A couple of things that I'm doing with my SD-Card NAND interposer for the Wii-U.
1) I'm deciding on a Micro-SD or SD form-factor. Which do you all prefer? The eMMC works in 4-bit mode and so both will work.
2) The "CLK" trace that's severed, the QSB/interposer is going to capture and solder to each side the cut line. There will be a SPST switch installed that will allow you to switch between reading/writing the onboard NAND in one position and reading/writing the replacement in the other position.
So if you want a quick way to also DUMP your stock NAND, this QSB will allow you to dump it. But I'm currently deliberating on the interconnect/breakout for connecting the installed QSB to an SD-Card/computer. Should I design an SD-CARD that has a small FFC connector on it that will connect via an FFC cable to another FFC interconnect on the QSB board so that you can have a solderless way of dumping/writing to the stock NAND once you install this QSB?
I'm still in the planning stages. But I welcome all feedback and suggestions. Ultimately, I want this QSB to serve 2 purposes 1) An easy/simple way to replace a failing NAND. 2) A easy way of manually dumping/writing to the factory NAND when you can't via software using the Wii-U.
1) I think full size is better as it gives you more options about what card to use.
2) While FFC might work great on the SD side I think it would be better to have something more common, like DuPont, on the QSB side. This way people could not only connect to a SD slot but also to other things (like the SDIO bus of an RPI) without needing special adapters or cables.
//EDIT: Something like this might work great as dumping port on the QSB side:
Just not sure how to make it on SD adapter side. Maybe without any connector but the cables soldered directly?
//EDIT2: Or maybe something less error prone, like these:
That way the SD adapter can't be wrongly connected but it's still DuPont compatible.
Here you should probably take into account that when building such devices on their own people often will buy the cheapest components from Aliexpress (or similar cheap places). I.e. fake DuPonts. The ones which are made of magnetizable metal, quickly come loose, and are capable of losing contact after some time due to oxidation. And yet to the 'untrained' eye, they can look just as good as the real thing.
Voultar> I would prefer micro sd personally. If anyone wanted to use a micro sd card to sd adapter you get another potential point of failure. I have some of these adapters that have such a loose grip on the card that the micro sd could probably fall out if shaken hard enough
Regardless of what you choose, I wote for the sd slots that clicks and lock the cards in place
The way i see it right now the market is shifting more and more towards microSD as the universal form factor accepted in most devices. I usually see full sized SD cards marketed at camera users. A full sized SD slot would allow both but with the caveat of unreliable microSD to SD adapters. Not sure which is the better choice.
The way i see it right now the market is shifting more and more towards microSD as the universal form factor accepted in most devices. I usually see full sized SD cards marketed at camera users. A full sized SD slot would allow both but with the caveat of unreliable microSD to SD adapters. Not sure which is the better choice.
Only unreliable adapters will be unreliable. In my opinion, the problem of unreliable adapters lies in the contacts, weakened and damaged/shifted by frequent card changes. And/or in the excessive economy on the material and coating of the contacts (which is more likely for really trashy adapters).
For example, the same adapters from genuine Samsung cards (the ones that are white and gray and even to the touch feel very sturdy) are very reliable. In any case, they have never let me down so far. Or maybe I was just lucky. And I would not be surprised if the quality varies from batch to batch.
As for the full-size cards, sometimes they are even designed like a microSD card inside an individual non-removable adapter. Reasonable unification and reduction of production costs. Also this solves the problem of contacts wear and tear (compared to a 'normal' adapter). But it leaves the (possible) problem of excessive savings on contact materials.
Although it is very possible that some still makes real old-school style full-size cards.
So I agree that the full-size slot is still more omnivorous, and that slots that snap and lock the card in place are quite handy.
Hmm, yeah. Go with full size then. We have enough space. I also have a bunch of these Samsung adapters and they are indeed high quality. They don't feel like they will break any moment unlike most adapters i had.
I think I would go with a cheap micro sd slot without a spring. I don't see much point in a fancy mechanism where the card propbably only gets inserted once. A spring could be problematic with people pushing and breaking solder joints between the interposer and the mainboard and maybe even rip pads. Also from my experience these spring slots like the one on my raspberry don't hold the cards that good. A micro sd slot without spring will be cheaper for both the slot and the pcb as it could be smaller compared to a full size sd slot.
Today almost everything is micro sd and I had bad experiences with these adapters. The only reason for full size would be if someone wants to reuse an old full size SD, he has lying around.
Also if I look at my board I see C1252 in the way, how will you deal with that? Also keep the metal shield in mind, so it shouldn't become to high, what could be the case with a full size slot.
2) The "CLK" trace that's severed, the QSB/interposer is going to capture and solder to each side the cut line. There will be a SPST switch installed that will allow you to switch between reading/writing the onboard NAND in one position and reading/writing the replacement in the other position.
So if you want a quick way to also DUMP your stock NAND, this QSB will allow you to dump it.
But I'm currently deliberating on the interconnect/breakout for connecting the installed QSB to an SD-Card/computer. Should I design an SD-CARD that has a small FFC connector on it that will connect via an FFC cable to another FFC interconnect on the QSB board so that you can have a solderless way of dumping/writing to the stock NAND once you install this QSB?
Are these two different proposals or the same?
If I understand you correctly you would have two board, one small qsb which then has a connector to connect to a second pcb with SD adapter or the PC/Card reader?
I would argue for putting the the SD slot on the QSB, because more connectors usually mean more possible points of failure. And here it would be really hard to debug. Someone who is doing this, maybe with full bricked wii, which doesnÄt produce screen output anymore, because the emmc went ro would have a very hard time figuring out what the problem is. At it could either be that the SD is incompatible, the clone he made is bad, something is wrong with the SLC, something is wrong with the console, not related to the MLC or just a bad connection. So I would try to eliminate at least the bad connections as much as possible. I was trolled at least once by a bad connection between the SD card and the Adapter....
I want this QSB to serve 2 purposes 1) An easy/simple way to replace a failing NAND. 2) A easy way of manually dumping/writing to the factory NAND when you can't via software using the Wii-U.
For the purpose of unbricking a Wii U wich was just bricked in software, we would also need a qsb for SLC, als both need to be flashed together. But besides that I agree with that.
Here you should probably take into account that when building such devices on their own people often will buy the cheapest components from Aliexpress (or similar cheap places). I.e. fake DuPonts. The ones which are made of magnetizable metal, quickly come loose, and are capable of losing contact after some time due to oxidation. And yet to the 'untrained' eye, they can look just as good as the real thing.
This describes me... Buying the cheapest connectors and then being frustrated over bad contact, especially with the DuPonts.
Maybe just have big soldering points on the QSB for the PC connection. After you dumped the eMMC, you probably never need to connect anything to these again and you could just cut the cables if you don't want to leave them in.
@JamesWA But the nand dump still finishes?
Can you dump /sys/logs from the slc and pm it to me?
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I made a new build of mdinfo, which shows the date in a nice format. But you don't need to rerun it, I can see from the CID that you have a July 2012, same as mine.
it finishes doing the dump , i got it saved now, it just gives a 5 retry count on an area always.
i sent you a message over pM with what you wanted,
oh keep in mind i havent seen any error yet on my hynix, the internal storage is almost empty and im using the wiiU just with games on the flashdrive. Just weird that when doing the dump of the nand i always get error count 5
the eMMC you dump through the hardmod could still be good enough. I would recommend doing multiple dumps and compare them.
Without a NAND backup you just have to be super careful to not mess up the SLC cache.
I woudln't be suprised if we can get it to boot again to a error message and from there on we can use udpih to fix the broken files
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You can just dd to it. But if your cardreader supports it, you can run blkdiscard before on the card, so the controller can earase everything in advance. If the card is discarded before it might also make sense to skip FF blocks, but I think dd can only skip zeros. But I am not really sure if the hassle would be worth it
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If your eMMC produces consistently read errors, it's perfect to test the error handling of my dumper code.
It would be helpful for me, if you could run a dump with it and show me the output and the generated mlc.log.
Please don't trust the generated dump, but it would be good to see what wfs-extract thinks about it.
You need to run it through UPIH. It replaces the recovery menu.
EDIT: I found some problems with the dumper, that I want to fix first. I removed it and will upload the new version, when it is ready
Here is the current work in progress version. I still have problems with the SLC dumper, so don't worry about the SLC errors it is reporting, your slc is probably fine
Also note there is a Screwhole under my SD Adapter. So my placement isn't good, it would interfere with the RF Shield. I still haven't reassembled the console yet, as I need it for testing (and be able to flash the SLC back)
I'm keeping it close to the original eNAND and will be positioning the micro-SD here. My only concern is if C617 is populated on other boards.
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I'm plotting the Wii-U PCB out so that i know where things live. I'm beginning to lay the board out.
One thing to keep in mind. It's really important that you have dampening resistors sitting between the 3v3 signal sources and the Micro-SD card to mitigate in-rush current. I'm going to use 0805 sized resistors so that they'll be large enough for anyone with decent soldering ability. Or, risk it and just bridge them across. It's your Wii-U
Good to know what these resistors are for. I think I should at them too. I have to relocate the SD anyway.
Is that just basic knowledge or is it somewhere in the spec or the datasheets?
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