| Progress Continues We've already had 13187 updates since Dolphin 5.0. Keep up with Dolphin's continuing progress through the Dolphin Blog: July, August, and September 2020 Progress Report. |
- Install Wii Games From Usb
- How To Install Wii Homebrew
- How To Install Wii Games
- How To Install Wii Channels
- Wii Channel Music
Plug your USB hard drive back into your Wii, load up WAD manager via homebrew, find the wad you just created and install it. If at any time you need to uninstall this channel, simply load up the WAD manager, find your wad, and select “uninstall” instead of install. I also managed to install all the official Wii channels (internet channel, Netflix etc) and they too work. I now only need the Weather channel. The News channel and HULU Plus channel. If any has them in wad format please let me know.
| The Dolphin Emulator Wiki needs your help! Dolphin can play thousands of games, and changes are happening all the time. Help us keep up! Join in and help us make this the best resource for Dolphin. |
| Homebrew Channel | |
|---|---|
| Type | Downloadable (third party) |
| Developer(s) | Team Twiizers |
| Platform(s) | Wii Channels |
| Release date(s) | April 2, 2008 |
| Genre(s) | Utility |
| Input methods | Wii Remote, Wii Remote + Nunchuk, Classic Controller, GameCube Controller, Guitar Controller |
| Compatibility | 5 Perfect |
| GameIDs | HAXXHB, OHBCHB, LULZHB |
| See also... | Dolphin Forum thread |
The Homebrew Channel is a freeware homebrew application loader that was developed to provide a way of easily running unofficial software on the Wii console. Once installed, it appears as a standard Wii Channel on the Wii Menu. When launched, it displays a list of applications found on an SD card or USB drive. The user then selects an application to launch by using a Wii Remote or GameCube controller. It also accepts application uploads via a USB Gecko or TCP/IP (over Wi-Fi or Ethernet), which allows for quick application testing during development. When launched from the Wii Menu, the Homebrew Channel will check for updates to itself and automatically download them if the user chooses to do so.
The functionality provided by the Homebrew Channel is provided by Dolphin directly, so the HBC is not needed (except to work around Dolphin's broken Wii homebrew detection in some cases).
- 1Emulation Information
- 2Problems
Emulation Information
Pre-1.1.3 Black Screen
The developers of the Homebrew Channel had placed traps into the program to prevent the Homebrew Channel from loading in Dolphin. There are other problems in pre-1.1.3 versions, which won't be documented here. The 1.1.3 release of the Homebrew Channel, which is now open source, has removed the anti-Dolphin code.
Missing SD card adapter support
Dolphin does not emulate the official Nintendo memory card to SD card adapter, used to store applications to launch. See issue 11757. The Homebrew Channel also supports USB and the Wii SD slot, which are properly emulated.
Problems
Networking
Network initialization never completes. Fixed since at least 5.0-10472.
Direct3D
Using Direct3D with XFB enabled will cause the screen go black, but the app stills work normally otherwise. Use OpenGL to solve this. Fixed since at least 5.0-10472.
Configuration
This channel does not need non-default settings to run properly.
Version Compatibility
Install Wii Games From Usb
The graph below charts the compatibility with Homebrew Channel since Dolphin's 2.0 release, listing revisions only where a compatibility change occurred.
Testing
This channel has been tested on the environments listed below:
| Test Entries | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revision | OS Version | CPU | GPU | Result | Tester |
| r7598 | Windows 7 | Intel Quad Core Xeon @ 2.8GHz | ATI Radeon HD 5770 | All issues in the Problems section are present. | SephirothFanatic |
| 3.0 | Windows 7 | Intel Quad Core Xeon @ 2.8GHz | ATI Radeon HD 5770 | All issues in the Problems section are present. | SephirothFanatic |
| 3.0-376 | Windows 7 | Intel Quad Core Xeon @ 2.8GHz | ATI Radeon HD 5770 | Starts and runs normally, except when reloading or exiting with the Home button. | SephirothFanatic |
| 5.0-1422 | Linux (Debian sid) | Intel Core i5-4210H @ 3.5GHz | NVIDIA GeForce GT 940 | Everything works (including launching homebrew, returning to Wii menu, shutting down) except networking. | Léo |
| 5.0-2742 | Windows 7 | Intel Celeron G1610 @ 2.6GHz | Intel HD Graphics | With D3D and XFB disabled looks normal but cannot launch homebrew; enabling XFB to real made it look black, but didn't crash. Using OGL and XFB to real seems to work normally, except for network. | EblfIYH |
| 5.0-3951 | Windows 10 | Intel Celeron G1610 @ 2.6GHz | Intel HD Graphics | Now, it crashes with D3D. OpenGL still work | EblfIYH |
| 5.0-3965 | Windows 10 | Intel Celeron G1610 @ 2.6GHz | Intel HD Graphics | D3D works again, with the same problems | EblfIYH |
| 5.0-10472 | Windows 10 | Intel Core I5 4670K @ 4.3GHz | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 | D3D issues seems to be fixed, couldn't reproduce it with D3D11/12. Works without any graphical issues. Difference between graphics backends is huge though. D3D12=1000FPS, D3D11=900FPS, OpenGL=600FPS, Vulkan=500FPS | Miksel12 |
Gameplay Videos
If you followed my previous post on attaching a USB hard drive to your Wii, you now should have the convenience of loading games directly from your hard drive without ever having to worry about swapping discs. Yet having to load the Homebrew channel, then going through to your USB loader can feel cumbersome sometimes. Getting channels to go directly to the games, or the USB Loader is easier than you would think.
You obviously need to have the Homebrew Channel plus a USB loader installed before you can do any of this. If you don’t, follow these steps then come back here once you’re done. Please note that the steps here can and might damage your Wii! I very highly recommend you install BootMii into boot2 and back up your NAND before attempting any of the following steps. Should anything go wrong, you have a backup you can fall back on, otherwise you are continuing at your own risk!
Prerequisite Steps
- Download and install WAD Manager.
- Create a “/wad” folder on your SD card (must be on the root of the card!) Any channels that you want to install must be placed here or else the WAD Manager will be unable to find them.
There’s two options from here on out, and you’re welcome to do both. You can just install a usb forwarder channel that will allow you to access your USB Loader from the main menu, or install channels for individual games so that they show up on the main menu.
Installing USB Loader Forwarder Channel
How To Install Wii Homebrew
There’s quite a few USB forwarder channels out there, but they all do pretty much the same thing. A USB forwarder channel looks in specific directories for an installed USB loader and tries to run it. The advantage of this is that it makes it simple to upgrade your USB loader without ever having to mess with the forwarder channel, since you can just swap the boot.dol to a newer version.
To make things easier, you can download the one I use: Universal Forwarder Channel by Narolez. This forwarder looks in the following locations for a USB Loader boot.dol:
- sd:/apps/usbloader_cfg/boot.dol
- sd:/apps/usbloader/boot.dol
- usb:/apps/usbloader_cfg/boot.dol
- usb:/apps/usbloader/boot.dol
Forwarder Installation
- Copy the .wad file to “sd:/wad”.
- Load up WAD Manager in homebrew, find your wad, and choose to install.
You should now have the channel correctly installed, and should be able to access your USB loader directly from the main menu! If at any time you need to uninstall the channel from your Wii, you can follow the installation steps above, choose the same wad file, then choose to uninstall and the channel will be removed from your system.
Installing Channels for Individual Games
How To Install Wii Games
Installing games already on your USB hard drive is pretty simple, just be sure you already have the games loaded onto you hard drive via USB Loader. You also need to download CRAP in order to assist with the channel creation.
Channel Installation Steps
How To Install Wii Channels
- Plug in your usb hard drive to your computer.
- Launch CRAP.
- Select the drive letter of your USB hard drive, i.e. J:.
- Choose the game which you wish to create a channel for.
- Select a loader. Most of the time you should be fine with using USB Loader 1.6, but you may need to use a different loader depending on what options you want to apply to the channel.
- Click on “create channel”
- Your wad will be saved in the WAD directory of your CRAP folder, so you will need to copy/move this wad to your USB hard drive.
- Plug your USB hard drive back into your Wii, load up WAD manager via homebrew, find the wad you just created and install it.
- If at any time you need to uninstall this channel, simply load up the WAD manager, find your wad, and select “uninstall” instead of install.
You should now have a channel listed on your main menu for your game, and you can repeat the above steps for any additional games you wish to install.
Wii Channel Music
There may be an occasional issue with a couple of games depending on what version of cIOS38 your are currently running. cIOS38 rev. 14 unfortunately breaks dual-layed disc compatibility, so games such as Smash Bros. Brawl or Metroid Prime Trilogy will not work in USB Loader. Wii Sports Resort will not work via the channel method if you >13 installed, so you may want to pick and choose what cIOS38 you are running based on what games you want to install as channels.