Hey folks, I recently modded my Wii and just wanted to offer some advice and share my story and lessons learned from the whole experience.
First off, if you have little to no experience soldering small, delicate electronic components, DON'T DO IT YOURSELF. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have even bothered. I had taken 3 electronics courses in high school (a decade ago) and I've built a few basic DIY electronic kits over the years, so I figured from a variety of tutorials that it wouldn't be that big a challenge. I was very wrong.
I was lucky enough to have one of the original, easy-to-mod, wiikey compatible, D2B models from around the time of the Wii's launch so I bought a wiikey online. They were going for dirt cheap and it SEEMED like it would be easy enough to do. I was feeling very confident in my abilities and acquired all the necessary tools to begin my project so I carefully opened my wii and kept all my screws and pieces neatly organized on a strip of masking tape stuck to a piece of paper. Here's a couple of pics:
My artistic abilities depicted below.
my diagram was crude and I'm not an artist, but it served it's purpose very well. The screws on the masking tape helped keep everything in order in case there was a sudden jolt to the table I was working on. I managed to disassemble and reassemble the wii very quickly and easily. Upon opening the wii I realized that this wasn't going to be nearly as easy as I thought. First, I identified the location for my WiiKey here.
This picture and all similar ones you see on the net do NO justice to the actually scale of what you're seeing. I have my camera set to macro mode and it's 2 inches away from the circuit board. To give you a better idea, the yellow square grid you see on the board is about the size of a dime.
So, I take a deep breath and line up my wiikey with the appropriate contact points on the board. The wiikey design has what is described as "the easy quicksolder installation method" that doesn't require any wires. I HIGHLY recommend that you abandon this method and opt to use wires instead. My quicksolder method was disastrous. I couldn't tell where solder was going. The solder never seemed to go in the direction that I wanted it to and just accumulated on top of the wiikey.
Even though I was extremely careful not to apply too much heat to the pad, one of the wiikey pads flaked right off. I was so pissed off and frustrated I almost punched a hole in the wall. Any hope for the quicksolder method was out the window now. Worse still, my wiikey was now welded to the board and I couldn't reach the soldered areas because the friggin chip lies against the board. So then I had to run out to radio shack and buy a desoldering bulb to try to suck the solder through the tiny holes in the wiikey.
After an hour and a half, I finally managed to ease the chip off the board. Fearing for the health of my wii at this point I plugged it back in and thankfully it still worked ok. I probably should've stopped then, but I was determined to get this wiikey working.
In the end, I used the wired method and had to solder one of the wires directly to the leg of the wii chip since I had burned off one of the pads. Although it was successful, I now have one of the ugliest mods out there and I'm still waiting for my wii to explode at any given moment.
You can see the damage here:
And closer still:
Yes as you can see, it is quite a messy, sloppy, unprofessional, perhaps even a dangerous mod and I don't know if I've effectively halved the lifespan of my wii. If I could go back in time, I would have just spent the extra 40 or 50 bucks to go to a pro and have it done right. I feel pretty dumb about it and would never ever put myself through that mental anguish again. I'm sure there are a lot of you out there that managed to get your wiikey installed with no problems at all and I applaud you for your success. You're either very skilled or very lucky. I recently told a friend I had modded my wii and he was like "wow that's great can you do mine too?" I wanted to hit him.
So for all of you with your next gen D2C boards with your dremel tools ready and dozens of wires, cut drive pins and high hopes...STOP. Look at the pictures above. Don't do it. Let a pro do it. You'll be glad.
First off, if you have little to no experience soldering small, delicate electronic components, DON'T DO IT YOURSELF. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have even bothered. I had taken 3 electronics courses in high school (a decade ago) and I've built a few basic DIY electronic kits over the years, so I figured from a variety of tutorials that it wouldn't be that big a challenge. I was very wrong.
I was lucky enough to have one of the original, easy-to-mod, wiikey compatible, D2B models from around the time of the Wii's launch so I bought a wiikey online. They were going for dirt cheap and it SEEMED like it would be easy enough to do. I was feeling very confident in my abilities and acquired all the necessary tools to begin my project so I carefully opened my wii and kept all my screws and pieces neatly organized on a strip of masking tape stuck to a piece of paper. Here's a couple of pics:
My artistic abilities depicted below.
my diagram was crude and I'm not an artist, but it served it's purpose very well. The screws on the masking tape helped keep everything in order in case there was a sudden jolt to the table I was working on. I managed to disassemble and reassemble the wii very quickly and easily. Upon opening the wii I realized that this wasn't going to be nearly as easy as I thought. First, I identified the location for my WiiKey here.
This picture and all similar ones you see on the net do NO justice to the actually scale of what you're seeing. I have my camera set to macro mode and it's 2 inches away from the circuit board. To give you a better idea, the yellow square grid you see on the board is about the size of a dime.
So, I take a deep breath and line up my wiikey with the appropriate contact points on the board. The wiikey design has what is described as "the easy quicksolder installation method" that doesn't require any wires. I HIGHLY recommend that you abandon this method and opt to use wires instead. My quicksolder method was disastrous. I couldn't tell where solder was going. The solder never seemed to go in the direction that I wanted it to and just accumulated on top of the wiikey.
Even though I was extremely careful not to apply too much heat to the pad, one of the wiikey pads flaked right off. I was so pissed off and frustrated I almost punched a hole in the wall. Any hope for the quicksolder method was out the window now. Worse still, my wiikey was now welded to the board and I couldn't reach the soldered areas because the friggin chip lies against the board. So then I had to run out to radio shack and buy a desoldering bulb to try to suck the solder through the tiny holes in the wiikey.
After an hour and a half, I finally managed to ease the chip off the board. Fearing for the health of my wii at this point I plugged it back in and thankfully it still worked ok. I probably should've stopped then, but I was determined to get this wiikey working.
In the end, I used the wired method and had to solder one of the wires directly to the leg of the wii chip since I had burned off one of the pads. Although it was successful, I now have one of the ugliest mods out there and I'm still waiting for my wii to explode at any given moment.
You can see the damage here:
And closer still:
Yes as you can see, it is quite a messy, sloppy, unprofessional, perhaps even a dangerous mod and I don't know if I've effectively halved the lifespan of my wii. If I could go back in time, I would have just spent the extra 40 or 50 bucks to go to a pro and have it done right. I feel pretty dumb about it and would never ever put myself through that mental anguish again. I'm sure there are a lot of you out there that managed to get your wiikey installed with no problems at all and I applaud you for your success. You're either very skilled or very lucky. I recently told a friend I had modded my wii and he was like "wow that's great can you do mine too?" I wanted to hit him.
So for all of you with your next gen D2C boards with your dremel tools ready and dozens of wires, cut drive pins and high hopes...STOP. Look at the pictures above. Don't do it. Let a pro do it. You'll be glad.
