Hacking Which surface mount parts are needed to add GC ports?

[PhiSch]

Hi everybody,

I have been reading everything from DeadlyFoez about adding GC ports to the new wii. The only thing I couldn't find out is which surface mount parts he soldered to the pcb near each port. Are there any part lists from the wii pcb? I have already asked him by mail (and later found out that he doesn't like being contacted for wii support - so if you're reading this, DeadlyFoez, sorry about that), that's why I opened this thread. I would love to be able to connect the GC-controllers to the wii, so help would be really appreciated.

cheers
PhiSch

 

[bowser]

Hmm...the pictures/videos in this thread might help you out.

Unless this is what you've already been reading?

 

[PhiSch]

Thank you, but that's actually really what I've been reading so far . You can clearly see the part numbers on the pcb and therefore recognize if it's a capacitor, diode or ferrite, but since the surface mount parts have no numbers printed to them, I don't know which values to use. I've talked to an electronics engineer two hours ago, and he told me that these are just some protective circuits, and that it would also be possible to just bridge the pads, but I don't want to take the risk of having some interference frequencies or short something because there is no protection against that. That's why I'm trying to find correct (or at least working) values. Does anybody have a 1st generation Wii that has already been opened and maybe could look if there are component values printed there? Or is anyone from Team Your Mom reading this and maybe could tell me which parts to use?
Thank you very much
cheers
PhiSch

 

[mauifrog]

If deadlyfoez does not help, streamlinehd, krafter, or bad-ad84 should be able to give you some insight. They are on hacksden.

 

[Anon10W1z]

You can use the "Personal Messenger" to contact him. It's the mailbox icon on the upper right corner of the website.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

Honestly, I don't know the values for those components. I do not have a capacitance meter so I was not able to check, and no one has ever come out with the service manual for the wii so there is not reference there either. The way that I did it was by taking the surface mount components off of an older dead board, and about %95 of them had the same silkscreen part number printed next to them. There was only about 3 of them that I had to guess at which component value it could be.

You can not bridge the diodes or the capacitors because that will just fuck everything up and possibly fry something, but you can get away with bridging the filters, but I still would not do that myself because that could cause unstable or unpredictable behavior with shitty 3rd party controllers and such. If anything, you could just not add the capacitors (which I would not do), but you NEED the diodes or else it won't work at all (I found that out myself).

One thing that you need to understand, is that if some component was not needed for reliable operation then Nintendo would have saved themselves some money and not used that component at all. Companies like this try to save every fraction of a cent where ever possible because after doing a production run of a couple million boards, that fraction of a cent per board adds up to a lot. But if Nintendo feels that this filter is needed for reliable operation then they will use it so people don't come back bitching "My 3rd party controller does not work, please fix this under warranty", and in the end it would cost them a lot more doing things like that.

With all of that said, there were no resistors that I needed to add to the board, and from looking at the huge amount of pictures you should be able to determine which components were added. I'll try to answer whatever questions I can for you, but since I no longer have the board here the most I can do is just look at the pics that I took, which probably won't be much more help than you looking at them yourself. Sorry man.

 

[PhiSch]

Thank you all very much for your help.
Maybe I will get an older dead board to take the components from.
Cheers
PhiSch