As some of you know, I have been trying to get a broken Wii mobo so I can sand off the first layer and scan the inner traces. In the meanwhile, a picture of how far you can trim a wii, and an N64 board for comparison!
In interesting note: All the BGA connections on the two main chips, ALL of them, have a via going through to the other side right underneath. Basically,those buttons up front, the SD slot, and the wifi and bluetooth boards should go straight to the chips, so if I can trace where they go to, you can trim a few good inches from the front of the board. In fact, you could eliminate the drive board connectors, too! All of those things are in the middle hidden layer, I really hope we can expose them.
Oh, and the green "IMPOSSIBLE"? That is how small it could be if you completely rebuilt the voltage regulation for EVERYTHING by hand. Not worth it by a long shot, but I left it as an option. If you were going for just gamecube, you could even strip that chip that makes it stick way out on the green outline near the top, it is just the Wii realtime clock chip. Only 8 of the traces are used so again, if we can get mid layer scans, should be easy to knock that bit off. All the voltage regulation stuff is underneath it, so not too bad.
In interesting note: All the BGA connections on the two main chips, ALL of them, have a via going through to the other side right underneath. Basically,those buttons up front, the SD slot, and the wifi and bluetooth boards should go straight to the chips, so if I can trace where they go to, you can trim a few good inches from the front of the board. In fact, you could eliminate the drive board connectors, too! All of those things are in the middle hidden layer, I really hope we can expose them.
Oh, and the green "IMPOSSIBLE"? That is how small it could be if you completely rebuilt the voltage regulation for EVERYTHING by hand. Not worth it by a long shot, but I left it as an option. If you were going for just gamecube, you could even strip that chip that makes it stick way out on the green outline near the top, it is just the Wii realtime clock chip. Only 8 of the traces are used so again, if we can get mid layer scans, should be easy to knock that bit off. All the voltage regulation stuff is underneath it, so not too bad.
