IPL Transplant

[Ashen]

Please note: Duplication in part or in whole of any part of this guide, its contents or visual references is strictly prohibited without the express consent of the author.

Today I successfully transformed a IPL v1.0 board into a IPL v1.1 board by transplanting both "MX" chips from a dead v1.1 board to a working IPL v1.0 board.

Its now Wiikey compatible. Yay!

These are the chips I swapped:

 

[nuke]

Oh crap...

 

[bentomo]

That's just amazing.

 

[demonicfox666]

superb work man ,we mst see if it works swapping between different region cubes , dont see why it wouldnt work

 

[Tchay]

Thats.....actually very doable.

This is really good news for me

great job Ashen!

 

[samjc3]

Hot air reflow, I take it? Such an excellent tool indeed. <3 mine so much.

 

[Ashen]

Actually I just cut the IC legs... Reflow seemed like to much work at the time. I would have had to walk out to the garage to get my hot air gun.

 

[XCVG]

I've reworked chips by prying up the leads, but ChipQuik works much better. I don't have hot air reflow. When you cut the legs, was there enough left to solder to?

 

[Ashen]

Yep, it worked out pretty perfectly actually. Last time I tried using heat to get the chip off I broke off one of the IC legs. I like this method much better.

 

[demonicfox666]

^ deffo one of the best methods is to use chipquik especially when there is very few legs to it, using a heat gun would probably be a bit overkill

 

[ShockSlayer]

You have to use both chips?

Dang, HAD I ONLY KNOWN. XD

I was under the impression that the IPL was only on one of them. Huh.

Added to the sticky.

SS

 

[Ashen]

I wish I would have known at the time you tried too SS. It was only on a whim that I swapped that second chip.

Should be noted that when I originally did this the other day it was a transplant from a DOL-CPU-11 board to another DOL-CPU-11 board. Yesterday I tried a DOL-CPU-10 and swapped in the chips from a "dead" DOL-CPU-30. It didnt work at first, I had to do an extra step.

More info on this once I test it a bit moar.

 

[Ashen]

Alrighty, So I've tested my DOL-CPU-10 board that I've transplanted the chips to with the Wiikey and everything is working perfectly. Here is what I did:

DOL-CPU-10/11 boards have a different clock crystal than later boards. If you're transplanting from a board with the newer crystal to a board with the older type timing crystal then you have to remove the old crystal and relocate the newer crystal also. If you are doing a transplant from a board that has the same type clock crystals then you only have to swap the two "MX" chips.

Here is what a DOL-CPU-10/11 board looks like stock. Note that some DOL-CPU-10/11 boards have a second clock crystal located to the left of the MX timing chip. You can leave that one alone if the board has it. We are only concerned with the crystal below the MX chip.

DOL-CPU-10/11:

Here is a DOL-CPU-30 board for comparison (DOL-CPU-20 boards look the same in this area):

DOL-CPU-10/11 Clock crystal traces:

DOL-CPU-20/30 Clock crystal traces:

And relocated:

As you can see, I removed the old clock chip and wired the new on directly to the IC legs.

Sorry for the crappy pics. Taken with my iPony.

 

[Tchay]

I just did the transplant from CPU-20 to CPU-10.

Swapped out both MX chips then put in the crystal.

Problem: I got black and white video. Tried another crystal, same result.

I am going to try putting in the chip on a spare CPU-30 board as it is not an MX chip but a CLK chip. Maybe it will make a difference?

 

[Noah]

Taken with my iPony.

Has Ashen become one of us?

 

[Tchay]

Okay just tried the CLK, and I STILL have black and white. I'm ganna swap out the MX chip on the mem card side of the board. Maybe that MX chip is bad for some reason.

 

[Ashen]

Bad connection on one of the IC legs probably... I seem to remember this happening at some point.

 

[Tchay]

Bad connection on one of the IC legs probably... I seem to remember this happening at some point.

I guess its possible. But I had clear solder globs on each leg. But anyhow, I gave up on that board.

BUT

I got REALLY lucky and my last spare board, a CPU-11, is compatible with the wiikey fusion!!!! I just did the precision soldering last night and then epoxied it down (no more hot glue crap). So I can finally get this portable finalized!

 

[Ashen]

Next time someone attempts this transplant I'd like to try just a clock crystal swap without swapping the MX chips. I'm curious to see if an IPL v1.0 chip will boot with just the modified clock crystal. If it works it'll make this whole process much simpler, not to mention possible with 0 donor parts if we can locate the correct clock chips on mouser or digikey.

If I get to it before anyone else I'll post the results here.

 

[XCVG]

I don't know if that will work. It looks like one model uses a crystal and the other uses a powered oscillator, but I can't really tell from the pictures.