Hacking Wiinja v1 DREs FIXED by Capacitator

[SinnerDS]

I am pretty sure I fixed my DRE problems on my Wiinja v1. To be honest it all happened by accident

I was playing around with Erant's DVD tool and installed the Capacitator (47 pF) for the sync errors.
When I put my Wiinja v1 back I left the capacitor in place and all of sudden all my DRE's are gone (Pikmin2 & WarioWare tested but used to be badly spoiled by DRE's).
You can solder the capicator directly on the Wiinja chip between pins 7 (Clock) & 8 (GND).

Good luck. Hope your frustrations will be over just like mine....

CheerZ

 

[hef]

Can anybody else confirm this hack is working?

 

[FAST6191]

Interesting quite how this would work (you are effectively slowing the clockspeed here) I do not know, if I had a device I would try. It seemed to help people with the cable method though.

As for capacitors if people need one try and scavenge one from an old sound card or something (they will be the devices with two legs and some numbers ending with F and perhaps a stripe/symbol for negative, they tend to be blue or black covered or plain silver), 47 picoFarads is not much either so if you are not up for a trip to an electronics shop you can make one by laying two strips of aluminium foil either side of a piece of cling film (or some other plastic/insulator), connecting one strip to one wire and the other to the other (do not bridge the strips) and rolling it up.

 

[kdanarch]

Wish I knew this before I ordered a Wiinja V2

 

[Scorpei]

If I had the capacitator I would test it for you guys (not feeling like going out to the store today

).

 

[kdanarch]

Considering I'd have to open my Wii up again for V2 anyways, I may actually try this today, should radioshack make it's way into my scheduled stops.

 

[kdanarch]

Considering I'd have to open my Wii up again for V2 anyways, I may actually try this today, should radioshack make it's way into my scheduled stops.

I found a 47uF capacitor in an old 3rd party controller that stopped working. Would this work? And does it matter which "foot" gets soldered to which leg? ALA, there's a side with a stripe... I'm not sure if this should be soldered to the clock leg or the ground leg.

 

[Scorpei]

Considering I'd have to open my Wii up again for V2 anyways, I may actually try this today, should radioshack make it's way into my scheduled stops.

Considering I don't

;
http://wii.scorpei.com/Guides.html
(btw, if anyone get's the SDload page, please please please save the source of that page --> the .html and send it to me. I'd be ever so grateful).

 

[SinnerDS]

I found a 47uF capacitor in an old 3rd party controller that stopped working. Would this work? And does it matter which "foot" gets soldered to which leg? ALA, there's a side with a stripe... I'm not sure if this should be soldered to the clock leg or the ground leg.

47 uF is different from what I used (and is used in Erants doc) from 47pF but maybe you didn't look right .
Have a look at:

- If yours resembles (Aluminium) Electrolyde it is sensitive for polarity and I wouldn't advise to give it try (though the black stripe indicates negative (GND pin 8 on Wiinja)). I think it is much too 'powerfull';
- Normally (IMHAO) a 47pF resembles the ceramic disc and those don't care about polarity.
Attach it to pins 7 (CLOCK) & 8 (GND)

 

[ds_barf]

ok, so you're sure that before the hack you had a lot of DRE's and áfter NONE?

if this works that would be cool

Can't say i have a lot of DRE's (maybe 3 so far with Wario and 4 with Excite truck)_ but you would be the hero of the day! \o/

 

[FAST6191]

It seems this question will be answered before I finish but:
47uF is 6 orders of magnitude higher than SinnerDS suggested.
As far as I can tell it lowers the clockspeed by keeping the on/high voltage signal coming for longer and 47pF is small enough to get fully charged and discharged in the time 47000000pf is what you have which means you can effectively stop the clock.
The stripe is the negative leg (it will probably have dashes along it) so point it towards the Wii rather than the chip.

Some things you can try though:
run that capacitor and a few others in series, this will reduce the overall capacitance (1/total capacitance= 1/c1 +1/c2 .... in series)
make your own, I detailed how in a post above but some back of envolope calculations say a strip of foil 1m long by 3cm wide and held together tightly (a couple of decent elastic bands should do it) between cling film should be just as good.

 

[kdanarch]

I found a 47uF capacitor in an old 3rd party controller that stopped working. Would this work? And does it matter which "foot" gets soldered to which leg? ALA, there's a side with a stripe... I'm not sure if this should be soldered to the clock leg or the ground leg.


47 uF is different from what I used (and is used in Erants doc) from 47pF but maybe you didn't look right .
Have a look at:

- If yours resembles (Aluminium) Electrolyde it is sensitive for polarity and I wouldn't advise to give it try (though the black stripe indicates negative (GND pin 8 on Wiinja)). I think it is much too 'powerfull';
- Normally (IMHAO) a 47pF resembles the ceramic disc and those don't care about polarity.
Attach it to pins 7 (CLOCK) & 8 (GND)

I didn't look right, and I don't have any of them in the junk pile I've got

So my Wii's on the operating table again, waiting for the V2 or until I find one of those capacitors (just to see)

 

[kdanarch]

Alright, I'm running to RadioShack now. I'll report later with my findings. At the moment, pikmin is my worst DRE game, so I'll check it with that.

It's a shame that I've already ordered a Wiinja V2... that this will only ever be a temporary fix until hte v2 comes in the mail.

I love boasting resourcefulness

 

[kdanarch]

Alright, now armed with tacos and a couple capacitors I'm gonna try to go at it. I didn't know the conversion rate from micro so I got the two disc shaped capacitors I could find. I'll do a conversion on google, but I think its the smaller one I need. Still, better safe than sorry.

I also moved myself into the competent zone by getting a solder-sucker iron and a multimeter

 

[AgeJ]

Just use pleomax dvd-r 8x and you will never see a dre again. I have a wiinja V1 and no dre with pleomax on excite truck with verbatim I get a lot of dre's on excite truck.

 

[kdanarch]

Just use pleomax dvd-r 8x and you will never see a dre again. I have a wiinja V1 and no dre with pleomax on excite truck with verbatim I get a lot of dre's on excite truck.

The V1 DRE problem is mainly with gamecube backups. And by the way, this mod did not work for me. I could not solder the 47pF directly onto the wiinja and still maintain backup functionality.

So if this works I assume it works with wherever the author had it connected.

 

[SinnerDS]

And by the way, this mod did not work for me. I could not solder the 47pF directly onto the wiinja and still maintain backup functionality.

kdnarch: Sorry to hear! You connected the capacitator to pins 7 and 8 from the Wiinja? And afterwards the Niinja didn't work at all? You removed the capacitator and it started working again?
Obviously chances are very real the hack/accident doesn't work for every1 simply because it works for me (n=1) but IMHAO the modchip should not stop working simply because it has a 47pF capacitator between the clock and GND (Erant's cable (DVDTool) would then probably not work either since it uses exactly the same clock and gnd (and syncs to the clock)). The good news is that your Wiinja v2 is on its way so your DRE days will be over too soon.

 

[kdanarch]

And by the way, this mod did not work for me. I could not solder the 47pF directly onto the wiinja and still maintain backup functionality.

kdnarch: Sorry to hear! You connected the capacitator to pins 7 and 8 from the Wiinja? And afterwards the Niinja didn't work at all? You removed the capacitator and it started working again?
Obviously chances are very real the hack/accident doesn't work for every1 simply because it works for me (n=1) but IMHAO the modchip should not stop working simply because it has a 47pF capacitator between the clock and GND (Erant's cable (DVDTool) would then probably not work either since it uses exactly the same clock and gnd (and syncs to the clock)). The good news is that your Wiinja v2 is on its way so your DRE days will be over too soon.

hehe yeah I got pin 7 and 8 with each leg, and I even spun it around to see if the leg position mattered. I had a copy of Red Steel in the drive, and it read it without the capacitor installed, but not with.

I think it's possible it doesn't take kindly to the bridge on the modchip, and would be much happier bridging on the board, but I'm not messing with those connections again

I was just in the bathtub wondering about soldering it in series instead of in parallel but that's just a thought, and doesn't have any great knowledge behind it

 

[Pacote]

I use the datacable + syndicate loader and never had any DRE, and im using some cheap medias lol

playing papermario and warioware just fine

 

[Pacote]

Ops, just got a DRE on mario paper, will try to burn on a better media