Who still owns a USB Gecko?

Hello everyone, it’s been a while since I’ve created a topic on my own besides commenting on others topics so I decided to ask everyone a question that most people can’t answer really but screw it.

Who still owns a USB Gecko out of everyone still active? Besides Bully since he is like 80 years old at this point and that is like a Civil War medal to him.

I’ve been looking to get one and I’m way off on timing here maybe 7 years late but meaning I still have my Wii why not say screw it lol

I always thought there should have been a better way to hack Wii codes, instead of having to buy a device and only produce a limited quantity of them. Why can't we hook up a USB cable to the back of the Wii and get into the RAM that way from the PC, you know. I know, in some way at least, that it could be done wit maybe some modifications. I ran Gecko Codes from an SD card reader before.

I still own mine. Bully actually was the one who sold it to me. I am not interested in giving it up though. Sorry!

SnB@BWH wrote:I always thought there should have been a better way to hack Wii codes, instead of having to buy a device and only produce a limited quantity of them. Why can't we hook up a USB cable to the back of the Wii and get into the RAM that way from the PC, you know. I know, in some way at least, that it could be done wit maybe some modifications. I ran Gecko Codes from an SD card reader before.

In theory, you should, people have done something similar on XBOX / PS. but it would require software that makes the data/ram readable to the computer. I know this is what the gecko does. But making your own software would give you way more options.

Just food for thought.

Sorta like make a APP for HomeBrew. Its function would be to open a port or make the ongoing files readable/copyable to a directory or folder on the computer and or a usb stick / sdcard that is connected to the Wii. Later to be read by the computer.

@Modder~kid

Exactly. I know you can use cheat codes via a USB. Gecko OS reads from both the SD card reader and the USB ports. You would just need a bridging cable from the Wii to the PC, and direct the Wii to read from the USB bridge hooked to a mounted drive for cheat code reading. But for memory reading / writing, you'd need further programming. Perhaps, you would only need to modify Gecko dotNET or create a new program to read / write to the Wii, but maybe you would need to modify Gecko OS as well, and I wouldn't know how you would do that (devkit Pro?).

On Wii U we use a TCP connection wirelessly to your computer so you can start making codes without any additional hardware. It works using just the local network. This is what Wii could/should have been but I guess someone wanted to make money off selling USB Geckos or something (well, a cable is also a bit more stable/faster than wireless).

TCPGecko (Homebrew app) found Here could be recoded to what Bully said to make it work on Wii if someone knew C++ and could recode it to make it work.

TCPGecko.NET or TCPGecko dNet (Software) used for Wii U modding over TCP could also be modified as well as Bully’s J GeckoU if he would recode it.

As we all know the Wii is dying and no body in the right mind would ever think of doing this unless you are stuck in your house bored and want to code something and knew what they were doing (wink wink hint hint @Bully). I don’t know C++ but would surely look into it if I did. It would open up so many roads to new people.

There are a ton of ways to search memory with dolphin these days.

Check this program out.
https://github.com/aldelaro5/Dolphin-memory-engine/releases/tag/v0.5-beta

This looks like a great tool, I never tried anything but the USB Gecko method. How good are the Dolphin debugging tools? It might be more time efficient these days than messing with a real Wii. I love my breakpoints though and I doubt it has them

Nope, no advanced features like breakpoints. We should bug him about it Bully!
I posted here to thank him for his work:
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19437

I've heard you can do a ton of work arounds with cheat engine but its complicated and I still don't think the ASM will work in cheat engine either because it does not interpret PPC ASM, only x86-64.
https://smashboards.com/threads/using-cheat-engine-with-dolphin.442909/

DME(Dolphin Memory Engine) is programmed in C++ and Cheat Engine is programmed in Delphi.

Interesting Reads:
https://aldelaro5.wordpress.com/2017/06/19/the-annoyance-when-no-ram-search-works-with-an-emulator/
https://aldelaro5.wordpress.com/2017/07/22/progress-on-my-new-dolphin-ram-search-the-initial-ram-watch-is-done/
https://aldelaro5.wordpress.com/2017/08/10/first-beta-release-of-dolphin-memory-engine-how-a-memory-scanner-is-done/

Me and Bully were just talking. You can do a lot of things with Dolphin but of course it’s not fun that you can’t mod online games. I’d still rather have the physical console and mod that than use Dolphin still like the old days. A lot more stable then using software to run your games

Nice links Welohabi, I liked reading them. I've been into C++ a lot more lately. It's a fun and challenging language with a lot of potential to be unleashed for good stuff.

All you'd have to do for reading PPC in Dolphin is Google up the Hex opcodes and convert them from what the memory viewer is reading. Then, from there, build a memory viewer, but of Hex-converted PPC instructions. Then get that guy to implement cheat code creation fom within DME. It can be done!

I was working on a while back, a PPC Hex opcodes understanding of how instructions are converted to Hex. It's quite simple actually, it's just a basic algorithm sorta thing.

Is gecko.net or Wiird open source? Maybe the guy could use it for reference?

Yes, Gecko dotNET is.

https://code.google.com/archive/p/geckowii/source/default/source

This picture looks a lot like breakpoints built into Dolphin's debugger. I haven't used this. I'm assuming it is PPC ASM though.

@Welohabi

Yes, that is PowerPC. Both the Wii and GameCube ran a PowerPC CPU. I had already known that Dolphin had breakpoints built-in. Should have mentioned that earlier, lol

SnB@BWH wrote:Yes, Gecko dotNET is.

https://code.google.com/archive/p/geckowii/source/default/source

That's an old version of the source unfortunately, there have been tons of updates for it. The latest couple releases by dtx2 were closed source.

@Bully

Still, it could be used as a somewhat decent reference, no?

@everyone

I think I may have mentioned this before, but there was this time, my SD card enclosure for the chip inside was splitting on the edges, eventually would have lead to the entire chip being exposed, rendering it useless, as it wouldn't fit in the slot anymore. So, to save it, I picked up an SD card reader. Thinking it wasn't going to be read by Gecko OS... But it was! I could use cheat codes by using the USB slot at back.

Now, I'm not sure if it was only read because, technically, it's just an SD card as an adapter. It's not being read as a USB, just a bridge connection between the SD card and the Wii. I wish I still had my Wii... Wish I still had my Gecko, but those were the days I should have had things as such in mind.

If cheat codes and even apps too can be read from a USB, maybe we could... Maybe we should... In the future, make a USB connection hack device from simple materials and sources that can be easily reproduced by anyone, which would mean, you could build it yourself, with just some already-written code, and stuff you can order online or in a store.

One of these days, when we can all put in our time together, we should definitely do that. Either that, or have Dolphin SIGNIFICANTLY improved. Dolphin may be really good, and quite actually, the only option we may have, but it definitetly needs to be improved in a lot of ways, especially for code creation.