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The Wii U was truly the black sheep of the main Nintendo consoles, but in terms of homebrew capabilities, it was but a diamond in the rough. While the Wii U is way past its heyday by almost a decade, the homebrew community still continues to thrive and develop great things for the system.

One of these developers, @shinyquagsire23, has made some research and advancements towards creating a modchip for the Wii U, which he titled "de_Fuse". The modchip started when Shiny Quasire started looking at the then unhacked Wii Mini console, in an attempt to glitch boot0 on it, and while getting curious if it could work on Wii U, he found that a similar exploit could be attempted for it, with the only downsides being OTP dumps being impossible due it being all 00s and the driver for boot0 being limited to SDHC cards.

While the necessity of having a modchip for the Wii U is not a must since Wii U already has coldboot exploits and many other things like Aroma that could serve a similar purpose, the main purpose of this modchip is to allow booting a Wii U console straight from the SD card, without having to rely on the Wii U's internal eMMC chip to boot into the console. This due to the recent news about some Wii U consoles bricking entirely due to failures in the eMMC chip, so giving players the option to boot from SD card would be a relief to this delicate issue that plagues the console.

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The rest of the information is highly technical and dives into the eFuses, OTP, boot0, boot1 and SRAM of the console, so those interested in a more in-depth and detailed information regarding the process can read it in Shiny Quagsire's own article about de_Fuse on his webpage.

The modchip is currently in early stages of development, and it currently requires an FPGA of sorts, but it hasn't been standardized in terms of schematics or parts. However, Shiny Quagsire is trying to aim for a $25-$35 dlls range when its finished (or lower), based on RP2040 chip. Those interested and willing to collaborate and help out throughout its development can do so through Shiny Quagsire's GitHub repository for the modchip, where he keeps all of the coding and research for it open source.

de_Fuse, the One True Pwn article
GitHub Repository

 

[Foxi4]

No, read what it is actually for.

Booting directly from external storage instantaneously solves the NAND degradation issue by making main storage easily replaceable, as opposed to requiring complex soldering. If that can be achieved with just a couple wires instead of a zillion solder balls, it extends the lifespan of the system tremendously.

 

[retrofan_k]

for the wiiu? what a waste of fucking time. but on the other hand there is no way nintendo will try to stop it!

Not really, if I can use my dead console again, as a result of nand corruption (non use for 3.5 years) I welcome this and so would others in the same situation.

 

[urbanman2004]

What does this modchip do better than Tiramisu and Aroma?

Read the gyatt damn fuqing manual next time... Sheesh

Post automatically merged: Apr 13, 2023

Booting directly from external storage instantaneously solves the NAND degradation issue by making main storage easily replaceable, as opposed to requiring complex soldering. If that can be achieved with just a couple wires instead of a zillion solder balls, it extends the lifespan of the system tremendously.

That is true, however, I would rather just emulate Wii U titles on my gaming PC. There, problem solved

 

[duwen]

Surprised no one's mentioned the awesome wiiuident homebrew here - search it up, install it, and add your system to the database. Essential tool to identify what emmc you have.



now I'm not on my phone, edited to add link to thread

 

[mfdez920]

iirc early in the lifespan of the Wii U, they used cheaper Hynix NANDs that tend to stop functioning long before they're expected to. The Wii was made with better NAND chips, so they rarely fail today. i believe the only safe bet on a non-Hynix system is the Wind Waker edition, but i could be wrong.

Unfortunately , you are wrong, at least PAL Wind Waker systems can have hynix nands, cause mine does

 

[Marc_LFD]

My 2008 Wii is still kicking ass up till this day!

I bought Wiis sold as "spares and parts" unknown if they'd work and they do (not too surprising as they rarely malfunction).

 

[SolidSonicTH]

for the wiiu? what a waste of fucking time. but on the other hand there is no way nintendo will try to stop it!

Does this community have a downvote function...?

 

[A-Hacked-Soul]

No, read what it is actually for.

That is expecting a lot from them.

 

[m_babble]

The hack no one asked for.

 

[linuxares]

The hack no one asked for.

But the hack we all needed

 

[Foxi4]

But the hack we all needed

I don’t understand what people are failing to grasp here. The NAND is soldered to the board and won’t last forever. PS5’s will have the same problems 10 years down the line. I have a sneaking suspicion that Nintendo realised this, as the Nintendo Switch has its memory on a removable module instead, which should be an industry standard when using this kind of storage.

 

[linuxares]

I don’t understand what people are failing to grasp here. The NAND is soldered to the board and won’t last forever. PS5’s will have the same problems 10 years down the line. I have a sneaking suspicion that Nintendo realised this, as the Nintendo Switch has its memory on a removable module instead, which should be an industry standard when using this kind of storage.

OLED is sadly soldered and I think the Lite also.

Also people think this is a "MUH PIRACHY!" chip. Well sure, but why would he re-conitnue this project if piracy was all? Since Aroma take care of that.

 

[SolidSonicTH]

Wonder if someone could make a higher quality Wii U GamePad screen. That'd be a neat mod.

 

[sombrerosonic]

Does this community have a downvote function...?

The Angry reaction is basicly a "Downvote" in this community

 

[Foxi4]

OLED is sadly soldered and I think the Lite also.

Huh. Never opened one of those before, so I wouldn’t know - I’m quite happy with my launch model. Huge step backwards if that’s the case.

 

[gaga941021]

for the wiiu? what a waste of fucking time. but on the other hand there is no way nintendo will try to stop it!

Tell me you read the title only without telling me you read the title only.

 

[deSSy2724]

Mostly an Hynix emmc bad batch

But what about those already bricked consoles..... would this solution from @shinyquagsire23 still solve it/unbrick it if the console is already bricked?

 

[linuxares]

But what about those already bricked consoles..... would this solution from @shinyquagsire23 still solve it/unbrick it if the console is already bricked?

Read the article?

 

[Valery0p]

The custom boot1, (known as minute_minute) now boots into the home menu!

Now it comes the hard part of building an infrastructure over this exploit... a new recovery menu, something to "rebuild" firmwares on corrupted nands like ctrtransfers or daybreak, and last but not least a new rednand implementation compatible with the Aroma enviroment; that last one already sounds like a PITA...

 

[tiger111]

guys since it will be helpful in emmc issues will it be also solve issues of bricked wiius during updates with no display and gamepas sync (to be precise black screen of death and with no otp nand back up )