Planning on getting a Wii soon *Advice needed*

Hi there, I do not have a Wii of my own just yet, but im planning on getting one very soon. And i just had a couple questions first I wanted to just be sure of. Excuse my newbie-ness.

** My laptop does not have a SD card reader at all, so I realize I'll have to get a USB reader device and my first question is..
What brand or model or whatever USB SD card reader would anyone recommend to buy??

I know there's tons of different readers all over the internet, but I just wanted to be sure of what you experts would recommend.

** Next question - I hear that there's a new type of Wii that was just released a short while ago, or coming soon before the end of this year, that does not have any sort of Gamecube controller support, or anything-gamecube at all.
Will those work with The Homebrew Channel ?? I have no idea.. because of the IOS stuff and such.

I was considering on getting a used Wii from Gamestop. Not one of the brand new types this holiday season.

I just only really plan on wanting to just use emulators like FCEUX (fce ultra), snes9x, visual boy advance, etc etc - via Homebrew Channel. Not any complicated major apps or stuff with risks.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2012 08:25AM by kujakiller.

All Wiis work just fine with homebrew. The ones without GC compatibility are called the "family bundle" or something like that I think, so if you care about GC, try and get one of the normal ones instead of one of them.

As for card readers: pretty much any should do the job. You shouldn't need to use it too often (just for transferring the installation files to the card, and then any homebrew apps you want; for apps though, you can download them directly on the Wii using "Homebrew Browser", or you can transfer them to the SD card wirelessly using wiiload, or you can load them from a USB drive - SD is only mandatory for installation purposes). Probably stay away from the dirt cheap ones, but something in the region of a few dollars/pounds/euros/whatever should be perfectly sufficient.

If you need any more help, don't hesitate to ask.

Okay then, cool. :)
Well, i typed in "SD card reader" into amazon... and got over 80,000 results :( Sheesh

Uhhh.. is this one fine i guess ??
Amazon SD link

And.. if I understand correctly, the bootmi installer (for installing Homebrew Channel) supposedly will only work on SD cards 2 GB or less correct ??

So then this should be just fine, as I checked the compabilitity list on the wiibrew wiki:
2 GB sandisk

Kinda bummer, cause I think i'll require at least 3 to 4 GB for my emulators and games. Would kinda hate to have to buy 2 seperate copies. Would rather just buy 1 single 4 GB card ..but the installation requiring 2 GB card or less. heh. Ah well. It's understandable.

** Edit: actually, I think just 2 GB will be enough. The only real major stuff that takes up tons of space are DS games. they're between 64 to 256 MB apiece. And i saw a youtube video on here:
[wiibrew.org]
And it was super slow. But wouldn't know if the latest version offers any speedup.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/16/2012 08:06AM by kujakiller.

I think SDHC cards should work fine for installing. With older methods, they didn't because old System Menus didn't support SDHC (homebrew had SDHC support before the Wii officially got it), but I believe with the latest System Menu and exploits, SDHC should be just fine (i.e. sizes over 2GB). BTW, there isn't such a thing as a 3GB card ;)

And yes that card reader looks fine, although a bit on the expensive side I'd have thought. Personally I'd go for something cheaper, but it's up to you. Literally any SD card reader should be fine. (You can even use a camera or something like that if you have one that supports SD cards and has a USB cable)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/16/2012 03:23PM by SifJar.

Alright i officially received my wii yesterday afternoon. It was a fresh clean install looks like.
The first time i turned it on, i had to go through all the intial console setup stuff.
Everything's been fine, and i checked the System menu version, it said it was already 4.3 U. No games/channels, etc. Just only the pre-factory setup)

I proceeded to do the letterbomb, and it looks like i did get one of the early wii's. It said i was allowed to install bootmi as "boot 2"
I did that just in case.
So, i know that every time i turn on the wii now, it also shows the bootmi menu instead of the "health and saftey" screen first.
Everything's just fine. :)

I have not done anything else just yet, but since i have the boot2, should i just uhh.. do the nand backup thing "just in case" for the future ?? I never touched anything yet. I'm by no means an expert or such, with all the risky stuff like that.

Just only installed the homebrew channel with favorite emulators - fceux GX, snes9x, visualboy advance, n64.. and so on. So i could play some stuff on TV now instead of computer.

1 last thing - i only saw 1 single thing that really scared me.. when i first tried out the "homebrew browser" - it was saying all that stuff about connecting to a website, downloading the homebrew list or something. after 5 rows of dots, the whole TV turned into black and white vertical bars, followed by some "exception error" with hundreds of numbers. It totally froze the wii until i forced it off with power button :(
I tried it again later, and it worked just fine with no trouble.
Just thought i'd let you know



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/2012 02:28PM by kujakiller.

Yep, take a NAND dump and keep it in a safe place (probably somewhere on your computer rather than wasting space on your SD card).

As for the dsi exception, don't worry about. That happens every now and again, it's nothing serious. If it always happens at the exact same time in the same app, you should contact the developer to report a bug.

OK, i did the nand backup thing now.
It said that only just 3 single blocks were "bad". All the other 4000+ good. so that's all fine.

I have a couple more questions if I may ask.

Is there any homebrew app that can play video content from Justin.TV ?? or other video sites... "NOT" youtube. Cause i would really love being able to test out seeing some stuff on my TV instead of computer.

I know the wii's own regular "internet channel" dont work. Cause every single site i go on just says "please download flash" ..and sometimes a message pop's up saying "the wii ran out of memory, please reload" or something... heh.
----------------------------
My next question - which app do i need to get to do the FTP upload thing for the SD card ??
I just wanted to try it out.
About transfering stuff from my comp to the SD card without having to ever take it out of the wii.
Correct me if im wrong but apparently BOTH "wii load" and "FTP wii" can both do it.

But which one is recommended or the easiest to setup ??



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2012 03:21AM by kujakiller.