Hardware [REQUESTION] Remarry Wii U DVD drive

simon66 · Nov 29, 2016

Hi everyone,

So I bought a lot of broken Wii Us and I managed to get them working except one. Looks like the person swapped the DVD drive and now the console doesn't want to boot (Power light flashes red and the console shuts down).

I know the motherboard is not damaged since once you remove the DVD drive, the system boots up with a error message stating that the drive is not present (Or that is damaged).

I'm assuming the DVD drive has its own set of keys and that its tied to the system (Much like how the PS3 does it). Does anyone know of a way to remarry this new drive to the system? I'm not sure if someone is working on a way to do this.

Any help would be appreciated

Error code:
160-1400

image

=== UPDATE ===

Got it to work! Looks like the ribbon cable has put on backwards!
Here's how they need to go in (2 side notches on the ribbon cable needs to be on the DVD side):

This is the wrong way:

RCJayce · Nov 29, 2016

simon66 said:
Hi everyone,

So I bought a lot of broken Wii Us and I managed to get them working except one. Looks like the person swapped the DVD drive and now the console doesn't want to boot (Power light flashes red and the console shuts down).

I know the motherboard is not damaged since once you remove the DVD drive, the system boots up with a error message stating that the drive is not present (Or that is damaged).

I'm assuming the DVD drive has its own set of keys and that its tied to the system (Much like how the PS3 does it). Does anyone know of a way to remarry this new drive to the system? I'm not sure if someone is working on a way to do this.

Any help would be appreciated

Can you upload a picture of the message that states that the DVD Drive is not present? thanks!

naddel81 · Nov 29, 2016

nintendo having sophisticated hardware connection/dependency???? I don't think so. Never heard of the DVD drive being married to the board on the Wii U.
I guess it is just a faulty drive.

simon66 · Nov 29, 2016

naddel81 said:
nintendo having sophisticated hardware connection/dependency???? I don't think so. Never heard of the DVD drive being married to the board on the Wii U.
I guess it is just a faulty drive.

I haven't seen one neither but no one has talked about it haha. I ended up figuring out that the original owner connected the ribbon cable backwards lol. Fail on his part and win for me

I've updated the first post with images on how it needs to be connected.

naddel81 · Nov 29, 2016

great, thanks for sharing!

PurPPle · Apr 27, 2017

Hello. I'am new here, sorry for my rough english.
I don't know nothing about electronic or programming ( i have some basic understanding), i bought on ebay a Wii U with disc drive error (160-1402), but they changed the dvd drive without swapping the pcb...and they dont have it anymore.
The weird thing is that sometimes, the console boot, but 1 on 50 try...
So, i wanted to know if one day it would be possible to do the remarrying ?
Cordialy, thank you.

simon66 · Apr 27, 2017

PurPPle said:
Hello. I'am new here, sorry for my rough english.
I don't know nothing about electronic or programming ( i have some basic understanding), i bought on ebay a Wii U with disc drive error (160-1402), but they changed the dvd drive without swapping the pcb...and they dont have it anymore.
The weird thing is that sometimes, the console boot, but 1 on 50 try...
So, i wanted to know if one day it would be possible to do the remarrying ?
Cordialy, thank you.

Hi,
Looks like these drives are not tied to the system. You can swap them and don't need to remarry them. As for your console not booting, that could be a bad ribbon connector.

GerbilSoft · Apr 27, 2017

According to http://wiiubrew.org/wiki/Hardware/SEEPROM , there *is* a drive key. I'm pretty sure this is related to the optical drive, since there's also separate USB and SHDD keys.

I'm not sure if SEEPROM is writable from homebrew, but if it is, it may be possible to pair the system with a new drive, assuming the key can be extracted from the drive.

simon66 · Apr 27, 2017

GerbilSoft said:
According to http://wiiubrew.org/wiki/Hardware/SEEPROM , there *is* a drive key. I'm pretty sure this is related to the optical drive, since there's also separate USB and SHDD keys.

I'm not sure if SEEPROM is writable from homebrew, but if it is, it may be possible to pair the system with a new drive, assuming the key can be extracted from the drive.

I swapped the drive on 2 units that I have and they all worked fine.

PurPPle · Apr 27, 2017

Thx for reply guys.
Hope one day, someone make it possible.
Cheers.

GerbilSoft · Apr 27, 2017

simon66 said:
I swapped the drive on 2 units that I have and they all worked fine.

It's possible that the drive key is identical for drives made in a given month/year or facility, or that they simply disabled the pairing requirement due to issues. (Or that the SEEPROM field is for something completely different; I'm not too sure of the specifics.)

PurPPle · Apr 27, 2017

You know what : i'am going to receive a brand new dvd drive for testing, so i let you know if it works.

PurPPle · May 2, 2017

PurPPle said:
You know what : i'am going to receive a brand new dvd drive for testing, so i let you know if it works.

Nope, it does not work.

Deleted User · Jul 18, 2017

Perhaps it'd make sense to take a look and see if we can find error logs (i.e. with SCT) to see if we can get the drive key to update.

abal1000x · Jun 5, 2022

The drive key could be get from the nand using harddump via teensy++.
Are there any hint on dumping the drive key from the drive, or write on it based on the console drive key?

QuarkTheAwesome · Jun 10, 2022

GerbilSoft said:
It's possible that the drive key is identical for drives made in a given month/year or facility, or that they simply disabled the pairing requirement due to issues. (Or that the SEEPROM field is for something completely different; I'm not too sure of the specifics.)

This would be absolutely wild if true, though I don't have a better explanation for what the OP saw w/ two drives working... As I'm sure you're now aware 5 years later, retail consoles do still have a pairing requirement, and worse, the drives check the console (not the console checking the drive) so we can't even patch it out in homebrew. Unless there's a killswitch somewhere?

abal1000x said:
The drive key could be get from the nand using harddump via teensy++.
Are there any hint on dumping the drive key from the drive, or write on it based on the console drive key?

Not from the NAND, unfortunately, the console-side key is kept in SEEPROM, which is hidden away inside the SoC and not accessible via a hardmod.

I don't think it's publicly known where the key is kept on the drive itself. I looked at a drive board last year and made note of a M24C08-WDW6TP, which would be a good candidate. I'm not aware of any way to dump a TSSOP8 chip that doesn't completely suck though, they're too small for chip-clips and I am not game to solder that. So who knows!

trimesh · Jun 10, 2022

QuarkTheAwesome said:
I don't think it's publicly known where the key is kept on the drive itself. I looked at a drive board last year and made note of a M24C08-WDW6TP, which would be a good candidate. I'm not aware of any way to dump a TSSOP8 chip that doesn't completely suck though, they're too small for chip-clips and I am not game to solder that. So who knows!

I somehow doubt it's in there - Nintendo have made some pretty boneheaded security decisions in the past, but I can't see even them storing a supposedly private drive key in an unencrypted serial EEPROM. I think I have a grabber for a TSSOP8, so I will try and dig out a WiiU drive and see if it's readable in-circuit.

Hardware [REQUESTION] Remarry Wii U DVD drive

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