7th Sphere

Wii Chip Fun!

May 5, 2007 – 4:25 pm

A couple of months ago, they announced that a Wii mod chip had been developed. For those living under a rock, a mod chip in a video game console allows you to do some pretty sweet things that the manufacturer never intended. My modded Xbox went from being a sometimes used game console to being the hub of my living rooms media center (how did I ever live without it?). While modding the Wii doesn’t currently unlock the potential of what the Xbox did, there are still some pretty handy things that made it worth it to me to take the plunge. These include the ability to run homebrew apps, backup my games, play backed up games, and then the all important ability to run games from other regions.

My Chip Choice: Wiikey

At the time of writing this, there are a few choices out there when it comes to available mod chips. These include the CycloWiz, Wiinja, Wiikey, and the WiiFree. The first three are developed internally by commercial entities, while the WiiFree is an open source project. The features on the three commercial chips are relatively similar, however the Wiikey stood out because of its ability to reflash the firmware from a DVD. Note: at the time of writing this, there hasn’t been an updated firmware for the Wiikey as of yet, but the developrs say it is coming very shortly. In all honestly, I am sure any of the commercial chips would be fine for a first timer at this point.

On a side note about the WiiFree project - I think this has the most potential and will likely end up dominating the Wii mod scene in the near future. The way it basically works is that you download the ROM firmware, and then flash a $0.89 chip through a serial programmer on your computer. While this may be a turnoff for a lot of people, it sounds like an enticing electronics project for someone like me who has never done anything like that. The programmers can be purchased on eBay for less than $20, and the rest of it is pretty straight forward. At the time of writing this, the WiiFree’s feature list is the most rich, and you know that no matter what happens, there will be support for it. You also aren’t stuck in a dead end as the ROMs are dirt cheap, and can be reprogammed quickly. I know that once my friends see what I can do with my Wii, they are going to want their consoles modded. The WiiFree is definitely to most economical way to go for installing lots of chips.

Pre-installation: The Checklist

Once you have your chip in hand, you will need the following items to successfully install your chip:

• A “tri-wing” screwdriver (more on this later)

• A jewlers style phillips head screwdriver

• Some 30 guage Kynar style wire (This is available at some local RadioShits and through their online store. I suggest calling around first, they have a stock # of 278-501 (*-502 and *-503 also work, they are just different colors)

• A 15 watt soldering iron with a nice clean tip (melting the pads off the board on the wii will happen if you get it too hot)

• Thin electronics grade solder and some flux

• Some hot glue and electrical tape are handy

A tri-wring is a special screw that Nintendo uses on all of their recent hardware. I HIGHLY suggest ordering a screwdriver when you place the order for your mod chip. While many people have said you can use a flathead jewelers screwdriver, we found this to be next to impossible. In fact, we had to cut the end off a flathead with a dremel, and custom shape the stub into a tri-wing for this to work. It sucked, and is not suggested. Spend the $4!

The Installation: AHHHH!

Getting the Wii open is pretty straight forward when you have the right tools. Again, don’t skip the tri-wing purchase. There are plenty of good guides out there on how to crack open the Wii. There are also some good videos of people doing it on Youtube.

Once the Wii is open it’s time for the fun part - soldering it in! The way to do this will depend on the chip that you have, so get some instructions from the manufacturer regarding where point A should connect to point B. Now, I will be the first to admit that my soldering abilities are somewhat limited. I have done quite a few Xbox chips, but those are MUCH larger than what you wil see inside the Wii. With my aging eyes and sometimes shakey hands, I had very little confidence that I would be able to do a good job on it.

I did what I suggest many of you should do - grab a friend who is very experienced with soldering and small electronics. I was fortunate that my friend Aaron (http://www.subresonant.com) fits this bill and was willing to do it. There is a thread on some Wii chip forums that shows graphical horror stories on what some people did to their boards - owch. I repeat - unless you are an intermediate to advanced in soldering electronics, get some help!

Attempt #1 - Yes, thats right, there was more than one attempt for us. On the first attempt, we weren’t really prepared, and had yet to find a user made install guide to follow like this one. While the design of the Wiikey looks like you would be able to quicksolder it in, it really is not the case. We quickly realized that we would need to solder some wire to the pads on the motherboard, and then tack the wires onto the pads on the chip. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any good wire and used some leads from some LCDs or capacitors that Aaron had laying around. After him being surgical with the gun for about 20 minutes, it looked like it was good to go, he used a multi-meter to check the continuity of the connections, and it all looked good.

We hooked it back up, and then gave it a test. Wii booted normally, and original games worked. Then we tried the Wiikey setup disk, and that was a no go. The wii would spin up the DVD for a few seconds, then it would spin down, and give a disk read error (originals did work ok). After trying five different types of media which we burned from a few different burners, we gave up for the day figuring the chip was dead. I spent the next week or so reading the Wiikey forums at PSX scene, and realized that many people were having a hard time getting it going on the first shot.

Attempt #2 - After reading all of the posts regarding the install being even more delicate that it looked, Aaron was nice enough to give it a second shot. This time, we went out and got some good 30 guage wire and decided to do the install a bit different. Instead of placing the chip directly over the board in the way the install guide recommended, Aaron moved the chip to a neutral location a couple of inches away. Then, he installed a slightly longer wire to each point on the board. This is a great idea for a couple of reasons. First, the chance of shorting something on the board is far less, as the chip sits somewhere neutral. Second, with the solder points being so small and delicate, if you need to change the chip, redoing them to the board would suck ass. Now, if the chip dies, or we change it, we only need to resolder to the pads on the chip which is much better.

After an hour and a half of removing solder from the first attempt, and wrestling with pubic hair sized wires, the installation was complete. Aaron hot glued down the chip and the wires, keeping them nice and secure. A little electrical tape was also put over it all for good measure.

We went and plugged in the Wii, and it still had one of the Wiikey setup disks that we burned for the first attempt in there. Sure enough, the Wii fired right up, and detected a gamecube disk! Success!! The next part came easy - and that was figuring out which media and burner to use.

Making it happen: DVD media is important!

Color us kind of lucky on this one. When we did the first installation attempt, we burned probably six different versions of the Wiikey setup disk, figuring it was a media problem and not our Install. Having these available to test out probably saved a ton of time and headaches in the future.

After we confirmed that the chip worked with one of the setup disks, I went in and started to test the other disks to see if the media would make any difference. Sure enough, it made a huge difference! It quickly became apparent that we made perfectly working setup disks from Aaron’s burner and my burner, but anything made with some of the media I had laying around didn’t work. I believe the media that I was using are Sony DVD-Rs. These didn’t work a bit - some were burned at 4x, some at 8x, some on a Plextor, and some on my crappy lite-on. It became apparent that the media was simply crap, and the laser on the Wii just hated it.

Fortunately, Aaron is also a man of quality! The working setup disk that we used was burned on Taiyo Yuden media. If you don’t know what or who Taiyo Yuden is, go hitup Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiyo_Yuden). They manufacture the best media in the world, and this was just another example of why.

I grabbed a few more of the Taiyos from Aaron, and went and burned a couple of game backups that I had. Sure enough, they worked perfectly on the first shot! After playing a few of them for a couple hours, I have experienced no problems whatsoever. There is no difference between playing a backup game or an original.

Conclusion: What I learned

With any project, be prepared when you go in. I can honesty say to myself that in this situation, I didn’t put in the research until after the first installation that maybe I should have in the first place. Had I done the research, the first installation attempt would have been pretty much avoided. I also would have purchased the necessary things from the start (no more dremmel tooling tri-wing drivers and using cutup LED leads). But, in the end it all worked out, and it’s fun to learn from your mistakes. Got questions, post em up here or visit PSX Scene Wii Forums!