Wii U Stuck on Logo

ChefVortivask · Apr 4, 2023

Hello everyone,

First time poster here. I decided to make this post since I am having issues with my Wii U. Currently, my Wii U will not boot up to the main menu. It stays stuck on the Wii U logo indefinitely.

There are a few things to note about my console. The console is the black 32 gb model. I believe it was bought during the 2012 holiday season (release) as we were expecting to play Pikmin 3 before it got delayed. The system has never been modded in any fashion. It was not the most heavily played console, and I can't even give a good estimate of when it was last used (at least more than 3 years).

I have already tried doing the UDPIH, however it does not seem to be working. When using the second recovery menu, I get a white screen with some blue lines (see attached image). I believe this is similar to what @fadafwet described in his post. I was able to get the logs from the system, which I have attached to this post. Any idea what the issue may be and how to fix it? Any help would be much appreciated.

ChefVortivask · Apr 7, 2024

I think I understand what you meant by trigger. I was to set the trigger so that I would essentially record a specific event. I think the reason the CLK is "flickering" is because in those clips, I didn't have a specific trigger set. I was mainly focused on CMD since I wanted to see if there was any activity. I had the trigger set to "RUN/STOP" and the mode set to "AUTO" (I've attached a picture of the trigger options so that it's clear what I mean). I didn't know if there was a specific waveform I was supposed to be looking for with CMD since I believe it was stated it should be uneven, at least initially.

SDIO said:
It only goes up to 1V, not the 3V.

I've only ever seen it go to around 1V. The frequency is also 375 kHz. It's consistently been like that since I've started probing with the oscilloscope.

At this point given what I've been able to observe, and based on what you said about CLK only going up to 1V, does it seem like CLK may be the more pressing issue right now than CMD? Is there a datasheet that shows what resistance is used for the CLK pull-up?

SDIO · Apr 7, 2024

normally clk wouldn't have a pull up, since it is always driven by the host controller. Since the host controller seems to have problem driving it all the way up, we might help it with the pull up. Maybe try 1K and see what it does to the waveform.

ChefVortivask · Apr 8, 2024

I can give that a shot. I’m assuming it’ll be like what we had planned for CMD and I’ll be putting the resistor between CLK and 3V3? For the CLK point, I can’t use the pad on the NAND-AID right? It would either have to be the castellated via or the pad for the micro SD card slot (castellated via would probably be easier).

SDIO · Apr 8, 2024

ChefVortivask · Apr 9, 2024

I soldered in a 1 kohm resistor between the 3V3 pad and the CLK castellated via. It doesn’t look the prettiest, but the multimeter seems to show everything to be fine. I tried probing with the oscilloscope again and it doesn’t look like anything changed. I saw activity on CMD the first couple times I tried before eventually all I could see was it sitting at 3V. I’m assuming that since it appears that CMD can still be driven high and low that CMD might not be an issue and maybe it’s just acting this way since something else might be at fault? In any case, CLK didn’t seem to change at all. The wave looks the same, frequency is the same, and voltage is around 1.7V. Should I try a smaller resistor (stronger pull-up), or is there something else that might help?

SDIO · Apr 9, 2024

Hm that would indikate that something is really driving it into that state and it's not just to weak to drive it up like it is supposed to.
Maybe the ransistor which drives it down or so is broken and constantly on, thus fighting the one which is supposed to drive it up.

ChefVortivask · Apr 9, 2024

If that’s the case, and it does make some sense based on what you said, would there be any fix for that? Originally we were going to put in a pull up resistor to drive it high, but if we need to drive it low, I’m assuming the same method of just soldering a resistor between 3V3 and CMD wouldn’t work.

SDIO · Apr 9, 2024

I am only talking about CLK not CMD now.
We don't need to drive it low since it looks like it is driven down, even when it tries to drive it high. But ofc if would be good to have a working console to compare.
Maybe you could boot into minute and look how the clk on the SD slot looks. Then we have a healthy clock to compare.

ChefVortivask · Apr 10, 2024

Sorry. It seems I was a little unclear and confusing in my wording before. I was also talking about CLK, not CMD. I only mentioned CMD when I referenced what we were originally thinking of trying (pull-up resistor between CMD and 3V3). I understand how that can be confusing though.

Anyways, as for trying minute, would I just use the standard version of minute? Would I need to select a specific menu option, or would just bring in the menu be fine? I might be able to try tomorrow as the electronics shop is closed right now.

SDIO · Apr 10, 2024

yes you would use the standard minute.

ChefVortivask · Apr 11, 2024

I didn't have a chance to try it out yesterday, but I did today. There definitely is some different activity on CLK as booting into the minute menu happens. There's initially this wave that may be square, but it's rise and fall times are so fast that it's hard for me to tell even when I adjust the horizontal scale. After this it goes back to the square wave that I've been seeing before, but there are a couple of differences. Most notably, the voltage has risen to 2.16 V and the frequency has decreased to around 211 kHz. I did also try patch & boot, and it does get stuck on MLC open attempt. At that point CLK, CMD, and DAT1 look identical to what I was observing before. I guess that makes sense since I would assume when the Wii U powers on, it tries to access the MLC.

I do also want to note that although it looks like CMD just stayed at 3V3, I actually was able to observe the same activity I reported before the first few times I powered the Wii U on.

SDIO · Apr 11, 2024

It's normal to start out with a lower frequency and ask the card for it's capabilites and oly ramp the frequency up after making sure the card supports it.
The old minute from the defuse release even just tested the frequencies through to see which works.

ChefVortivask · Apr 13, 2024

So based on all your comments for my oscilloscope traces, it's appearing to me that things seem to be working as expected. Obviously the CLK still isn't reaching 3V3, but it doesn't seem like any particular signal is showing any red flags or anything of concern. It looks like CMD can still be driven high and low. Any idea on why I see activity on CMD the first couple of times I turn the Wii U on before it seems to just shoot up to its idle state (3V3)?

SDIO · Apr 13, 2024

The CLK not working properly looks like a big problem and it's likely the reason for your problems

ChefVortivask · Apr 13, 2024

So I've been thinking about this for a couple days now, but is there any chance that the eMMC (the old Hynix one) could be interfering? We know that its CLK and CMD signals are completely cut off due to the pads being torn off, but let's assume that the eMMC isn't fully disabled. I'm not sure how all these signals interact with one another, but if the eMMC were still sending out signals on any of the 4 DAT lines, could that impact how CLK is behaving? Does CLK look for something on one of the DAT lines? I suppose I could test this by removing the micro SD card and seeing if there's still any signal on the DAT lines.

V10lator · Apr 14, 2024

@ChefVortivask AFAIK CLK should not be impacted by eMMC interferences. If you want to get sure the eMMC is completely unable to interference from a hardware PoV you could cut the data lines (D0, D1, D2 and D3), too, so the eMMC is completely disconnected from the bus.

SDIO · Apr 14, 2024

If the clk line is cut the eMMC can't influence the clk line.
Another option I was thinking of is to use a LVS sdcard. That can operate in 1,8V mode right from the start, without requiring a handshake with 3V3. The problem with that is to start up in LV Mode it would look at the signal levels it sees from the Host controller and at the clk. The datasheet says the LV Mode is available for 50MB/s speed, but the Wii U can only do 25MB/s (50mhz), so I am not sure what the card would do in that case.
Also I would need to check if the Wii u host controller even supports 1,8V signaling.

And the did you capture the start of the clk? Is it that low right from the start or only after some time running?

ChefVortivask · Apr 14, 2024

SDIO said:
And the did you capture the start of the clk? Is it that low right from the start or only after some time running?

I've never seen CLK go to 3V3. The highest I ever saw was when it went to 2.16 V when trying minute, but normally it is around 1.7 V. I've tried trigger on falling edge and I never captured it going higher than around 2 V. I've also stated this before, but just to reiterate since it's been a while, CLK only seems to kick in after about 5 seconds or so. Initially when turning the Wii U on there's no signal (0 V), but then it goes to that square wave.

V10lator said:
If you want to get sure the eMMC is completely unable to interference from a hardware PoV you could cut the data lines (D0, D1, D2 and D3), too, so the eMMC is completely disconnected from the bus.

I thought about just removing the resistors I still have in place as the outcome will be the same.

If there were eMMC interference, what would that look like?

ChefVortivask · Apr 16, 2024

So I think I may have found the cause of the problem, or at the very least something that should not be happening.

I decided to try probing with the oscilloscope with no micro SD card inserted in the slot. I also did not use de_Fuse and removed the SD card from the front just to be safe. If my assumptions are correct, then in theory I should not see any signals from any of the lines if the eMMC is disabled since there’s no micro SD card to send out signals. However, as you can see, I still saw activity with CLK and DAT1, and the activity is exactly what I saw with the micro SD card inserted. There’s no activity with CMD which I suppose is good, but the fact that I'm seeing activity on CLK and DAT1 (I also did test DAT0 and saw activity) leads me to conclude that somehow, the eMMC is not fully disabled and is interfering. I have no clue how the CLK line would even be connected to the NAND-AID in such a manner. It's also possible that I'm mistaken as to where the CLK signal should be coming from, but I don't think it should be coming from the controller. What do you guys make of this?

SDIO · Apr 16, 2024

No that is expected. The CLK is driven by the host controler and the Host Controller is also sending the commands to the Card over the CMD line, which is just responding to them. In this case it would still send CMD0 and probe if a card responds.

Wii U Stuck on Logo

Well-Known Member

Attachments

Well-Known Member

Attachments

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Attachments

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Attachments

Well-Known Member

Similar threads

Popular threads in this forum