Yesterday I committed support for the Nintendo Wii U to NetBSD -current. The Wii U is a very nice upgrade from the Wii: * CPU is a 1.24GHz tri-core PowerPC (IBM 750 derivative) * 2GB RAM * GPU is AMD Radeon (probably R7xx) * HDMI / composite / component video out * 4x USB 2.0 ports * SD card slot * SATA Blu-ray drive * Touch screen, buttons, camera integrated into the controllerTo get NetBSD up and running, you need a homebrew-enabled system. You can do this with an SD card and internet connection, no additional hardware required. Follow the instructions for installing Aroma on https://wiiu.hacks.guide to prepare the system for installation. This only needs to be done once.
Once the system is homebrew-enabled, prepare an SD card with the NetBSD install. I _strongly_ recommend using an A2-class microSD card for this.
Files required:
* https://nycdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/HEAD/latest/evbppc/binary/gzimg/nintendo.img.gz
* https://github.com/wiiu-env/fw_img_payload/releases/download/v0.2/fw_img_payload_v0_2.zip
* https://gitlab.com/linux-wiiu/linux-loader/-/jobs/artifacts/master/raw/fw.img?job=loader-build
To setup the SD card:
1) Uncompress nintendo.img.gz and image the SD card using your
favourite image writing software (dd, balenaEtcher, etc).
2) Mount the new FAT file-system that was written to the SD card. You
should see a directory named "linux" and a file named "netbsd" in the
root directory. Make a new directory named "wiiu".
3) Uncompress fw_img_payload_v0_2.zip and copy "payload.elf" to the
"wiiu" directory.
4) Copy linux-loader to the root directory as "fw.img".
The final layout of the FAT file-system should look something like this:
fw.img
linux/boot.cfg
netbsd
wiiu/payload.elf
(There will be other files present, those are to support the original Wii).
Power on the Wii U with this SD card installed and the system should boot
automatically into NetBSD. On first boot, it will grow the FFS file-system
to fill the entire SD card and reboot once, this is expected. Once it
boots a second time, you can login as "root" and use the system as any
other NetBSD install.
Take care, Jared