of the hard drive.

Awesome man; great write up!

Thanks. I edited to add a link to a program to convert iso files directly to the proper format for the wii.

Offically did it after you posted this. Worked just fine with v 4.2

guy incognito said:

Remember, you aren't going to pirate ANY games, only dvdr back ups of games you own!

Click to expand...

guy incognito said:

Now you can rip games to iso using your computer, or download the iso, then convert it and manually add it to the fat partition of the hard drive.

Click to expand...

First, you tell us not to pirate ANY games, then you tell us to download pirated games
very confusing.

ktwister said:

First, you tell us not to pirate ANY games, then you tell us to download pirated games
very confusing.

Click to expand...

Or you could just use your inductive reasoning skills and figure out that the *wink* hinted at a particularly high level of sarcasm.

ktwister said:

First, you tell us not to pirate ANY games, then you tell us to download pirated games
very confusing.

Click to expand...

No. I said you could either rip the dvd you own onto your computer, or you could simply download a copy available on the internet. Often times it is easier to download than to try and get around copy right protection features on discs you legitimately own. You shouldn't be downloading it if you don't own the rights to it.

Bump just in case some other people want to mod there wii. The novelty has worn off a bit for me, and I don't have tons of time to sit around and play games, but I still use it as a media player to play downloaded movies and video files.

Cool thread. Nice tutorial.

That is too cool guy. Nice work!

Been running home brew for a little over a year now. It is a cool umm mod.