​

Just a month ago, the WiiU modchip de_Fuse begun development by shinyquagsire23, which can be used in a Raspberry Pi Pico board , setting off to achieve a way to be able to boot a Wii U console without having to rely on the console's installed eMMC, and instead allow booting through an SD card on an external medium, with the final goal being to alleviate the surging problem of Wii U consoles ending up bricked due to a failure in their NAND chips.

The project has since evolved in its development, and after several revisions and new updates to it, the modchip can now dump and restore SLC and MLC from the Wii U's eMMC thanks to the use of the Pico board, so developers and early adopters can verify whether or not their board is properly connected to the Wii U console to dump/restore the corresponding parts. Some of the features that de_Fuse currently offers are as follows:

• Flashing a Raspberry Pi Pico with de_Fuse to check for proper connection
• "minute" menu to navigate the options once connected
• NAND backup, SLC/MLC
• OTP and SEEPROM backup
• Setup redNAND with a 64GB SD card for 32GB Wii U models, and 16GB SD cards for the 8GB Wii U models.
• NAND restoration, SLC/MLC (might still have some bugs)
• OTP and SEEPROM restoration
• Overclock and underclock of the Radeon GPU
• Rewrite of de_Fuse in C, which allows for an eventual Aroma support.

​

There also seems to be some people working on a solderless method to allow using de_Fuse, and there's also the possibility of an upcoming system title restore feature which could help with other kinds of bricks as well, so the future of de_Fuse is looking bright.

​

Source

 

[Valery0p]

Is it a REAL overclock, or just bringing the GPU back "up to stock" speeds like with the Switch?

Idk what's the speed it's supposed to work at, but the improvement is surely noticable:

 

[Ettino]

Idk what's the speed it's supposed to work at, but the improvement is surely noticable

"I've been letting it idle for about an hour to see if it's stable, so far it's fine but the heatsink is definitely getting ridiculously hot" - Shiny Quagsire

Yup, as expected. Gonna have to add extra cooling on top of that.

 

[ChiefReginod]

Mods that future-proof consoles are probably the most important kind of mods. I've heard of enough people with the dead NAND from non-use problem that I believe it's really a thing, so I'll probably get this eventually.

Also, I wonder how many other consoles will start dying when their internal memory exceeds their write limits or just plum fail from non-use like the Wii U. It's a bit scary to think about. The Wii U could just be the canary in the coal mine.

 

[Jayro]

Mods that future-proof consoles are probably the most important kind of mods. I've heard of enough people with the dead NAND from non-use problem that I believe it's really a thing, so I'll probably get this eventually.

Also, I wonder how many other consoles will start dying when their internal memory exceeds their write limits or just plum fail from non-use like the Wii U. It's a bit scary to think about. The Wii U could just be the canary in the coal mine.

Why would the nand fail from non-use though? This instance of nand failure is the first of it's kind that I've heard about. Normally nand failure is due to poor yields and too many writes. Now I could believe Nintendo using sub-par nands that were deeply discounted... They love old tech, after all.

 

[Valery0p]

Why would the nand fail from non-use though? This instance of nand failure is the first of it's kind that I've heard about. Normally nand failure is due to poor yields and too many writes. Now I could believe Nintendo using sub-par nands that were deeply discounted... They love old tech, after all.

I don't have an integrated circuits engineer on call, but for the MLC one of the failure modes sounds like the ps3 bug where the eMMC turns read only.
And since that's written every boot afaik, it's an instant brick if the write fails.

 

[darkangel5000]

Why would the nand fail from non-use though?

Because it isn't real "hard" storage like punch cards (and even those will wither away, given enough time).
NAND and NOR flash (also EPROMs and other programmable storage) suffers from shorter retention time in comparison to other mediums, because they're dependant on holding their charge (on a per cell basis). If the charge is somehow lost, they're prone to failure (i.e. by random bitflips). This isn't a matter of *IF* it happens but rather *WHEN* it happens.

Just to give a bit more insight: Losing charge doesn't mean that the data will degrade as soon as the power is disconnected from the chip. This can also happen while the eMMC is technically powered, as not every cell is read/written to 100% of the time. Also the fact that chip packages are typically made of thermoset plastics automatically makes them more susceptible to things like cosmic rays which can basically have the same effect => A very nice demo of this happened in quasi real time when a Super Mario 64 speed runner experienced a cosmic ray induced bitflip in the RAM, which in turn helped him achieve a otherwise impossible jump.

 

[The_Monado_Satyr]

View attachment 371758
​

Just a month ago, the WiiU modchip de_Fuse begun development by shinyquagsire23, which can be used in a Raspberry Pi Pico board , setting off to achieve a way to be able to boot a Wii U console without having to rely on the console's installed eMMC, and instead allow booting through an SD card on an external medium, with the final goal being to alleviate the surging problem of Wii U consoles ending up bricked due to a failure in their NAND chips.

The project has since evolved in its development, and after several revisions and new updates to it, the modchip can now dump and restore SLC and MLC from the Wii U's eMMC thanks to the use of the Pico board, so developers and early adopters can verify whether or not their board is properly connected to the Wii U console to dump/restore the corresponding parts. Some of the features that de_Fuse currently offers are as follows:

• Flashing a Raspberry Pi Pico with de_Fuse to check for proper connection
• "minute" menu to navigate the options once connected
• NAND backup, SLC/MLC
• OTP and SEEPROM backup
• Setup redNAND with a 64GB SD card for 32GB Wii U models, and 16GB SD cards for the 8GB Wii U models.
• NAND restoration, SLC/MLC (might still have some bugs)
• OTP and SEEPROM restoration
• Overclock and underclock of the Radeon GPU
• Rewrite of de_Fuse in C, which allows for an eventual Aroma support.

​

There also seems to be some people working on a solderless method to allow using de_Fuse, and there's also the possibility of an upcoming system title restore feature which could help with other kinds of bricks as well, so the future of de_Fuse is looking bright.

Source

So what exactly can we do with this ,Bc now I want to get my Wiiu out & over clock something

 

[ShadowOne333]

Thanks for the article!

Post automatically merged: May 16, 2023

Here's the solderless install, as you can see it uses some jigs to connect to the easily accessible testpoints:

Added the tweet to the article just now

 

[Jayro]

I don't have an integrated circuits engineer on call, but for the MLC one of the failure modes sounds like the ps3 bug where the eMMC turns read only.
And since that's written every boot afaik, it's an instant brick if the write fails.

I didn't know the PS3 even had an embedded eMMC, that's weird... but to write to it every time it turns on is just poor design.

 

[chrisrlink]

might as well remove the pico from my doa picobot gc to prep for thiss mod

 

[neotank19]

I didn't know the PS3 even had an embedded eMMC, that's weird... but to write to it every time it turns on is just poor design.

Two words. Designed obsolescence.

 

[urbanman2004]

Kudos to the modder for his efforts, but this is why I only emulate Wii U

 

[tiger111]

this wii u de fuse modding chip initially appeared to be promising

 

[Valery0p]

Leaving this here
https://github.com/shinyquagsire23/stroopwafel