Jankii Laptop (Wii hardware, wiikey, softmodding questions)

[Kyosho]

So. I had a pretty feature-filled GCp planned but that had to be put on hold indefinitely. Long story short, I can't do much soldering anymore. I was going to commission a prominent member of the forum to do the soldering for me, but then I had financial issues. Oh well. However, a friend just sold me (for a very cheap price) his Wii with a borked disc drive. Should be coming in the mail within a week.

Now, because I was going to build that GCp, I have a brand new Wiikey Fusion that's just collecting dust. So I thought I'd include it in this. Unless... unless I don't need to? I've done some searching around the internets, and I'm still not sure whether it would be better to softmod, or use the wiikey, or both. I've read people saying that a softmodded Wii can't play GC games. I've also read the exact opposite. But I know the Wiikey Fusion can. I think. Heh. Pretty sure, yes. I don't know. Is there a benefit to one over the other? Should I do both? Should I save the wiikey for that pie-in-the-sky GCp?

Now, for hardware stuff. I'm aware that I can get away with just the DVD drive's main board, and won't need the whole thing. Do I need to do any special soldering for that to work, or is it simply detach it and plug it back into the Wii?

Since I'd be removing most of the disc drive, I was thinking I could use the spare space in the original case for batteries. Is the disc drive cavity thick enough to hold typical A-sized cylindrical lithium cells? At least I think that's the size. You know, the ones you'd get out of camcorder batteries like Bacteria and other people were so fond of using. I've got 12 of the friggin' cells (and a protection circuit) from when I was doing my PGPC. Probably will only use 6 though. If they'll fit. Will they fit?

Haven't decided on a screen yet. I've got some PSOnes and a couple other random ones.

The sensor bar, if I remember correctly, is just IR LEDs at a certain wavelength. I could just hack the original sensor bar, rather than trying to buy some. I think you could get a closer distance by mounting them closer together, right? I seem to recall that from Ben's original Wii laptop.


Well, that was a lot of random rambling and questions. This should be a fairly simple project, and hopefully will only have minimal soldering. Because I really can't do much. Blargh.

 

[Kyosho]

Re: Jankii Laptop (Wii hardware, wiikey, softmodding questio

Yes, I'm double-posting in my own thread. But I have a habit of typing huge walls of text, so I figured this would be better (see my old PCp thread for me at my worst).

Wish the forum's search didn't hate 3-character words so much. I'm thinking maybe of just integrating a PSOne LCD into the main case of the Wii, in the gap where the disc drive will have been. And the "sensor" bar as well. My failed search was for "wii rgb." Now, I know the Wii can do RGB in PAL regions for SCART. And according to pinouts.ru, I think even the NTSC boards have the pins for it. Whether it actually functions in NTSC is another matter entirely. Anyone know? It seems to use the same pins as component, just have to not short some pins (which is what activates component? I think?) It's the best option for the PSOne screen. Unfortunately the little jerk can't do component. No 480p for you, Mr. PSOne LCD.

God I hate waiting for stuff to ship in the mail. I've got the Wii coming, a sensor bar, a component cable (for playing on my HDTV), and I forget what else. The anticipation is killing me. I'm so excited to work on a new project, even one as simple as this.

So I'm pretty sure I'm going with just the Wiikey Fusion for now. Softmodding looks stupid-simple but I don't think I'd really have any need of it. At least not until I decide to put a hard drive in the thing. Which I'm not sure there'd be room for. I'm still not sure whether my batteries would fit. But I'd rather have the screen in there than the batteries.

 

[Akira]

Re: Jankii Laptop (Wii hardware, wiikey, softmodding questio

As you allready know i am busy with a A portable.

And been looking into softmodding modchips etc.

if you softmod your wii you must still have the pcboard of the drive connected to start games, without it they wont run.
you can load DIOS MIOS to play gamecube games from the sd card. and use the usb port to wii load games from usb stick or hdd
I dont know if all the softmod programs are compatable with SDHC SD cards with large capacity

here is a video of usbload combined with dios mios http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL7BgpUX ... re=related

for the wiikey fusion i am unsure if you need the pcboard of the drive. swiss 0.2 bypasses this i think, but swiss cant run wii games (correct me if i am wrong)
I am still looking into this chip to load wii and gamecube games from a largers storage then SD cards

Then i have been looking at the wode jukebox, this can start games from usb hdd/stick for wii and gamecube, and still needs pcboard of drive.
The wode has a lcd , i know ashen stripped this from the wode. and still has it working.
Wode can run through wodechannel if you install this to select a game or change settings (what you normally do from the tiny lcd
This menu needs to be controlled by a gamecube controller

Then there is the sundriver. It runs gamecube games, wii games and this chip has the pcboard of the drive build in itself. So no need for it.
Sundriver loads like a gamecube game and the menu needs to be controlled by a gamecube controller
Sundriver has 2 versions a sata and a IDE + Compact flash

 

[Kyosho]

Re: Jankii Laptop (Wii hardware, wiikey, softmodding questio

Well, I'm not going to bother with anything but the Wiikey until I decide to put in a hard drive. I'm not planning to use the system for anything but playing Wii and GC games.

SO! My Wii came today. Sensor bar is still in the mail, and apparently you can't navigate the menus without it. I could do a silly trick with TV remotes or something, but nah. Besides, I need a new SD card (can't find the one I was planning to use) and going to wait for it as well. SD cards have gone down in price since I bought one last. That is handy. I could use another card, but all of mine are sort of occupied. Really don't want to redo my DS's flash cart card, nor my phone's. I could probably make an image backup of one, but, really, card should be here tomorrow, hopefully the sensor bar too.

Took the system apart, took the main board off the DVD drive and put my wiikey fusion between. System loads up, and then goes to an error. Thought it was because of the DVD drive thing I did (had to cut the motor lines, but that's all), but when I remove the wiikey, the system sits on the main menu just fine. Does the Wiikey require an SD card to be in the system? I'm assuming (hoping) that's my problem. This is from the news page of the official wiikey site:

Today we have released Wiikey Fusion update v1.4 which partially fixes an issue that causes the Mii/Photo channel to crash on some Wiis when no SD card is present. With this update, all Wiis should now work as long as SD card or DVD is present. This will be completely resolved in the upcoming 1.5 firmware update.

Pretty sure Wiikeys ship with 1.0 firmware. Hoping this is the problem. Find out tomorrow I guess.

 

[superben51]

Re: Jankii Laptop (Wii hardware, wiikey, softmodding questio

If you need to navigate menus, just light so candles and pretend they are the sensor bar.

 

[Kyosho]

Re: Jankii Laptop (Wii hardware, wiikey, softmodding questio

Hah! I forgot all about that trick. I've heard of people doing that. Hrmm. I know I've got candles here somewhere.

Edit: Still looking for candles! But I forgot to mention earlier, there IS room in the case now for batteries. Just so long as I keep the metal plate (shielding plate?) from the top half out. Also, there's some other bits that could be trimmed or removed for a little more room. I don't think I could fit both batteries AND a screen in here, unless the screen wasn't flush. And if it's not flush, then I don't see the point of doing it like that. So..probably back to the laptop idea now. We'll see. There might be more I could remove.

 

[Kyosho]

Re: Jankii Laptop (Wii hardware, wiikey, softmodding questio

^^^ The bane of my existence lately. So, my wiikey seems to be dead. Or something. I've tried every region code, and still get that error about 30 seconds after booting. So I'm softmodding for now. Sadness. Found a candle, as you can see. But only one. Works, but is a major pain to use. My sensor bar didn't come today. Really thought it would.

EDIT: Fully softmodded my Wii. Decided to try putting the Wiikey back in. And what do you know, it worked! But unfortunately, gave me this error for a while. It would sit there on that error, then go to the menu and just constantly be "mounting."

No idea why. I think some sort of bug with the way WBFS manager formatted my card. On the third reformat of my card, it magically worked. So I was able to update to 1.5. But I realized, for some reason the gamecube controller wasn't working in the menu, and I knew it was supposed to. But I used the reset button (as you do), and....

However, the gamecube controller doesn't work. I have two, and neither work. I thought maybe it was the port on the console, but the controllers work perfectly in the one USB loader application. I have no clue what's causing this problem. At least tomorrow (jebus willing), I'll have my sensor bar and navigating Wii menus won't be the headache that it was today. So many hours fiddling... I will get this thing working eventually!


EDIT2: This issue has been fixed. It seems the "region free" settings in Priiloader somehow screwed up the Wiikey's ability to detect Gamecube controllers. Don't ask me, but it works now with those turned back off.