Hardware Opening/Soldering the WII *INFO*

[Hooya]

I'm planning on soldering a cyclowiz chip in my wii later this week using the quicksolder technique. I'm a novice solderer and so read this thread through and done some research. I've also opened up the wii and examined exactly what I need to do. The only thing that is seriously worrying my is bridging the connections because at least two of the connections on the cyclowiz are incredibly close and the whole thing is so tiny. So, I was wondering if anyone has any good tips on how to avoid bridging the points, especially in terms of soldering technique and given I'm not going to use wires. I've got some desoldering braid, but I'd really like to not have to use it and get it right first time rather than struggling with the panic of having to try and get rid of excess solder.

Practice on something else (old sound card or something) and use wires. If you're a novice at soldering the wire install is a wiser choice because it's easier to fix if you screw up.

 

[pcornall]

Thanks for the advice - have taken it and installed using wires. Was a long hard slog, but overall I impressed myself by apparently not shorting anything or overdoing the solder. I put my wii back together and it still works, plays originals, etc, but it won't read my backups. I'm presuming (or should that be hoping) that's because I burned them on pretty rubbish DVD+Rs and not because I did something wrong installing the chip. But anyway, what i was wondering was, if I had made a mistake installing the chip (ie one or two of the contacts coming lose), would the wii still be working fine as mine is? I just want to work out whether it's most likely a problem with the dvds or my install....

 

[arctic_flame]

If one of your solder joints was loose, your Wii will behave as if nothing had been done to it at all (As if no chip was attached)

 

[ziddey]

Final question before I give nonshaving approach a shot.

I read that you can completely douse the area with flux, so much so that you can barely see the wires, if it'd help.

So my plan is to tin the wires, then tape them down on the pcb, so that I can line them up and have them not move while soldering.

Should the clipped legs also be tinned, or just liberal fluxing be ok as long as wires are tinned?

I assume no tinning is needed for the pcb contacts.

I have a 15w radio shack iron, and understand to work left to right, being right handed. Should I do the all the pcb contacts first, then the clipped legs, vice versa, or left contact, left leg, etc, or left leg, left contact?

 

[Hooya]

You really only should need enough flux to coat the point. Yes, probably not a bad idea to flux the pcb contacts (talking about the part you're rebuilding the legs on here) as well, but you don't really have enough room to actually tin either. If you've fluxed you can just use a well tinned wire. I wouldn't recommend taping the wires down before you do the soldering, as that gives you less control when you're touching the iron to the point. Personally I'd rebuild one leg completely, then move to the next.

Someone else suggests tinning the wires, then bending them to form an L shape to re-build the legs with.

After you've rebuilt the legs you can solder to the normal points as usual.

 

[BloodRose]

Yeah it does lookt a bit more involved but is a bit cleaner than the wire method and the "quick solder" method. Using longer wires is easier though. Where have you folks been mounting your Wii (cyclo and wiikey) mod chips? To the underside of the optical (dvd) drive?

The one thing I like about the way he has instructed that method is that he suggests just using flux on the wii board points instead of adding solder to them, as he reckons there is enough solder in the points already, therefore you keep the actual soldering on the console to a minimum.

 

[ziddey]

got the mod done. restoring the legs was probably the hardest thing I've ever done. Almost had it with the first try, but when putting the third leg down, it bridged against the middle leg. Same story over and over, and with varying techniques, but after 5 hours, finally got the legs on in a way that if I needed to make adjustments, I could fairly easily.

by the time to solder on the wiikey, I was out of the 30awg that came with the wiikey. So I ripped apart some electrical wire for a lamp and used the individual wires inside. Soldered the wiikey on in about a minute. Complete breeze.

Went to try. No dice. Shows continuity to the restored legs, but legs must have not all been bridging to the clipped part of the d2b. After much more prodding with soldering iron and getting angry, finally. I had a collection of around 30 discs with a variety of discs, + and -, different brand, different burn speeds. All work just fine. dvd drive makes a little noise. Not sure if it's because the unit isn't assembled at all right now, or if dvd speed is high. Either way, no dre's reported yet.

 

[wiiza]

anyone successfully solder onto cut legs? tried and failed? or everyone just directly went to filing off the d2b package?

Weve done a quite a few D2Bs, we use a small cutting tool (multi-tool) to expose more of the tracers/legs in the IC. Once these are exposed we link the tracers on the IC to the mod-chip using kynar. We find it is best to protect the tracers with a hot glue gun after soldering to increase the security of the kynar. This is quite a delicate operation but weve had 100% success rate using this method.

 

[ziddey]

haha thanks for the reply. I made that post back at the beginning of July. Just the other day, I managed to restore the legs in a what's the word? non-destructive? way

 

[wiiza]

I know what you mean its hard to get a good connection that way but it is less destructive. Any pics of your install mate?

 

[lesado]

What do I do if I managed to solder away the original solder on the board? (just a dark spot where the solder used to be)
How do I get the solder back on?


EDIT:
Should have read this thread better. I'll sort it out (hopefully)

 

[fsimonp]

one question.
how can i see which chip i have?
i mean d2c or whatever...

 

[nikigo]

I bought Wii one week ago. Checked the S/N with the wii serial tracker and I knew I was in little trouble with the cut legs. I opened my Wii and started to grind the chip. After 10 minutes of grinding and 15 minutes of soldering I managed to solder the 3 wires (ATA66 cable) on the chip. Then when I tried to solder the rest of the wires on the wiikey I was a bit surprised when the pad 3 was missing.

More trouble for me. After a while of soldering I finished the wiikey with the wire method

. Here are the pictures of the situation.



I hope this is helpful for some people.

 

[loresfx]

the ends of the cables look like if they were cut long. If they contacted each other would this affect anything?

BTW i modded a friends wii with the cables from an IDE cable (used wii key)

like this one

They were very very thin, and flimsy! but i managed to solder them on to the chip and board.

These thin cables worry me, they seem so flimsy that it seems like they'll come loose at one point.


So my question is... Would Using this cable wont affect anything that could potentially damage the hardware?

 

[betawind]

the ends of the cables look like if they were cut long. If they contacted each other would this affect anything?

BTW i modded a friends wii with the cables from an IDE cable (used wii key)

like this one

They were very very thin, and flimsy! but i managed to solder them on to the chip and board.

These thin cables worry me, they seem so flimsy that it seems like they'll come loose at one point.


So my question is... Would Using this cable wont affect anything that could potentially damage the hardware?

If you have 2 bare wires making contact with one another it will short things out (same concept behind bridged soldering). I used IDE cable in mine as well, and I'm glad I did. Made it easier to solder. I just dropped some hot glue on it when I was done to cover the solder joints so only the shielded wire stuck out, which eliminates the possibility of them coming loose.

 

[ben_r_]

Hey I kinda of a random question, I have a really nice Paladin Stripax $90 wire stripper that only does down to 28 AWG wire. Now I know everyone recommends 30 AWG wire for Wii mods, but how bad is it to work with 28 AWG? Is it really too big to solder to the IC legs?

 

[ziddey]

if you can make it work, then go for it. I've always used strands of wire I got from ripping apart household electrical cable. Don't be so fixed on set numbers. Try it out and if it seems to be too difficult, you'll know to work down to a smaller size

good luck

 

[ben_r_]

if you can make it work, then go for it. I've always used strands of wire I got from ripping apart household electrical cable. Don't be so fixed on set numbers. Try it out and if it seems to be too difficult, you'll know to work down to a smaller size

good luck

Thank you, that was actually very good advice and what I knew inside but needed to read I guess. I should have looked at it that way myself in the first place. Ill pick up from 28 AWG wire and see how I feel about it.

 

[ben_r_]

Hummm, seems all I can find is stranded 28AWG wire and Im not so sure that Id like to do stranded with this time of project... Anyone else use stranded and find it to be okay?

 

[D1MX]

When installing the Wiikey if one of the contact points somehow looks like it might of burned off (not too sure) its virtually impossible to properly install the chip correct?

All 6 points need to be connected to each other whether be quick solder or wire method.

Main idea of this post is to check if one of the contact points won't take solder when I try to apply a small amount of solder to to it to quick solder it onto the other contact point...does that mean I might need another Wii?

Cuz the current Wii is a launch day Wii...but one of the six points is sorta grayed and it wasn't before...it must of been burnt off accidentally by the Wiikey installers soldering iron...I'm just making sure I have all the right answers before I point fingers. Oh yeah and whenever I put the Config Disc 1.3 it never boots...hence the reason why I'm posting here.