Worklog My first trimmed wii thing :D

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Hey guys! I recently found this community because of the "kill mii" project that was suggested to me on youtube, and I've started my first project. I can't figure out how to attach pictures, sorry, let me know how to do that and I'll post some. The voltage regulators I bought online did not arrive yet, and I wanted to start this project today, so I headed down to my local micro center, and bought 4 step down converters (also, they were $7 each!!! What a rip off) and I found out they only go down to 1.25 volts :/
So I made some voltage dividers, and they are working to an extent. Right now I need some help troubleshooting what's going wrong. I've made a video, and I'll post it as soon as it's done uploading to youtube.
 
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Update: the 1 volt power is not at 1 volt, as it's drawing too much current for my voltage divider circuit atm, update when I get that fixed

OK, I've got it somewhat working now. On the video out, I get some static-like crap, but it doesn't move around. The problem I'm facing now is that the 1 volt input is not staying at 1 volt. The problem with resistor voltage dividers is that as current draw goes up, voltage goes down!! I tried to mitigate this by increasing the voltage pre-divider, and after testing I've found out that I've now sent 2.1 volts to the 1 volt area for brief periods of time (around 1/10 a second) a couple times now :oops:. Let me know If this is enough to kill something.
This project is now on hold until the voltage regulators I bought online come in
 
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GingerOfOz

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Welcome! You're making crazy fast progress considering the KillMii hasn't been around long.

I see a few issues with your current setup. I think you've figured this out already, but voltage dividers aren't going to work. Waiting for your other regulators (PTH08080s?) is your best option.

Just a few other thing I'm seeing is that your Bluetooth wires may need to be shorter. You definitely to twist your data wires together on USB, and I'd reccomend using magnet wire on those.

For future reference, when you're updating within the same day or without anybody else posting between, go ahead and just edit your previous post. It helps cut down on clutter and makes stuff easier to read through.

Good luck with the new regs! Hopefully that'll fix your current issue.
 

cheese

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You probably haven't killed your wii board, they're pretty resilient. The 1v line usually pulls around 1-1.5A, which is why your resistors were getting so hot. The static like image is because of the regulators not holding their output properly causing the wii to crash.

All of @GingerOfOz points are correct as well, though I'd like to add that the bluetooth data lines can stay that long if you twist those as well, but it's usually easier to move bluetooth near the LDO or RAM (the two larger black chips near the CPU/GPU) in which case you don't need to twist them
 
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You probably haven't killed your wii board, they're pretty resilient. The 1v line usually pulls around 1-1.5A, which is why your resistors were getting so hot. The static like image is because of the regulators not holding their output properly causing the wii to crash.

All of @GingerOfOz points are correct as well, though I'd like to add that the bluetooth data lines can stay that long if you twist those as well, but it's usually easier to move bluetooth near the LDO or RAM (the two larger black chips near the CPU/GPU) in which case you don't need to twist them
Awesome, I'm glad I most likely didn't kill it! If you notice in the video I ended up twisting the usb wires.
Welcome! You're making crazy fast progress considering the KillMii hasn't been around long.
Thanks! Glad this community is so supportive! Do you know where I can buy the nand flash breakout boards? I wanted to relocate the nand on my second or third wii, and I don't want to have to design then build/buy my own.

EDIT:
More things I wanted to say, oh boy. No, the voltage regulators I bought are not the PTH ones, they are some cheap ones I found on eBay (10 for $6) that said they are 3 amp, but they also mentioned something about 1.5 amps so idk. In case you guys are wondering why I'm even considering such a hard project for my second wii mod, sadly the answer is not that that I'm a god. It's that I've been tinkering and designing things all my life and I've been soldering for 8 years (yes that means I got my first iron when I was 9) Additionally, what's the best place to buy wii motherboards?

EDIT 2:
I looked into it, the regulators I bought are "3 amp max" and "1.8 amp sustained" which means I should be good, right?
 
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20181016_161417.jpg 20181016_161732.jpg 20181016_161754.jpg So, the voltage regulators I ordered (the correct ones this time) arrived, so I got it all wired up, aaaannnddd, I'm pretty my wii is dead :(
All the wii outputs on the video is static, like before, but this time I checked all the voltages and they are stable at what they are supposed to be. Additionally, the CPU & GPU get much hotter than before. I assume this means It's actually doing something, as it did not get very hot before. I'll attach pics in a sec.
Edit: Ew, my crappy wire looks gross up close
Time to find a new wii !
 
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BocuD

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Oyes, thanks to @BocuD on discord, I got it working! He is truly a god of debugging. My U10 was at 1.45 volts
I wouldn't say god lol, this is just what happens when you first break (and then fix) so many Wiis. The U10 wasn't the only problem, as the 3.3v reg was, well, fucked and didn't work correctly. The resistors are apparently on the bottom, so that why you couldn't see them @cheese
 

Shank

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Welp It started going in and out of static when it I got it to output a clean signal (which was very rare) and now it does not output any video no matter what I do :(
EDIT: I should mention that my u10 broke so I was using a button to attempt to send a signal at the correct time
 
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Welp It started going in and out of static when it I got it to output a clean signal (which was very rare) and now it does not output any video no matter what I do :(
EDIT: I should mention that my u10 broke so I was using a button to attempt to send a signal at the correct time
If you have the other pieces of the MOBO, you can use the u9 instead.
 
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