Wii Mini Hacking Initiative: We WILL Crack It!

legofan623

legofan623

Well-Known Member
I'm starting this thread to get the Wii Mini hacked. All ideas, known methods, and discussion should go here. If you see information that is incorrect, please say so. Without further ado, here is what we (I) do know:

Method -> PASS/FAIL/POSSIBLE -> REASON

LetterBomb-> FAIL -> No internet and no SD
Twilight Hack-> FAIL-> Sysmenu 3.0 required and no SD
Lego Hacks-> FAIL -> No SD
WiiKey -> POSSIBLE -> Nobody has tried this yet
Wii NAND swap -> FAIL -> NAND is married to system, no swapping allowed
Solder in SD slot -> POSSIBLE -> Nobody has tried this yet
 
I have 2 wii minis, but I shipped one off to cheese. The Wii mini has potential. It uses the same hardware chips as far as I can tell, so it still has the same data lines. Im 90% sure one cluster of test pads run to the SD card lines. It also uses the same video chip, so component video could be a possibility. It has a space for a WiFi chip connector to be soldered in as well.

It lacks a few things. Off the top of my head, it doesn't have the large capacitors for component video lines.
Missing ports are as follows:
Gamecube ports 1, 2, 3, 4, A, and B
SD card slot
USB port 1
WiFi module

Surprisingly, the wii mini's board iself resembles the 4 layer wiis (rvl 40, rvl 60, and all rvk boards) way more than the 4 layer boards resemble the 6 layer boards. Most the traces and chips are in the same location relative to each other and the same distance.

Since it uses the same hardware, it would be much more difficult to redesign board to remove the data lines altogether rather than keep them there but disable functionality. They knew the Wii worked. The more they changed, the more likely they were to change that and encounter unexpected problems. All the data lines are probably present, but just run to nowhere.

On the software end, it is capable of booting without a WiFi chip, as it doesn't have one, so that's worth looking into. It could be used to discover a way to do the same on a regular Wii.

In order to restore full functionality, some software mods may be necessary to enable the disabled hardware.


For both hardware and software, I would think we would need to figure out how the features themselves on the traditional Wii itself worked before could figure out how to reimplement them on the wii mini.
 
If someone was willing and had the skills, they could desolder the NAND chip from a softmodded Wii and put it into a Wii Mini, if the chips are similar/identical. Best case scenario it works, we can install BootMii as Boot2, resolder the original NAND back in, then use BootMii to dump the original NAND, and compare the dump to a normal Wii's dump. Kind of a long process that PROBABLY wouldn't work, but you never know. Also, can you post a picture of the SD traces you were talking about? And please tell me the DD has the same ribbon cable as the Wii's so we can just use a WiiKey.
 
I'd try to move over a nand chip, but I'm afraid that since it has missing components it will "fail" the checks before booting.

I'll try to take some shots of the traces.

As for the disc drive, that's a negative, ghost rider. Its not a ribbon cable. Its some sort of proprietary plug. Check my revisions guide for a picture
 
Dang... I was hoping the DD would work. And Nintendo is lazy about changing Wii software, I bet swapping NAND would work. I can boot gamecube games on my wasp on a RVL-101 after all :p .
 
Correct me if I'm wrong but if we find a way to ignore the boot checks on a Wii, like your trying to do anyways, then transplanting the name should work? You could essentially solder in a PCB with the resistors for GameCube controllers into it for GC support.. A board like that shouldn't be to hard to fab.. Just thinking out loud, but it would take some of the work out of miniaturization. The traces for the SD card slot sounds the most exciting prospect though. Even if the drive will not recognize the gamecube discs, you could play them from the sd slot theoreticlly. Only the video quality isn't as good on Wii mini...
Edit. Nand.. Not name
 
Good find, red. I read that thread a while back, well before I knew much of anything about wiis or electronics. This thread tells me that I cannot simply swap the nand chip because the nand must match the starlet or it won't boot. You probably just saved me from destroying a Wii mini.
 
Yea, I remembered reading it some years back too, so I figured I'd point it out since I also remembered it having some useful info too. Glad I could save you the trouble. :)
 
Well I guess tlnand swap is out... And I had no idea that the sysmenu was different, that's good to know.
 
Unfortunately the SD card slot has already been attempted, and failed. The code for reading SD cards has been removed (or disabled) in the Wii mini. However, I am getting a NAND read/writer in, does anyone know of a way to install the homebrew channel to a NAND dump (if you have the key of course... *evil grin* )?
 
legofan623 said:
Check out this: https://sites.google.com/site/completesg/useful-tools/showmiiwads/showmiinand

If you can find a homebrew channel wad (or just extract it from another Wii), you can install it to the nand.bin dump. You can load homebrew from the USB port from there.
Click to expand...

Gonna test this out on a couple Wiis I've got the keys for (haven't got the parts I need to put this on a wii mini quite yet...) This could be the gateway into Wii mini homebrew, of course, if it works... :)

Also, gonna use those dumps to test if a brute-force NAND cracking program I'm gonna write works... If so, we could totally brute-force our way into Wii mini NANDs (albeit, probably one a month or however long it takes to find the right 128 bit key, since there are [128! - 1 3.4x10^38] possibilities...).
 
cheese said:
legofan623 said:
Check out this: https://sites.google.com/site/completesg/useful-tools/showmiiwads/showmiinand

If you can find a homebrew channel wad (or just extract it from another Wii), you can install it to the nand.bin dump. You can load homebrew from the USB port from there.
Click to expand...

Gonna test this out on a couple Wiis I've got the keys for (haven't got the parts I need to put this on a wii mini quite yet...) This could be the gateway into Wii mini homebrew, of course, if it works... :)

Also, gonna use those dumps to test if a brute-force NAND cracking program I'm gonna write works... If so, we could totally brute-force our way into Wii mini NANDs (albeit, probably one a month or however long it takes to find the right 128 bit key, since there are [128! - 1 3.4x10^38] possibilities...).
Click to expand...


Any progress on this project?
 
Haven't been here in a while, school and all :p
I have, however been wondering about something... Can we get some people who have softmodded their wiis, but still have the original serial number to post original serial and NAND key? I would've done this myself with the few wiis I've got here, but the shells are all mixed up so I don't know which serial goes to which wii... I was hoping nintendo might have done something like serial -> nand key so they wouldn't have to toss the board whenever they got one back on RMA. If there is a correlation, then hacking _any_ wii (and wii mini ^-^) would be as simple as typing the serial in and hitting go on a NAND dump.
 
I have at least 10 fully functional wiis in their original shells right now. Let me know what info you need, how to get it, and how you want it organized and Ill get it to ya.

I have yet to find any correlation between the two for identifying board revision/hardware wise, but thats not to say there is none. After discovering the battery tray method I had no need for it and stopped looking for a correlation.
 
Dyxlesci said:
I have at least 10 fully functional wiis in their original shells right now. Let me know what info you need, how to get it, and how you want it organized and Ill get it to ya.

I have yet to find any correlation between the two for identifying board revision/hardware wise, but thats not to say there is none. After discovering the battery tray method I had no need for it and stopped looking for a correlation.
Click to expand...

If you softmod a Wii and make a NAND backup, it also puts a file called keys.bin (it should be a 1KB file) on the main directory of the SD card. If you rename the keys.bin file to the serial of the Wii it came from, you could either email me those renamed keys.bin files, or upload them to my server. I was hoping Nintendo would be lazy and just use either the serial itself, or some permutation of the serial as the NAND key (eliminating the need to crack it). If we get the NAND key, we're in the console.
 
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