I'm going to build a Wii+PC combo in a small portable case, and planning to use Flatmii to stream the games to the Wii, as there is no room for the Wii's DVD drive (the case is already built long before I decided to put Wii into it).
Now, it would also be nice to be able to play games directly from the discs. Is it possible (with or without modchips) to use the PC's DVD drive together with the Wii (could build a hardware switch to connect it to either the PC or the Wii)?
The only thing I could think of is using a flatmii and loading the games from your PC. That would be your best bet.
But you definitely could not use a regular drive because the wii does not use a standard interface to interact with the drive (eg. IDE, SATA, or PATA).
Although the flatmii is not cheap. It's about 60 dollars (not including shipping) on even the cheapest websites like modchipcentral.com.
I know the Wii uses non-standard interfaces. However I read something about a SATA "adapter" (which is why I mentioned modchips). Now googled it some more and it seems the WiiZii hasn't been released yet and will probably take a while...
Is there any info available of it yet? Would it even be possible for it to support SATA DVD drives with original Wii discs? Read that only a few drives are able to read the discs, why?
I still need the Flatmii as the original idea was to stream the games (hey, it will be built into a computer), so I've already ordered it. Being able to still use it as a regular Wii would just be a bonus.
As it took 3 months to build the case, this is probably still far in the future. It's 30x28x5.4cm and already holds a mATX, slim DVD, 2.5" HDD and 2 PCI cards. Adding a Wii will be tricky but it looks like it could work =)
No that SATA connector was for HDs. It was a completely different concept. I guess the idea behind the wiizii was to read isos from a HD connected to the wii.
Frankly no one knows if the wiizii is going to go into mass production any time soon or if it is even real at all.
Oh and of course even if it could their are only a few extremely specific lg drives that could read it. Not to mention those were only certain firmware drives which haven't been produced in a very long time so they are extremely expensive.
And you also have to understand that the wii drive does all of the disk checking and everything directly from the disk module specifically the d2* chip.
But I do understand what your trying to do. Although it would be nice if you gave some more details. So I'm guessing your trying to build a computer case with space for the wii and slots for the outputs such as video and power and the inputs, the power button although you could just use your wiimote to turn it on and off.
Btw you do know that if the wii is in a metal case it might hurt your bluetooth signal.
So why can only those few drives read the discs? And isn't one of the points in modchips to skip the "check" =)
Anyway, guess I'll just stick with streaming... maybe somehow make the Wii-drive some kind of external accessory.
Here is the build log for the case, and here it's translated from swedish to english.
edit:
Oh, and the Wii is also in a metal case. The BT chip is half outside of it, and the Wifi has an "external" antenna. I'll try it later to see how well it works in the case.
Wii and gamecube disks are printed backwards, from the edge of the disk inward. All other optical media is written from the inside out. So only drives with a specific set of error checking hardware and software can handle that. Thats why only that one group of drives can be used to read wii disks.
1. I don't know. For some random reason LG made a firmware for a few DVD drives (some of them are not even burners) that could read wii discs. Why? no one quite knows...but they only made them for a shot period of time before they updated the firmware to fix this "bug"
2. The checks that the drivechips skips are checks on the physical disks. Games made for console have unique copy protections that are burned into them that require extremely advanced DVD presses (the things they have in factories). Thus no discs have ever been made for consoles that don't require some mod to work. For example puts codes and genuinity information outside of the normal burning area of DVDs. The DVDs themselves are also specially made to work with wiis. The DVDs are manufacured just for that one console.
3. Perfect, as long as its outside the metal case, it should be fine inside the computer case. Heck people have added BT modules to eepcs all the time and they work fine and those aren't nearly as powerful as the wii bluetooth.
PS your case looks very smexy...I want that beast so bad xD
