GerbilSoft, on 27 June 2013 - 07:02 PM, said:
The other option, which is probably cheaper, is getting a used Wii RVL-001 and third-party Wii component cable.
This, plus you can softmod it and run most GCN games from a USB drive, prolonging the life of your optical drive. DIOS MIOS (there's also a Lite version that loads games from SD, but that seems pointless to me) has minor incompatibility issues with games that use audio streaming, and if you're using a component cable it assumes progressive scan for its splash screen (even if your Wii is set to 480i and you're using a CRT), while Devolution is actually running GCN games in Wii mode, and can handle audio streaming, but requires a one-time verification of original disc possession (which may be a dealbreaker if one were to have, or buy for cheap, a Wii with a broken optical drive). DIOS MIOS is a custom MIOS replacement, while Devolution is a standalone app. The benefit to using DIOS MIOS, in my opinion, is that you can run your 1.35GB ISO/GCM images through DMToolbox (which comes with DM) and scrub them of wasted space, similar to the .wbfs file format for wii games. Devolution requires 1:1 rips like you would get with CleanRip, and thus requires each game to take up 1.35GB of space. Both DM and Devolution support virtual memory cards (called "no more memory" in the Wii scene), but compatibility is much spottier than on the PS2 with Open PS2 Loader (which I use, and VMC compatibility is quite high), so I recommend using a physical memory card.
If you do this, I recommend trying to find an older Wii (pre-2008 for sure, as they fixed the strncmp bug present in boot1 sometime during 2008) so that you can install BootMii/boot2, which provides low-level brick protection - even if you nearly completely fuck your NAND, as long as the first 8 blocks are intact, then you can put an SD card in with the BootMii files that the installer will prepare for you, and restore the entire NAND from a backup that you make with BootMii (which I recommend doing regularly). If you get a newer GCN-compatible Wii, you won't be able to install BootMii except as an IOS, which provides much less protection if something happens to your System Menu or the IOSs that it uses, as it requires a sane NAND filesystem. There's also priiloader, which is sort of in-between BootMii/boot2 and BootMii/IOS for brick protection - it runs before the System Menu, but depends on the IOS that the System Menu uses, so if something happens to that, then you're hosed. This will run on newer GCN-compatible Wiis with the newer version of boot1. Boot1 can never be modified, as the system checks its hash against a value stored in one-time programmable memory, so the hash can never be changed, and if boot1's hash doesn't match, then you pretty much have a bricked Wii unless you reflash the NAND with a hardware programmer.
TL;DR: Get an older pre-2008 Wii, softmod it, run your GCN games from a USB hard drive, and use cheap Wii component cables instead of highly expensive GCN component cables. Also, I use too many fucking parentheses.
This post has been edited by LocalH: 28 June 2013 - 09:04 PM
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