Broken Wii U with blue light and no video

alexszymona · Mar 30, 2023

Hi,
I bought a broken black wii u.
When i turn it on the light goes to a steady blue and i hear the drive 2x going back and forth.
My 2 TV's say NO SIGNAL on HDMI and my old CRT wont get signal on AV too.
I cant sync the gamepad using the red button.
I tried the UDPIH with the recovery_menu_dc_init, but im unable to get the purple light.
Is it bricked?

Im new to the wii u and i hope someone knows if this is repairable.

Thank You

skawo · Mar 30, 2023

Did you rename the dc_init file to just "recovery_menu"?
Is your SD card formatted to FAT32?
When are you plugging the Pico in?
BTW - The dc_in menu only outputs over HDMI, not AV.

alexszymona · Mar 30, 2023

I did rename the file, and formatted a 32GB micro SD to FAT32 using Windows.
I tried to plug the Pico in from 8s - 15s after powering the console on.

skawo · Mar 30, 2023

Try plugging it in a second after the drive stops moving. It takes about 10 seconds to get running, as well.

alexszymona · Mar 30, 2023

it doesnt work,
i tried a different, regular 8GB SD card and reflashed the Pico.
Still nothing

SDIO · Mar 30, 2023

For me 7 seconds after power on work, so you might try to plug it in earlier. But maybe your wii u crashes before it can run udpih.
One possibility would be the eMMC is dead or read only. But that's just shooting in the dark.
But the ARM is starting and able to load stuff from the SLC or else you wouldn't get the blue light. Next step would be to mount the mlc and load stuff from there. So if it is dead you would get that what you have. The MLC (eMMC) needs to be at least partly there for UDPIH to work. There was a batch of bad eMMC chips in the early models.

But there are also other things that could go wrong. I am just very focused on that particular one and therefore biased towards it.

EDIT: my Idea would be to open the console and see if it has an Hynix eMMC. But maybe wait for other ideas. If it is a bad hynix, it is proabably fixable with an SD card and an soldering Iron.

alexszymona · Mar 30, 2023

Is it possible to replace the eMMC without a backup?
Its a black 32GB model produced in 2014, so it shouldn't be as early

EDIT: I took it apart, it has an Hynix eMMC

SDIO · Mar 30, 2023

The Wii U didn't sell that well, they had lots of stock...
Yeah Hynix has a good possibility do be bad. If you are lucky it is still readable. Then you can do the Hardmod to dump it through a PC with a cardreader or (what I prefer) with a raspberry.

Maybe you want to wait till @Voultar finishes his QSB, which will make the whole process a lot easier: https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-i-fixed-160-0103-system-memory-error.626448/post-10114518

alexszymona · Mar 30, 2023

Im going to try to read the Hynix tomorrow.
Can u give me a tutorial for the raspberry method?
Or else im going to try a cardreader

SDIO · Mar 30, 2023

For the raspberry you need to enable the second sdio interface in the config.txt

Code:

dtoverlay=sdio

Cut the clk trace on the wii U and solder the cables, just like described for the Hardmod. Then connect to the Raspberries GPIOs http://www.bluecomtech.com/Web Sites/Raspberry Pi Pinout/pinout.xyz/pinout/sdio.html#
Then start the Wii U. Give it a few seconds and then start the raspberry. I powered my raspberry B+ with a y cable from the Wii Us USB ports, just to be sure (but if you have a newer Pi, they might be to weak)
The raspberry should then detect the eMMC as mmcblk1. You can then try do dump it with gddrrescue.
After the first dump, do a second dump and then you can compare them.

Voultar · Mar 30, 2023

I'm looking at the datasheets, and I don't believe we need bus termination resistors for use with SD-Cards that we're using to replace busted eNANDS with. I believe we can safely omit these and be problem free.

The I/O is 3V3, the resistors are there to help clamp signals and back terminate them to match the drivers resistance. But in this specific application with the memory that we're replacing it with, it doesn't really matter much.

Just as there are no pull-up resistors to keep a logic state from floating, the SD-Cards that we're using will work and not care.

This will save tremendous space.

V10lator · Mar 30, 2023

@alexszymona Might be a stupid question but you made sure that no USB device is connected when trying to boot into the recovery menu?

alexszymona · Mar 30, 2023

V10lator said:
@alexszymona Might be a stupid question but you made sure that no USB device is connected when trying to boot into the recovery menu?

i just connected Power, HDMI and the Pico
EDIT: and the SD Card

alexszymona · Mar 31, 2023

I dumped the eMMC using the Raspberry Pi 3 B+. It took me about 6 hours.
Unfortunately i ripped the CLK Pad to the eMMC so i cant dump it a second time.
Can i check the dump somehow or should i just copy the dump to a SD Card and connect it to the board?

SDIO · Mar 31, 2023

Without the otp whe can't check the MLC as it is encrypted. You can just do a sanity check and see if it has the correct size and is not just 00 or FF in a hex editor.

Remember as soon as you write it to an SD and try to boot from the SD, the state of the SLC is now married to the state of the SD. So you can't just write an older version back. As you don't have a matching SLC+MLC dump, the Wii U then depends on this SD. If you mess it up there will be no way to get a consistent file system back and the Wii U is doomed (with the current state of the tools).

alexszymona · Apr 1, 2023

It doesnt work with the SD Card, i think its best to put it aside and buy the next console.
Maybe its fixable in the future or i can use its parts

SDIO · Apr 1, 2023

what exactly did you do? did you check all the connections with a multi meter? Can you show a photo of how you installed it?

alexszymona · Apr 1, 2023

its not my best soldering but i checked the connections using the vias on the otherside
I wrote my backup using Win32DiskImager to the SD Card.
It said the Image is bigger than the Card but i ignored the warning because u did too according to your Thread:
"How I fixed 160-0103 system memory error"

Does the Disc-Drive have to be plugged in to be able to start?

SDIO · Apr 1, 2023

Try to get GND closer to the emmc, maybe from the bad close to the Disc Drive connector.

You don't need the Disc Drive yet. It would show an error much later without the drive.

Could you compare the content of the SD card to the dump to see if the Wii U changed anything on it?

There is also the posibility that the eMMC isn't the problem or that the SLC got messed up. My SLC got messed up when my eMMC died for the second time.

EDIT: If you have a logic analyzer we could look at the SDIO bus to see if the Wii U is doing anything with it.
To see everything the LA would need 200Mhz. But to see the inital handshake before it ramps the clock up a slower one would also do it.

EDIT2: also make sure the SD makes good contact. If it's an older one maby scratch the contacts to make sure they don't have oxidation (that trolled me one time)

EDIT3: also make sure you didnÄt short CMD to the GND via between CMD and CLK

alexszymona · Apr 2, 2023

I just have a cheap 24Mhz logic analyzer. Never used it before.
I captured it using PulseView with just GND, CLK and CMD.
Do i need to connect the DAT0-3 for capturing the handshake?
Could the SD Card be incompatible? Its just a random noname 32GB card i had. I ordered a Sandisk to try it again.

Link to the Captured Data on my OneDrive

Broken Wii U with blue light and no video

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