Hacking Will Wii U work without the disc drive attached?

[Tommy084]

if you want to open youre wii u for a hardmod just try unplug the disc drive boot and see what happens

It will boot and give a error message, then shut down, but if you let the motherboard for the disc drive, no error

 

[cearp]

It will boot and give a error message, then shut down, but if you let the motherboard for the disc drive, no error

hi thanks for sharing that is is possible
what exactly needs to be done?
i see in this video -
so we can just leave the green disk drive motherboard attached to the wiiu main motherboard, and everything else can be removed?
so there will just be 1 cable attached to the disk drive motherboard?

 

[gamesquest1]

hi thanks for sharing that is is possible
what exactly needs to be done?
i see in this video -
so we can just leave the green disk drive motherboard attached to the wiiu main motherboard, and everything else can be removed?
so there will just be 1 cable attached to the disk drive motherboard?

yeah that should be fine, just wrap it up with insulation tape or whatever and tuck it out of the way everything else appears to just be the motors and disk sensors, I would imagine it should work fine without any of them attached

 

[cearp]

yeah that should be fine, just wrap it up with insulation tape or whatever and tuck it out of the way everything else appears to just be the motors and disk sensors, I would imagine it should work fine without any of them attached

thanks, i tried to share a specific time position of the video where there was a nice display of the motherboard but the link got converted to an embedded video and that part was lost...

anyway, thanks for the tip

 

[gamesquest1]

let us know how you get on, I guess with all the scene advancements picking up a wiiu with a dead disk drive is worth while now

 

[dwray]

Then its done, works also

I tired doing this the other day. I left the main board for the dvd drive attached with the little board that had two wires soldered to it connected as well, the sensor that detects if a disc is inserted. I powered it on and it worked, played some games from USB flash drive and it was working but I didnt try to transfer any games yet. I soldered the wires for hard drive to the front left USB port and jumped the power and ground wires to the port on the right, similar to what you did but I did ground wire as well. I don't know if thats what was different, but my hard drive wouldn't power on. I did the front ports because I figured if I screwed them up, I would just dremel a hole in the back above the rear USB ports and run the cable out the back like I did with my original Wii. Well I unsoldered the wires, plugged the hard drive in the back two ports, started transferring some games from SD to hard drive and got dvd error 150-3032. I thought it was because I wrapped the little board under the dvd main board so I uncovered the sensor on it, retried transfer and it failed same error again. So I thought the sensor needed to read the other board on the dvd drive so I plugged it all back in, retried transfer and it failed same error again. So I completely reassembled the drive and had it laying outside the case, and it gave a new error 150-3033 i think. I moved the hard drive to the front USB ports and put the dvd drrive back in the way it is supposed to sit in the case and it has been working fine for two days now. Im gonna try to move the hard drive to the back ports again after transferring this next batch of games. When I did it the first time to test if games would play they worked good off a flash drive I already had games on but as soon as I transfer, I get errors. My soldering was good, all wires were correct and no contacts were touching. The hard drive is working on the ports I had it soldered to but plugged in now, so I didn't mess the ports up.

My question to you is did you remove the tiny board attached to the main board with the two soldered wires or leave it connected? Is it still working good for you without any errors?

Edit: Tried again with just the mainboard connected and hard drive plugged into both ports in the back and the front. Each time gave error hard drive didnt have enough power even though it was plugged into two ports. Plugged dvd drive back in all the way and no more errors.

 

[Tommy084]

I tired doing this the other day. I left the main board for the dvd drive attached with the little board that had two wires soldered to it connected as well, the sensor that detects if a disc is inserted. I powered it on and it worked, played some games from USB flash drive and it was working but I didnt try to transfer any games yet. I soldered the wires for hard drive to the front left USB port and jumped the power and ground wires to the port on the right, similar to what you did but I did ground wire as well. I don't know if thats what was different, but my hard drive wouldn't power on. I did the front ports because I figured if I screwed them up, I would just dremel a hole in the back above the rear USB ports and run the cable out the back like I did with my original Wii. Well I unsoldered the wires, plugged the hard drive in the back two ports, started transferring some games from SD to hard drive and got dvd error 150-3032. I thought it was because I wrapped the little board under the dvd main board so I uncovered the sensor on it, retried transfer and it failed same error again. So I thought the sensor needed to read the other board on the dvd drive so I plugged it all back in, retried transfer and it failed same error again. So I completely reassembled the drive and had it laying outside the case, and it gave a new error 150-3033 i think. I moved the hard drive to the front USB ports and put the dvd drrive back in the way it is supposed to sit in the case and it has been working fine for two days now. Im gonna try to move the hard drive to the back ports again after transferring this next batch of games. When I did it the first time to test if games would play they worked good off a flash drive I already had games on but as soon as I transfer, I get errors. My soldering was good, all wires were correct and no contacts were touching. The hard drive is working on the ports I had it soldered to but plugged in now, so I didn't mess the ports up.

My question to you is did you remove the tiny board attached to the main board with the two soldered wires or leave it connected? Is it still working good for you without any errors?

Edit: Tried again with just the mainboard connected and hard drive plugged into both ports in the back and the front. Each time gave error hard drive didnt have enough power even though it was plugged into two ports. Plugged dvd drive back in all the way and no more errors.

Maybe better to post here?
https://gbatemp.net/threads/wii-u-two-usb-consoll-mod.454857/
Anyways, i can try to help, but im not sure what the case is...
The driver board with the litle board ( 2 wires ), is what i have connected and never gotten a error, even when the wiiu knows the drive its faulty ( seen logs in the system )
As for more power, i added a wire from the ports in the front
More pictures in the other threat.

 

[Tommy084]

hi thanks for sharing that is is possible
what exactly needs to be done?
i see in this video -
so we can just leave the green disk drive motherboard attached to the wiiu main motherboard, and everything else can be removed?
so there will just be 1 cable attached to the disk drive motherboard?

Yes, the drive mobo with the litle mobo ( 2 wires )
Here is some pics

 

[cearp]

because i only play digital games, i'm thinking of taking out my disk drive and selling it on ebay.
i understand what needs to be done (thanks to the above posts) - but i want to make sure:

will the drive work with a different wii u? (i guess so)
will the drive work without the same drive's motherboard? (which i need to keep so that my own wii u still powers on)

i ask this because i see here - https://www.amazon.com/Original-Replacement-Disc-Drive-HongLei/dp/B00L08HG8K - that it says the buyer should use their own broken drive pcb.
in which case, even if i sent the buyer my pcb, it wouldn't work, so it would be a waste?

any advice? thanks

 

[piratesephiroth]

because i only play digital games, i'm thinking of taking out my disk drive and selling it on ebay.
i understand what needs to be done (thanks to the above posts) - but i want to make sure:

will the drive work with a different wii u? (i guess so)
will the drive work without the same drive's motherboard? (which i need to keep so that my own wii u still powers on)

i ask this because i see here - https://www.amazon.com/Original-Replacement-Disc-Drive-HongLei/dp/B00L08HG8K - that it says the buyer should use their own broken drive pcb.
in which case, even if i sent the buyer my pcb, it wouldn't work, so it would be a waste?

any advice? thanks

The drive has a key that must match the one in the console's SEEPROM.
I know SEEPROM is writable (it's dangerous to modify it so there's no homebrew for that) but I have no idea about the drive.

 

[cearp]

Ok and I guess the key is stored in the motherboard of the drive, which is why you need to use your original when you replace the drive?

I just want to confirm.

 

[rg]

Well i did not read the full thread but i can say for 100% certain that the WII will not work without the Disk Drive.

I had a broken one and tired the same as you, on the old WII it does not work, the only way it could load anything was by using neek.

Not sure if it's the same with Wii -U

 

[piratesephiroth]

Ok and I guess the key is stored in the motherboard of the drive, which is why you need to use your original when you replace the drive?

I just want to confirm.

Yep. The board is also necessary for the Wii U to boot properly.

 

[cearp]

So I can sell my drive, keeping the drive motherboard as I need it and only I can make use of that board anyway - great, thanks

I understand now.

 

[godreborn]

might be patchable. the xbox 360 requires an optical drive as well, but there's a patch to remove that restriction. u get a constant blinking center light with no drive attached...on the 360 that is.

 

[cearp]

Ok I did this yesterday, I removed my disk drive from my wii u so I can sell it because I only play digital games.

The two screws holding the front panel (power button and sd card area), the two screws securing that to the drive brackets are very very tight and difficult to remove.
Thankfully I had some nice JIS screwdrivers that eventually got them out.

Here are some pictures.

The wii u with the drive:


The board removed from the drive:


The board covered in tape, connected to the wii u:


It works great! I like that I don't hear the drive when I turn it on, or go into wii mode.


One issue, I don't remember seeing this white led before, has this always been on? Is it on for other people who did this 'mod' too?


Thanks

 

[piratesephiroth]

One issue, I don't remember seeing this white led before, has this always been on? Is it on for other people who did this 'mod' too?
View attachment 97487

Thanks

That LED indicates that there's a disc inside the drive. Must be a side effect of the "trick".

 

[cearp]

That LED indicates that there's a disc inside the drive. Must be a side effect of the "trick".

Aha cool, thanks for that.
I have never put a disk in so I wouldn't have known.

 

[ShigoNaito]

Just wanted to say thank you,
I got a system on ebay with a bad drive, modded it and removed the drive leaving the drive system board like Cearp did and everything works. FYI the white LED for me is only on when the system is off the light turns off when the system is running.

 

[tmnr1992]

Reason for me asking is that im thinking about doing a mod where i would remove the disc drive and then fit an USB HDD where the disc drive was located, and run power/USB back out through the device.
I will never purchase a disc based release and want to try and fit everything within the box.

Anyone know how the Wii U reacts without a drive attached?
(i could try myself, i know - just wanted to ask before if it does not work )

thanks!

May or may not work. A few years ago my old wii's bluetooth module died and the console would boot to a black screen. With homebrew however I was able to boot games and could use a gamecube controller just fine. Wiimotes obviously did not work anymore as I couldn't pair them to the console.

In the case of my disc drive it was dead long before that, so I tried removing it and again got greeted by a black screen on boot. Cab't remember if booting through homebrew was possible without the drive though, so just try and see what happens.

[Edit] Nevermind, just read the above comment.