this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Wii

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Your community for all things Wii, including soft and hardware modding. Share your Wii haul or discuss the best games.

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How do I soft mod a Wii? (reddthat.com)
submitted 1 year ago by TheBiGuy@reddthat.com to c/wii@reddthat.com
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Soft modding is the process of installing Homebrew software on your console to get access to things like emulators, region locked content, online multiplayer and much more.

The general consensus on how to do it is simple:

  • Never ever follow video guides, they will probably bring you more problems than actual use
  • Wii.Guide is the most up to date and detailed guide. THIS is the absolute best place to start your soft modding journey
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[–] MrShankles@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Thank you! I'm in the process of moving, and had to decide whether my wii was worth keeping. I decided it was, due to it's size and ability to emulate games that my modded Xbox can't (at least not as well, or as easily)

I already hardmodded my original xbox and have it setup for emulating a (very) large number of games. And it can be used as a media server and a whole bunch of other things. But emulating GameCube games or ripping my wii games isn't as efficient, and it's not as small of a system

When I saw how easy it was to softmod my wii and what I could do with it, I was pretty sold. My xbox is still my pride and joy, because of how much time I put into making it work the way I wanted... so it won't go anywhere either.

But I'm pretty stoked to see what I can do with my wii; and because it's not nearly as old and pretty straightforward to mod, I think I have enough experience now to get it done rather quick. Now I just gotta finish finding a new home and moving, before I can start digging in. Gonna save this post for when I'm ready!

[–] TheBiGuy@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Modding your Wii is defintely worth it. Even without emulation the Wii just has plenty of great Wii and GameCube games to offer you can play locally. Mods like ctgp are also great to spice up some titles like Mkwii

[–] MrShankles@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

So I ended up not waiting to finish moving, and went ahead and softmodded it last night lol. I got a cheap 32gb SD card and installed the homebrew channel, installed bootmii "as ios", as well as installed boot2.

So I think I installed BootMii as Boot2 to my SD card, if I'm understanding correctly? (Idk if one overwrites the other or not, I haven't dug that far into what is actually going on)

Then I made a NAND backup to my SD card as well, and left it at that for now

I am a little confused about if BootMii is installed to the ios or just my SD card. I read:

"BootMii as Boot2 is recommended, but only available to install on early Wii consoles. Otherwise, it can only be installed as an IOS"

I have the first version of the wii that came out, so idk if I should re-do the BootMii/Boot2 install without the SD card inserted, or what "install to ios" actually entails. I kinda just did the basics real quick and saved the NAND file to prevent any "unlikely" bricking of my wii... because I have a little ptsd from my xbox modding that required a LOT of effort and learning to recover it from an "unlikely bricking" that nonetheless happened to me

(I eventually learned that the freaking xbox disc drive died after I soft modded and while attempting to zero my EEPROM. It froze-up, I restarted it, and got an error that was the beginning of a journey to diagnose/repair the issue. Had to zero the EEPROM on the motherboard manually, with a modified 9-pin cable... it was way beyond my scope at the time lmao. But my soldering skills did go from zero to "ok" real quick, and I've modded several since then)

But yeah, I did manage to softmod my wii last night. Just a little confused as to where BootMii/Boot2 is installed, if it matters that I have a first version or not, and if I should have it installed differently. But I do have the backup, so I'm at least free to "fuck around and find out", so to speak lol

Now I just gotta read some more and figure out how to go from my SD card situation to an external hdd. Seems like I would just have to format the hdd and install the BootMii files to it, but idk if that's exactly correct because of some confusion on my end about Boot2 and where it's installed/should be on my wii

I'll definitely take any advice and will be checking back in lol

[–] MrShankles@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

And if you have an original xbox that you ever want to softmod, it's not bad and I can definitely help.

A hardmodded one is way more versatile/powerful, but does require soldering (either a chip or a "TSOP Flash", depending on the version)... but can still be done with almost no prior soldering skill, with the right info (I'm a testament to that lol). Just let me know.

And I'll be on this modded wii journey for now, so I'll definitely be checking back in