By just pressing one button, you too can turn your Quest 2 into an unusable laggy mess:
I had to factory reset it. (And after I did that, the OS crashed the first time I used Quest Link.)
Quality software…
I’ve been playing with Linux on my main machine again, because Windows as a development environment annoys me and my MacBook Pro, while I love it, won’t be replacing my big machine any time soon for a number of reasons.
I discovered recently that Ubuntu 22.10’s latest kernel breaks my sound card. This is my /proc/asound/cards on 5.19.0-31-generic:
0 [Creative ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Creative
HDA Creative at 0xfc604000 irq 37
1 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xfc080000 irq 119
2 [Generic ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
HD-Audio Generic at 0xfcb00000 irq 121
3 [Device ]: USB-Audio - AVerMedia USB Device
AVerMedia AVerMedia USB Device at usb-0000:09:00.0-1, super speed
4 [adapter ]: USB-Audio - Antlion USB adapter
Antlion Audio Antlion USB adapter at usb-0000:11:00.3-3, full speed
This is it on 5.19.0-35-generic:
1 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xfc080000 irq 119
2 [Generic ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
HD-Audio Generic at 0xfcb00000 irq 121
3 [Device ]: USB-Audio - AVerMedia USB Device
AVerMedia AVerMedia USB Device at usb-0000:09:00.0-1, super speed
4 [adapter ]: USB-Audio - Antlion USB adapter
Antlion Audio Antlion USB adapter at usb-0000:11:00.3-3, full speed
The Creative card I use is gone! It knows something’s there – notice how the first list starts from 0, and the second starts from 1 – but it just didn’t pick up the card at all.
Not only that, it also broke my video – the NVIDIA driver didn’t get installed, for whatever reason. That was easy enough to figure out, just install the relevant packages…
but after that was when I realised my audio was broken. So I booted into the prior kernel, but my video was broken again, as the NVIDIA packages for the old kernel were broken by the new kernel. I eventually figured it out: just remove all packages for the new kernel, then reinstall using the Additional Drivers window.
I’m still left with one issue though – the front channel of my sound card resets to 70% and muted whenever I reboot, so I have to fiddle in alsamixer for a little bit before I can hear anything.
It doesn’t end there though – not limited to the latest kernel was an issue where my capture card, an AVerMedia Live Gamer HD 2, would constantly disconnect and reconnect every few seconds. This was particularly annoying when I tested Xubuntu, as it displayed a notification every time it did so. I’m on Ubuntu MATE right now though which doesn’t do that, fortunately.
Turns out this was related to USB auto-suspend. The capture card exposes itself as a USB video and audio device, and I guess its USB controller hates auto-suspend or something. Fortunately the fix for this one was easy – all I had to do was turn that off in my kernel parameters:
usbcore.autosuspend=-1
And that fixes that. It seems auto-suspend is for battery saving on laptops – don’t need that on my desktop, so there’s probably no harm in turning it off.
I was hoping the Linux desktop experience would be a bit smoother nowadays, but maybe 2023 isn’t The Year after all.
My previous Anker SD card reader broke – it would think all full-size SD cards inserted into it were write-protected, even though they weren’t – so I ended up buying a UGREEN SD card adapter instead. It works fine and is fast enough. It still requires that I use the full-SD slot though, I assume the Wii U only accepts the first drive presented via USB, which happens to be the full-size SD slot.
I ended up buying a LAN adapter because, you know, it’s a Nintendo product, the Wi-Fi is awful. I bought the adapter for £5 + £1.50 shipping from CeX, and got some Chinese clone – but who cares, it works well.
I installed Coldboot Haxchi on my Wii U. Haxchi is basically an exploit that turns a Virtual Console DS title into a custom firmware launcher, and Coldboot Haxchi is another exploit that sets that DS title as your Wii U’s boot title (instead of the Wii U menu). So now I don’t have to deal with the web browser whenever I want to use CFW. Also, I can brick my system by deleting a DS game! Woo!
It requires a legit VC DS game from the eShop to work – and interestingly, I apparently already owned Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training, despite never having bought it. Interesting. But it worked, so I guess that means my Wii U technically boots into Brain Training. Neat.
That’s basically all that’s happened with my Wii U so far, I’ve been playing a lot of Splatoon (of course) and some Wind Waker HD every now and again. Maybe I’ll play some of the other games I downloaded sometime… Also, really wish it supported full-range RGB, but whatever. I’ll have to live with everything looking washed out.
I always wanted a Wii U, but …never got one. It might’ve been a commerical failure, but the first party games made it worth it: Splatoon, Wind Waker HD, Mario Maker with a thin stylus! Also, Miiverse. Whether that’s a good thing or not… it was iconic, at least.
I ended up buying a used (but good quality) 32GB Wii U, along with Splatoon and Wind Waker HD, from CeX for £145 (+£3 delivery). It arrived in good condition – the hardware was a little dusty, but that’s easy solved with some screen wipes. The top of the console was also scratched up a bit but other than that, everything was in great shape. Everything was included – including the GamePad stylus and a totally untouhed still-in-original-packaging sensor bar! The games were also in good condition, discs were very clean and included the manuals telling you how to read an electronic manual.
After finishing the set up and reaching the home menu, I was pleasantly surprised at how featureful the system was… or would’ve been, had Nintendo not killed off almost all of the online features for it. The one important feature that’s missing, though: support for full RGC colour over HDMI. The Wii U only supports limited RGB, and my monitor only supports full RGB – meaning everything looks washed out. It’s quite jarring, especially being adjusted to Splatoon 2 – which is on a platform that does support full RGB. Speaking of – Splatoon really does end up pushing the Wii U’s hardware to its limits. Even running at its much lower than 1080p resolution, it easily drops below 60 FPS when there isn’t that much going on. Even some of the more hectic matches in Splatoon 2 can stay at 60 FPS, though that game has dynamic resolution…
Homebrew on the Wii U is incredibly easy: you put some stuff on an SD card, shove it in the slot on the front of the console, go to a website, click a button – and you’re in the Homebrew Launcher. Alongside running custom applications, you can also install official titles – the Wii U eShop server doesn’t actually check whether you own a title, meaning you can just download it and then install it via a tool like WUP Installer GX2. Annoyingly, DLC is actually restricted to being registered to an account, but you can use custom firmware like Mocha to avoid those restrictions. Woo, piracy…! Modding games is also really easy, thanks to Cafiine and TCPGecko, and a myraid of other tools the Wii U community has produced over the years. I’ve even been getting dirty with some of that stuff myself…
Of course, to store all these games, I’ll need storage. The Wii U supports expandable storage via USB drives – the SD card slot on the front is actually only for compatibility with Wii games. I ended up buying a 128GB microSD card with a USB adapter – and it’s pretty damn fast, reaching speeds of around 75MB/s on my PC. Interestingly, the Wii U only accepts using the full-size SD slot on the adapter, not the microSD slot. I suppose it has to do with the ordering of the drives it presents, or something… luckily, the microSD came with an adapter for a full-size SD card. There’s no speed impact, although it might add an inconsequential touch of latency. Overall not an amazing solution – but it’s better than having some hard drives laying on my floor, I guess.
I’ve been enjoying the Wii U over the past couple of weeks I’ve owned it, though. Actually obliterating people in ranked Splatoon has been an enjoyable change, and Wind Waker is just glorious in HD. Eventually I’ll check out some of the other games I’ve downloaded, but my list of games I want to play just keeps piling up…