Wow, what an adventure this has been for me. Thanks OP and others for putting this together. I absolutely love my Wiiu (retro gaming mostly) and this guide helped me restore SLC and MLC. It took a few weeks and definitely had some challenges but my beauty is alive again!
Here's what happened. A few weeks ago, I wanted to transfer some games to an SSD and through the process I lost all icons that had been carefully placed in specific folders. Like a dummy I was careless and I used FTPiUeverywhere to restore the entire usr folder on the MLC that I had taken months earlier thinking that the baristaIconDatabase and Account info would put back my icons, and the end result was that the Wiiu would no longer boot past a Black Screen. Gamepad also did not respond to any sort of buttons, and it definitely was not an SD card issue. I suspect I corrupted something in the MLC, perhaps related to "BrainAge Training" and since I had CBHC it could no longer find the title properly or could not certify that the title was legit anymore .. I am only guessing .. I'll never know..
Luckily I had a a full backup from 2017 (Mlc, SLC, Opt.bin, slccmpt)
So I proceeded to just do the MLC hard Mod thinking I could just restore MLC and I'd be back in business. While the MLC flash worked, I learned that since my backup from 2017 was 5.5.1 , and my current SLC on the system was 5.5.5 the system could NOT be repaired just by restoring MLC. I learned that I would have to restore SLC back to 5.5.1 as well to match my MLC 5.5.1 backup , and then hopefully I'd be able to update again naturally to 5.5.5 through the UI..
The main point to share here is that if any of you have backups that were taken years ago on a different System Version than what you have presently, you should probably take another backup as it will make restoring things a lot easier in the future.
Sorry for the long post, but wanted to share some additional tips below in case any of this may help someone else in 2021
Tips for restoring MLC
- I went through about 15 card readers and the only ones that seemed to work were older USB 2.0 card readers. Any USB3 readers either could not detect the MLC, or had a hard time maintaining the connection. Also CMD line seemed to be the most picky for me. Cable length longer than 30cm would not allow me to read the MLC chip so my advice is to
stay under 30 cm for your cable length
- When cutting the track for CLK, you can stop cutting once you start getting 43k - 200k ohms. With the trace completely cut I was still getting some very very minor resistance, probably from the board itself so I would advise people not to cut too deep.
- I used Female Dupont cables for the wiiu board, and male dupont cables for the SD card. This made things easier to disconnect/reconnect/troubleshoot. After you flash your MLC, make sure to physically remove the SD card from your card reader as the Wiiu wont boot with it still in the reader.
- MLC and SLC need to be the same version .. For example I had a back of my wiiu from when it was on 5.5.1 .. So I tried restoring just MLC and the Wiiu would not boot past the error 160-0103 , which forced me to look into restoring SLC back to 5.5.1 as well
Tips for Teensy
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You will definitely need to use a voltage regulator. I have a Samsung SLC chip so not sure if it's just me but any type of external voltage did not work for me. The Chip was being detected as being 2MB in size when I was using 3.3v external voltage. Do yourself a favor and use a voltage regulator according to the original OP guide. While external voltage may work for PS3 mods, I don't believe it will work with the Wiiu.
- There are a lot of different versions of the Singnal Booster HEX files on the net, don't just randomly download the first one you google. For example, there's a "NANDway_SignalBoosterEdition.hex" version out there with a
file size of 29KB which will not work with the Wiiu. It will give you an SLC size of 134 MB. The proper HEX and PY files are as follows:
NANDway_SignalBoosterEdition.hex = 24,136 bytes
NANDway.py = Line 430 in the PY should say VERSION_MINOR = 65 , and file size is 19,251 bytes
You can get both of the files by googling "NandWay Repository Github"
- I used Windows 10 X64 and as such Windows10 already installs serial drivers for the Teensy so you don't need to download any additional drivers.
- I only got a COM port showing in Device Manager after I performed all of my Teensy prep Soldering along with Flashing the correct HEX file. Only then I was able to get a COM Port showing in Device Manager
- I flashed the Hex file after performing the Teensy Prep steps, but before hooking it up to the Wiiu
- Despite others saying you only need to disconnect GND to test your SLC flash that did not work for me at all. I had to Disconnect everything with the exception of a few IO lines to get it to boot after SLC flash.. Maybe it's just a Samsung Chip thing. If you can, use Dupont cables as it will make connecting/disconnecting much easier instead of desoldering each time
- When flashing SLC, you will get the Drive Spinning up + Blue light , but when you are flashing slccmpt.bin only the blue light will come on, no Drive spinning up will happen .. this is normal
- Something that is missing from the guide is that you will need to install pyserial along with python otherwise you will get an error "could not open serial"
These are the files you'll need (Newer versions of Python will not work)
python-2.7.2.msi
pyserial-2.5.win32.exe
Tips for restoring SLC
- The solder pads on the board are pretty small. Remember to tin your iron tip, otherwise you will completely suck up the solder pad the first time you touch it. There are 2 solder pads for each connection so if you mess up on one you could use the other adjacent pad for the connection.
- It made things a lot easier for me if I used a little bit of hot glue to hold the cable in place after each solder.. Hot glue is your friend so long as don't add too much otherwise it will be hard to add back the IO shield casing if you plan on leaving the cables behind
- You can reattach the heatsink to the CPU after you remove the backplate shielding. If you're like me you'll need to leave the unit running for hours and the Wiiu CPU will overheat or crash your teensy flash if the CPU is left with no cooling in place. (there's a tiny bracket you can unclip from the IO shield which you can use to secure the heatsink.)
Soldering tips
Everything everyone else mentioned on this forum was very useful. I would also add that you should try and use a magnifying glass soldering kit , or in my case I just used a simple Cell Phone Holder attached to my working desk and I just used the Flash On light from my phone + Magnify 8x from the phone to do all my soldering. It worked wonderfully and I also have some momento videos of soldering now
On Amazon just search for "Phone Stand Phone Holder" if you're interested. Also, make sure to use a small tip for soldering. There are a ton of different Temperature controlled Kits around the $40-50 range on Amazon . Also practicing soldering ahead of time really helped on an old component around the house.. I am a beginner when it comes to soldering.
.. and lastly don't give up.. I found myself in a corner when I was trying to do do too many things at once (like figuring out teensy for the first time, while troubleshooting Cable length issues, while dealing with Windows Python install issues for the first time .. ) .. My recommendation would be to tackle one item at a time rather than trying to do the whole guide/procedure in one shot!
I hope some of this helps someone.
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