Hacking Running games with the DVD drive removed ?

[zona]

HI recently I got second wii and decided to play with it
got one of the wii2HDMI adapters, remove the shell of it, soldered ribbon cable to the AV connector pins no the wii MB, made opening on the case and hot glued it ( I know a lot of people don't like the hot glue for fixing but some other solution would require a lot of custom work ) so now it works with HDMI cable and not through component or composite video and then through scart to HDMI and them the AV receiver and finally the TV with this I removed the Scart switch or (wii2HDMI dongle)
next wanted to remove the USB HDD so I soldered usb cable, for some stupid reason ribbon cable was not working, could not initialize the USB drive I guess the ribbon cable has too big power loss and does not supply enough power, and maybe I'm wrong, but anyway it did not work so I took usb cable, removed the usb connectors, sodered one edn to the USB-0 port pins on the MB and the other end I stripped external 2.5" HDD usb device, took only the board removed the usb board and soldered the wires on the board, and it works it boots games
on order to hit the HDD inside removed the DVD drive but now the games do not run I got error that the game is damaged and need to eject the disk and restart
so I removed only the DVD drive board connected it and now it works

But I want to exclude the DVD pcb too, can this be done ?
with some version of IOS or neek2o or something, or do I have to have the board in it ?

Anyway now I have nice compact wii with HDMI output and 500GB hdd with almost all VC games around 50 Wii and 30 GC games and some emus ... without the dongle and USB HDD attached to it

 

[DeadlyFoez]

https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/portablizemii-is-here.403/

Check that out. I believe it gives you custom ios's that have the disc drive patched out, plus it can do many other awesome things.

 

[zona]

https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/portablizemii-is-here.403/

Check that out. I believe it gives you custom ios's that have the disc drive patched out, plus it can do many other awesome things.

Thanks I'll try this, currently I removed the board from the DVD and put the HDD instead of the DVD hardware
tried to connect the hdd activity LED to the dvd drive light pipe but did not work, I assume the led's on the light pipe are 12v

 

[GreyWolf]

Thanks I'll try this, currently I removed the board from the DVD and put the HDD instead of the DVD hardware
tried to connect the hdd activity LED to the dvd drive light pipe but did not work, I assume the led's on the light pipe are 12v

Could be the polarity is reversed. Diodes only allow electricity to pass one way and LEDs aren't generally 12 volts.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Thanks I'll try this, currently I removed the board from the DVD and put the HDD instead of the DVD hardware
tried to connect the hdd activity LED to the dvd drive light pipe but did not work, I assume the led's on the light pipe are 12v

LEDs are around 3v (well closer to 2v but 3v will work) but it might have a resistor which could be easily removed or bridged to allow it to be powered off 3v or changed for another value resistor to allow it to be powered off 5v.

HI recently I got second wii and decided to play with it
got one of the wii2HDMI adapters, remove the shell of it, soldered ribbon cable to the AV connector pins no the wii MB, made opening on the case and hot glued it ( I know a lot of people don't like the hot glue for fixing but some other solution would require a lot of custom work ) so now it works with HDMI cable and not through component or composite video and then through scart to HDMI and them the AV receiver and finally the TV with this I removed the Scart switch or (wii2HDMI dongle)
next wanted to remove the USB HDD so I soldered usb cable, for some stupid reason ribbon cable was not working, could not initialize the USB drive I guess the ribbon cable has too big power loss and does not supply enough power, and maybe I'm wrong, but anyway it did not work so I took usb cable, removed the usb connectors, sodered one edn to the USB-0 port pins on the MB and the other end I stripped external 2.5" HDD usb device, took only the board removed the usb board and soldered the wires on the board, and it works it boots games
on order to hit the HDD inside removed the DVD drive but now the games do not run I got error that the game is damaged and need to eject the disk and restart
so I removed only the DVD drive board connected it and now it works

But I want to exclude the DVD pcb too, can this be done ?
with some version of IOS or neek2o or something, or do I have to have the board in it ?

Anyway now I have nice compact wii with HDMI output and 500GB hdd with almost all VC games around 50 Wii and 30 GC games and some emus ... without the dongle and USB HDD attached to it

Your idea of using neek2o should actually work in theory, since it patches disc drive reads/writes to read from USB. But there might be some checks the console is doing that neek2o isn't patching out.
Anyway how do you access the USB drive to put files on it with an internal mod like that? My idea would have been to leave the mini/micro USB connector on the HDD sticking out of the disc drive slot just slightly so it can be accessed easily. And just soldering the chopped off USB cable directly to the USB->SATA adapter (or directly to the HDD PCB if it doesn't use a separate adapter board). Maybe with a diode on the chopped off USB cable to avoid power being fed back to the Wii through the PC USB 5v->HDD->Wii USB 5v link. But I'm not sure if that would even be necessary, it just seems like a good idea. Obviously the MicroUSB on the HDD should only be used when the Wii is powered off otherwise unpredictable behavior will occur, that is unless you use a switch to physically switch the connection between Wii and PC. Something like this: http://www.ebay.com/bhp/4pdt-switch?rmvSB=true
Which then wouldn't even require soldering to the SATA adapter. You could just get 3 USB cables. One goes in the MicroUSB on the HDD with the other end soldered to the switch. Another would be soldered to the Wii's USB port with the other end soldered to the switch. And the last would have a female USB Mini/Micro port on one end going out the front for easy access (or make a hole in the back for it if you want) with the other end soldered to the last 4 pins of the switch. Then the switch simply switches the 4 pins going to the HDD's MicroUSB port between the two other cables.

 

[tswntk]

Thanks I'll try this, currently I removed the board from the DVD and put the HDD instead of the DVD hardware
tried to connect the hdd activity LED to the dvd drive light pipe but did not work, I assume the led's on the light pipe are 12v

why concern about the voltage of the light pipe LED? There is no DVD activity but HDD activity. Just extend the HDD LED with two wires (so that it is still controlled by and showing the status of the HDD) and glue it to the position where the origin DVD LED's was.

 

[zona]

why concern about the voltage of the light pipe LED? There is no DVD activity but HDD activity. Just extend the HDD LED with two wires (so that it is still controlled by and showing the status of the HDD) and glue it to the position where the origin DVD LED's was.

tried both polarities - does not work
on the lightpipe board there is another set of diodes (not led, just plain diodes) remved them - doe not work
the led's are very small, plain led ( as you suggest to extend the wired from the hdd will not work, the construction of the lght pipe does not allow it )
http://diy.sickmods.net/Tutorials/Wii/Lightbar_Schematics/

tried all I can think of but nothing works

...
hmm, actually did not try to power the lightpipe with 3v battery, will try that

 

[tswntk]

you got me confused. You said
"connect the hdd activity LED to the dvd drive light pipe"
and now you said
"the led's are very small, plain led ( as you suggest to extend the wired from the hdd will not work"
so you are not relocating the HDD LED?
check the HDD activity signal to the LED to see if it is active high or active low.
If it is active high, just route that signal to replace the CPU-C5 signal. If its active low, add an inverter stage. No need to touch the components on the original light pipe.

 

[zona]

with some messing around with the light pipe board I managed to get the hdd activity on the light pipe ( had to remove the additional 2 diodes and connect the led-s in parallel instead od serial ( as they are originally )

about the HDD I soldered the usb leads of the usd-hdd board to the port 0 pins on the wii MB
about adding games to the HDD, I got wii, GC games more that I'll ever play on it ( plus almost all of the VC and wiiware games ) so I do not intend to add more games

but just as a gimmick, I intend to get 2 pole switch with 12 contacts so that in one position the hdd will be connected to the MB and in the second position the hdd will be connected to the USB-0 port in the Wii so that I can access the HDD on the Wii from PC, of course will need USB male to male cable