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The Wii U was truly the black sheep of the main Nintendo consoles, but in terms of homebrew capabilities, it was but a diamond in the rough. While the Wii U is way past its heyday by almost a decade, the homebrew community still continues to thrive and develop great things for the system.

One of these developers, @shinyquagsire23, has made some research and advancements towards creating a modchip for the Wii U, which he titled "de_Fuse". The modchip started when Shiny Quasire started looking at the then unhacked Wii Mini console, in an attempt to glitch boot0 on it, and while getting curious if it could work on Wii U, he found that a similar exploit could be attempted for it, with the only downsides being OTP dumps being impossible due it being all 00s and the driver for boot0 being limited to SDHC cards.

While the necessity of having a modchip for the Wii U is not a must since Wii U already has coldboot exploits and many other things like Aroma that could serve a similar purpose, the main purpose of this modchip is to allow booting a Wii U console straight from the SD card, without having to rely on the Wii U's internal eMMC chip to boot into the console. This due to the recent news about some Wii U consoles bricking entirely due to failures in the eMMC chip, so giving players the option to boot from SD card would be a relief to this delicate issue that plagues the console.

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The rest of the information is highly technical and dives into the eFuses, OTP, boot0, boot1 and SRAM of the console, so those interested in a more in-depth and detailed information regarding the process can read it in Shiny Quagsire's own article about de_Fuse on his webpage.

The modchip is currently in early stages of development, and it currently requires an FPGA of sorts, but it hasn't been standardized in terms of schematics or parts. However, Shiny Quagsire is trying to aim for a $25-$35 dlls range when its finished (or lower), based on RP2040 chip. Those interested and willing to collaborate and help out throughout its development can do so through Shiny Quagsire's GitHub repository for the modchip, where he keeps all of the coding and research for it open source.

de_Fuse, the One True Pwn article
GitHub Repository

 

[tmnr1992]

You could just boot into minute and disable the disc drive in the seeprom through the backup and restore menu in minute.
No need to install something

Thanks for the quick reply, just to confirm so I don't mess something up, the option you're referring to is "Set SEEPROM SATA device type", which should be changed from "default" to "no device" right?

 

[SDIO]

Yes. Also the default option isn't really default, if you works want to enable it again, you would set it to ROM (don't remember the exact name).

 

[tmnr1992]

Yes. Also the default option isn't really default, if you works want to enable it again, you would set it to ROM (don't remember the exact name).

Thank you so much, just tested it and it works! I'll try this on my other console to see if it boots.

 

[my2k2zx2]

I have a console that only had a blue light at powerup and no display before I took it apart.
I have a defuse pico soldered on and I do get the purple led and menu to show up. I was successful in getting a dump of the otp and seeprom. Pi pico is still on the board.
I'm not sure where to go from here. I have a mlc2sd but have not put it on yet. I got the isfshax installer to load but it says the boot1 is unsupported.

 

[SDIO]

If you have defuse, you don't need to install isfshax.
You can dump the logs in the backup and restore menu in minute and that might tell us why it is crashing.
Since the boot1 is so old I wouldn't expect the live log to work when doing the patch and boot

 

[my2k2zx2]

If you have defuse, you don't need to install isfshax.
You can dump the logs in the backup and restore menu in minute and that might tell us why it is crashing.
Since the boot1 is so old I wouldn't expect the live log to work when doing the patch and boot

I have redone the 1gb card with only the files for the defuse setup. At what point do I remove the pico or put the mlc2sd on the board?
I was able to download the mlc and slc files with the downloader and the otp I dumped. I'm not sure what my next step is. Do I need to set up a 2nd sd card? I have a spare 32gb card. If i need a 2nd card, what is the file layout for it?
do I flash the file in the defuse zip boot1_slccmpt.img to the wiiu and us the 32gb card for rebuilding the mlc/slc?

 

[SDIO]

You need to flash the boot1 to SLCCMPT. Then you can use any SD card, as long as it is formatted FAT32.
From the logs I can see that SCFM is crashing because of errors from the eMMC.
What you do depends a little on what you want. If you have a 64GB SD card you can do the format redNAND, which partitions your SD card and clones the eMMC to one of the partitions, after that you can do "Erase MLC" and then restore redNAND. That will make your console probably boot again, but it's likely that it still has corruption. (You can then check with the MLC checker in the UDPIH recovery, how bad it is).

Or if you don't care for the data on the console, you can also just install MLC2SD now and run the setup. Since your firmware is so old you would have to boot the latest OSv10 fw.img as ios_orig.img from the SD.
Also that won't update your boot1. To also update your boot1, you could it also to the wafel_install folder. But you could also install it later through the normal Firmware Update or with NUSspli.

EDIT: here I explained how you can get the ios_orig.img https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-...ii-u-internal-memory-mlc.636309/post-10385733
If you also download the boot1 (0005001010000100) with JNUS, then you need to add the -dlEncrypted option.

 

[my2k2zx2]

I've flashed to the slccmot and now my 32gb card boots to the minute menu. I have no care for the existing mlc data, this console was bought in a junk lot. I have a mlc2sd ready to go and a 64gb card for it. I'll put that in after I get the osv10 downloaded.

 

[SDIO]

The console might have eShop games on it, that's why it might be interesting to check the data on it out.
But you could also see that from the tickets on the slc

 

[my2k2zx2]

I have the ios_orig.img downloaded and on the card, but when I boot with that option, it stops at
"searching for otp store in plugins
OTP Store at 27e24514"
the led stays purple

I'm guessing I dont have something on the sd card properly?

 

[SDIO]

It sounds like you have an outdated minute. Make sure to use the latest minute and stroopwafel

 

[my2k2zx2]

It sounds like you have an outdated minute. Make sure to use the latest minute and stroopwafel

Ok, going to set up the sd card and try again.
does the SD card going in the mlc2sd need to be a specific format before going in the slot? I have a new one I havent taken out of the package.

 

[SDIO]

You can put it straight in, the setup will format it automatically

 

[my2k2zx2]

You can put it straight in, the setup will format it automatically

Was trying a different sd card, ended up ripping the mlc2sd off he board and pads went with it. Calling it quits for this board.

 

[SDIO]

Probably your GND joint wasn't good.
You can still get the signals from the vias. Or you just use redNAND or uSATA