Hear me out: the console has a 1.24GHz tri-core IBM PowerPC processor, 8GB of internal storage (32GB on the Deluxe model) that can be expanded by as much as 32GB with SD or 2TB with USB, and it has 2GB DDR3 RAM. It seems to be more than capable enough.
The Gamepad could be used as a keyboard and/or trackpad
This version could probably be called HaikU
Do you know how an OS can be installed on the Wii U? How to boot an installation medium? How is the general boot process?
Yes, it’s possible.
I’ve not tried this myself but am interested aswell, it woulf likely be more of a niche port though : )
Since Linux can be run on it too, I assume it would be possible to port Haiku to this device. Not sure if using a desktop oriented os with only a game controller is a good idea. Could a normal keyboard be connected to the Wii U?
And of course, as always with threads like this it boils down to one thing: Somebody actually has to do the hard work and do the porting.
The Wii U Gamepad has a massive touchscreen on it
This is why I said the Gamepad could function as a keyboard and trackpad
Yes, it has usb2 compatible usb ports
Yeah, but those ports would probably be taken up by a Y cable, since the Wii U doesn’t send enough power through its USB ports for most external hard drives to be able to run using just one port
That’s why I suggested putting the keyboard and trackpad on the gamepad
Why not just use a powered hub for USB?
I just looked it up, and Nintendo apparently confirmed that you can use USB hubs with the Wii U
Maybe the Gamepad could be used as a secondary display
The problem is Bluetooth is not working yet in Haiku. To be more precise, it works with few chips but doesn’t do anything but pairing. But anyway, Bluetooth services would be launched too late. To develop and to debug such port, you need the keyboard to be working during boot or in debugging land etc. The best way to achieve this is using a wired keyboard. On a PC, you would prefer PS/2 or Din connection over USB for the same reasons.
The first problem is we don’t have a working PowerPC version of Haiku at the moment. So anyone doing this will have to start from there: getting our bootloader running on the Wii U will be a good first step. What kind of bootloader does it have? Is it U-Boot with UEFI? That would be relatively easy because we support it for ARM and RISC-V and x86. Is it something else? In that case the bootloader need to be ported to it.
Once you have the bootloader, you can move on to getting the kernel loaded and started, and then write all needed drivers.
This would be a huge project to pull off and since it would be Wii specific not that many users. The existing devs have their hands full already, and ARM, ARM64 and RISC-V would target a lot more potential users.
So unfortunately anyone who wants this to happen probably need to work on it themselves.
The Wii U bootloader is proprietary but well-documented by homebrew developers
