Hi I am new to this, but I have done some research on the wiiu emmc chip and found that it might be possible to replace it with an SD card adapter. Because the wiiu operates in a 4bit mode when reading data from the emmc. Attached is the diagram. I am not an expert and I am open to suggestions and criticism. What are your thoughts.

 

[Carnage]

Not only it is possible, but it has been done:

You can read all about here:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-i-fixed-160-0103-system-memory-error.626448/

 

[pulterbit]

Oh my gosh sweet thank you you save me a lot of work

 

[SDIO]

Nice drawing, but I would use the vias near to the emmc so you don't have to desolder the old eMMC. Cutting the clk trace is enough to disable it.
Also I assume you know what decoupling cap to use, because I just guessed and probably used the wrong one.

 

[pulterbit]

Thanks SDIO I really appreciate that, and when I was putting the sketch together I actually had no clue that you had already done it lol. BTW great job I enjoyed reading your write-up on it it was extremely informative. But the wiring diagram that I put together was all hypothetical I actually ordered all the parts to start testing this week lol. I'm just glad to see that I wasn't the first person to try this, and that it actually works.

 

[duwen]

I'm guessing that if there's demand for this solution to the reported NAND issues that the way forward will be a simple (pre-populated) flex ribbon - that way the most complicated part of the install will be cutting the necessary traces.

 

[Naendow]

Has anyone tried to use a way bigger SD yet? It would be cool to at least have a 128GB NAND replacement.

 

[V10lator]

Read the linked post: A 64 GB card had been tried but failed.
Beside that the Wii U blindly assumes any MLC size which is not 8 GB is 32 GB, so it won't use the extra storage anyway.

 

[Naendow]

This is a really weird way to determine the MLC size. This means no bigger internal storage for games without sacrificing a USB port. :/

 

[rcpd]

This is a really weird way to determine the MLC size. This means no bigger internal storage for games without sacrificing a USB port. :/

It isn't weird. There were only ever two versions of the Wii U made: the 8Gb version and the 32Gb version. If it isn't an 8, it must be a 32. Simple as that.

 

[pulterbit]

Thank you SDIO for all the help. I completed the mod today and it's safe to say another Wii u was saved from becoming e-waste. The hardest part was cutting the clock line but once that's done it's just as simple as connecting magnet wires lol. FYI you will need a microscope as cutting that clock Trace will be completely impossible without it.

 

[Ettino]

it's safe to say another Wii u was saved from becoming e-waste.

Nicely done. How's console functioning so far? Are you going to do some sort of stress test?

 

[SDIO]

@pulterbit first of all congratulation, great job, it looks much cleaner than whatever I did. How did you dump the eMMC? I hope you made sure that there were no writes happening to the eMMC between dumping it and replacing it with the SD card, or else you have an inconsistent file system, which can cause problems further down.

I can't see it exactly, where you soldering to the SMD resistors or the vias next to it? The recommendation for the hardmod is to solder to the vias and not the resistors, as they are supposedly are easily destroyed. On the other hand you will probably never need them every again...

If you were experiencing eMMC errors I would also recommend you to check for broken files and delete and replace them. I can provide you replacement files, if you give me a list of the broken files. Or you can try to get them from NUS.

Also it would be interesting to know what eMMC you had. can you make a picture of it, with the Part Number and the production date readable?

Has anyone tried to use a way bigger SD yet? It would be cool to at least have a 128GB NAND replacement.

Yes I did, I tried a 64 SDXC card from Samsung. The Wii U didn't like it, it was not even trying after the handshake. But it is also possible that it didn't like my SDXC card for another reason. But that is all the data we have so far. Maybe @pulterbit can say what SD card he used.

It isn't weird. There were only ever two versions of the Wii U made: the 8Gb version and the 32Gb version. If it isn't an 8, it must be a 32. Simple as that.

I would argue against it. The Wii U can use sdxc cards in the SD slot and it is probably using the same driver for that. So it isn't unreasonable to expect it also to work as an eMMC replacement.
But you still couldn't use the additional storage as you would still have to grow the file system, and we can't do that right now.

 

[V10lator]

I would argue against it

No need to argue, it's a fact. IIRC it was @GaryOderNichts who decompiled and inspected the relevant codes.
Not sure what part of IOSU does this assumption but I don't think it's the SD/MMC driver.

 

[SDIO]

@V10lator Do you have a link, where he did that? I would be interested.

 

[V10lator]

@SDIO IIRC it was just some talk on a Discord server. Not sure which one through (maybe Aroma Discord or 4TU?).

 

[Carnage]

@V10lator Do you have a link, where he did that? I would be interested.

@SDIO I believe this is the link:

GaryOderNichts said:

1. If you want to test it in the firmware emulator, bump this up way higher: https://github.com/kinnay/Wii-U-Firmware-Emulator/blob/master/src/hardware/sdio.cpp#L23-L24
   
   
   
   
   
2. • [5:09 PM]
     A card size of 0x0000 0xFFFF is 32 gb

 

[GaryOderNichts]

No need to argue, it's a fact. IIRC it was @GaryOderNichts who decompiled and inspected the relevant codes.
Not sure what part of IOSU does this assumption but I don't think it's the SD/MMC driver.

@V10lator Do you have a link, where he did that? I would be interested.

It's in the md_blk_drv of the IOSU.
It's doing something like this:

if size < 8gb
  totalSize = size
else if size < 32gb
  totalSize = 8gb
else if size < 64gb
  totalSize = 32gb
else
  totalSize = 64gb

This would imply that 64gb internal storage is technically possible, but this hasn't been tested yet.
If you have anything larger than 64gb it will just be capped to 64gb though.

@SDIO I believe this is the link:

Yeah if you want to test if the console would boot with 64gb, the firmware emulator would be a simple test.

 

[SDIO]

Thank you all. If I could get the Firmware emulator to work, I would try it. But I had problems last time I tried it.
I am thinking about buying a cheap 64GB emmc from ali express and try that on the real console. But there is also not much incentive to do so, as we don't have a way of growing the FS as far as I know.

@GaryOderNichts can you tell me the exact size it is checking against?

 

[pulterbit]

@SDIO sorry that it took me a bit to get back I was a little bit busy tonight. As far as SD cards I used a 32 gig SanDisk high endurance SDHC
And I did solder directly to the resistors. as far as the internal emmc goes, it was a Toshiba however I forgot to take a picture of it before I epoxy the SD card reader in place sorry about that lol. And thank you for the offer to send over recovery files I greatly appreciate it I was actually lucky that I took a nand back up of my Wii u right before I put it into storage so I was able to restore a fully functional backup to it.
I haven't done too much with it since swapping out the nand, I just made sure that it booted properly, so I'm going to try to use another SanDisk high endurance 64 gig card to see if I can get it to read wish me luck.

Post automatically merged: Mar 17, 2023

Also thank you to everybody for the help it's amazing to see a community try to come together to save a dying console.