Community Drive Chip?

[gamefreakfatty]

Since the WKF and the WASP have both halted production, are there any plans to work on a community drive chip? It doesn't really matter to me whether it's open source or just a clone of the WKF. It would be sad to see things slow down in the GameCube portablizing scene since those chips have become an important component for anyone intending to build one.

I don't have any experience with this type of work and don't know what exactly it would entail, but my guess is that making a clone of the WKF would be the better route to go. Neither option would be easy, but this would probably be the less difficult of the two, especially since we already know the WKF works perfectly fine for portables.

I'm guessing the part we'd have the most trouble with would be acquiring the code for the FPGA. I've been having a lot of trouble finding any technical details or discussions on the WKF, how it works, or what its updates contain. Is there anyone who has done some reverse engineering on them? I'd be curious to see if the WKF updates contain the code for the FPGA, even if it's encrypted.

I know emu_kidid over at GC-Forever was able to get the source code for the XenoGC chip. I might be remembering wrong, but I think the XenoGC team and the WiiKey team were the same group. I think saw a post from emu_kidid mentioning that he had asked the WiiKey team for the source code to the WKF before, but I think that was before they'd stopped production. Has anyone heard anything about that or if he's tried to contact them about it since then?

For the time being, I don't really have a lot of time or money to invest in something like this myself. There's a lot I'd need to learn before I'd really be of any help anyway. I was just curious to see if anything like that was being worked on and thought someone else might know if there's anything going on that just isn't being posted on any forums or that I've just simply missed.

 

[JvaOneShotz]

Well, http://www.BadAssConsoles.com still makes them but making a Community Drive Replacement would be a LOT of work. It might not even be JUST mod retro but also the people from GC-Forever and all the Other forums... If we EVER do this we will have to work till' we drop...

 

[Bush]

I don't think a PCB would be too difficult to design, but the FPGA code is another story. I'm not too educated on them, but could the fpga code be read and dumped from an existing wkf or wasp?

 

[gamefreakfatty]

Re:

I don't think a PCB would be too difficult to design, but the FPGA code is another story. I'm not too educated on them, but could the fpga code be read and dumped from an existing wkf or wasp?

As far as I can tell, you're not supposed to be able to read the code from them. I don't know if you could get the code from an existing WKF or WASP without decapping the chip. If that's what it takes, it probably won't be worth it. It might be worth looking into the updates to see what's in them though.

 

[DuHasst0]

The wkf and wasps FPGA code is secured upon writing from with megalomanic had said in the past.

 

[megalomaniac]

a community drive chip?? why bother??
a drive chip is a device that injects code to the DVD drive to unlock it and allow reading DVD-r backup discs...
if you want a drive chip, make a xeno clone...




now if you are referring to a real modchip, then just wait and see what will be replacing WKF/WASP....
it will be quite a few months down the road because there is also another project in the works to also allow further support / improved support in conjunction with this new modchip and its also something that will improve performance on any GC no matter what method, viper, qoob, sdml....dont matter what it boot method, this will offer improved performance...it will be a while till its finished and released, but its coming!!

until then WKF/WASP still offer the very best compatibility
and dont forget, audio streaming support is also coming to WKF/WASP to allow even greater compatibility than the original firmware...

exciting times are coming!!!

 

[naimlessone]

Sounds pretty interesting Mega! Can't wait to see what you're creating for us!

Any news about when we can expect new orders for WASPs?