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There is a new product which promises to open up the Nintendo Wii to Homebrew Development. This device called the Drive Doctor, by Datel, will allow you to view and modify memory currently running on your Wii. This capability allows you to run any code you want but unfortunately the Drive Doctor does have a limitation; you need to solder in a few wires. On the other hand having access to runtime memory may lead to some advances towards softmods allowing homebrew without special hardware.
More Detailed Information
Drive Doctor connects to your PC via a high speed USB (cable supplied). It allows you to view and modify the DVD drive’s memory in real-time. Drive Doctor’s powerful ARM7 processor, running at 60MHz, makes read and write operations quick and easy. You can then review its innermost operations, watching your Wii software in action through Drive Doctor’s PC application. You can even add data of your own, all from your PC. Drive Doctor’s memory and command views give you a unique insight into the innermost workings of your Wii’s drive memory, and even lets you make on-the-fly adjustments. You can read status, write data, send control commands, report the drive status and more. By injecting your own code into the data stream, you can create your own effects and experiment with modifying the program. It’s fun! And as the Wii home brew scene grows and prospers, the device will also come in handy for playing freely-downloadable software straight from your console.
Still Intrested?
If the thought of playing with cryptic hexadecimal values gets you excited then maybe you should head over to the UK codejunkies website for even more info including purchase info.
17 Comments »
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posting from my wii. this thing makes me have hope for the little shitbrick
Comment — October 4, 2007 @ 5:49 pm
This is one of the dumbest products ever. Who would spend money, invalidate their Wii’’s warrenty, and possibly mess up its system code with one of these!? And for what, winning a game by cheating. (That is, if you don'’t ruin your Wii.) This is just another dumb piece of unlicensed equipment for nerds that have nothing better to do and are bad at video games. I, for one, play my Wii like a normal person. This is just retarded crap! Now go meet some new friends (not on the internet), step out of your mom’’s basement, and see the real world!
Comment — October 24, 2007 @ 1:38 pm
In response to the comment on Oct 24, this is not targeted towards the average person. Clearly, it is a step towards reverse-engineering the Wii’s memory, which should allow talented nerds…uhm, programmers…to make significant progress towards the development of a functional emulator. And that’s what this site is about, isn’t it?
Comment — January 8, 2008 @ 9:29 pm
What wrong with running the Wii normally WITHOUT using any hacks? I for one think the Wii has no problems… If there is a problem, it’s probably you.
Comment — January 22, 2008 @ 11:05 am
You are a f___ing idiot. do you know why you play zelda 8 on nes? because of those wonderful people. Do you know who actually DEVELOPED the psx game crash team racing?
people like us. it was a homebrew, the company liked it and bought it. and, another thought, Why do you give two shits what we do with our wii? We have lives and girlfriends that we actually know to talk to. You are an ignoramus that is close minded and talks crap out of your ass on subjects that you don’t even know about. Do you know who made the protocol of torrent that you use to pirate all your movies? People like us. BTW, IM ONLY 15 turning 16 in may. Also we are very well at speaking English and we know how to use the semicolon instead of fragmenting sentences. Good day.
Comment — February 13, 2008 @ 7:34 pm
This may be a important step to emulations and my favorite, playing games that aren’t even out yet! All of you are morrons! This is the biggest step for wii mods(which I disprove of) and emulators yet!
Comment — February 26, 2008 @ 5:25 pm
:P i am a professional programmer, just like all programmers, im a bit nuts.
So i bought a drive doctor, installed it and now i can run my own stuff on it.
Works for me, and i think its an interesting device.
And to the guy talking smack about people like me, i guess you never visited the real world. Must be very amusing living in your own little world where people that are smarter then you have a social disorder.
I live on my own, have more ex-girlfriends then you can count, and offcourse i make a shitload of cash. I also play my guitars and hang with my friends, smoking some dutch stuff and i’m just 20 years old.
The whole mom’s basement stuff is really outdated, so, if you’re ready to visit the real world, lemme know.
Comment — April 17, 2008 @ 1:59 pm
Most people relate things with Hollywood movies too much, Most of us aren’t “Geeks”or “Nerds” I want to use this device for games like Fire Emblem where getting characters. To add to the pointless and futile argument people like us developed that box your sit your ass in front of all day!
Comment — June 9, 2008 @ 1:53 am
Don’t feed the trolls, people. Be secure enough in your dorkiness (which is a good thing, trust me) that you don’t feel the need to defend yourself against every little slight from people deliberately trying to provoke you. All that does is make you look bad yourself and it gives them exactly what they want.
Most of the readers here are on your side so you don’t need to preach to the choir.
Comment — June 23, 2008 @ 6:47 am
this sounds like a really cool piece of hardware, and if i had a wii (i’ve played one, and i love them!) and i knew how to program i’d love to try and put a character of mine in a game to replace the main character or an NPC or something!
…or just re-create the entire game’s imagery…
Comment — October 17, 2008 @ 8:42 am
This seems like a huge step in Wii modding…I should get one.
To all you against Wii modding, I understand your point of view. I know alot about the inside of my Wii, and if I didn’t, I wouldn’t dare open up my Wii and install this.
It’s worth it, though.
Geeks ftw!
Comment — November 14, 2008 @ 5:37 pm
I have the Wii Drive doctore but i can’t find any homebrews for it! :’(
Comment — January 5, 2009 @ 11:31 am
stupid. you need this to run hacked games, thats all. original game prices are a drag.
Comment — January 23, 2009 @ 12:19 am
Yet from what this says it seems to me like just another way to hack your console so you can play all games without having to pay for them, which eventually leads to developpers like yourself but who have been sucessfull by becoming true developpers for big companies, problems with developping, because their clientele they are seking prefers to download the content and play free by hacking that same system instead of buying the thing and encourage them.
i was starting to be a programmer back in the days but i was too weak in mats. one thing i’ve learned is that if everyone started to take the easy route to sucess, like hacking and downloading by pirating all of the stuff… you’d have no more consoles going on on the market, games would just fall short and companies would just stop publishing anything. the same with all movies you refuse to go see in theathers or even refuse to buy on DVD.
the movie industry is already showing signs of demise from internet piracy. i suggest you guys don’t make the same mistake with the gaming industry which might be bigger, but can fall down as fast as the video and music industry is.
that said.
i am not against piracy in the way that it provides people with DEMOs of kind. as in you try the game, you like it, go buy it. Demos have became a real problem and now a days we can’t have em for any games that comes out. we are forced to look upon videos and screenshoits that truly doesn’t give the game its due. so, if that drive doctor enables me to play nintendo wii games on my actual wii. then so be it, it must be worth it. but i am proud of saying that even if i am not rich like most of you hackers seems to be. i am proud of that little 10 games collection i am having now, and i know i wont be pirating things for the fun of saying, hey i tryed it, it was fun and now let’s move on. because i didn’t buy a wii for that purpose.
trying the thing is one thing, but i strongly encourage people that actually love the game, that they do try to get in real format. not just in a pirated version of it. that way you encourage the gaming industries and local companies who are actually living on it. that way you favorise economy and that way your country can live another century without having a financial deficit.
Comment — February 14, 2010 @ 11:19 pm
This tool does not really seem useful, because of the level of debugging you can achieve. I’m assuming debugging applications is what this is used for, because the NAND (memory) of the Wii can be read, so every application can. Another use could be memory hacks, but I don’t see what you would hack.
I’m a nerd, I like breaking into stuff, trying to get things nicer, faster and better and my Wii is no exception. Also, Nintendo has done a really crappy job writing the Wii software.
Oh and anthony: nice rant but “we are very well at speaking English” seems kind of stupid and ironic. (FYI “well” should be “good”)
Comment — March 13, 2010 @ 2:12 pm
Hey, I fairy amazed with this info. Wii homebrew development?
I thinks its worth to keep eye on this info.
Comment — March 30, 2010 @ 10:12 pm
this will be possible untill nintendo finds out and will make an update to protect it and then this will be useless so it’s thrown away money
Comment — April 13, 2010 @ 12:53 pm