Help me build THE ULTIMATE WIIU!!

[rcpd]

extending the range of the gamepad. The thread i saw showed little improvement. Maybe a repeater?. Anyone know anything about that?

It can be done, but it’s not easy. There’s some debate over which is the appropriate antenna, but ultimately I think it’s a wasted effort. The Wii U uses 5GHz bi-directional antenna for the gamepad and it channel hops very frequently to avoid interference. I’ve done some spectrum analysis on it and you can see it channel hopping pretty frequently when things work right, but when the gamepad shows “signal isn’t strong enough”, the thing hops around like it’s on fire. And since it’s pretty low power, you can’t really extend the range without causing interference.

Honestly, I wish Nintendo had gone with the 2.4Ghz range or just used Bluetooth. At the time, though, neither had the speed/latency required for 480p display and audio as well as handling inputs.

It’s as good as it’s ever gonna get, in other words.

 

[mikefor20]

It can be done, but it’s not easy. There’s some debate over which is the appropriate antenna, but ultimately I think it’s a wasted effort. The Wii U uses 5GHz bi-directional antenna for the gamepad and it channel hops very frequently to avoid interference. I’ve done some spectrum analysis on it and you can see it channel hopping pretty frequently when things work right, but when the gamepad shows “signal isn’t strong enough”, the thing hops around like it’s on fire. And since it’s pretty low power, you can’t really extend the range without causing interference.

Honestly, I wish Nintendo had gone with the 2.4Ghz range or just used Bluetooth. At the time, though, neither had the speed/latency required for 480p display and audio as well as handling inputs.

It’s as good as it’s ever gonna get, in other words.

No chance for a modified repeater?

 

[rcpd]

No chance for a modified repeater?

I don’t think commercial hardware can channel hop that quickly so I don’t think a repeater could handle the way the Wii U hops. Repeaters introduce interference which isn’t so bad on something that can do TCP/IP error correction (Wi-Fi card in your laptop) but is devastating on something like this that needs less latency.

I think a repeater would do worse than trying to extend it via antennas.

This might sound stupid, but if you have your Wii U against something like a wall or stuck in an entertainment center… wrap some tinfoil around a piece of cardboard and make sure it’s not too wrinkled. Place that cardboard/foil eyesore directly behind the Wii U. Congratulations! You just extended the range by about 3-5 feet.

 

[EnterpriseFreak]

Spoiler: Post

Responsible disclosure, I guess:

That Noctua fan caused some sort of big issue that killed my Wii U. (Warning, the following is pure speculation!): I think the fan did somehow feed power back into the system during spin down which fried parts of the motherboard (most likely power delivery)

When I tried to use my Wii U yesterday, it powered up but the fan didn't spin up, so I opened the console up to see if maybe the soldering between the connector and the fan had somehow gone bad. It did not, so I mesured the voltage on the +5v pin only to see that instead of the 5v needed only about 0.5v were provided. So at this point I just thought to myself "Old tech is gonna have some issues at some point" and did a dumb thing (totally 100% my fault!) and soldered a jumper wire from USB 5v to the fan header. Would you look at that, it's working again. Hurray. And then I powered it off to put it back together and look at that, it's dead. So dead that not even the red power LED lights up anymore. I'm going to (half-heartedly) assume that maybe it's just a case of incredibly bad luck and that there were some issues with the console that built up over time that just so happend to reach the breaking point during my fan adventures. Regardless of that I'm going to advise everyone that considers doing this mod to be very careful! As for me, I'm probably going look for a defective Wii U (with a broken Disc Drive or something) on eBay and try that fan with an additional diode added to it's +5v line again.

Edit: After some testing and measuring with a multimeter it appears the fan really does generate voltage when it spins down, the worst I was able to measure is about 0.2v.

Update on the fan mod I tried to do:
After some testing I can now confirm that the fan really does generate some voltage when it spins down. The worst I was able to measure is about 0.2v and that's probably enough to kill the electronics. Adding a diode should prevent the generated voltage from flowing back into the console, thus making the mod safe. I'll post another update on this when I've got my hands on a broken Wii U.

 

[EnterpriseFreak]

Well, I finally got my hands on a somewhat reasonably priced broken Wii U to further test the Noctua fan situation so here's that update I promised:

Adding a diode to the +5v wire of the fan did stop current flowing back into the system after a shutdown. That much was to be expected from it, that's what diodes are for anyway.

I turned the console on and off about 20 times now just to see if anything breaks - thankfully it does not. As one is able to tell by looking at one of my previous posts the Noctua fan is smaller than the stock fan, so I created a little mounting bracket that can be 3D printed, I'll attach the STL file for it here.

It's probably not worth mentioning since it probably didn't have an impact on the last Wii U dying but I didn't connect the RPM control wire of the fan this time, only +5v and ground. With all that said I guess the fan mod can be considered safeish to perform, just add a diode to be extra sure of it. Now let's see how long it'll take me to find a used Wii U in working condition for an ok price, I'll be having a working Wii U with a Noctua fan no matter what.

 

[mikefor20]

Thanks for the update! Glad the new console worked out. I ordered the Screen protector,tpu case, extended battery,Zelda shells and a few things for now. I think I might do the unlimiting and the usbc port.. I was watching another thread about storage. Im trying to figure out exactly what i need to use to hold everything. I dont want to touch the WiiU to swap drives and I want to fit everything. Anyone know what the best setup is? I want to hold all english Wii/wiiu and all Japyan only roms as well as all roms for all compatible emulators. All homebrew. WiiU complete.

 

[Blythe93]

I want to hold all english Wii/wiiu and all Japyan only roms as well as all roms for all compatible emulators.

As far as complete Retroarch roms collection for all emulators available, I know there's CrazyMAC's Retro Gaming Pack. Minimum requirements are 128GB or SD card storage, so I'm not sure if that would be enough for JP only roms as well (not sure how many of those there are).

I want to fit everything.

Yep, you're nuts. ^^ Well I checked and I've found out that if you'd like to collect all Nintendo games released so far you'll need:

• NES – 237 MB
• SNES – 1.7GB
• N64 – 5.5GB
• GB/GBC – 568MB
• GBA – 8.4GB
• NDS – 83.2GB
• GameCube – 867GB
• Wii – 6.56TB

Sourced from here.

As for the Wii U, you'll need around 1.22TB (source), probably a bit more if you add the physical-only releases as well.

That's... insane.

I dont want to touch the WiiU to swap drives and I want to fit everything.

Unfortunately, Wii U Menu has a 300 tiles limit, including the ones that came with the system, which means that in order for you to have all the games, you'll definitely need more than one HDD for all Wii U games (3 or so should do the trick). I'm not sure if you can go past that limit. And that means that you'll have to swap HDDs.

Personally, I've picked the games that either I'm interested in and/or have decent ratings. I don't think I've even hit 100 titles to be honest. I have 83 Wii-U-only games and it took me a while to cherry-pick them, various videos, sites, reviews, forum threads, votes etc.

 

[mikefor20]

As far as complete Retroarch roms collection for all emulators available, I know there's CrazyMAC's Retro Gaming Pack. Minimum requirements are 128GB or SD card storage, so I'm not sure if that would be enough for JP only roms as well (not sure how many of those there are).

Yep, you're nuts. ^^ Well I checked and I've found out that if you'd like to collect all Nintendo games released so far you'll need:

• NES – 237 MB
• SNES – 1.7GB
• N64 – 5.5GB
• GB/GBC – 568MB
• GBA – 8.4GB
• NDS – 83.2GB
• GameCube – 867GB
• Wii – 6.56TB

Sourced from here.

As for the Wii U, you'll need around 1.22TB (source), probably a bit more if you add the physical-only releases as well.

That's... insane.

Unfortunately, Wii U Menu has a 300 tiles limit, including the ones that came with the system, which means that in order for you to have all the games, you'll definitely need more than one HDD for all Wii U games (3 or so should do the trick). I'm not sure if you can go past that limit. And that means that you'll have to swap HDDs.

Personally, I've picked the games that either I'm interested in and/or have decent ratings. I don't think I've even hit 100 titles to be honest. I have 83 Wii-U-only games and it took me a while to cherry-pick them, various videos, sites, reviews, forum threads, votes etc.

So. I didnt mean nintendo only. I meant all english roms the wiiu is capable of emulating. SEGA.ninty. NEC. ATARI AMIGA, C64 Colecovision.etc etc

As for storage.. 300 n title limit doesn't matter. I can boot into vWii for most things. I just want the storage there. For context,i recently n tried to mod my old Ps2 and finding IDE drives is not easy. I got a SATA adapter but im trying.to avoid future hassle by getting the proper size.

What do i need?

 

[Blythe93]

So. I didnt mean nintendo only. I meant all english roms the wiiu is capable of emulating. SEGA.ninty. NEC. ATARI AMIGA, C64 Colecovision.etc etc

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten that much into retro games emulating so I can't really be much of a help there. I believe that whatever CrazyMAC collected in their release should work on Wii U (haven't tested, I've only heard about the collection and seen video tutorials of it).

What do i need?

Speaking from my own limited experience so far, you can only add Wii U, Wii, GameCube and VC injected games to the external drives. I'm not sure if you can add games from different emulators to anything other than SD card. I know that e.g. Genesis Plus GX can load games from USB drive (as I've played them on my Wii Mini). I do hope that some of these emulators have an option to change the storage path to USB one.

I've stumbled upon this video tutorial the other day on how to use larger than 2TB HDDs on Wii (U):



Not sure if I've mentioned already, but I personally use 2 external HDDs, one for Wii U and the other one for Wii / GameCube games. On my SD card I have all my homebrew apps, Retroarch roms and WiiWare games. Both of the drives are ADATA SU650 960GB SSDs, both inside Logilink 2.5in USB 3.0 HDD enclosures, connected to the console via USB 3.0 Y cable with the two of the fat connectors plugged into the two back ports and two slim connectors plugged into a power adapter which is plugged into an outlet for additional power. Some SSDs can run properly with one simple USB to SATA cable or enclosure + whatever USB cable they use, while some other drives require Y cables in order to work properly (I've tested Samsung EVO 850 and old Kingston SSDNow SSDs which worked perfectly without issues with a simple USB cable; ADATA SU650 SSDs worked until I've made my first save, then the whole drive went corrupted and needed to be reformatted).

In your case, I'd probably go with what a bigger WD drive, like the one used in the video above, preferably with the self-powered enclosures. However, do note that sometimes USB Loader GX can have a problem initializing vWii HDD if you're using an HDD enclosure.
I'd avoid using USB flash drives for game storage.

So. I didnt mean nintendo only. I meant all english roms the wiiu is capable of emulating. SEGA.ninty. NEC. ATARI AMIGA, C64 Colecovision.etc etc

If Retroarch roms can be stored on an external HDD (i.e. USB drive), it may be possible to use vWii HDD for all your Wii, GameCube and emulator games. Otherwise, you'll need a large SD card, de (I'd personally go with some high endurance ones, SanDisk Extreme or Samsung Pro Plus).

 

[Pence_PC]

That above 2TB tutorial is strictly for vWii. Also, since making the tutorial, WD has been updating the firmware on external hard drives which says "the version of firmware on your drive does not support changing the block size of your WD external drive". That error occurs when trying to use the WD Quick Format software. I can confirm that WD drives with P/N of 4TB WD WDBPKJ0040BBK-0B 4TB WD WDBYFT0040BBK-0A work still. Another option to use larger than 2TB drives in vWii is to partition the drive into 2 parts. half for Gamecube and half for Wii. The Gamecube part partitioned to FAT32 and the Wii part to NTFS. Using the software program easeUS makes this possible but it is a paid program. Make sure multiple partitions is selected in USB Loader GX and that the Gamecube custom path is changed to the correct directory. I will have a tutorial for this soon.

 

[mikefor20]

That above 2TB tutorial is strictly for vWii. Also, since making the tutorial, WD has been updating the firmware on external hard drives which says "the version of firmware on your drive does not support changing the block size of your WD external drive". That error occurs when trying to use the WD Quick Format software. I can confirm that WD drives with P/N of 4TB WD WDBPKJ0040BBK-0B 4TB WD WDBYFT0040BBK-0A work still. Another option to use larger than 2TB drives in vWii is to partition the drive into 2 parts. half for Gamecube and half for Wii. The Gamecube part partitioned to FAT32 and the Wii part to NTFS. Using the software program easeUS makes this possible but it is a paid program. Make sure multiple partitions is selected in USB Loader GX and that the Gamecube custom path is changed to the correct directory. I will have a tutorial for this soon.

Ty. I actually followed that months ago. My WD p10 5Tb drive worked. I am still trying to figure out what i need to have WiiU complete.. im still waiting on parts. What storage setup is ideal? Ive seen

2 HDD with power supplies (need sizes and model information)
2 SSD
Dual HDD enclosure (interesting)
All sorts of flash drive and SD as well as warning about using flash memory.

I dont know how much space. Ill go with

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten that much into retro games emulating so I can't really be much of a help there. I believe that whatever CrazyMAC collected in their release should work on Wii U (haven't tested, I've only heard about the collection and seen video tutorials of it).

Speaking from my own limited experience so far, you can only add Wii U, Wii, GameCube and VC injected games to the external drives. I'm not sure if you can add games from different emulators to anything other than SD card. I know that e.g. Genesis Plus GX can load games from USB drive (as I've played them on my Wii Mini). I do hope that some of these emulators have an option to change the storage path to USB one.

I've stumbled upon this video tutorial the other day on how to use larger than 2TB HDDs on Wii (U):



Not sure if I've mentioned already, but I personally use 2 external HDDs, one for Wii U and the other one for Wii / GameCube games. On my SD card I have all my homebrew apps, Retroarch roms and WiiWare games. Both of the drives are ADATA SU650 960GB SSDs, both inside Logilink 2.5in USB 3.0 HDD enclosures, connected to the console via USB 3.0 Y cable with the two of the fat connectors plugged into the two back ports and two slim connectors plugged into a power adapter which is plugged into an outlet for additional power. Some SSDs can run properly with one simple USB to SATA cable or enclosure + whatever USB cable they use, while some other drives require Y cables in order to work properly (I've tested Samsung EVO 850 and old Kingston SSDNow SSDs which worked perfectly without issues with a simple USB cable; ADATA SU650 SSDs worked until I've made my first save, then the whole drive went corrupted and needed to be reformatted).

In your case, I'd probably go with what a bigger WD drive, like the one used in the video above, preferably with the self-powered enclosures. However, do note that sometimes USB Loader GX can have a problem initializing vWii HDD if you're using an HDD enclosure.
I'd avoid using USB flash drives for game storage.

If Retroarch roms can be stored on an external HDD (i.e. USB drive), it may be possible to use vWii HDD for all your Wii, GameCube and emulator games. Otherwise, you'll need a large SD card, de (I'd personally go with some high endurance ones, SanDisk Extreme or Samsung Pro Plus).

Great information. CrazyMac packs will work. I have some nointro stuff from BITD.. i have to look at what drives to get. My 5tb drive works in vwii. I own a 8tb mybook but its a archive. Maybe ill get newer one and use the old one for vwii.. what should I buy to contain everything...

 

[Pence_PC]

Ty. I actually followed that months ago. My WD p10 5Tb drive worked. I am still trying to figure out what i need to have WiiU complete.. im still waiting on parts. What storage setup is ideal? Ive seen

2 HDD with power supplies (need sizes and model information)
2 SSD
Dual HDD enclosure (interesting)
All sorts of flash drive and SD as well as warning about using flash memory.

That is why I stumbled across this thread because I was trying to find the best setup just like you for a tutorial for people lol.
Just so happened to see you post one of my videos. I did figure out finally how to keep both drives connected to the back and working without having to swap fortunately using a USB hub.

 

[mikefor20]

That is why I stumbled across this thread because I was trying to find the best setup just like you for a tutorial for people lol.
Just so happened to see you post one of my videos. I did figure out finally how to keep both drives connected to the back and working without having to swap fortunately using a USB hub.

Could you link to the hardware you used?

 

[Pence_PC]

Could you link to the hardware you used?

I REALLY wish I could link you to a different one, as this one is way overkill, but it is the ONLY one that worked. I have pulled my damn hair out spending countless hours testing this. Here is the 10 port USB hub that worked.

I tried this 4 port model of the same brand and it DOESN'T WORK!

Using any other HUB, USB Loader will just freeze at "reinitializing USB Device."

On the 10 port model, this is exactly what worked. I have taken it apart shut down etc, and it boots everytime with both drives connected and both drives working.
**EDIT**
Guess it won't let me link to items until I have 5 posts.
I made a community post on my YT with the link.