Board scan Wii U Gamepad Board Scans - DRC-01

[Lazr]

Hey all! I spent the past few months sanding and scanning the DRC-01 Wii U Gamepad Mobo. It's a 6-layer board, so it really took me some time (considering it's the first multi-layer board I've done). Should be useful for RE, repairs, and maybe trimming the Gamepad?

The scans are available on @YveltalGriffin's Wii U Docs folder on Google Drive. There is also DRC-01.xcf which should have all the layers mostly aligned. Note that the internal IO layers are the pre-preg layers. The traces are fully visable through them, but it might be annoying tracing out in some areas. Have fun!

DRC-01 - Google Drive

drive.google.com

 

[Lazr]

I added scans for both sub-boards. one of them is sanded (mostly), the other is not. I also uploaded my doodles on them (the .xcfs). No idea wtf the EXT port is for (iirc it's I2C, but theres a mystery 3rd pin). Anyway, have fun!

 

[gorgyrip]

Thank you! I've noticed that 2 layers aren't sanded, but scanned through the board. To get better results for those layers, you can cover the board in spit. Not joking I've tried water, ipa, lotion, but the results weren't that great. Also there's no need to sand the outter layers. It's easier to use caustic soda. Note that some boards have a very persistent silkscreen.

 

[Lazr]

I got bored and sanded those pre-preg layers off. The scans are now complete (with the .xcf also updated)!

 

[zlz1]

One thing I'm interested in in regards to modding the gamepad is removing the 5GHZ WiFi connection to the gamepad and wiring the gamepad directly to the Wii U mobo. In a portable, the gamepad components are going to be right next to the actual Wii U board and these components aren't going to be moved away from eachother so technically we shouldn't really be using any wireless connection, that's my thought process. I imagine this would be an incredibly complex thing to implement though.

My first guess to how you would do something like this is to find the locations on the boards where the WiFi data goes from the WiFi receiver chips to the rest of the electronics and intercept the connection?

Honestly now that I think of it it would probably be easier to just reverse engineer the gamepad and create a custom gamepad implementation designed for this purpose....

 

[Lazr]

Wire the consoles 5GHz module to the gamepads 5GHz module. Could be done with magwire or some MHF4 cables.

 

[zlz1]

Damn, that was a lot more straightforward than I thought it would be.