Hacking Possible to increase 512MB Internal memory?

[davidw89]

Has anyone opened up the Wii and replaced the 512Mb internal memory to a 2gb one or maybe a 4gb + one?

Is it possible? Does it use a SD card or what? Is it formatted into FAT16?

 

[teq]

It's not like the memory you'd find in an SD card.

The internal memory is NAND, which is the same technology used in an SD card, but it's in a BGA. It would take some skillfull soldering to pull that off. Not to mention, the memory is of lower fault tolerance than SD. Replacing it with anything but similar memory would kill the lifespan of your system.

It is possible, but it's not cheap or worth it.

You're much better off getting multiple 2GB SD cards.

 

[santorix10]

It's totally possible, I imagine that Nintendo uses one 4096Mbit NAND chip. All you need to do is solder an identical chip right on top of the old one.

The biggest issue here is: no software supports it.

 

[littlestevie]

It's not like the memory you'd find in an SD card.

The internal memory is NAND, which is the same technology used in an SD card, but it's in a BGA. It would take some skillfull soldering to pull that off. Not to mention, the memory is of lower fault tolerance than SD. Replacing it with anything but similar memory would kill the lifespan of your system.

It is possible, but it's not cheap or worth it.

You're much better off getting multiple 2GB SD cards.

BGA? your talking about the SD cards there right..... well i hope because the wii nand is TSOP

not to mention replacing it with similar is *Vital* as there are only a few nands supported in IOS by the wii...

 

[zidane_genome]

Not sure who it was, but I remember reading someone doubled the system memory. But they had to put it on a switch, and could only use one bank at a time... one bank was running the latest firmware, and the second bank was running an older firmware... but the Wii can only see 512 at this time... no matter how much you throw in, it'll only see and use 512Mbytes.

 

[littlestevie]

Not sure who it was, but I remember reading someone doubled the system memory. But they had to put it on a switch, and could only use one bank at a time... one bank was running the latest firmware, and the second bank was running an older firmware... but the Wii can only see 512 at this time... no matter how much you throw in, it'll only see and use 512Mbytes.

the person you are talking about is ch1pd, he did a hell of a lot of work to get that going, it took 3 weeks of datasheet referencing alone to get it 100%

 

[Arakon]

2 issues: more memory may need an extra pin, which very likely is not connected on the wii. second: the wii firmware doesn't attempt to address any more than the 512 MB.

and nintendo does not have larger nands either.

 

[littlestevie]

2 issues: more memory may need an extra pin, which very likely is not connected on the wii. second: the wii firmware doesn't attempt to address any more than the 512 MB.

and nintendo does not have larger nands either.

actually the RB/2 and CE/2 pins from 1GByte nands that are made as 2*512MByte nands are connected
and pin direct to the starlet...... how and why is the mystery

EDIT: Ch1pd has 1 such nand in his wii as a switched dual bank nand because noone knows how to activate it....

EDIT2: this still leaves the question why are there the required pins?

 

[davidw89]

Ah so many restriction that makes it rather expensive/brickable..

Damn the software for only address 512MB..oh well backing up games to the SD card we go..