Hacking Wii Raffle Wrap Up!

[DeadlyFoez]

So as most of you know, Team Your Mom held a Wii Raffle, and it was a success. We got just barely enough donations to pull through with this and make it happen.

Spoiler: Here's the Winners List

1,dono****
2,maui****
3,kase****
4,cpum****
5,nick****
6,airp****
7,jero****
8,krun****
9,game****
10,magi****
11,mass****
12,ebay****
13,leez****
14,mjro****
15,aaro****
16,bran****
17,bobd****
18,rico****
19,hera****
20,jnc2****
21,hosi****
22,e.va****
23,tous****
24,abjo****
25,thom****
26,alex****
27,dspr****
28,tige****
29,gian****

As of this moment, no one have opted out of their prize.

But onto what the whole purpose of this raffle was for, the new horizontal Wii's that don't have the gamecube ports. Well, my experiment was a complete success. I was able to get the GC controller ports and memory card ports put onto the Wii's motherboard and everything worked as intended. I had to also solder on about 20 tiny surface mount components, and that was a bitch. I can honestly say that it is not military grade solder work I did here, but it does work.

Now onto the video​

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wi0AcBJZo8​

Spoiler

[titler you can watch the explicit version]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spHHMCBEBZM

In the video, I am first quickly showing you my solder work, to prove that I did in fact do a whole bunch of stuff to that Wii. Then I start the Wii up, show you that the GC memory card is being seen in both ports. Then I go and run MMM, and I plug the GC controller into every port and show that the app is properly responding to a few button presses on every port.

Finally I go and load up Mario Kart Double Dash using my WODE and play it for a few short moments. And that concludes the video.

Now onto the pictures​

I took a lot of pictures throughout this project. I'm not going to make everyone have to view them and take up a huge section of this post, so instead I will just put them all in a spoiler. And for some messed up reason, GBAtemp's pic auto resizing didn't work, so you're all stuck with these huge ass pictures to look at. Sorry, but I'm not going to reupload them all and take up all of that time.

Spoiler: Lots of pictures in here

I did clean up the solder job a little better on those surface mount components after I took those pics, but they still are not perfect.

I will have all the prizes shipped out by the end of this week. I'm busy at the moment with another wii repair and a few PC's to fix and I only want to make one trip to the post office.

Thank you everyone for participating in this raffle. I'm glad that I was able to prove that the wii does not have any other hardware changes that prevent it from using the gamecube ports. And I was able to send that virgin nand dump to a few people for them to have a look at. I don't have the full results of that yet. If I end up with more to tell you all about then I will put it in this first post here.

Well folks. That about wraps that all up. We plan to do another raffle when the Wii-U comes out, so stayed tuned.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Looks nice. Though you seemed to have forgotten the end spoiler tag on the images haha.

Can't wait for the next raffle!

 

[DeadlyFoez]

Looks nice. Though you seemed to have forgotten the end spoiler tag on the images haha.

Can't wait for the next raffle!

No, it's in there, but for some reason it is not working. Maybe a mod knows the reason of why and could fix it or tell me how to fix it. It actually was working when I previewed it, but then it someone stopped working once I finalized the post.

 

[Hunter X]

Excellent work DeadlyFoez, perhaps you can do a little write-up on how it's done for those of us willing to perform limb surgery on our horizontal Wii's (I certainly am interested). Also, whatever happened to that little port that was where the GameCube memory card slot is?

 

[JN_big3]

Congrats to the winners out there.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Foez, I've wondered this since I first saw the mobo on one of these here, but haven't seen the answer. Do you know what that connector on P100 is used for?

I would think it would be a sort of diagnostics port, but I'm also no expert on the topic.

Also: Looks like I am gonna have to give The Elliot a call

Edit - of course I would forget to write congratulations to all the winners and that I am glad you were able to get this working successfully.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

Excellent work DeadlyFoez, perhaps you can do a little write-up on how it's done for those of us willing to perform limb surgery on our horizontal Wii's (I certainly am interested). Also, whatever happened to that little port that was where the GameCube memory card slot is?

Ehh. Eventually. It'll take me a lot of time though.

Foez, I've wondered this since I first saw the mobo on one of these here, but haven't seen the answer. Do you know what that connector on P100 is used for?

I would think it would be a sort of diagnostics port, but I'm also no expert on the topic.

It's for the Waikiki adapter, which is N's official device to put the wii into recovery mode.

 

[mauifrog]

So, would it be possible to rip apart the gc ports into four separate pieces, then make 4 separate single ports. Would it be possible to make some kind of clip out of this just to load savemiifrii. Something that anyone could do without soldering?

 

[loco365]

Impressive, to say the least. I thought it'd be a stupid move by N to just remove the ports, not change the System Menu, and not do anything more. They'll do anything to save money.

Congrats to the winners!

Oh btw, did you replace the drive in it to read backups? Or is it still using the original drive it had?

 

[techboy]

Congrats to the winners

So, would it be possible to rip apart the gc ports into four separate pieces, then make 4 separate single ports. Would it be possible to make some kind of clip out of this just to load savemiifrii. Something that anyone could do without soldering?

That seems like it'd be a lot of work. I'm sure some kind of "overlay board" with the parts and matching pads could be made, but the surface-mount parts might be an issue, if only because of pad size.

It'd likely be easier to make an adapter that connects P100 and allows a Savemii to be connected (assuming the P100 connector is just a GC memcard slot with a different form-factor).

 

[crwys]

Very nice DeadlyFoez.
It is great to see how well the Wii Community turned out.

 

[Sicklyboy]

So, would it be possible to rip apart the gc ports into four separate pieces, then make 4 separate single ports. Would it be possible to make some kind of clip out of this just to load savemiifrii. Something that anyone could do without soldering?

It looks like you'd still need to attach on all fuses and everything else though. So if you were to make a sort of clip that has all of that on it as well, then yeah, most likely. But I bet it would still be a pain in the ass XD

 

[MassiveRican]

Terrific DeadlyFoez congrats to all who participated on the raffle as we all did a small part in helping DF get this done albeit he did all the hard work lol.

Good to know this can be pulled off but it says u were using a WODE which means a purchase of a drive would be necessary as well.

So how much would u estimate it would cost for all the parts needed and the drive?

 

[shortz1994]

Terrific DeadlyFoez congrats to all who participated on the raffle as we all did a small part in helping DF get this done albeit he did all the hard work lol.

Good to know this can be pulled off but it says u were using a WODE which means a purchase of a drive would be necessary as well.

So how much would u estimate it would cost for all the parts needed and the drive?

well it's that. or could be the small orange ribbon coming out the wii drive. (i think). outher then that being different on that part. (the ones on the older drives look like a J were this one is strait.). the drive board looks the same.(using mine to compare to pics.) so could be to run gc disc just switch that ribbon out.
great work deadly. glad it could be done.
the wii can run with out a drive, you just need the board.(mine is done like this, got tiered of the death clicking.). never used a wode. so guessing on this part. but it's what i do.
instead of putting every thing back together to "test". then if it doesn't work, having to take it all apart again. just use the wode to test the gc game to make sure every thing is running.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

In the video I don't even have a drive connected at all, just strictly the WODE. Keep in mind, a WODE is a Wii Optical Drive Emulator.

So, would it be possible to rip apart the gc ports into four separate pieces, then make 4 separate single ports. Would it be possible to make some kind of clip out of this just to load savemiifrii. Something that anyone could do without soldering?

Yes, you could cut up the GC controller ports into 4 separate pieces, but I chose not to because it wouldn't look as clean in the end.

About a clip to do the savemiifrii, I honestly doubt it. I actually offered marcan the chance for me to send him the waikiki port that I took off the board so he could make a newer version of the SaveMii, but he declined to do so saying that "savemii has been quite useless for a long time now anyway".

It looks like you'd still need to attach on all fuses and everything else though. So if you were to make a sort of clip that has all of that on it as well, then yeah, most likely. But I bet it would still be a pain in the ass XD

There were no fuses for me to touch on this. It was SMD filters and SMD capacitors. I just wanted to clarify that.

Oh btw, did you replace the drive in it to read backups? Or is it still using the original drive it had?

I did not replace the drive, as I had stated in the rules. I don't have a spare one, and plus replaces the drive is unneeded bc someone can always use a WODE, DM (when it comes out again), DML, and devolution so it was unnecessary to replace the drive.

That seems like it'd be a lot of work. I'm sure some kind of "overlay board" with the parts and matching pads could be made, but the surface-mount parts might be an issue, if only because of pad size.

It'd likely be easier to make an adapter that connects P100 and allows a Savemii to be connected (assuming the P100 connector is just a GC memcard slot with a different form-factor).

A buddy and I were chatting about the possibility of making a GC port dongle that could sit externally out of the wii. The only good thing that it would allow it easier soldering for the end person, but making such a thing could be rather expensive.

One thing that really grinds my gears with this whole thing is that before N released the horizontal Wii's, a Wii could be bought for $129.99 around here. And now that they removed a bunch of stuff to cut costs the decided to bump up the price by $20. It almost makes me think of Sony when a move like this is done.

As soon as Nintendo announces the release date for the Wii-U, we will start planning the next raffle. But if anyone has any ideas for any other raffles then I am open to suggestions.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

UPDATE: I just got all the prizes shipped out to everyone. Most of you should get your prizes within a week.

Thank you all once again. This was a fun project to do. I put probably about 20 hours into the whole thing from start to finish. I hope you all had fun with us.

P.S. FWI to everyone. All those pics that I took was with my cell phone, even the very close up shots. The only reason why I was able to take such close up shots was because I had a broken camera that I was able to steal the optical lens from and hot glue it to my phone to allow me to take those pics. Thats also what I am doing in the video, is I am taking off that lens. It works freaking great. I will use my phone at time to examine thinges even though I have a headset magnifier, but it just doesn't magnify enough. So here I am using one hack to help me with another hack.

 

[Anon10W1z]

Impressive, to say the least. I thought it'd be a stupid move by N to just remove the ports, not change the System Menu, and not do anything more. They'll do anything to save money.

Congrats to the winners!

Oh btw, did you replace the drive in it to read backups? Or is it still using the original drive it had?

It's the WODE, a modchip which let's you load Wii/GC iso's from a USB drive. It does a similar thing to NEEK+DI, but it works differently.

 

[loco365]

Impressive, to say the least. I thought it'd be a stupid move by N to just remove the ports, not change the System Menu, and not do anything more. They'll do anything to save money.

Congrats to the winners!

Oh btw, did you replace the drive in it to read backups? Or is it still using the original drive it had?

It's the WODE, a modchip which let's you load Wii/GC iso's from a USB drive similar to SNEEK.

Oh, I see. I'm not too familiar with modchips. Still, pretty cool to mod a Non-GC Wii to use GC hardware. N was pretty stupid to remove it in the first place.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

Impressive, to say the least. I thought it'd be a stupid move by N to just remove the ports, not change the System Menu, and not do anything more. They'll do anything to save money.

Congrats to the winners!

Oh btw, did you replace the drive in it to read backups? Or is it still using the original drive it had?

It's the WODE, a modchip which let's you load Wii/GC iso's from a USB drive similar to SNEEK.

That is far from an accurate representation of what a WODE is. SNEEK is completely software driven, whereas a WODE is software emulating hardware. There is really a big difference. But when trying to speak it to noobs that understand almost nothing then your analogy could work for them.

 

[Anon10W1z]

Impressive, to say the least. I thought it'd be a stupid move by N to just remove the ports, not change the System Menu, and not do anything more. They'll do anything to save money.

Congrats to the winners!

Oh btw, did you replace the drive in it to read backups? Or is it still using the original drive it had?

It's the WODE, a modchip which let's you load Wii/GC iso's from a USB drive similar to SNEEK.

That is far from an accurate representation of what a WODE is. SNEEK is completely software driven, whereas a WODE is software emulating hardware. There is really a big difference. But when trying to speak it to noobs that understand almost nothing then your analogy could work for them.

I meant it does a thing similar to SNEEK.