Hi guys sorry if these have been answered before but I wanted to ask some stuff about wiikey before I buy one.
First off I have a pal wii with the latest update, dose the wiikey effect my wii in any way? If so what's the worst thing that can happen to it?
Secondly can I use any DVD burner to burn the games on to a DVD? Many thanks for the help.
I very recently bit the bullet and got a WiiKey. I too have a Pal Wii (Aust with DMS Chipset) which had the latest firmware 3.1E installed prior to installation. When I first got it in, it didn't work, it still booted and loaded original games fine, but not homebrew/backups - this was my own fault though. I installed with wires, as my first job with very fine 30AWG wire it was a bit messy, but I did a friend's Wii neater and it worked fine, I re-soldered new wires into mine in the same neater configuration and voila, she booted backups and homebrew without problems.
The worst thing that could happen to it really depends on how good you are with your own tools. As research will say, the worst you might do is lift off the soldering pads, meaning you would need to solder directly to the drive chipset's legs, which requires much more skill due to their size. To be honest I'm not a great solderer and I used a tip probably a bit large for the job, but I was very careful and didn't go overboard with the solder amount and managed to pull off 2 clean, successful installs. I'll be doing a 3rd tomorrow.
You can burn DVDs from any burner. Some drives might pull off a better quality job than others, but from my reading the general consensus is moreso that problems will depend on the media itself and what speed at which you burn. I have a TSSTCorp (Samsung, I think) burner, using ImgBurn, burnt to TDK discs at 4x and they've all worked well. I did try burning the config disc and a backup to some Verbatim DVD+R's, and they did not work. Either I did something wrong during the burn, or maybe my Wii just doesn't like +R's. Either way, I just picked up some -R's and all has been dandy so I personally I really don't care about this
.
I did have some issues recently booting games, the Wii would start up but give errorswhen I launched games and want me to eject the disc and restart the console. I actually found my Wii was mighty hot, so I disabled WiiConnect24 and moved it from it's stand onto it's feet in a more ventilated area and since I've had no issues. I had it in a somewhat enclosed space which certainly didn't help, esp with a killer summer coming up for us aussies. I don't believe this has anything to do with the Wiikey but certainly keep that in mind if you have stability issues.
For some reference here's some pics..
WiiKey size comparison
My WiiKey install
It's hard to guage from photos, but the 4 small soldering points are probably about .75mm in size.
