freshly back into GC modding - questions about flashing a wiikey fusion

Portables, case replacements, mods etc, all in here!
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junits15
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freshly back into GC modding - questions about flashing a wiikey fusion

Post by junits15 » Mon Apr 27, 2020 1:56 am

Hey all,
This marks my first time back on this forum in 6 years! Stepped away from console modding back then to focus on my degree. Now that i'm graduated and working I've been slowly picking up all my old hobbies including console modding.

I have a good condition DOL-001 cube that I picked up off ebay for $30 a few years ago. I also have a genuine Wiikey fusion from back in the day, and a CARBY component cable. I had previously had the wiikey installed and working in a different gamecube. During a failed attempt at case-modding that cube, I killed that system and pulled the wiikey from it. I used the wiikey in my wii after that, and recently extracted it for use in this gamecube. The wiikey was never upgraded from the stock firmware, i have no idea what firmware it is running and no easy way to check it.

I know some years ago mega used to sell adapter boards for the wasp/wiikey. I see that those are currently unavailable. After some researching around I came across citrus3000psi's freely available daughter-board designs here: viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3636 and his github page on the project here: https://github.com/citrus3000psi/GameCube-Wasp-QSB. The assembly and installation of this is well within my abilities. I have the components and the boards on order.

I guess the question I would like to ask the community is what is the proper thing to do with regard to the wiikey firmware? I know i want to get swiss onto it, but since I never flashed the firmware i am not familar with the process. Can i re-install the wiikey in my wii and flash the firmware there before installing it into my cube? That way I can know for sure the firmware flash is good before I install it into my cube.

Citrus' boards allow the use of the original GC drive when the wiikey is in pass-through mode, an excellent feature, I'm assuming this will not work on the stock wiikey firmware? If there is a sticky or similar post somewhere please let me know as well.

if anyone has any additional recommendations or comments please don't hesitate to let me know! Thank you all in advance.
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emu_kidid
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Re: freshly back into GC modding - questions about flashing a wiikey fusion

Post by emu_kidid » Thu Apr 30, 2020 10:58 pm

Recommendations are: Do you really want to use the WKF? These days Swiss is very good at playing backups from the SD card->Memory card adaptors + SD Serial Port 2 adaptor. Not to mention there's a GC ODE that was made by a forum member here.

If you really want to flash Swiss onto that WKF, you need to make yourself a WBFS SD card with Swiss on it as a bootable ISO, once booted, use another device and have the Swiss .FZN and .FZN.FW files on it and click the .FZN file to flash it. After that your WKF will only read whatever file systems are supported in Swiss (FAT32 recommended). Remember that the WKF is also limited to 64GB SD cards.
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junits15
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Re: freshly back into GC modding - questions about flashing a wiikey fusion

Post by junits15 » Sun May 03, 2020 12:07 am

emu_kidid wrote:
Thu Apr 30, 2020 10:58 pm
Recommendations are: Do you really want to use the WKF? These days Swiss is very good at playing backups from the SD card->Memory card adaptors + SD Serial Port 2 adaptor. Not to mention there's a GC ODE that was made by a forum member here.

If you really want to flash Swiss onto that WKF, you need to make yourself a WBFS SD card with Swiss on it as a bootable ISO, once booted, use another device and have the Swiss .FZN and .FZN.FW files on it and click the .FZN file to flash it. After that your WKF will only read whatever file systems are supported in Swiss (FAT32 recommended). Remember that the WKF is also limited to 64GB SD cards.
Hey thanks for the reply, I really appreciate the advice. I’m not married to the idea of using the WKF, in fact I’ve been using a bootable Swiss disk and a xenogc to boot from an sd2sp2 with great results. I mostly just want to take the optical drive out of the equation, in the event that it ever fails.

I figured the wkf would give me an easy way to autoboot into Swiss with no drive.
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Re: freshly back into GC modding - questions about flashing a wiikey fusion

Post by emu_kidid » Mon May 04, 2020 11:18 pm

junits15 wrote:
Sun May 03, 2020 12:07 am
I figured the wkf would give me an easy way to autoboot into Swiss with no drive.
Most would figure this is the route to go but you'd be locking your GameCube down with a unsupported and outdated device IMHO.
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junits15
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Re: freshly back into GC modding - questions about flashing a wiikey fusion

Post by junits15 » Fri May 08, 2020 1:42 pm

emu_kidid wrote:
Mon May 04, 2020 11:18 pm
junits15 wrote:
Sun May 03, 2020 12:07 am
I figured the wkf would give me an easy way to autoboot into Swiss with no drive.
Most would figure this is the route to go but you'd be locking your GameCube down with a unsupported and outdated device IMHO.
Fair point, I guess I’ll keep my eye out for a hyperboot
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