since the 3rd of October 2019, i’ve been working on a Discord bot called Octoling. it’s been really fun, hence why i’m still working on it every now and then almost five years later. so far the bot has a nice set of features but lacks many modern features such as / commands and the ability to add commands to your user profile to use wherever. to solve this, i have begun building a new version of the bot with the idea of keeping the code as futureproof as possible as the main focus. i’ll likely make posts here about the progress of this new code as i work on it.
so i bought a broken wii u
(an unpublished post from May 2024)
a couple days ago, i was on ebay looking at Wii U systems. i find this one for just under £17 that claims to be broken. specifically, it’s showing the error code 160-0103. as of today, this can be a really easy error code to fix thanks to the fact that udpih exists, so i decide to buy it. fast-forward to today, and it’s here. i connect it to power and my capture card, boot up OBS so i have a display, and…
…it boots normally to the Wii U menu. there are 2 users on it, neither are linked to an NNID and there’s no parental control lock. i check the system version. it’s on 5.5.4 (E). i then put in my mario kart 8 disc to see if it will play a game, it plays fine. next, i connect it to the internet to prepare for exploiting it. i go back to the wii u menu. turns out the past owner had automatic updates enabled. the update completes and the system reboots. i go to the web browser after preparing my SD card, send it to wiiuexploit.xyz and run the exploit. it’s failed to mount the sd card. i reboot and open mii maker to try exporting a mii, just to double check. yeah it’s not mounted.
so i end up thinking the SD card slot is gone, because all the buttons and slots on the front panel feel looser than my main system and other SD card adapters don’t work. i try reformatting the SD card anyway just in case, thankfully it worked this time. i exploit it again, now the NAND (minus the MLC) is dumped and I have isfshax on the thing. i dump the logs. there seems to be nothing there until i get to log number 11 of 13. that one shows a media error. there’s the issue, the MLC is probably on its way out. it’s a Hynix so i’m not surprised.
i now prepare the SD card for a redNAND setup. resizing goes fine, now i need to download the MLC titles. i decide to try something different this time and download the Japanese MLC titles and attempt a region switch. i install them on the redNAND and it boots to the first-time setup after a ~5 minute install.
2 weeks as a ps3 owner
so i finally bought the ps3 i said i’d buy in the gamecube post. but not really. as much as i wanted a slim i still couldn’t find one. but u wanna know what i did find? a used CECHK03 fat ps3 for £45 with a controller that i would soon realise was fake and no power cable. some would call that dodgy as fuck, i would call that fun as fuck. so i buy it without first realising that it would be shipped by a courier that i “jokingly” call the worst in the UK with my mates. once it turns up (took forever but surprisingly turned up on the day they said it would turn up!), i get it out of its packaging that consisted of a bunch of paper and what i vaguely remember to be an Aldi shopping bag, plug it in and power it on. to my surprise it actually booted and it was absolutely filled with shit. what i believe was pirated tv shows, music, a couple games, decent lot of save data (the most notable being GTA V and IV) and they still had ps home installed with some cache data! one issue though: the disc drive didn’t seem to enjoy ejecting any disk very well. later on that issue fixed itself though once i gave the drive some more use.
once i knew that it actually worked, i took it upstairs and began my fuckery. i first installed HFW and HEN to grab their game licenses just in case i ever wanted them and then webMAN MOD to check the temps and usage stats. the temps are surprisingly good for it being a fat ps3 with a still intact warranty seal, not overheating at all. they had used the system for around 3400 hours and it had a startup and shutdown count of around 1800. fairly decent for a probably 15 year old console. once i had checked all that, i installed multiMAN to extract the ps home cache data. that went well and it’s sitting on my desktop. i’ll be donating it soon.
now that i’ve got all the data i needed i put in a 500GB hard drive i had lying around and loaded into safe mode to reinstall 4.91 OFW in preparation for an Evilnat 4.91 CFW installation. now that i can see the XMB again i log into PSN and activate my account on the system, and of course disable auto log in. next i made a new local user, opened the browser, wiped all the cookies, search history, etc. and loaded the ps3 toolset. the flash got backed up, i checked it with PyPS3checker, it says my flash backup is good so i patch it and that succeeds. i reboot and install Evilnat 4.91 Beta 8, then webMAN MOD, multiMAN, the PS2 Classics Launcher and the PS2 CONFIG Database. multiMAN gets started, i put in a PS2 disc, try dumping it, multiMAN starts acting up and crashing my system. i spend about 20 minutes trying to fix the issue and turns out i had to take it out of mmCM mode or else for some reason it would just cause my system to crash. now though, i have a really nice way to play PS2 games since setting my actual PS2 up is a pain in the arse and the video quality is similarly arse since i have to use AV.
fast forward to today (2024-08-20) and i have a small collection of PS3 games that i’ve dumped and put on the hard drive for easy access. i’ve also got both the Sonic Adventure games for the third time, making me closer to completing my goal of owning every single different version of both the Sonic Adventure games (thank you very much Sony for keeping the PS3/Vita store alive, even if it is a bit of a pain to add funds). i’ve been playing through them both, cleared SA2 again and for the first time in literally years i now have the hero and dark gardens unlocked. and for the first time ever, i have all A ranks in a couple stages too.