Datel's Wii Drive Doctor - the 'ultimate home mod tool', the easy backup tool for Wii

[Booyakasha]

Datel are once again to take a trip over to the 'grey side' of gaming accessories with the Wii Drive Doctor. They are dubbing as the total drive kit for the Wii and it DOES REQUIRE SOLDERING, a mainstream manufacturing of accessories selling a product that requires soldering - what's the industry coming to ? They claim the Drive Doctor allows Wii owners to connect the console to the PC using a USB cable. From there on in you can take a look at all sorts of stuff in reference to your drive memory and even make on the fly adjustments. They also claim that as the Wii 'homebrew scene grows', the device will come in hand for playing FREELY DOWNLOADABLE software straight from the Wii. The price you may ask? $34.95. Some eagle-eyed readers have spotted that this perhaps a more convential working (via USB) of the serial data cable which can be used in conjunction's with WAB's drive software to run back up games...



PRESS RELEASE

The trouble with most games consoles, is you can't modify the game code when it's running. Sure, you can use tools such as Datel's own Action Replay game enhancers to input all sorts of cheats and enhancements, but there's no straightforward way for amateur programmers and techie tinkerers to get inside the game, investigating how it works and trying out modifications and tweaks you've programmed yourself. Thankfully, if you're a Wii owner Datel has come to the rescue with Drive Doctor, the ultimate aid for the hardcore tinkerer and amateur programmer. With Drive Doctor for your Nintendo Wii, you can gain a unique insight into the under-the-bonnet operation of your console, examining, analysing and altering the Wii drive's memory...

With Drive Doctor in place, you can connect your Wii to your PC using the supplied USB 2.0 cable. You can then review its innermost operations, watching your Wii software in action through Drive Doctor's PC application. You can even add data of your own, all from your PC. Drive Doctor’s memory and command views give you a unique insight into the innermost workings of your Wii’s drive memory, and even lets you make on-the-fly adjustments. You can read status, write data, send control commands, report the drive status and more. By injecting your own code into the data stream, you can create your own effects and experiment with modifying the program. It’s fun! And as the Wii home brew scene grows and prospers, the device will also come in handy for playing freely-downloadable software straight from your console.

Fitting Drive Doctor requires a little soldering, so make sure you have your precision Soldering Iron handy. Full fitting instructions are supplied. It’s a fairly simple task, requiring you to connect just five wires. After that, the unit just clips to the back of your console. It remains in place even when not in use - just unplug your USB cable and you can use your Wii in the usual way. It's styled to match the console, and completely unintrusive when not in use.

Source : http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=16865

[{{909}}]

five wires eh, datel suck nowadays, there was a time when their products actually assisted modding, not followed it by rehashing free hacks into commercial products.

[kjun]

You gotta commend them though, it's a brave move going after nintendo like this on the commercial market

I suspect it'll all end in tears

[EvilBoB]

If they have some software that eases things like the injection and running of software then great but as stated this is more than likely a way to get the solder points of the injection hack to an external port.

It probably only took this long as their developers needed to make a "Datel branded" front end to the software.

[4me2]

They can poke it up thier arses as far as Im concerned.