Hardware Are chipped Wii's useful at all here in 2020?

ragnar14 · Dec 4, 2020

TLDR, I have a chipped Wii and I'm thinking of cutting the chip out and tossing it. Good or bad idea?

Full story. I had a soft modded Wii with a dead DVD drive, it worked fine aside from that. Walking through a thrift store one day I spotted a Japanese Wii sitting there for $5, which I figured I'd grab for a working disc drive. When I got the system home I tested it out, and the disc drive worked playing a legit Japanese game, but there was something wrong with the systems firmwares. When attempting to click at the settings just to glace at the firmware version the system was on, it wouldn't show me, instead a web browser would pop up and attempt to connect to Yahoo.jp?! I was like, lol wtf, this system is trash I only wanted it for the drive anyways... So I teardown the system, and to my surprise it has a modchip slapped on the bottom of the disc drive. So I was like, lol wtf can this hurt, and I slapped it in my softmodded US system. The drive works fine, it can play US games (which it didn't do in the Japanese system), and burnt games because wtf why not.
But, it seems to have come with some problems. I'm obviously primarily using a USB drive to play stuff, launching a game from USB and then trying to go back to the Wii menu from there sometimes blackscreen locks up the system. Attempting to simply launch Gamecube games often results in Nintendont crashing on a blackscreen. The systems date is going crazy, sometimes it thinks it's 2035, other times it thinks it's 2091, wtf. Basically I think the modchip is trying to do it's job, however the hell it used to get this done, but it's causing a bunch of conflicts.

So yeah, playing burned games is of basically no benefit. I don't know what model of modchip is in there, so if the modchip needs some supporting software or settings or something, it doesn't have it. It just seems a shame to toss the chip, the install is well beyond my soldering capabilities.

Alexander1970 · Dec 4, 2020

Good Morning Canada.

First,I thought,I was still asleep,when I have read this......

.....cutting the chip out and tossing it.

Guys, are you guys really that boring?

Please leave it where it is !!!
If you do not want it,please sell the Wii.

There are maybe many of Developers,Collectors or simply Wii Guys like
@Brand Newman or @Alex_Halley here in the Community who will have such Wii.

The Possibility alone,to play Dragon Quest X is a Reason to not doing such "Actions" like removing a Mod Chip....
Maybe you can make these Guys a Christmas Present.

But of course,it is your Wii,you can do what you like with it.

Thank you.

fvig2001 · Dec 4, 2020

You're better off not using it as I never went back to using it after USB loading came out. The modchip was a good stepping stone but Wii homebrew has come far that it's no longer needed. Heck we even have Wiis as big as a Gameboy nowadays.

Alex_Halley · Dec 4, 2020

I want to buy your chiped wii to play dqx!

ragnar14 · Dec 4, 2020

Nice, thanks for suggesting reasons for me not to destroy it. That's why I posted this thread, I couldn't think of a single reason not too on my own.

I'm not opposed to selling it, it's just a spare Wii too me... Although I'm way off from getting access to the Trading Area.

Alexander1970 · Dec 4, 2020

ragnar14 said:
Although I'm way off from getting access to the Trading Area.

Then -> off you go for you and the great Posting Time. :rofl2:

Have Fun and a great Time here (and with your Wii´s of course.)

qbdp · Dec 4, 2020

ragnar14 said:
Nice, thanks for suggesting reasons for me not to destroy it. That's why I posted this thread, I couldn't think of a single reason not too on my own.

I'm not opposed to selling it, it's just a spare Wii too me... Although I'm way off from getting access to the Trading Area.

Are you willing to open it back up and take clear photos of the chip and the solder points (if any)? It could perhaps identify the modchip and get us more info to you about how to work with it or even disable it.

The Real Jdbye · Dec 4, 2020

ragnar14 said:
TLDR, I have a chipped Wii and I'm thinking of cutting the chip out and tossing it. Good or bad idea?

Full story. I had a soft modded Wii with a dead DVD drive, it worked fine aside from that. Walking through a thrift store one day I spotted a Japanese Wii sitting there for $5, which I figured I'd grab for a working disc drive. When I got the system home I tested it out, and the disc drive worked playing a legit Japanese game, but there was something wrong with the systems firmwares. When attempting to click at the settings just to glace at the firmware version the system was on, it wouldn't show me, instead a web browser would pop up and attempt to connect to Yahoo.jp?! I was like, lol wtf, this system is trash I only wanted it for the drive anyways... So I teardown the system, and to my surprise it has a modchip slapped on the bottom of the disc drive. So I was like, lol wtf can this hurt, and I slapped it in my softmodded US system. The drive works fine, it can play US games (which it didn't do in the Japanese system), and burnt games because wtf why not.
But, it seems to have come with some problems. I'm obviously primarily using a USB drive to play stuff, launching a game from USB and then trying to go back to the Wii menu from there sometimes blackscreen locks up the system. Attempting to simply launch Gamecube games often results in Nintendont crashing on a blackscreen. The systems date is going crazy, sometimes it thinks it's 2035, other times it thinks it's 2091, wtf. Basically I think the modchip is trying to do it's job, however the hell it used to get this done, but it's causing a bunch of conflicts.

So yeah, playing burned games is of basically no benefit. I don't know what model of modchip is in there, so if the modchip needs some supporting software or settings or something, it doesn't have it. It just seems a shame to toss the chip, the install is well beyond my soldering capabilities.

Nintendont doesn't use the disc drive, so there's no way the chip would be affecting that.
I surmise it has something to do with your setup or your settings, not sure though.

You should post a syscheck: https://gbatemp.net/threads/posting-a-system-check.300279/

If all else fails you always have the option of generating a new blank NAND with ohneschwanzenegger. If that doesn't help it must be hardware damage.

cearp · Dec 4, 2020

DQX can't be run via usb? I had no idea, what are the reasons?

Alexander1970 · Dec 4, 2020

Hello.

cearp said:
DQX can't be run via usb? I had no idea, what are the reasons?

It needs an special IOS59 and only works on Japanese Wii´s (or Region changed to Japan).
It do not work with USB Loaders because of that special IOS.

It needs the USB for installing additional Data.
Then it installs an Channel and needs for Playing of course the (Original/Backup) Discs.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/is-dragon-quest-x-incompatible-with-gx-loader.556566/

Thank you.

Crazynoob458 · Dec 4, 2020

chipped wiis are good for piracy but then usb loaders
the only problem i had with homebrew was riivolution others nintendont, etc work perfectly

ragnar14 · Dec 5, 2020

qbdp said:
Are you willing to open it back up and take clear photos of the chip and the solder points (if any)? It could perhaps identify the modchip and get us more info to you about how to work with it or even disable it.

Sure can do. Not today though, it's pretty time consuming to dig that deep into the system and then put it all back together.

alexander1970 said:
It needs an special IOS59 and only works on Japanese Wii´s (or Region changed to Japan).
It do not work with USB Loaders because of that special IOS.

It needs the USB for installing additional Data.
Then it installs an Channel and needs for Playing of course the (Original/Backup) Discs.

----------------

Thank you.

Neat. I too had no idea that DQX had these issues. Although shouldn't Alex_Halley simply buy a Japanese Wii then? I'm sure they're out there and not particularly expensive, and DQX looks cheap enough too (with a quick look I see a Wii that just eBayed for $50USD shipped and DQX for $10USD). International shipping form Canada is far from cheap nowadays, and my Japanese Wii is basically a brick as it sits now, it has a dead DVD drive in it and won't even let me in the system settings

The Real Jdbye said:
Nintendont doesn't use the disc drive, so there's no way the chip would be affecting that.
I surmise it has something to do with your setup or your settings, not sure though.

You should post a syscheck: --------------

If all else fails you always have the option of generating a new blank NAND with ohneschwanzenegger. If that doesn't help it must be hardware damage.

Crazynoob458 said:
chipped wiis are good for piracy but then usb loaders
the only problem i had with homebrew was riivolution others nintendont, etc work perfectly

It's certainly possible there's some other issues, there's a bunch of basic's I didn't even bother checking. Like perhaps the USB drive is just being screwy, I can easily test it on another system. And reloading an old NAND backup is easy enough.

urherenow · Dec 5, 2020

My wii is chipped, but I never had to solder it. It’s a clip-on

I have a bunch of games that were downloaded/copied and burned to disc, because usb loading wasn’t a thing yet, and the chip allows for playing copies at the full 6x speed. Without a chip, physical copies are reduced to 3x speed, and it breaks certain games like one of the Metroid games, and I think Ghostbusters.

Deleted User · Dec 5, 2020

The Wii's optical drive arguably is worth less than nothing these days. It weighs the console down and wastes electricity.

If you have a collection of burnt games and can't afford a USB stick or have slow internet making ripping disks more pragmatic than downloading ISOs then the optical drive serves a purpose. But these are niche uses and most people would be better off without it.

Alex_Halley · Dec 5, 2020

ragnar14 said:
Sure can do. Not today though, it's pretty time consuming to dig that deep into the system and then put it all back together.

Neat. I too had no idea that DQX had these issues. Although shouldn't Alex_Halley simply buy a Japanese Wii then? I'm sure they're out there and not particularly expensive, and DQX looks cheap enough too (with a quick look I see a Wii that just eBayed for $50USD shipped and DQX for $10USD). International shipping form Canada is far from cheap nowadays, and my Japanese Wii is basically a brick as it sits now, it has a dead DVD drive in it and won't even let me in the system settings

I really want to run DQX on one of my Wii's (I have 4), but 2 do not run backups recorded by me, and the other 2 have chips that do not run at 6x speed (necessary for the DQX to install the channel and pen drive). Let's talk about Ebay. I live in Brazil, so all Ebay prices, for you to have a reference for those who live in Brazil, multiply the prices by 5, then you will approach Ebay prices for Brazilians.
I already play DQX for PC and Switch, but DQX for Wii (which no longer has online mode) has an exclusive story mode, which I was interested in playing but without spending more than I spent on Wii's .
I publicly thank alexander1970 for remembering me!

ragnar14 · Dec 5, 2020

Alex_Halley said:
I live in Brazil,

Oh. Yeah I've heard about that. I don't know what that layer of shipping hell is like, I just spotted a Japanese listing shipping the console internationally for free, but that totally could exclude Brazil.
I just poked at Canada Post's website and guesstimated the size/weight to ship a Wii from here to Brazil. Looks like it's either $30 or $60 for untracked surface mail (not sure why the site is throwing me 2 different prices for the same rate). Tracked shipping *starts* at $90, which is what eBay would need at a minimum. And afaik you guys get hammered on import taxes too

ragnar14 · Dec 7, 2020

Alrighty, I did some things with with this chipped drive. Firstly I opened it up and took some pictures:

Colors? Who needs colors when you have 29(?) wires going to random tiny points?!
Ain't no way I'm going to touch that tape, I don't care that I can't see everything. I'd rather not accidentally have something pop loose that I'm incapable of fixing.

From there I figured the best test to confirm there were any hardware/software system issues would be to remove what I thought to be the problem, just for confirmation. So I popped my dead drive back into my US system, and slapped the chipped drive into the Japanese Wii again.
Booting up my US system without the chipped drive, Nintendont still was crashing, so I initially thought the cheap thumbdrive was the issue. However I couldn't repeat the, USB game load, home button back to the Wii menu crash, so I kept testing random stuff with the USB drive. Turns out Nintendont started working just fine when I popped the drive onto my PC and deleted all the GameCube save files that had weird timestamps decades removed from reality. Perhaps Nintendont won't function in the year 2035? idk lol
So yeah, once I removed those few files the chipped drive somehow managed to corrupt, my US Wii works totally fine.

Onto the Japanese Wii, not much I can think to do here, partly cause I can't read Japanese. I previously tried a US retail game on it, which didn't work. Just cause I could, I fed it a burnt US game, which obviously didn't work too. I fed it a burnt Japanese game (Captain Rainbow, a game I bought intending to play, until I realized how annoying Riivolution is), which worked, yay.
I can't observe the system clock cause I can't get into the settings. Maybe I could transfer something to a SD card to view some timestamps, but I can't think how cause I can't get into the settings. Minutes on the clock move along at a seemly normal 1 a minute rate, and did so on the US system. Months days years are the WTF is happening problem, I think. Although I did observe the system click over from 11:59 am, over to a nonsensicle time of 0:00 pm. Yeah, I don't think time works like that even in Japan...?

Edit: Ran syscheck, seeing as I just had some possibly corrupt files caused by questionable hardware. I don't see anything that jumped out as wrong, but idk, I'm far from an expert

SysCheck HDE v2.4.0 HacksDen Edition by JoostinOnline, Double_A, R2-D2199, and Nano
...runs on IOS58 (rev 6176).

Region: NTSC-U
System Menu 4.3U (v513)
Priiloader installed
Drive date: 09.07.2006
Homebrew Channel 1.1.2 running on IOS58

Hollywood v0x11
Console ID: 44244622
Console Type: Wii
Shop Channel Country: Canada (18)
Boot2 v4
Found 110 titles.
Found 49 IOS on this console. 5 of them are stubs.

IOS4 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS9 (rev 1034): No Patches
IOS10 (rev 768): Stub
IOS11 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS12 (rev 526): No Patches
IOS13 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS14 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS15 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS16 (rev 512): Stub
IOS17 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS20 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS21 (rev 1039): No Patches
IOS22 (rev 1294): No Patches
IOS28 (rev 1807): No Patches
IOS30 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS31 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS33 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS34 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS35 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS36 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS37 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS38 (rev 4124): No Patches
IOS40 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS41 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS43 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS45 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS46 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS48 (rev 4124): No Patches
IOS50 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS51 (rev 4864): Stub
IOS52 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS53 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS55 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS56 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS57 (rev 5919): No Patches
IOS58 (rev 6176): USB 2.0
IOS60 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS61 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS62 (rev 6430): No Patches
IOS70 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS80 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS202[60] (rev 65535, Info: hermesrodries-v6): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS222[38] (rev 4, Info: hermes-v4): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS223[38+37] (rev 4, Info: hermes-v4): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS224[57] (rev 65535, Info: hermesrodries-v6): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS236[36] (rev 65535, Info: rev 3351): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access
IOS249[57] (rev 21008, Info: d2x-v8final): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS250[56] (rev 21008, Info: d2x-v8final): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS254 (rev 65280): Stub
BC v6
MIOS v10
Report generated on 12/06/2020.

qbdp · Dec 7, 2020

Never heard of a Wii modchip with 29 wires. Most are 9 or 6.

I wonder if the modchip isn't causing the issue. System firmware 3.0 really messed with a LOT of modchips.

DinohScene · Dec 7, 2020

I'm quite happy with me Sundriver.
Tho that's a full on replacement and not a simple drive chip.

The Real Jdbye · Dec 7, 2020

ragnar14 said:
Alrighty, I did some things with with this chipped drive. Firstly I opened it up and took some pictures:

Colors? Who needs colors when you have 29(?) wires going to random tiny points?!
Ain't no way I'm going to touch that tape, I don't care that I can't see everything. I'd rather not accidentally have something pop loose that I'm incapable of fixing.

From there I figured the best test to confirm there were any hardware/software system issues would be to remove what I thought to be the problem, just for confirmation. So I popped my dead drive back into my US system, and slapped the chipped drive into the Japanese Wii again.
Booting up my US system without the chipped drive, Nintendont still was crashing, so I initially thought the cheap thumbdrive was the issue. However I couldn't repeat the, USB game load, home button back to the Wii menu crash, so I kept testing random stuff with the USB drive. Turns out Nintendont started working just fine when I popped the drive onto my PC and deleted all the GameCube save files that had weird timestamps decades removed from reality. Perhaps Nintendont won't function in the year 2035? idk lol
So yeah, once I removed those few files the chipped drive somehow managed to corrupt, my US Wii works totally fine.

Onto the Japanese Wii, not much I can think to do here, partly cause I can't read Japanese. I previously tried a US retail game on it, which didn't work. Just cause I could, I fed it a burnt US game, which obviously didn't work too. I fed it a burnt Japanese game (Captain Rainbow, a game I bought intending to play, until I realized how annoying Riivolution is), which worked, yay.
I can't observe the system clock cause I can't get into the settings. Maybe I could transfer something to a SD card to view some timestamps, but I can't think how cause I can't get into the settings. Minutes on the clock move along at a seemly normal 1 a minute rate, and did so on the US system. Months days years are the WTF is happening problem, I think. Although I did observe the system click over from 11:59 am, over to a nonsensicle time of 0:00 pm. Yeah, I don't think time works like that even in Japan...?

Edit: Ran syscheck, seeing as I just had some possibly corrupt files caused by questionable hardware. I don't see anything that jumped out as wrong, but idk, I'm far from an expert

SysCheck HDE v2.4.0 HacksDen Edition by JoostinOnline, Double_A, R2-D2199, and Nano
...runs on IOS58 (rev 6176).

Region: NTSC-U
System Menu 4.3U (v513)
Priiloader installed
Drive date: 09.07.2006
Homebrew Channel 1.1.2 running on IOS58

Hollywood v0x11
Console ID: 44244622
Console Type: Wii
Shop Channel Country: Canada (18)
Boot2 v4
Found 110 titles.
Found 49 IOS on this console. 5 of them are stubs.

IOS4 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS9 (rev 1034): No Patches
IOS10 (rev 768): Stub
IOS11 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS12 (rev 526): No Patches
IOS13 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS14 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS15 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS16 (rev 512): Stub
IOS17 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS20 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS21 (rev 1039): No Patches
IOS22 (rev 1294): No Patches
IOS28 (rev 1807): No Patches
IOS30 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS31 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS33 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS34 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS35 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS36 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS37 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS38 (rev 4124): No Patches
IOS40 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS41 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS43 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS45 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS46 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS48 (rev 4124): No Patches
IOS50 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS51 (rev 4864): Stub
IOS52 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS53 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS55 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS56 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS57 (rev 5919): No Patches
IOS58 (rev 6176): USB 2.0
IOS60 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS61 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS62 (rev 6430): No Patches
IOS70 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS80 (rev 16174): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS202[60] (rev 65535, Info: hermesrodries-v6): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS222[38] (rev 4, Info: hermes-v4): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS223[38+37] (rev 4, Info: hermes-v4): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS224[57] (rev 65535, Info: hermesrodries-v6): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS236[36] (rev 65535, Info: rev 3351): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access
IOS249[57] (rev 21008, Info: d2x-v8final): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS250[56] (rev 21008, Info: d2x-v8final): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS254 (rev 65280): Stub
BC v6
MIOS v10
Report generated on 12/06/2020.

That's a D2CKey.
The chipped drive can't corrupt your files. It's literally completely separate from the Wii firmware and other hardware and only tricks the drive into accepting burned discs and treating them as legitimate.
I think the battery in the Wii might be dead. There's a battery door secured by a single screw underneath the Wii that holds a CR2032 (IIRC).

Hardware Are chipped Wii's useful at all here in 2020?

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