Wii U Stuck on Logo

[ChefVortivask]

Hello everyone,

First time poster here. I decided to make this post since I am having issues with my Wii U. Currently, my Wii U will not boot up to the main menu. It stays stuck on the Wii U logo indefinitely.

There are a few things to note about my console. The console is the black 32 gb model. I believe it was bought during the 2012 holiday season (release) as we were expecting to play Pikmin 3 before it got delayed. The system has never been modded in any fashion. It was not the most heavily played console, and I can't even give a good estimate of when it was last used (at least more than 3 years).

I have already tried doing the UDPIH, however it does not seem to be working. When using the second recovery menu, I get a white screen with some blue lines (see attached image). I believe this is similar to what @fadafwet described in his post. I was able to get the logs from the system, which I have attached to this post. Any idea what the issue may be and how to fix it? Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[ChefVortivask]

Understood. You specified the NAND-AID for the voltage. Can I just use the pads on the NAND-AID for all the measurements or should I be measuring at different points for some of them? I assume the NAND-AID would work just fine since it’s directly connected to all of the points, but I’d just like to make sure.

 

[SDIO]

You can measure on the NANd-AID

 

[ChefVortivask]

I measured 10.13 kohms for the resistance between CMD and 3V3 which to me seems reasonably high. When I measured the voltage between 3V3 and CMD (plugged in, but not powered on), I at first got mV readings that seemed to keep growing, but when I tried it again (removed probes and replaced them), I was getting a reading of 0 V.

 

[SDIO]

Can you measure CMD to GND while plugged in but not powered on? If it goes up to 3V3 it seems like it is shorted to the 3V3 standby rail.
https://gbatemp.net/threads/ultimat...reset-black-screen-after-stuck-update.642339/

I think C1257 should have the 3V3 standby, you can check by measuring it against GND. When you see the 3V3 there remove power from the Wii U and measure the resistance from there to the CMD

 

[ChefVortivask]

I measured around 0 V when measuring CMD to GND with the power supply plugged in (but the Wii U not powered on), with some mV fluctuations, so it doesn't look like there's a short there.

I did find 3V3 at C1257, and with the power adapter unplugged, I measured around 0.66 Mohms (and slowly rising) between the one side of the capacitor and CMD, so again it looks like there isn't a short there.

 

[SDIO]

If it isn't shorted to any of the power rails, but the signals always has 3V3 when the Wii U is on, then probably the controller is bad.
I have to look at the mlc code in minute anyway, so maybe I make a minute later, which turns the controller of (or doesn't turn it on) so you then can measure.

EDIT: didn't I sent you a minute which doesn't turn the mlc on? Can you try loading that (but not pointing into IOS) and see measure what voltage CMD has then?

 

[ChefVortivask]

You did indeed share a version of minute that doesn’t turn the mlc on. I can give that a try. When you say not to point in IOSU, do you mean don’t try to patch & boot? Just turn on the Wii U with de_Fuse and that version of minute and then measure the voltage (which would be CMD to GND)?

 

[SDIO]

yeah just in the minute menu

 

[ChefVortivask]

I measure around 3.19 V for CMD when in the minute menu.

 

[SDIO]

this minute should hang during MLC Init. It is constantly sending CMD0, which should keep the CMD line busy. Check what voltage you measure when this is running.

 

[ChefVortivask]

I'm measuring around 0.62 V.

 

[SDIO]

Ok this is expected, that means that the Host controller can still drive CMD low. So now the question is why your scope didn't trigger

 

[ChefVortivask]

Interesting. Any ideas on why it seems to shoots up to 3V3 (idle state) so quickly? Or perhaps as you said, the oscilloscope isn't capturing it on low so the only thing I'm seeing is 3V3, thus giving us the wrong idea. I don't know if it's relevant or not, but the oscilloscope does appear to be a bit old. It appears to have a CRT monitor (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) and it runs an old version of Windows. Is it possible that the initial events are happening too fast for the oscilloscope to detect?

 

[SDIO]

What is the sampling rate of the scope? Initially the SDIO bus runs with 400kHz, so the scope would need at least 800Khz, better 1Mhz

 

[ChefVortivask]

I looked it up and the sampling rate varies from 5 GS/s on 1 channel, 2.5 GS/s on 2 channels, and 1.25 GS/s on 3 or 4 channels. I don't see anything regarding frequency when it comes to sampling rate, however I can say that the bandwidth is 1 GHz. It also looks like I may be able to adjust the vertical sensitivity by changing resistance from 1 Mohm to 50 ohms.

 

[SDIO]

that is really fast. Fast enough for everything we need to do

 

[ChefVortivask]

That's what I thought, but that just makes it more confusing as to why I couldn't capture the falling edge. Maybe it was the vertical sensitivity?

Post automatically merged: Mar 25, 2024

I can try again with the oscilloscope using a greater vertical sensitivity, otherwise I’m not sure what the next move could be. We know the host controller can drive CMD low, but are we still not sure if it can drive it high?

 

[SDIO]

The signal seems to go high...
I am not sure what to do, but maybe you are not setting up the oscilloscope right. Not sure

 

[ChefVortivask]

I think I may have some good news (or at the very least something of note). I went and tried the oscilloscope again on Thursday and I adjusted the vertical sensitivity, and I'm not sure if it helped or if it was something else, but I was able to observe some sort of activity from the CMD line several times. I was even able to trigger on falling edge a couple of times. Eventually it went back to staying at 3 V and I couldn't catch anything, so I don't know if that was from the oscilloscope or perhaps once the Wii U warmed up a bit something went wrong. I was also able to observe some kind of activity on DAT0 and DAT1. It turns out that I had the vertical scale too high to observe anything before.

I was able to record some of the activity and you can download the videos from here (they're fairly small): https://file.io/fREXrmBHQVF2
If this doesn't work, I suppose I could upload them to YouTube or share using Google Drive or something similar.

I'm also attaching a couple of pictures. One shows the activity on DAT0 and DAT1, and the other shows what I was able to catch on the falling edge. For everything, CLK is channel 1 (yellow), CMD is channel 2 (blue), DAT1 is channel 3 (purple), and DAT0 is channel 4 (green).

 

[SDIO]

The clk looks wrong. It only goes up to 1V, not the 3V. That could be a problem. Maybe adding a pull-up could help.
Also there might be confusion about the term Trigger. When I use my logic analyzer, trigger means the point from which on it will start recording, so I can capture that specific timeframe I want.
With an oscilloscope I think you also can set a trigger for the display, so it won't flicker for something like the clock. If that trigger was set correctly, it would sync the tracing of the cock on it's edges, so it would have the edges alwas roughly in the same place on the screen. This doesn't seem to be set correctly in xour case, since the clk was jumping around on each pass.
But when I said trigger in the past I meant the trigger to start recording.