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]

I guess it was nothing then, but at least I learned something. It’s possible that CMD0 was sent out, but I may not have had the vertical scale set properly or it was just really fast.

What about the signals on the DAT lines? Are those expected as well?

 

[SDIO]

DAT should only be used after the handshake

 

[ChefVortivask]

So since there’s no card to shake hands with, I would guess that there shouldn’t be anything on the DAT lines. I did notice however that if I tried probing DAT0 and DAT1, but not CLK (no probes connected), the signal looks far weaker than it does if I also probe CLK. There’s still a little something there, but not much (in the picture, DAT1 is yellow and DAT0 is cyan). Is it possible that the oscilloscope is giving a sort of false positive and the host controller sees the oscilloscope as a card? Even if that were the case, I don’t understand where the DAT signals are coming from other than the eMMC. I guess it’s also possible that since the signals are relatively weak that they’re negligible, maybe even small signals matter.

 

[ChefVortivask]

So at this point, I’m thinking I should probably pivot away from trying to have a working MLC and just use the SATA adapter and hard drive in place of the disc drive. As much as I want to keep the disc drive, it seems like we’ve pretty much exhausted all options at this point, aside from the LVS card, but even that isn’t guaranteed to work.

I figure that if I want a Wii U with a disc drive, I can buy one for cheap. It could have a bad disc drive for all I care as I can use the one I have. It could also have a bad eMMC because assuming the controller isn’t bad, it should be an easy fix with the NAND-AID.

 

[SDIO]

We also have patches to use the front SD as mlc and USB as sdcard

 

[ChefVortivask]

That could work too. Does de_Fuse need to remain installed for any of this?

Post automatically merged: Apr 28, 2024

I realized you’re probably referring to ISFShax.

 

[SDIO]

You would either need defuse or ISFShax for rednand. You can install ISFShax from defuse, by launching the installer from minute (just skip the exploit thing in the ISFShax guide).

I attached a experimental wafel_core, which should support redNAND, even if the real mlc is not present. You should be able to follow the redNAND guide with that.
Keep in mind this is experimental, and it might wipe your SD or corrupt data on it.

 

[ChefVortivask]

Sorry for the late reply. This week has been a bit busy for me, but I do intend on doing this soon. I don't mind being a sort of beta tester as I feel a lot of this project has been experimenting and contributing to our knowledge of the Wii U and its hacking.

I'll probably go with ISFShax since if I understand everything correctly, I won't need de_Fuse, thus I can close up the Wii U. Plus I can keep the disc drive. I do have a couple general questions though before I start it, which hopefully will be this weekend. Mainly, will I need any additional supplies for this? I'm guessing that I can just use the 64 GB micro SD I have in the SD card slot, thus it'll still act as the MLC in a way. Also, I'm using that experimental core to install de_Fuse, or is that just for redNAND? I don't really know anything about redNAND. Does redNAND get installed on my micro SD card.

Also, what's the data reading and writing speed from the SD card slot? Is it lower than it would be if I had the NAND-AID working?

 

[SDIO]

For setting up redNAND see this: https://gbatemp.net/threads/fixing-...-soldering-using-rednand-with-isfshax.642268/
In place of isfshax you can also use defuse for now and switch later. Defuse and isfshax are pretty interchangeable in that context.
To use bigger SD cards with defuse, you need to flash the minute boot1 to slccmpt.

The reading speed should be about the same, the writing speed is better, because you get rid of scfm.

 

[ChefVortivask]

So it’s been a while, but I think I’m ready to get back to finishing up my Wii U. I haven’t worked on it in a couple of months, but back in May I partitioned my 64 GB micro SD card as detailed in the instructions for redNAND. What I’m confused about right now is where the mlc titles and that experimental wafel core (among other things) will go. Does that stuff go in the FAT32 partition of my micro SD card? Is it being set up like my 2 GB card was for de_Fuse and minute?

 

[SDIO]

You can just use the latest release stroopwafel and minute.
And yes that all goes on the FAT32 partition

 

[ChefVortivask]

Thank you for the fast response, especially after all this time. I've downloaded the latest version of de_Fuse (v1.1) and I'll be setting up that FAT32 partition like I did the SD card. I'm assuming that since v1.1 was released 4 days ago, it has the latest release of minute and stroopwafel (if I recall correctly, boot1.img is minute).

 

[SDIO]

Yes the defuse 1.1 has all the latest suff for now.

 

[ChefVortivask]

Sounds good. Does the rednand.ini file go in the root of my FAT32 partition?

 

[SDIO]

It goes to the minute folder

 

[ChefVortivask]

That's what I thought by reading the instructions, but I don't have a minute folder. I thought that would be included with de_Fuse for some reason, but now I'm thinking that's something I have to make myself in the root?

 

[SDIO]

Yes just create it yourself

 

[ChefVortivask]

Understood. I'm trying the set up redNAND right now, but for some reason, PuTTY isn't showing anything. I flashed boot1.img to the FAT32 partition. Am I supposed to use boot1_slccmpt.img since the total space on the card is greater than 2 GiB? This might be a stupid question and something I should know, but I'm not sure if it's only the size of the FAT32 partition that we care about.

Post automatically merged: Jul 28, 2024

Update: I tried boot1_slccmpt.img and it didn't fix the problem.

 

[SDIO]

you need to flash the boot.img to the 2GB sdcard, not the partition. You can then use minute to flash the slccmpt_boot1.bin to the slccmpt on the console, so it can load it from there instead of the sd card, so larger SD cards work then. Both files are actually the some, just the name is different.
Also you should see at least something in putty, if not then something is wrong with the pico or the usb connection

 

[ChefVortivask]

Thank you for the details. So first set up my 2 GB card with the v1.1 of de_Fuse (at least the minute and wafel core), and I'm assuming put slccmpt_boot1.img on the root of the card, then flash that to the console, then switch to my micro SD and go from there.

PuTTY is definitely acting weird and I'm not sure why. I checked the pico and the motherboard and I don't see any loose wires on either of them. I believe the connection to my computer is good as it still recognizes that something is plugged in. Is it possible that the COM port that's being used isn't good?

Post automatically merged: Jul 29, 2024

Update: I tried switching the COM port but nothing changed. I checked the wires again and I was able to find a loose wire. I guess I should have taken a closer look, so apologies for the false alarm. I'll fix that and see where it goes.