I thought i'd share some work I decided to do on a Wii U I picked up recently. I've had a few Wii U's and before this I had a white version and was that guy who stuffed an SSD inside the console without losing the optical drive and also managed to fit a ridiculous 10,000mah battery inside of a Wii U controller.
I've mostly been interested in the Switch for the past few years and have installed many, many hwfly/picofly chips in OLED Switch's... so before giving any of this a try, I'd recommend having better soldering skills than me
Since the de_fuse project along with MLC2SD boards available (thanks @V10lator) I decided I wanted to get myself another Wii U, most people who install the MLC2SD/NANDAid boards are doing so because theirs died. In this case there was nothing wrong with the 32gb Toshiba MLC on this Japanese Wii U I just simply wanted a sleek way of expanding the storage to around 256GB.
The end goal of this was to:
1. Replace the original MLC with a 256GB "Sandisk Endurance" MicroSD
2. Have the ability to connect directly to the RP Pico RP2040 via a USB-C port on the front of the console should I ever need/want to.
This means I don't need to disassemble the console again if anything was to go wrong, or just wanting to use Minute Menu with a serial connection for any reason.
Anyway... now for the pics:
Installation of the MLC2SD its self - really not much to talk about here, I followed one of the guides available for this.
Installation of the RP Pico RP240 chip. Again as per the guide written by @shinyquagsire23 The biggest difference however was removing the original MicoUSB port and soldering wires directly to then be routed to the front panel. Hard to see in this photo but the magnet wire I was using (no idea on the AWG, but its tiny!) is small enough to fit through the tiny holes scattered all over the PCB.
More close up image of how I routed the wires from the RP2040 Mico USB port to the front panel.
The actual USB-C port I used is probably recognisable to anyone who's spent any time with the various Switch chips, this is one of the USB-C ports which will come as part of any "picofly RP2040 Switch" kit. I then just soldered the wires directly to the ribbon.
My soldering here looks really, really bad but I promise it does work What I did was get the USB port closest to the SD card, remove the 4 pins and de-solder from the motherboard and then hollowed out the original USB-A port. This is how it looks from the back:
The Nintendo Switch picofly USB-C port is pretty much the perfect size and is a pretty tight fit. But to be on the safe side I used gorilla glue to fill the void and glue the port in place. Now this has cured it seems to be pretty robust, I did have to clean up some of the glue after it had set because it does expand as it dries.
This is how the USB-C port looks when everything is back together. I used some blue solder mask just to make it even more clear this isn't a normal USB port and honestly just for general aesthetics.
Finally everything back in one piece and now at any time I can connect a USB cable directly to the RP2040 using a regular USB-C cable.
Tl;dr
Basically the same mod a few other people have already done, only mine has a USB-C port connected directly to the RP2040 chip to save having to disassemble the console if I ever need to connect to the de_fuse console for any reason.
I just wanted to share the work I'd done to hopefully inspire others that the Wii U still isn't dead!
I've mostly been interested in the Switch for the past few years and have installed many, many hwfly/picofly chips in OLED Switch's... so before giving any of this a try, I'd recommend having better soldering skills than me
Since the de_fuse project along with MLC2SD boards available (thanks @V10lator) I decided I wanted to get myself another Wii U, most people who install the MLC2SD/NANDAid boards are doing so because theirs died. In this case there was nothing wrong with the 32gb Toshiba MLC on this Japanese Wii U I just simply wanted a sleek way of expanding the storage to around 256GB.
The end goal of this was to:
1. Replace the original MLC with a 256GB "Sandisk Endurance" MicroSD
2. Have the ability to connect directly to the RP Pico RP2040 via a USB-C port on the front of the console should I ever need/want to.
This means I don't need to disassemble the console again if anything was to go wrong, or just wanting to use Minute Menu with a serial connection for any reason.
Anyway... now for the pics:
Installation of the MLC2SD its self - really not much to talk about here, I followed one of the guides available for this.
Installation of the RP Pico RP240 chip. Again as per the guide written by @shinyquagsire23 The biggest difference however was removing the original MicoUSB port and soldering wires directly to then be routed to the front panel. Hard to see in this photo but the magnet wire I was using (no idea on the AWG, but its tiny!) is small enough to fit through the tiny holes scattered all over the PCB.
More close up image of how I routed the wires from the RP2040 Mico USB port to the front panel.
The actual USB-C port I used is probably recognisable to anyone who's spent any time with the various Switch chips, this is one of the USB-C ports which will come as part of any "picofly RP2040 Switch" kit. I then just soldered the wires directly to the ribbon.
My soldering here looks really, really bad but I promise it does work
What I did was get the USB port closest to the SD card, remove the 4 pins and de-solder from the motherboard and then hollowed out the original USB-A port. This is how it looks from the back:The Nintendo Switch picofly USB-C port is pretty much the perfect size and is a pretty tight fit. But to be on the safe side I used gorilla glue to fill the void and glue the port in place. Now this has cured it seems to be pretty robust, I did have to clean up some of the glue after it had set because it does expand as it dries.
This is how the USB-C port looks when everything is back together. I used some blue solder mask just to make it even more clear this isn't a normal USB port and honestly just for general aesthetics.
Finally everything back in one piece and now at any time I can connect a USB cable directly to the RP2040 using a regular USB-C cable.
Tl;dr
Basically the same mod a few other people have already done, only mine has a USB-C port connected directly to the RP2040 chip to save having to disassemble the console if I ever need to connect to the de_fuse console for any reason.
I just wanted to share the work I'd done to hopefully inspire others that the Wii U still isn't dead!
Last edited by core2lee91,
