Hacking My discoveries with the new BC-less Wii's

[obcd]

Is it actually a different mobo, or does that connector fit on the solder pads used for the gamecube memory slots? It's difficult to see on the pictures.
Since people say you could solder some GC port connectors on it, I assume the solder pads exist and the mobo is the same. Why would they bother for those pads
in a new pcb design, unless they weren't sure at that moment that the gc ports would dissapear from the final product.

 

[Lucif3r]

old version of Wii, mario kart bundle - 1349sek
slim wii, mario kart bundle - 1489sek.

The "new' Wii is'nt slimmer at all.
Only gamecube parts are removed and there's anew plastic cover where the ports used to be.

Thats beside the point. Its sold in sweden as "slim" at many retailers. I guess the proper term would be "stripped", but that wouldnt really sell well, now would it?

Is it actually a different mobo, or does that connector fit on the solder pads used for the gamecube memory slots? It's difficult to see on the pictures.
Since people say you could solder some GC port connectors on it, I assume the solder pads exist and the mobo is the same. Why would they bother for those pads
in a new pcb design, unless they weren't sure at that moment that the gc ports would dissapear from the final product.

The pcb is the same, nothing new on it. It simply dont have the GC+mem ports soldered on (and have one memslot replaced by some other connector, probably for debugging).

 

[Krestent]

Unless they used v65280...an official update will never install lower version over higher, so the stubs would survive all Nintendo updates.

I don't think Nintendo would intentionally max out a stub's version number and block themselves from being able to manipulate those files in a future update.

N has shipped v65280 titles before: IIRC Photo Channel v1.0 comes as a v65280 stub on the consoles that ship with v1.1 preinstalled.

There's zero use for MIOS/BC on these new consoles, so in theory, they'd never need to update it again, unless Coto's idea is right and that mystery port is a way to attach GC ports (e.g. for internal use or maybe an unreleased GC port accessory).

Besides, if they really wanted to, they could still stub them using something like v10000 and not block future updates. Just keep working ones below v10000...

For the end user they are needless.
For Ninty they are valuable for repair purposes.

Why would Ninty need a version of IOS that blocks out all Wii-specific hardware for repair purposes?

 

[JoostinOnline]

*snip*

For the end user they are needless.
For Ninty they are valuable for repair purposes.

Why would Ninty need a version of IOS that blocks out all Wii-specific hardware for repair purposes?

He is saying they need a version that DOESN'T do that.

 

[Hielkenator]

*snip*

For the end user they are needless.
For Ninty they are valuable for repair purposes.

Why would Ninty need a version of IOS that blocks out all Wii-specific hardware for repair purposes?

He is saying they need a version that DOESN'T do that.

Yup, thank you Joostin'

 

[thieves like us]

im guessing nintendo was too lazy to remove the plastic that holds the ports and memecard

That they were. Left-over cases were converted for the new hardware to cut costs.

You call it lazyness that bign uses the same cases and leaves the holes in, but you have to see it from their side. With this way of doing things, they only need to keep one type of enclosure in stock.
They als need to keep the new covers in stock, but they take far less space than the enclosures. A new piece of enclosure requires the design of a new moule which is mounted on the machine that makes the pieces. Such a moule is very expensive. So, from their point of view, reusing what they have is a good descision and has nothing to do with lazyness. If the expected sales aren't high enough to justify the development costs, it's simply not worth doing it. They cut the development costs where possible. Seems logically to me.

the re-tooling costs far outweigh the benefits that nintendo would receive and as odcd pointed out, this allows them to stock a single item replacement case for units returned for service.

if you look at the newer ds cases, you'll notice that rather than create an entirely new mold, it was re-tooled and the clips to hold the game boy advance cartridge were removed and substituted with a rather crude looking block that fills the space. again, this is a cost savings and in the world of big business every penny adds up.

 

[VashTS]

so has anyone checked to see if the gamecube memory card management is still an option? i assume it is as the software is 100% the same.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

so has anyone checked to see if the gamecube memory card management is still an option? i assume it is as the software is 100% the same.

Yeah, it was already confirmed to still be there, just the the GC disc in the disc channel still shows up too.

 

[JoostinOnline]

It's the same System Menu.

 

[Hielkenator]

It's the same System Menu.

Can the GC game be started?

 

[JoostinOnline]

It's the same System Menu.

Can the GC game be started?

I imagine you could click start and it would give you an error, but I don't know. I'm just saying that the menu itself should appear to be exactly the same.

 

[WiiPower]

Read the 1st post again:

[...]
1. Inserting a GameCube disc causes the drive to not take in the disc, make some noises like it's jammed (gave me a scare), and then spit the disc out as if it was a disc that someone had grabbed and prevented from going in.
[...]

Maybe there are 2 generations of these Wiis. And the 1st ones got old drives, while one part of the real cost reduction plan are new drives that can't handle the mini DVDs at all.

 

[SifJar]

It's the same System Menu.

Can the GC game be started?

According to some report I read (i thought in this thread? don't have time to check) inserting a GC disc will cause the drive to spit it back out, so no.

EDIT: But if there is a modchip that allows you to use full size DVDs for GC games, that'd probably "work" in that it would boot, but of course no way to control or save (well, NMM could be used fro saving, but without a controller, what's the point?)

EDIT: Ah, WiiPower already quoted what I was talking about. Oops. But still, I guess my theory about GC games on full size DVD with modchip still stands.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

Maybe there are 2 generations of these Wiis. And the 1st ones got old drives, while one part of the real cost reduction plan are new drives that can't handle the mini DVDs at all.

Who has said that they had a drive that did take in the disc and have it show up in the disc channel? Everything I've read says that it gets spit right back out.

From the images that I've seen of the internals of these new wii's is that the drive looks the same mechanical wise. So I think it is safe to assume that the logic board sees the non wii disc and decides to eject it. Easy way to test it is to throw in other non-wii discs and see what it does.

 

[Krestent]

Maybe there are 2 generations of these Wiis. And the 1st ones got old drives, while one part of the real cost reduction plan are new drives that can't handle the mini DVDs at all.

Who has said that they had a drive that did take in the disc and have it show up in the disc channel? Everything I've read says that it gets spit right back out.

From the images that I've seen of the internals of these new wii's is that the drive looks the same mechanical wise. So I think it is safe to assume that the logic board sees the non wii disc and decides to eject it. Easy way to test it is to throw in other non-wii discs and see what it does.

Well, what it does is kind of similar to what would happen if I inserted a disc halfway, but held on while the motor tried to take in the disc. So that might narrow that possibility down to the logic board just spitting out any mini-disc inserted, based solely on its size.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

EDIT: Ah, WiiPower already quoted what I was talking about. Oops. But still, I guess my theory about GC games on full size DVD with modchip still stands.

No it doesn't. There is no way that these new drives will read a burned dvd by any means at all, not even with a modchip. The only thing that may actually work is a wode or swapping out the drive for one that actually can read dvd's.

Unless I'm missing something, but I'm pretty sure all mod chips just forced the drive into dvd mode, but since N got rid of the dvd mode that no mod chips worked for any of the newer drives.

 

[WiiPower]

EDIT: Ah, WiiPower already quoted what I was talking about. Oops. But still, I guess my theory about GC games on full size DVD with modchip still stands.

No it doesn't. There is no way that these new drives will read a burned dvd by any means at all, not even with a modchip. The only thing that may actually work is a wode or swapping out the drive for one that actually can read dvd's.

Unless I'm missing something, but I'm pretty sure all mod chips just forced the drive into dvd mode, but since N got rid of the dvd mode that no mod chips worked for any of the newer drives.

I don't think so. The modchips that are soldered to the drive achieve 6x reading speed and some of them support gamecube audio streaming, both is not possible in DVD mode. The chips that are only plugged in use the video dvd stuff, and won't work on the newer drives, are limited to 3x reading and don't support audio streaming. If the latest drives can't be modded with modchips, i guess there's another reason for that than the no video dvd firmware.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

Yeah, those modchips that you solder on to the logic board can not be used with any of the newer drives, hence why nintendo stopped bothering to cut pins off the chip and stopped putting the epoxy around the chip. No need to waste the money doing that stuff when a modchip wont work anyways.

 

[dslitemonkey]

Does the new Wii play image files of Gamecube games?

 

[JoostinOnline]

Besides, if they really wanted to, they could still stub them using something like v10000 and not block future updates. Just keep working ones below v10000...

Quit trolling Daco. His statement makes sense. MIOS and BC have been incrementing by values of 1, and I doubt Nintendo will be releasing thousands of new versions. In the event of an update, MIOS and BC would never need to be installed and, since stubs are smaller, you would even get a little extra NAND space (not enough to matter though).