Looking for a USB Gecko

Hi guys long time no see! Sorry I haven't been active for a while. I've been too busy with Xbox 360, PC coding, and that all important job of earning money and forgot all about my Wii and the awesome guys here.

Now that introductions are over, here is my main reason for posting. I've finally worked my way to understanding and coding C++ and a little bit of Lua and would like to try my hand at developing a simple "Hello World" app for myself on the Wii before I try to work on bigger projects. However, that means that unfortunately I need the fabled USB Gecko which I can't find on the usual suspects (won't go into details for the rules sake). So basically what I'm trying to say is does anyone have a USB Gecko for sale? I'm located in the US if that helps and would not prefer the USB Gecko SE, but if that's what's available, I'll take that.

For what it's worth, I think many devs get by without a USB Gecko. You can always rely on stack dumps for some help with debugging, and of course you can also add extra outputs (printf statements or outputting to a file) for debugging purposes. Not quite as convenient as a USB Gecko, perhaps, but you should be able to debug a lot of errors with a combination of those if you can't get your hands on a USB Gecko (they do seem rather elusive these days).

EDIT: Certainly for your early, simpler projects you should be absolutely fine without a USB gecko



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2013 08:25PM by SifJar.

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SifJar
Not quite as convenient as a USB Gecko, perhaps, but you should be able to debug a lot of errors with a combination of those if you can't get your hands on a USB Gecko (they do seem rather elusive these days).

EDIT: Certainly for your early, simpler projects you should be absolutely fine without a USB gecko

I'm not really so worried about convenience with the USB Gecko more than I would like to get one before they just become legends of yesteryear in forums and stuff. That way when I get around to some of the more complicated stuff, I have it available rather than having to track through the usual dead links looking for one. If I have to resort to not using a Gecko for later projects, is there some type of software that I can use with a Bootmii dump to recreate a Wii that I can use as a development sandbox on a PC?

I think Dolphin can do that, but I also believe that Dolphin isn't ideal for development purposes, as there are things which can crash Dolphin which work fine on a real Wii, and there are various other inaccuracies between how Dolphin works and how an actual Wii works.

Ok then (not sure if I can mention this as I don't really know how it works so sorry if it breaks the rules) would that NEEK thing, or whatever it's called work instead of Dolphin? I vaguely remember reading that it was some type of developmental sandbox for the Wii.

Also I remember reading on WiiBrew that you could build you're own USB Gecko. How hard would that be and would it be easier than trying to find a Gecko for sale?

To build your own, you'd probably need a decent knowledge of electronics (you'd need to be able to read the schematics, understand them, find the components, put them together correctly [includes soldering]).

As for NEEK, it's main purpose is using the SD card or a USB device as the Wii's "NAND" (it stands for "NAND and ES Emulation Kit"), but it does also have features involving debug logging to the SD card/USB device. The obvious downside of this is that it means you run something, debug output gets logged to SD card, you turn off the Wii, put the SD card into your computer, read the log etc. rather than getting live output. (For live output, I believe you require a USB gecko).

Seeing as this is the case, you can just manually log stuff to the SD card in your program.

BTW, NEEK isn't really supported here, as it can be used for warez. Given the subject of your question, I think it's OK, but just for future reference.