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- Mar 2, 2024
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My portable design is simple: keep most things, but nix the disc drive to make way for a battery and screen. This allows for a portable that is easy to move around, but more faithful to the original design (and cheaper!) I believe someone here is already working on something similar (https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/wii-portable-called-wii-tv.6155/)
I've made some progress, but started the worklog at this point since I will need to ask some questions. Those will be at the end of the post, but first, what's already done:
I bought a four layer Wii (busted disc drive) and since I own no Wii cables, I bodged some together for power and A/V using a PC power supply, paperclips, chopped up cables, and so on. This concerning looking arrangement got me to the setup screen, but I had no controller either so I bought a $6 Wii Remote off EBay. It had some problems:
That 1+2 button membrane was actually glued down with battery juice. Large amounts of cleaning later, I had a functional controller and with two candles for a sensor bar did lots of softmodding to get WiiFlow Lite, backup the NAND, boot directly into homebrew, and so on. (By the way, I don't particularly want to use RVLoader in this project, since the idea is to have a portable Wii that... still feels like an actual Wii. This unfortunately means that I will need to keep the disc drive motherboard around.)
After that was done, I opened up the system to find that the disc drive and accompanying shield had actually been dented inward somehow (possibly explains the broken drive), and for some reason somebody had scratched up the inside of the top shell all over the place. [Edit 3/3/2024 12:25 PM: The bottom shell has also been scratched up in the same way, so this Wii has definitely been disassembled fully before. Possibly by an angry toddler.] The disc drive has already been replaced once, as the screws have already been stripped for me! How polite of the original owner.
At this point, I have the Wii down to a motherboard (with the disc drive mobo tagging along) and it works fine. I soldered some magnet wire to the relevant points on the A/V connector to let me ditch the paperclips.
Now, for questions. I mostly have these questions because a trimmed portable does not have these systems, and I therefore don't know how they behave in a portable.
-While I could buy a 12v rechargable battery pack, I would rather add a PSU-Plus and connect a standard (but high amperage!) USB rechargable pack to that. However, I'm not trimming the board, and I'm unsure what happens if you have both original and custom regulators attached. I've made my guesses where to disconnect the original regulators**, but so far it hasn't gone well (see bottom of post.)
-Additional information I could not find: what things will stop working without 12v? In a handheld, nothing important, but here I'm unsure. To my knowledge, 12v is used for the disc drive (don't care, unless it stops the motherboard working*), sensor bar (I'll be integrating my own, low voltage one anyway), preamp (can rewire to 5v), and the front faceplate lights (that could be a problem, but I should be able to rewire). There may be others I couldn't find.
-Is the mysterious hole next to MX truly unused? I have routed some wires through there, and all signs point to that being a hole clear through the mobo and mobo shield, but if it is, why is it even there?
-How long can you leave a Wii with no heatsink? I'm avoiding turning it on without placing the heatsink on top, but sometimes I forget (and also I can't imagine the cooling is that good with it on, since it isn't screwed down and the thermal pads are old)
*[Edit 4/3/2024 6:46 PM: I have wandered the internet and identified the chips on dd mobo rev 2A, list:
Motor control IC, don't care if nonfunctional
Laser amp, don't care
DRAM, will work fine (doesn't need 12v)
Unmarked mystery chip, has continuity with 12v on several pins. By process of elimination, this is probably the microcontroller, and if no 12v causes it to not work that is bad.]
**[Edit 6/3/2024 10:33 PM: Not mentioned in the Wii Trimming Guide (since they are trimmed off) are some highly convenient labeled pads for the different voltages. I will be using these since it looks much easier than trying to solder to various components on the top side of the board, disconnecting these from the regulation circuitry seems to require removing these inductors: L1, L2, L4, L5, L6. I think all the capacitors can all stay, they are just connected to ground and filtering the voltage, although I'd like to learn more about the way electrolytic and tantalum capacitors work in circuits.]
9/3/2024: I've got problems!
With the above guesswork, I went ahead and desoldered L5 (5v line inductor), the power jack, and the magnet wire for video out (I'll use wire wrapping wire when I put that back.) Soldering two wires straight to the Vin pads on the board, I connected it, and, nothing! No voltage pretty much anywhere other than Vin as far as I can tell. Fuse is okay, and I even put a piece of wire across L5's pads (from my research the other regulators will refuse to start if 5v isn't there) but there is still no life in the board. I'm not sure what I am missing... My rather inelegant removal of the power jack destroyed the plating on the through-holes, restoring that with more wire brought the Wii back to life.
10/3/2024: Alive ish...
The repair I did yesterday did make the orange "has power" light come on. However, if you press the power button, it turns green, then goes out. Unplugging it and plugging it back in returns the orange light. I put the inductor back (extended to the side with wire, I don't want to completely undo my desoldering work) and it fully powers up once more. I'm doing as much independent research as I can, but I still am not versed in the nitty-gritty of how these circuits work - I had guessed that an inductor filters current like a capacitor filters voltage, making it a good thing to have but not strictly necessary.
19/3/2024: screen fun
I bought the traditional very cheap screen from Amazon, and it functions oddly now that I dropped the voltage going to it from 12v to 5v. It still shows an image, but it flashes on and off, so I will be looking for a regulator to bypass. This screen only turns on when a composite signal is fed to it, but since it still eats half a watt on standby, I'll still want to have an off switch.
I've made some progress, but started the worklog at this point since I will need to ask some questions. Those will be at the end of the post, but first, what's already done:
I bought a four layer Wii (busted disc drive) and since I own no Wii cables, I bodged some together for power and A/V using a PC power supply, paperclips, chopped up cables, and so on. This concerning looking arrangement got me to the setup screen, but I had no controller either so I bought a $6 Wii Remote off EBay. It had some problems:
That 1+2 button membrane was actually glued down with battery juice. Large amounts of cleaning later, I had a functional controller and with two candles for a sensor bar did lots of softmodding to get WiiFlow Lite, backup the NAND, boot directly into homebrew, and so on. (By the way, I don't particularly want to use RVLoader in this project, since the idea is to have a portable Wii that... still feels like an actual Wii. This unfortunately means that I will need to keep the disc drive motherboard around.)
After that was done, I opened up the system to find that the disc drive and accompanying shield had actually been dented inward somehow (possibly explains the broken drive), and for some reason somebody had scratched up the inside of the top shell all over the place. [Edit 3/3/2024 12:25 PM: The bottom shell has also been scratched up in the same way, so this Wii has definitely been disassembled fully before. Possibly by an angry toddler.] The disc drive has already been replaced once, as the screws have already been stripped for me! How polite of the original owner.
At this point, I have the Wii down to a motherboard (with the disc drive mobo tagging along) and it works fine. I soldered some magnet wire to the relevant points on the A/V connector to let me ditch the paperclips.
Now, for questions. I mostly have these questions because a trimmed portable does not have these systems, and I therefore don't know how they behave in a portable.
-While I could buy a 12v rechargable battery pack, I would rather add a PSU-Plus and connect a standard (but high amperage!) USB rechargable pack to that. However, I'm not trimming the board, and I'm unsure what happens if you have both original and custom regulators attached. I've made my guesses where to disconnect the original regulators**, but so far it hasn't gone well (see bottom of post.)
-Additional information I could not find: what things will stop working without 12v? In a handheld, nothing important, but here I'm unsure. To my knowledge, 12v is used for the disc drive (don't care, unless it stops the motherboard working*), sensor bar (I'll be integrating my own, low voltage one anyway), preamp (can rewire to 5v), and the front faceplate lights (that could be a problem, but I should be able to rewire). There may be others I couldn't find.
-Is the mysterious hole next to MX truly unused? I have routed some wires through there, and all signs point to that being a hole clear through the mobo and mobo shield, but if it is, why is it even there?
-How long can you leave a Wii with no heatsink? I'm avoiding turning it on without placing the heatsink on top, but sometimes I forget (and also I can't imagine the cooling is that good with it on, since it isn't screwed down and the thermal pads are old)
*[Edit 4/3/2024 6:46 PM: I have wandered the internet and identified the chips on dd mobo rev 2A, list:
Motor control IC, don't care if nonfunctional
Laser amp, don't care
DRAM, will work fine (doesn't need 12v)
Unmarked mystery chip, has continuity with 12v on several pins. By process of elimination, this is probably the microcontroller, and if no 12v causes it to not work that is bad.]
**[Edit 6/3/2024 10:33 PM: Not mentioned in the Wii Trimming Guide (since they are trimmed off) are some highly convenient labeled pads for the different voltages. I will be using these since it looks much easier than trying to solder to various components on the top side of the board, disconnecting these from the regulation circuitry seems to require removing these inductors: L1, L2, L4, L5, L6. I think all the capacitors can all stay, they are just connected to ground and filtering the voltage, although I'd like to learn more about the way electrolytic and tantalum capacitors work in circuits.]
9/3/2024:
With the above guesswork, I went ahead and desoldered L5 (5v line inductor), the power jack, and the magnet wire for video out (I'll use wire wrapping wire when I put that back.) Soldering two wires straight to the Vin pads on the board, I connected it,
10/3/2024: Alive ish...
The repair I did yesterday did make the orange "has power" light come on. However, if you press the power button, it turns green, then goes out. Unplugging it and plugging it back in returns the orange light. I put the inductor back (extended to the side with wire, I don't want to completely undo my desoldering work) and it fully powers up once more. I'm doing as much independent research as I can, but I still am not versed in the nitty-gritty of how these circuits work - I had guessed that an inductor filters current like a capacitor filters voltage, making it a good thing to have but not strictly necessary.
19/3/2024: screen fun
I bought the traditional very cheap screen from Amazon, and it functions oddly now that I dropped the voltage going to it from 12v to 5v. It still shows an image, but it flashes on and off, so I will be looking for a regulator to bypass. This screen only turns on when a composite signal is fed to it, but since it still eats half a watt on standby, I'll still want to have an off switch.
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