Hardware Black Screen Booting Up

[Biovirulent]

All right, so my low maintenance Wii portable (Basically just runs off of battery) suddenly stopped booting up.

Pretty sure the battery is charged, at least decently, but suddenly I boot to a black screen.
I didn't install any kind of bootmii or anything as far as I know, just the homebrew channel.

EDIT: I think I have bootmii installed. Don't know what it's for or what to do with it. I'm kind of new to hacking this system.

Help? Anyone? What happened?
I really don't want to buy a whole new wii for $60...

 

[SamTheSaminator]

Do you know if you have BootMii as boot2 or IOS?

 

[Deleted member 398281]

All right, so my low maintenance Wii portable (Basically just runs off of battery) suddenly stopped booting up.

Pretty sure the battery is charged, at least decently, but suddenly I boot to a black screen.
I didn't install any kind of bootmii or anything as far as I know, just the homebrew channel.

EDIT: I think I have bootmii installed. Don't know what it's for or what to do with it. I'm kind of new to hacking this system.

Help? Anyone? What happened?
I really don't want to buy a whole new wii for $60...

Did it happen right after installing HBC and BootMii? Every homebrew has risks, even the HBC and BootMii can brick your Wii.

 

[Biovirulent]

Did it happen right after installing HBC and BootMii? Every homebrew has risks, even the HBC and BootMii can brick your Wii.

I think I overheated something actually. It was a wii portable, and used a 12v 6000mah battery pack. (I think the amperage was too high, which is why it overheated.)
Basically I think boot1 is now done for. My system menu version is "null" and I can't install a system menu (I don't have nand permission apparently).
I was able to get to the homebrew channel, but that's it. I think it fried. I need to look into a lower power battery pack or better cooling on it.

I believe that's the case anyway. I was using WiiSX earlier in that day, and later that day, I booted into a black screen. I later used a 2gb sd card to get into bootmii, and successfully launched the homebrew channel. I can't seem to do anything from there, though.

 

[GreyWolf]

Yeah if the first 7-8 blocks of the NAND died then you can't do much to fix it. The console is hard-coded to load boot1 from there and it's never been replaceable.

 

[Biovirulent]

Yeah if the first 7-8 blocks of the NAND died then you can't do much to fix it. The console is hard-coded to load boot1 from there and it's never been replaceable.

Yup. That's a shame.

Now unless I can find a 4000 or so mAh 12v battery pack, I'd need to figure out how to get better cooling on the thing.

 

[Biovirulent]

Hey guys, bringing this back with an update.
When I looked at the wii, there was thermal paste on the larger metal piece below the heatsink, but not the smaller one. EDIT: There was thermal paste. It was just stuck to the bottom of the heatsink.
Was this the cause of the overheating? It's a thought. Maybe you guys could give me some ideas on how to get better cooling?
I could look into getting a 5AH 12v battery rather than my 6AH 12v, but I don't know enough about batteries to know if that was the cause of the overheating/frying of the nand/boot1/system menu.
Can anyone give me any insight? I'd like to make my new wii that I bought portable, but I am too afraid to jump in and try with what I have, considering what happened to the other one.

 

[Deleted member 398281]

Hey guys, bringing this back with an update.
When I looked at the wii, there was thermal paste on the larger metal piece below the heatsink, but not the smaller one. EDIT: There was thermal paste. It was just stuck to the bottom of the heatsink.
Was this the cause of the overheating? It's a thought. Maybe you guys could give me some ideas on how to get better cooling?
I could look into getting a 5AH 12v battery rather than my 6AH 12v, but I don't know enough about batteries to know if that was the cause of the overheating/frying of the nand/boot1/system menu.
Can anyone give me any insight? I'd like to make my new wii that I bought portable, but I am too afraid to jump in and try with what I have, considering what happened to the other one.

Do you still have all the manuals and stuff that came with your Wii portable? I'm not really familiar with batteries, but try to take a look at the adapters of the Wii cables and small-sized words on the back of the Wii. If you got a battery that is the same as the wattages/volts as the Wii input, I should think it's not the battery's problem, but I can't say it for sure.
EDIT:
My thoughts are: why doesn't a Wii used with the original adapters need cooling, but a self-made Wii portable with battery and like the same specifications DOES need cooling?!

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Hey guys, bringing this back with an update.
When I looked at the wii, there was thermal paste on the larger metal piece below the heatsink, but not the smaller one. EDIT: There was thermal paste. It was just stuck to the bottom of the heatsink.
Was this the cause of the overheating? It's a thought. Maybe you guys could give me some ideas on how to get better cooling?
I could look into getting a 5AH 12v battery rather than my 6AH 12v, but I don't know enough about batteries to know if that was the cause of the overheating/frying of the nand/boot1/system menu.
Can anyone give me any insight? I'd like to make my new wii that I bought portable, but I am too afraid to jump in and try with what I have, considering what happened to the other one.

mAh is just a measure of capacity, the Wii will only draw as much power as it needs, so I really doubt the battery had anything to do with it.

 

[Biovirulent]

Do you still have all the manuals and stuff that came with your Wii portable? I'm not really familiar with batteries, but try to take a look at the adapters of the Wii cables and small-sized words on the back of the Wii. If you got a battery that is the same as the wattages/volts as the Wii input, I should think it's not the battery's problem, but I can't say it for sure.
EDIT:
My thoughts are: why doesn't a Wii used with the original adapters need cooling, but a self-made Wii portable with battery and like the same specifications DOES need cooling?!

mAh is just a measure of capacity, the Wii will only draw as much power as it needs, so I really doubt the battery had anything to do with it.

Yeah, I'm not really sure what happened there then. My old wii just died suddenly. Very, very strange.

I did blow the fuse and then bridge it, but I also doubt that was the problem, because it still turns on. I can run boot2 just fine. It's just a really, really strange problem. Doesn't seem like there was too much of a rhyme or reason why it happened, either.

I had the wii for a LONG time. I finally bring it out, install homebrew+bootmii with letterbomb, install ios58 to run WiiSX games (I think that was one solution, I think it ended up being the fact that I didn't have the japanese BIOs for the PS1, but that's a completely different story), played WiiSX, and later that day, bam. No system menu. RIP Wii, death by unknown causes

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Yeah, I'm not really sure what happened there then. My old wii just died suddenly. Very, very strange.

I did blow the fuse and then bridge it, but I also doubt that was the problem, because it still turns on. I can run boot2 just fine. It's just a really, really strange problem. Doesn't seem like there was too much of a rhyme or reason why it happened, either.

I had the wii for a LONG time. I finally bring it out, install homebrew+bootmii with letterbomb, install ios58 to run WiiSX games (I think that was one solution, I think it ended up being the fact that I didn't have the japanese BIOs for the PS1, but that's a completely different story), played WiiSX, and later that day, bam. No system menu. RIP Wii, death by unknown causes

Does the disc drive flash twice when you power on the Wii?

 

[Biovirulent]

Does the disc drive flash twice when you power on the Wii?

I haven't tried that and probably won't try it.
I actually tried booting with and without the disc drive, same result.
However, now, the disc drive has two loose wires and I have no idea where they need to be soldered back to, so that's not going to happen.

 

[mikefor20]

Jdbye is correct, amperage of a battery is just about capacity, voltage is what fries things. it sounds like you've been poking around in that Wii for quite some time. Loose wires, with or without the drive, excetera excetera. Maybe it's time for a new system? in order for anyone here to truly help you we would either have to see the unit or know everything that you've done to it and I mean everything. unless you want to try making a Frankenstein unit by swapping out parts from a working Wii. How about this why don't you try the stock power supply? Does it work? last time that it did function correctly did you smell anything any burning, any ozone?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I haven't tried that and probably won't try it.
I actually tried booting with and without the disc drive, same result.
However, now, the disc drive has two loose wires and I have no idea where they need to be soldered back to, so that's not going to happen.

It's just a way to check if BootMii is installed as boot2. If it is, there might still be hope.
Download this and extract it to the SD card: http://static.hackmii.com/bootmii_sd_files.zip
(Use a 2GB or smaller SD card for the greatest chance of success)
Power on the Wii and see if the BootMii menu shows up.

 

[Biovirulent]

Jdbye is correct, amperage of a battery is just about capacity, voltage is what fries things. it sounds like you've been poking around in that Wii for quite some time. Loose wires, with or without the drive, excetera excetera. Maybe it's time for a new system? in order for anyone here to truly help you we would either have to see the unit or know everything that you've done to it and I mean everything. unless you want to try making a Frankenstein unit by swapping out parts from a working Wii. How about this why don't you try the stock power supply? Does it work? last time that it did function correctly did you smell anything any burning, any ozone?

I did try with the stock power supply. No difference.
I also did not get into the wii very much beyond to remove and bridge the fuse until this black screen. I then took it apart and looked at everything. Disc drive wires were just starting to come loose.
I don't remember smelling anything, but maybe...

I did buy a new wii, I just want to be sure of what happened with this one so I don't make the same mistake.

It's just a way to check if BootMii is installed as boot2. If it is, there might still be hope.
Download this and extract it to the SD card: http://static.hackmii.com/bootmii_sd_files.zip
(Use a 2GB or smaller SD card for the greatest chance of success)
Power on the Wii and see if the BootMii menu shows up.

Okay, so here's the information so far.
I did manage to get bootmii to run fine, I even was able to get to the homebrew launcher via this when I restored the black screen nand.
However, when I do this, I don't have nand permissions. And there's seemingly no way to get nand permissions.
It's definitely boot1/system menu (which MMM said I have a null system menu version, I couldn't install one either)/nand problems. Boot2 is just fine.

I also tried a different nand, a wiped one, and the same problem occured, except I had no homebrew launcher access.

 

[endoverend]

Did you try to make a new NAND with ohneschwanzenegger?

 

[Biovirulent]

If @GreyWolf is right though, I can't repair it. It's the first blocks of the nand that probably died. How though, is what I need to know.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Did you try to make a new NAND with ohneschwanzenegger?

Yup. That's what I used to get the wiped nand. With that, I had no homebrew launcher and no nand access as far as I can remember.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Just to clarify, I'm not looking for help to repair it. It's probably dead for good. I have a new wii I want to make portable, but if this could happen again somehow, I need to know how before I ruin the 2nd one.

 

[endoverend]

If your NAND got killed, it was almost certainly due to the battery pack. Too many variable in terms of voltage and amperage, and likely you overheated somewhere along the line, or you were runnign it on a severely undercharged battery. If you're really good at soldering, you can try to buy just a NAND chip and solder it in but otherwise a new Wii is your only option.

 

[Biovirulent]

If your NAND got killed, it was almost certainly due to the battery pack. Too many variable in terms of voltage and amperage, and likely you overheated somewhere along the line, or you were runnign it on a severely undercharged battery. If you're really good at soldering, you can try to buy just a NAND chip and solder it in but otherwise a new Wii is your only option.

All right. Well if it was an undercharged battery, I had no way of knowing, there's no warning light when it's low, and I don't know the battery life. But if it's the case, thank you, that's one thing I didn't think of.
Power supply says output 12v 3.7A DC. Battery pack was 12v 6.0A DC. If the others are right, the amperage had no problems. The voltage shouldn't, it's the same.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

How in the world did people make portable wiis, especially so high maintenance, small ones that fit in their hands? If there's this many leaps and jumps to get over, it's really hard to figure how they did it and I happened to fail with very low maintenance modifications. Homebrew channel+bootmii softmod and power cable hardmod.

 

[Takeshineale128]

Have you tried pressing the reset button on your wii. I get a black screen with bootmii as boot2 on composite video and i have to press the reset button every time to get the health and safety screen to pop up.