Okay, so I ordered a shiny new acekard 2i from their website. It is not a knock off, or appears to be physically damaged in any way.
I formated the card to fat32 and installed the firmware EXACTLY as multiple tutorials have instructed.
I have tried multiple versions of the firmware, both their...
although i ended up accidentally changing my nand with no way of going back bc i didn't know you needed a gamecube controller to restore it (i have a wii minus/1.1, which doesn't have gamecube controller support)
and if i find the sd card i have my NAND backed up on, i can not only restore the NAND if i solder the right part in, but i can also put my NAND on dolphin, then i can play dolphin online, like PMEX Remix or MKWii Riibalanced