Hardware Wii U RedNAND – SD card slot completely broken, can I replace it with a microSD adapter?

a7m6d · Aug 17, 2026

Hi everyone,

I have a Wii U with a failing eMMC, and I was already using redNAND successfully with the SD card. Everything was working normally before the SD card slot on my Wii U got damaged. Unfortunately, the slot is now completely gone, so I can’t insert an SD card anymore.

My question is: can I use a Raspberry Pi Pico by itself to boot the Wii U/redNAND without having an SD card connected to the Wii U?

If that’s not possible, I was thinking about soldering a small external microSD card adapter directly to the motherboard and using a microSD card instead of the original SD slot.

Could someone please tell me exactly which points/pins I need to solder for the SD connection? I found the Wii U SD test points (CLK, CMD, DAT0–DAT3, VDD and GND), but I’m not 100% sure which ones are required and whether CD/WP need to be connected or pulled to GND.

Basically, I want to make the external microSD adapter work exactly like the original SD slot.

Any help or a wiring diagram would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

SDIO · 2026-08-23T22:07:06+0100

Can your system still boot to a point where the browser works? Then we might be able to use the wafel installer, to first setup Homebrew with SD emulation and from there setup USBMLC instead of redNAND.

If not you will need an SD slot. The idwa with the micro SD adapter would work (I also did that for the eMMC in the past). The pins on the SD slot are labeled on the board the 1,2 .. 9 correspond to the contacts on the SD. Here you find how the contacts on the SD are numbered.
Also for the SD to be detected, you need to connect the CD1 and CD2 to GND (they should already be connected togert, but that might just be the SD slot in my case. And also connect WP2 to WP1 (or GND, since WP1 is already GND) to disable the Write Protect.

Hardware Wii U RedNAND – SD card slot completely broken, can I replace it with a microSD adapter?

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