Wii audio/video a/v cable pinout

[chris7263]

Hi there!

Recently, I've become the owner of a used Wii without power supply and cables. Infrared sensor bar is being replaced by candles (works great! ) until the package from China arrives. Power comes from an old PC PSU 12 V line.

Right now, I am trying to connect my Wii mainboard to my TV without an original Nintendo a/v cable, but with wires, soldered to the connector pins. Using Google image search, apparently, there are various cables existing:

#1 http://cd.indiabizclub.com/uploads05/33/G/NintendoWiiDVDComponentCable63180159.jpg

#2 http://fasttechcdn.com/products/124/1246702/1246702-4.jpg

#3 http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41jdg8ZzY1L.jpg

#4 http://ak1.ostkcdn.com/images/produ...ent-AV-Cable-for-Nintendo-Wii-MLB11291998.jpg

For the current state of my project, I'd only need composite video, no RGB, not even audio. Something similar to cable #3. So I looked for Wii a/v connector pinouts and found the following sources:

http://www.hardwarebook.info/Wii_A/V
http://pinouts.ru/Game/nintendo_wii_av_pinout.shtml
http://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=av:wii_multi_av_pinout

I decided to just use the "composite video" pin 3 and pin 5 for GND. You can see my work in this bad quality image:

However, it turned out to be kind of buggy. Sometimes there is no video signal at all. Sometimes it just gets lost after a minute or two. My soldering seems to be fine, jiggling and wiggling at the wire doesn't change a thing and continuity with multimeter checks out.

When I touch the GND wire, sometimes the signal returns, which seems kind of strange to me. So I took another look at this SCART adapter pinout:

http://gamesx.com/wiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=av:wii_rgb_pinout2.png

Pin 5 is stated as "audio ground", explicitly...? In contrary to the previously found pinout tables where pin 5 is just "ground" or even "composite ground".

I will try to use pin 12 as GND to see if it makes any difference. In the meantime... just looking for some confirmation. Am I doing this completely wrong? Why are there different pinout tables?

Thanks.

EDIT: images too big

 

[Blargaman91]

I went and looked at my motherboard just now and it seems pin 5 is purely GND, as is pin 12. So that shouldn't be causing an issue.
I can't see your wiring with those pictures but I'd certainly suspect a short somewhere. Perhaps a bead of solder almost too small to see between the pins.
What part of the GND wire are you touching when the signal returns?

 

[chris7263]

I went and looked at my motherboard just now and it seems pin 5 is purely GND, as is pin 12. So that shouldn't be causing an issue.

How would you explain the different pinout tables then? In the SCART cable pinout pin 5 and 12 of the Wii connector are not connected. Weird, isn't it?

I can't see your wiring with those pictures but I'd certainly suspect a short somewhere. Perhaps a bead of solder almost too small to see between the pins.

I'll try to take a better picture. A soldering problem still seems really unlikely to me... I will check anyway!

What part of the GND wire are you touching when the signal returns?

The composite video GND wire connected to pin 5.

 

[Blargaman91]

How would you explain the different pinout tables then? In the SCART cable pinout pin 5 and 12 of the Wii connector are not connected. Weird, isn't it?

The diagram you showed of the SCART connector does actually draw ground from pins 5 and 12. The labels like "audio ground" and "RGB ground" don't mean anything other than it's suggested that manufacturers of cables take ground for RGB connections or ground for audio connections from those spots, for convenience. They're the same ground, and those names don't mean anything when modding.

Could you get a pictures or pictures of the video output from the Wii? Is it discolored, or does it just sometimes show and sometimes not show?
The fact that it changes with a physical touch probably means a bad connection.