Hi everyone.
First, obligatory excuse for being a newbie. I did try to find the answer for my issue, but since it's a bit unique (or at least I think so), I wasn't able to find the answer.
So here's the story - my brother bought a second-hand Wii a couple of months ago, for his kid. It's a pretty old unit, and it was hardmodded - a bit shoddily at that. It came with one of those strip thin strip cables jutting out of it, and a small square chip in the end which was glued on the case ("was" being the operative word - I think you can sense where I'm going with this). I didn't get a chance to see the unit (we don't live in the same city, and with the pandemic we don't visit that often anymore), so I only know that the chip was small, square, and had a red LED on when the Wii was turned on. The Wii itself has 4.3E firmware, it has Homebrew installed, and it ran official Wii CDs as well as backups from USB perfectly.
A week ago my brother's wife was cleaning up the place and while dusting has apparently managed to knock the chip off the cable. This unfortunately wasn't noticed until days after, with the chip most certainly being vacuumed up and lost forever.
Without the chip the Wii will not load neither the CDs, nor the backups - the drive just flashes blue a few times and the "eject error" shows up.
My brother has no idea what the chip was. Since I am slightly more into tech then him, he asked me to help.
Now I have *some* experience with Wii hacking from a decade ago. I did manage to succesfully softmod a Wii for one of my friends, using the Letterbomb hack and following one of the web guides. However I have absolutely no experience with hardmodded Wiis, nor have any idea what are his options.
So here's my question - does anyone have any advice whether this situation is salvageable, or is this Wii now a brick? Can you softmod a hardmodded Wii, or is there any way to identify what the chip was and order a replacement somewhere?
Thank you in advance for any kind of assistance.
Regards,
B.
First, obligatory excuse for being a newbie. I did try to find the answer for my issue, but since it's a bit unique (or at least I think so), I wasn't able to find the answer.
So here's the story - my brother bought a second-hand Wii a couple of months ago, for his kid. It's a pretty old unit, and it was hardmodded - a bit shoddily at that. It came with one of those strip thin strip cables jutting out of it, and a small square chip in the end which was glued on the case ("was" being the operative word - I think you can sense where I'm going with this). I didn't get a chance to see the unit (we don't live in the same city, and with the pandemic we don't visit that often anymore), so I only know that the chip was small, square, and had a red LED on when the Wii was turned on. The Wii itself has 4.3E firmware, it has Homebrew installed, and it ran official Wii CDs as well as backups from USB perfectly.
A week ago my brother's wife was cleaning up the place and while dusting has apparently managed to knock the chip off the cable. This unfortunately wasn't noticed until days after, with the chip most certainly being vacuumed up and lost forever.
Without the chip the Wii will not load neither the CDs, nor the backups - the drive just flashes blue a few times and the "eject error" shows up.
My brother has no idea what the chip was. Since I am slightly more into tech then him, he asked me to help.
Now I have *some* experience with Wii hacking from a decade ago. I did manage to succesfully softmod a Wii for one of my friends, using the Letterbomb hack and following one of the web guides. However I have absolutely no experience with hardmodded Wiis, nor have any idea what are his options.
So here's my question - does anyone have any advice whether this situation is salvageable, or is this Wii now a brick? Can you softmod a hardmodded Wii, or is there any way to identify what the chip was and order a replacement somewhere?
Thank you in advance for any kind of assistance.
Regards,
B.