Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

WiiPower — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:52:05 +0200

Modifying the MIOS would be possible, but would prefer a GC loader in form of a mini project. But i think we are still even missing the info if gamecube games would work in wii mode if everything that is required to run GC games is done.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

TopGun96 — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:46:58 +0200

Yes. It is what many pirates use to pirate GC games.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

darklink — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:19:50 +0200

is a custom mIOS (cmIOS lol) possible?

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

yellowstar — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:13:31 +0200

You mean patching MIOS? That's difficult. Bushing said before that "you could add the ohci1 module to MIOS, but you'd have to figure out an IPC system". Then you'd also need the sdi module and an IOS sdi FAT implementation for loading patches, ect. And, figure out how ohci1 is disabled to patch out ohci1 disabling. Very difficult.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

Hman360 — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 23:39:20 +0200

Quote
cactusjack901
No, because... well.. we kinda do that on a regular basis. What he's saying is that MINI, the subsystem that Bootmii runs off of can't access the wiimote at the current time. We would also have to patch mIOS (the IOS that gamecube mode runs off of) if we wanted to add Wiimote support there

No, I'm not saying to do this through bootmii. I mean can you do this at all?

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

yellowstar — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:20:45 +0200

Beta 3 didn't change anything for MINI hw access for boot2, perhaps only the IOS version. Yes, one could add the necessary code to MINI to poke the GC DI mirror register bit, and have the option to either install the modified MINI to either MIOS, or just launch it from a MINI app.(Or just have the Bootmii menu run it directly from the SD browser.)(An option of just running an modified MINI would be an option with whatever solution I figure out, if ever, rather than just installing to MIOS. But you'd need to figure out how to down clock the Broadway.)

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

WiiPower — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:07:13 +0200

You do not need a MIOS replacement. The GC does not have an arm processor, when the Wii plays GC games, the arm may be involved in the changes that allow GC to be played, but after that it does nothing. Also since BootMii beta 3, mini projects have full hardware access on the ppc.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

yellowstar — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:37:38 +0200

BC/boot2, I think those just down clock the clock speed, and eventually load MIOS.(Dunno if those set some GC mode flag somewhere...) Imitating everything MIOS does will not give us full hardware access. That will only disable hardware. Whether you access the hw on Broadway or Starlet doesn't make any difference. A proper MIOS replacement would be a modification of MINI, setting the register bit for mirroring GC DI registers, and bootstrapping a homebrew Broadway GC disc loader.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

WiiPower — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:57:40 +0200

Now that BootMii beta 3 allows full hardware access on the ppc, i wonder if running GC in wii mode is actually possible. The GC only has a ppc and we have full hardware access there now. So if somebody would imitate everything that MIOS, BC and boot2 do when booting a GC in a mini project, we would theoreticllay have full hardware access, and a 2nd processor(the arm) to play with. But i guess it's 1. complicated to do, and 2. the hardware needs some registers to be set to certain values that shutdown the wii exclusive hardware, while allowing GC games to access the hardware.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

cactusjack901 — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 04:19:57 +0200

Quote
Hman360
I'm not a coder, but okay... What you're saying is that you can't even access the Wiimotes from homebrew code?

No, because... well.. we kinda do that on a regular basis. What he's saying is that MINI, the subsystem that Bootmii runs off of can't access the wiimote at the current time. We would also have to patch mIOS (the IOS that gamecube mode runs off of) if we wanted to add Wiimote support there

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

Hman360 — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 04:07:26 +0200

I'm not a coder, but okay... What you're saying is that you can't even access the Wiimotes from homebrew code?

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

yellowstar — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:33:31 +0200

That's possible, but it's difficult. MINI does not have an OHCI driver, so that would need written if we're going to replace MINI. I guess it may be possible to re-add OHCI1 to MIOS, but you'd may need to write process/module code for it... (But you could just inject the sections of OHCI1 module into MIOS, and have MIOS create a thread for OHCI1 before the idle loop.) And as bushing said earlier, you'd need some IPC system. And again you'd need to write a Broadway patching system somehow. Either way, someone would need to figure out what disables USB and Wiimotes. I'm fairly certain that the code executed from main,(not kernel thread) does not disable Wiimotes. I patched and disabled almost all of that code, and Wiimotes were still disabled. Whatever is disabling Wiimotes is executed from the kernel thread.(I haven't fully patched everything executed there GC related, tedious trial and error.)

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

Hman360 — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 05:04:37 +0200

Quote
Arikado
So, sorta like a program that launches a gamecube game but remaps gamecube controls to Wii Controls and the GC Memory Card to an SD Card?

Basically, would it be possible to use Wii controls for a GC game? That would be sweet... I know they did something similar with I think Mario Power Tennis but that was on its own disc, so they would have modified the code for it. They made it a Wii game from a GC game. Would this be possible though? You could play Spider-Man or Spider-Man 2 and interact more with the game, like web-swing with your own arms or punch people with an actual punching motion or at least use the Wiimote and Nunchuk controls and not have to buy a GC controller.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

daniel_c_w — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 09:25:45 +0200

Quote
HyperHacker
I noticed the system can reboot from GC mode back to Wii mode somehow as well. Pop out Mario Kart's disc at the title screen and hit reset, IIRC. Kicks you back to the System Menu.

Gamecube games used to reset the hardware, when the reset button is pressed, while the lid is open.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

yellowstar — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 03:26:18 +0200

~~That's when launched from sysmenu, right?~~ The old version of Gecko OS I have doesn't set some flag correctly and boot2 runs when shutdown, running sysmenu.(Dunno if the latest version fixed that.) This isn't really useful, it's just some reset, causing Starlet to run boot2 as when Broadway is initially powered off.
EDIT:
This is related to MIOS, it's not game specific. MIOS executes shutdown code when the POWER GPIO goes high, and when IRQ15 is triggered. The former calls reset(1), while the latter calls reset(0).

reset/LT_3c40
poke_hwresets_ppcbits();
LT_3e74();
*((u16*)(0x0d8b4026)) = 0;
udelay(100);
LT_3ed8();
HW_RESETS &= 0xff800fff;//clear bits 12 - 23
LT_37a4(1, 0);
u32 temp = HW_RESETS;
if(in_r0==1)
{
	temp &= ~BIT(5);//PPC1
}
else
{
	temp |= BIT(5);//PPC1
}
temp &= ~BIT(0);//SYS
HW_RESETS = temp;
while(1);

poke_hwresets_ppcbits/LT_2abc
u32 resets = HW_RESETS;
HW_RESETS &= ~(BIT(4) | BIT(5));
udelay(15);
resets &= BIT(5);
resets = (resets >> 5) << 5;
HW_RESETS = (HW_RESETS & ~BIT(5)) | resets;
return;

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

HyperHacker — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 01:50:18 +0200

I noticed the system can reboot from GC mode back to Wii mode somehow as well. Pop out Mario Kart's disc at the title screen and hit reset, IIRC. Kicks you back to the System Menu.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

yellowstar — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:48:03 +0200

Quote
WiiPower
I also wonder if it was possible to run gamecube games in wii mode, but gamecube clock speed.

For this i have some questions:
1. What exactly turns the wii hardware off? I think i read somewhere that it is related to the clock speed, which would be bad.

BC sets some flag, then loads and boots boot2. If this flag is set, boot2 adjusts the clock speed, and loads and boots MIOS. MIOS disables the Wii hw. According to bushing on hackmii, MIOS contains the GC IPL, and MIOS bootstraps the Broadway to run the GC IPL, which then runs the GC disc game. Here's my MIOS notes. Mostly C code of reverse engineered code. The NAND interface, AES and SHA engine seem to be disabled by resetting the interface/engines twice. ~~It seems to be possible to enable the sensor bar and the disc drive LED from GC mode PPC, unless there's some block for GPIO from Broadway.~~ Never mind, HW_GPIO_OWNER is set to zero, blocking Broadway GPIO access.(A few function calls before the bootstrapping function call.) [pastie.org]

Quote
WiiPower
3. Does the MIOS and/or BC do anything else than changing the clock speed, disabling hardware and running the main.dol/elf from the game? If not, wouldn't it be possible to run gamecube games without MIOS/BC by doing all necessary stuff in a loader?

Not sure. But with a modification of MINI, with an implementation of the code MIOS executes, it should work.(Replacing loading/bootstraping IPL with an MINI app just loading the apploader should work.) Mainly MIOS shutdown code via power button is missing from my notes. There might be GC mode related code in the thread code, other than IPL loading, so that would need reverse engineered to write an loader.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

yellowstar — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:15:39 +0200

~~Perhaps MIOS doesn't really disable Wii HW. Perhaps MIOS just sets some register for re-mapping the DI registers.~~ Never mind, there seems to be NAND interface, AES, and SHA engine disable code in MIOS. It seems that the only Wii hw related code run on MIOS is the Wiimote disconnection code, and the Starlet timer thread/process code.(The Starlet timer IRQ is the only IRQ enabled in the ARM HW IRQ mask register.) There's some AHB register,(I'm assuming this can only be set by Starlet) that enables direct access of all Wii hw registers from Broadway, which are normally only accessible from Starlet. This register is mentioned on gc-linux.org.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

HyperHacker — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:09:28 +0200

Quote
yellowstar
GC DI code uses completely different register addresses than Wii register addresses.(There may be other peripherals requiring patching.) Patching would be required for GC disc games to run.

Possibly just the exception handler would be enough, trapping and remapping accesses to any addresses that need it. That alone might slow down the game enough to make up for the clock speed difference; if not, just patch a delay loop in somewhere.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

ekeeke — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:24:58 +0200

Quote

What does MIOS actually do to handle that?

I have absolutely no idea, you would have to ask someone who already have disassembled MIOS
MIOS = Minimal IOS ???

Quote

I thought, the Wii and the GC have the same base clock and only the multiplier is chnaged by BC.

yeah, divided or multiplied, the idea is the same: I meant that all the chips probably use the same base clock as reference, that base clock being itself derivated from a master clock. That's just a supposition though, from what I've read and already seen in other systems.

Quote

I do not really understand.
All of the Gamecube Hardware can be used in Wii mode too.

you're right, I forget you can acces memory card in system menu
Again, that was only a supposition because hardware generally supports a limited clock range.
This is not very important though, the main reason is probably because of timers being too fast (I'm pretty sure many games are optimized for PAL and don't use VSYNC).
Anyway, even that can be properly handled if they are using some kind of low-level API to access timer (libogc already do this perfectly for example, calling sleep(1) will wait the same amount of time in both modes) so it can be something else, I really don't know but it sure is interesting subject.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

daniel_c_w — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:42:10 +0200

Quote
ekeeke
Gamecube access the drive at a difference address than the Wii does and it access it directly

What does MIOS actually do to handle that?

Quote
ekeeke
Quote

Why speed down the clock?
Generally, all chips/buses use clocks derivated/divided from the same base clock

I thought, the Wii and the GC have the same base clock and only the multiplier is chnaged by BC.

Quote
ekeeke
Some Gamecube games might not use video interrupts for synchronization but hardware timers instead.

That would actually have been a good practice, but unfortunately, most games console games still use VSync :)

Quote
ekeeke
I wouldn't dare trying to play FZero GX 1.5x faster :-)

FZeroGX actually uses VSync. Playing it in 50 hz is like having an extra easy difficulty :D

Quote
ekeeke
also, maybe because some Gamecube specifc hardware (EXI bus for Memory card ?) have clock speed restrictions

I do not really understand.
All of the Gamecube Hardware can be used in Wii mode too.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

ekeeke — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:41:24 +0200

Quote

What does DI cover?
Disc Access? more?

DI =Drive Interface
hardware is generally controlled through hardware registers that are mapped in CPU address space
Gamecube access the drive at a difference address than the Wii does and it access it directly (the PPC program writes the registers and trigger DMA operations itself)

Quote

Why speed down the clock?

Generally, all chips/buses use clocks derivated/divided from the same base clock
Some Gamecube games might not use video interrupts for synchronization but hardware timers instead. I wouldn't dare trying to play FZero GX 1.5x faster :-)

also, maybe because some Gamecube specifc hardware (EXI bus for Memory card ?) have clock speed restrictions

Quote

2. Does the gamecube have an arm processor? If not, could the Wii, if it could run gamecube games in wii mode, use that as hypervisor or whatever?

No, it doesn't: games run on PPC and access hardware directly through registers & direct memory access, it's simple monoprocessor architecture.
On the Wii, that's what the ARM program is meant for, it handles access to IO hardware for the PPC program.
In gamecube mode, I suppose address decoding is done somewhere so that access to the old addresses (DI but also SI for GC controllers) is remapped to new addresses.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

daniel_c_w — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:53:48 +0200

What does DI cover?
Disc Access? more?
Why speed down the clock?

Pardon my lack of knowledge.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

yellowstar — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:32:21 +0200

GC DI code uses completely different register addresses than Wii register addresses.(There may be other peripherals requiring patching.) Patching would be required for GC disc games to run. If someone could get GC discs to be read with a modified libdi,(orginal libdi reading GC discs produce unknown errors) patch DI register addresses references, and slow down the clock speed of the Broadway from Broadway, then in theory GC discs should boot fine in Wii mode.(The clock speed could be adjusted via Starlet and modifying MINI as well. Of course this homebrew GC disc loader in Wii mode would only work if adjusting the clock speed only adjusts the clock speed, not disable Wii HW...)

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

daniel_c_w — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:03:38 +0200

I am interested in the last question as well.

Quote
WiiPower
If not, wouldn't it be possible to run gamecube games without MIOS/BC by doing all necessary stuff in a loader?

Is there any reason, why we can't load and execute GC code in Wiimode?

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

WiiPower — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 14:20:41 +0200

I also wonder if it was possible to run gamecube games in wii mode, but gamecube clock speed.

For this i have some questions:
1. What exactly turns the wii hardware off? I think i read somewhere that it is related to the clock speed, which would be bad.
2. Does the gamecube have an arm processor? If not, could the Wii, if it could run gamecube games in wii mode, use that as hypervisor or whatever?
3. Does the MIOS and/or BC do anything else than changing the clock speed, disabling hardware and running the main.dol/elf from the game? If not, wouldn't it be possible to run gamecube games without MIOS/BC by doing all necessary stuff in a loader?

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

ekeeke — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:23:47 +0200

well, MIOS is already some kind of hypervisor, in that it handles memory partitioning (when gamecube games access memory mapped devices) and CPU configuration.

For a real hypervisor running on PowerPC, I think games would need to be coded first with the hypervisor in mind, I don't think it's possible otherwise (or it becomes an emulator)

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

gameboy13 — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:34:43 +0200

This may not be related, but I once tried the "Wii Pad" hook in Gecko OS, and the Wii remote stayed on when the GC game was running.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

robotmenace — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:15:03 +0200

Yeah, that's the idea and would be the main focus if I try to do this. It would have to be done in Wii mode though to be able to use the extra hardware, and I think timing issues would stop the bluetooth adapter and SD card reader from working even if you could mpatch MIOS to not turn everything not GC off. That's why I came up with this idea as a bit of a workaround. It could also add cool things like save states, and cheatcodes (though I never use them that would be cool) without downgrading MIOS and trying to find the old hardware and disc.

Re: Wii mode GC hypervisor/emu

Arikado — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:00:53 +0200

So, sorta like a program that launches a gamecube game but remaps gamecube controls to Wii Controls and the GC Memory Card to an SD Card?