Worklog Nemo's G-wii worklog

[NemoInSlumberland]

Hi all,

After months of putting it off due to my inexperience and limited free time, I am finally getting started on my very own G-wii. I like the landscape design of the g-wii, it is nice to have a wider grip without having to cram my hands together in a "game boy" style portrait device as exemplified by the g-boy. That said, unlike the g-boy there is no streamlined instruction manual, and I am a bit fuzzy on what to do once I get the wii trimmed and connected to the VGA screen. I am hopeful that, thanks to the the abundance of information and resources on this website, I will not struggle too much to get a working unit. This worklog is partly for myself, it will serve as a reference of sorts for the progress I made, but I am of course posting here in case anyone has helpful tips for a complete novice such as myself.

Over the past months or even longer, I have assembled what I believe to be all the parts required to make a working G-wii. Many of them were sourced from a post on Kranimation's worklog (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B6B3_TuYIHX4Une15si8NtRjfz9oxBRdxez1jFi0FhY/edit) I will start with their documentation below.

Speakers (Ali express)

GC stickboxes (1 OEM, 2 Shadeux)

Kingston Micro SD to USB (BB store)

5" 640x480 4:3 VGA display (ZJ050NA-08C - BB store)

Cooling Kit (BB store)

GC+ (V2.0) Replacement Board

GC buttons + membranes (OEM, from an old controller)

Tactile switches, 3 varieties (Ali Express)

Screws (Ali Express)

3500 mah batteries

multiple gauge wire (Ali express)

capton tape and copper wire

PMS-2 (4 layer)

Power delivery (4 layer)

U-amp (4 layer)

thermal paste

Headphone jack (I think, either BB store or 4 layer... don't remember)

G-wii shell (G-man on BB forums)


I am especially concerned about the stick boxes. I initially ordered them to repair a broken GC controller a while back, but after swapping the stick box out, it seems like my down and left directions had been crossed, so there was a constant downward drift when pressing left on the stick and vice versa. After trying to remove the replacement stick box and reinstall it, I must have burnt the board or something because the controller no longer registered any movement of the stick at all.

Also, if anyone can confirm if that is indeed a headphone jack it would be great.

EDIT: Next RVLoader and the trim

 

[NemoInSlumberland]

Having some trouble getting RVLoader installed. Installed homebrew channel via letterbomb, but the RVLoader is not showing up in the channel when I insert the Kingston micro USB drive with a FAT32 formatted (32K cluster size) micro sd card. Is there something I'm missing?

 

[Stitches]

Having some trouble getting RVLoader installed. Installed homebrew channel via letterbomb, but the RVLoader is not showing up in the channel when I insert the Kingston micro USB drive with a FAT32 formatted (32K cluster size) micro sd card. Is there something I'm missing?

Make sure there is no SD card inserted in the Wii's front slot

 

[CrazyGadget]

Even if the SD card is in the Wii, you can press 1 on the wiimote to change the homebrew source to the USB drive.

 

[NemoInSlumberland]

So I changed the source to USB (there was no SD card, but I removed and reinserted the USB) and got the following error
had to hard reset the wii, not sure what the issue is, but will try again.

 

[NemoInSlumberland]

Upon rebooting I get a blank homebrew channel, only the USB option is available and it is selected, yet the screen remains blank. Do I need to update the homebrew channel? Currently on 1.1.2 IOS59 v24.32.

EDIT:


I just reformatted the SD card and unzipped the files again, no change. I am going to try a different micro SD card (previous was a 16 GB branded Brave Eagle, will now try a 16 GB Verbatim). Received same Exception (DSI) occurred! error with verbatim stick. I am using a Wii "Family" edition which should be a RVL-CPU-40 board. Tried formatting NTFS and drive was not recognized.

Looks like the off brand micro SD cards may be the issue. According to the FAQ, samsung evo works great. Will buy a new samsung evo card for this purpose.

 

[Viilmo]

Upon rebooting I get a blank homebrew channel, only the USB option is available and it is selected, yet the screen remains blank. Do I need to update the homebrew channel? Currently on 1.1.2 IOS59 v24.32.

EDIT:

View attachment 23410
I just reformatted the SD card and unzipped the files again, no change. I am going to try a different micro SD card (previous was a 16 GB branded Brave Eagle, will now try a 16 GB Verbatim). Received same Exception (DSI) occurred! error with verbatim stick. I am using a Wii "Family" edition which should be a RVL-CPU-40 board. Tried formatting NTFS and drive was not recognized.

Looks like the off brand micro SD cards may be the issue. According to the FAQ, samsung evo works great. Will buy a new samsung evo card for this purpose.

The Family edition is a RVK-CPU-01 or 02 IIRC. The error your getting is from the Usb drive (in this case an adapter) a new good card would fix this

 

[NemoInSlumberland]

Now working with class 10 U3 128 GB samsung evo plus micro sd card formatted to 32 GB FAT32 with 32K allocation size. Something tells me NTFS would not have worked, seeing as the other cards didn't trigger an error when I inserted them as NTFS. This makes me wonder, how can I utilize the rest of the space on my drive? Multiple partitions with FAT32 or can I use a better filesystem after I install RVLoader?

EDIT: Patching VGA removed component video output, but switching to composite video returned. Loaded several GC nkit.iso and uncompressed iso formats, in the format specified in this guide, but none of them are appearing in the menu.

 

[Stitches]

View attachment 23413
Now working with class 10 U3 128 GB samsung evo plus micro sd card formatted to 32 GB FAT32 with 32K allocation size. Something tells me NTFS would not have worked, seeing as the other cards didn't trigger an error when I inserted them as NTFS. This makes me wonder, how can I utilize the rest of the space on my drive? Multiple partitions with FAT32 or can I use a better filesystem after I install RVLoader?

EDIT: Patching VGA removed component video output, but switching to composite video returned. Loaded several GC nkit.iso and uncompressed iso formats, in the format specified in this guide, but none of them are appearing in the menu.

Use guiformat to keep the full drive capacity

 

[Valanduin]

EDIT: Patching VGA removed component video output, but switching to composite video returned. Loaded several GC nkit.iso and uncompressed iso formats, in the format specified in this guide, but none of them are appearing in the menu.

The GameCube games have to be placed in a folder inside a subfolder which should be inside a folder named "games" at the root of your storage device (the subfolder should preferably be named the game's title) and renamed to "game.iso", any other file name will not work, it has to exactly match that pattern. You cannot just put the existing.iso into the folder and leave the name as is, the software will only read files named "game.iso" (or disc2.iso, disc3.iso, etc. for multi-disc games). Wii games are much more flexible and you can just leave the filenames as whatever you want as long as they are contained in /wbfs or a subdirectory of /wbfs.

 

[NemoInSlumberland]

Use guiformat to keep the full drive capacity

Thanks, I forgot about that tool.

The GameCube games have to be placed in a folder inside a subfolder which should be inside a folder named "games" at the root of your storage device (the subfolder should preferably be named the game's title) and renamed to "game.iso", any other file name will not work, it has to exactly match that pattern. You cannot just put the existing.iso into the folder and leave the name as is, the software will only read files named "game.iso" (or disc2.iso, disc3.iso, etc. for multi-disc games). Wii games are much more flexible and you can just leave the filenames as whatever you want as long as they are contained in /wbfs or a subdirectory of /wbfs.

I see, I just put the isos in folders and did not rename them to game.iso… thanks for clarifying.

 

[NemoInSlumberland]

So I'm looking to get started up on this again, as I have been travelling the past few weeks. Can anyone clarify the bluetooth/wii games requirement? Is bluetooth a bad idea in most cases? How would sensor bar replacement work?

EDIT: so there is a noBT patch, but is bluetooth relocation worth it?

 

[NemoInSlumberland]

Wow... the family edition still has the GC port cutouts! Hilarious.

 

[NemoInSlumberland]

Ok, time to trim

 

[NemoInSlumberland]

 

[NemoInSlumberland]

You'll notice on the back of the trimmed PCB, I nicked the board right next to one of the ground vias. It looks like it stripped off the top coating, is there potential for the nick to short out? If so, what can I do about it? Video to come.

 

[Stitches]

The bigger issue is you've cut through at least one of the NAND traces. That trim isn't going to work without some surgery

 

[NemoInSlumberland]

Ok, I'm not sure which trace I cut, to my naive eye it looks the same as the manual.
EDIT: Ok, I think I see what you mean, one of them is indeed cut. What can I do to fix the issue?
EDIT2: Is it possible to wire the nand directly to the other terminal of the trace?

 

[Viilmo]

Ok, I'm not sure which trace I cut, to my naive eye it looks the same as the manual.
EDIT: Ok, I think I see what you mean, one of them is indeed cut. What can I do to fix the issue?
EDIT2: Is it possible to wire the nand directly to the other terminal of the trace?

Yes if you are able to wire it then do it, only way to safe this now

 

[NemoInSlumberland]

I don't think I can save it. I scraped off the via of the adjacent trace, but I can't even measure a resistance from the nand to the via with my multimeter.