Question Ashida Troubleshoot/Worklog

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Hey gang,

Lurked here for a while and decided to try my hand on the Ashida since a lot of the work is done for you by the 4Layer boards.
Have wired up the wii board twice with two different trims but am unable to get anything to show up on the screen.
Screen flashes blue with VGA in the corner before turning black and then that's all that happens.
Wii gets nice and hot when powered on so something is happening there but nothing is showing up. I'm trying to test using composite and the screen never gives any sign that it is receiving any sort of AV signal.

Attached a few photos to give everyone an understanding. This is more just a test wire up so I haven't hooked up USB yet but started hooking up VGA to an extent by soldering the RGB vias but haven't wired MODE to 3.3 as of yet.

I *think* that u10 is wired correctly - hooked up to the PMS.

This is my second trim and has been sanded pretty well. Thought that I must have messed up the first trim so moved on to my backup wii but considering that I am getting the exact same problem - wii heating up but nothing on screen, I am assuming I am doing something else wrong.

Thanks in advance for any help, guys!
 

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Many of your pictures are blurry so if you can retake them so there are good, clear pics of where you have hooked up your wires it would be helpful in figuring out if you have them connected in the right place. You can make soldering the video wires a lot easier on yourself by removing the elctrolytic capacitors, that will give you some nice large pads to solder to (make sure to use the ones closest to the edge) and there is a wide ground plane with large vias so you can easily scrape back the mask to have a large spot to solder to or solder to the vias easily.
 
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Thanks for the tips. I'll try removing the capacitors now to give myself a bit of room. Have tried cleaning up the board a bit and have yet to get it to work - have a question although it might be stupid.
This screen - the screen from the 4Layer site, does it automatically switch sources? The screen will always indicate that it is displaying VGA despite composite being attached.
 

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The screen didn't automatically switch for me, although I'm not sure I was doing everything I needed to for composite. I eventually got VGA to work, although the ribbon connector for the screen was quite finnicky for me, I ended up needing to reseat it a couple times to get it to work.

Looking through your pictures, many of those solder joints are questionable at best. Your U10 wire is in the right place, but you have way too much exposed wire and it looks like it could easily short out against something. Also many of your solder joints look poor, particulary the grounds on the wii motherboards and the 3.3v power to the display and the driver board, and whatever you have wired up to the C5 capacitor adjacent to the LDO (Which also has way too much exposed wire), I wouldn't trust them at all, the solder was clearly not flowing properly and that will result in joints that are both physically weak and make poor electrical connections. Solder joints that looks like that are typically a result of some combination of one or both of the components being soldered not being hot enough at the time of soldering or having insufficient flux when you do the soldering, if the issue is heat you may need to bump the iron's temperature higher than you would normally want to use and/or use a larger tip that can store more heat energy without dropping in temperature (this is particularly important on lower wattage irons and ones which have a separate tip and heating element with an air gap between them as those irons have difficulty maintaining the tip temperature when the tip contacts larger components/traces) for things which soak up a lot of heat like ground planes or voltage planes. You also seem to be using far more solder than you need to everywhere that thicker wire is used, which isn't an issue on its own but is poor technique because it is much easier to accidentally bridge points that aren't supposed to be in contact whent there is too much solder (it is also wasteful, although the amount of wasted solder is quite small).
 

Stitches

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1657586684306.png

I agree with Valanduin, too much exposed wire
 
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Thanks to the both of you for your input!
I have cut off the end of my u10 wire to a shorter length, with less tinned wire at the end and cleaned up my voltage wires - made a difference to turn up the heat a little. Was a bit afraid of burning the board.

Still getting nothing from the screen when booting however - just a hot wii and a flicker of a blue screen before nothing.

Tomorrow, I will replace the u10 wire, wick the area and clean it before trying again.
Will update then.
 
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So after redoing all of my wiring, reflowing all of my joints on the PMS and the wii board as well as switching to VGA, I am still not getting any signal.
Starting to think that the wii might be dead but I can't think what I would have done twice to kill the board.
 

Stitches

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Just making sure, because this fucked me up as well once: When you wired the RGB lines for VGA, did you wire them according to the colour of the trace in the guide, or the letter markation in the legend?

The guide highlights multiout pin 7 as green, but that's actually component green (Y) from the days before the VGA mod. In VGA mode, pin 7 outputs Red as indicated in the legend. I'm not sure if having the colours all mixed up could lead to blackscreen, but I know I've made that mistake before. Something else that it could be is H and V sync being swapped, might be worth swapping them just to see. Won't do any damage to anything, just don't leave the Wii on for more than 30 seconds without a heatsink or it'll bake itself

Aside from that, nothing really jumps out at me. The only other thing I can ask is whether you've checked all the voltage lines for shorts against each other and ground.
 
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Definitely have them hooked up correctly regarding the traces - although the colours did get me originally haha.

Checking for continuity between gnd and the voltages, all seems fine except that I get beeps between 1.15v and 1.8v as well as gnd and these two voltages. However it sits at about 38 ohms for these voltages to gnd and about 67 between each other. From what I've read and also measured on my other wii trim - this appears normal?
 

Stitches

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The resistance values are skewed by the PMS being attached, but a short would still show up as 0-1 ohms. I'm stumped. Aside from switching H and V sync just to see if that screen is one of the ones where the silkskcreen is printed incorrectly, I have no idea what could be fucky.

You could try wiring the Wii's reset button and holding it down while powering the board on. That forces it to boot to priiloader even if there's something wrong with RVLoader.

Short of that, my brain falls back on: desolder everything and try again carefully with fresh solder joints. I'm really not sure what could have happened twice in a row tho, it's very odd. One suggestion I would make is to solder your ground wire to the ground side of one of the big black tantalum caps instead of to the screw post shields. It's much easier to get a good solder joint on them due to the existing solder, it's possible that your other ground wires aren't making good enough contact.
 
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So after desoldering everything and resoldering and moving my gnd wires somewhere else, it has finally boot!
Not exactly sure what I did that was the ticket since I pretty much did everything all at once - if I had to guess it would either be that I had a pretty weak solder joint on the PMS at 1.8v and a potentially cold joint at one of the gnd points on the PMS. Not sure though - just happy to see that it's working!

Thanks heaps to the pair of you. Stay tuned for a completed build sometime soon!
 
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Alright, so we're right at the finish line. I have everything wired up and everything appears to be working except my wii when being turned on now seems to show AV2 in the top left of the screen which it never did before. Will note that I have VGA hooked up with nothing wired to AV on the screen or the wii.
Does the screen auto source to AV2 when VGA is wired up but MODE is shorting? This is what I am going to check on next and try and remedy but wanted to make sure it wasn't something much simpler like a secret switch on the screen driver board that switches the screen between AV and VGA haha.
 

Wesk

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This is what I am going to check on next and try and remedy but wanted to make sure it wasn't something much simpler like a secret switch on the screen driver board that switches the screen between AV and VGA haha.
You'll need to connect the button board to the screen driver and set the input to VGA, it should then always boot on the VGA input.
 
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Hey Wesk, good to hear from you.
Thanks for the great design.
Unfortunately, I do not think my screen came with a button board so I am unsure why my screen would have changed inputs in the first place.
 
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So I disconnected MODE from 3.3v and AV2 is now working although the colours are all messed up.
I am assuming that I must have changed the input from VGA to AV somehow while tinkering with things. I am not exactly certain how I did this but if anybody has any ideas on how to change it back without a button board, that would be terrific.
Alternatively, a link to where I can order a compatible button board will work as well.
Thanks guys.
 

Stitches

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So I disconnected MODE from 3.3v and AV2 is now working although the colours are all messed up.
I am assuming that I must have changed the input from VGA to AV somehow while tinkering with things. I am not exactly certain how I did this but if anybody has any ideas on how to change it back without a button board, that would be terrific.
Alternatively, a link to where I can order a compatible button board will work as well.
Thanks guys.
Does the silkscreen on the underside of the driver board have + - Menu Source printed on it? If it does, you might be able to just wire a tact switch between the source pin and ground to change the source. I can't remember if these boards need set resistors for the buttons, but it's worth a try
 
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Tact Button worked a treat! VGA colors are wonderful.
Only one strange little thing going on now - whenever I turn it back on, it is still preferring AV. So I have to use the tact button to switch it back to VGA which is the only input hooked up.
So it's one step forward but two steps back. I could cut a little mount in the case for my button but man, it should be easier than this haha.
 

Wesk

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Tact Button worked a treat! VGA colors are wonderful.
Only one strange little thing going on now - whenever I turn it back on, it is still preferring AV. So I have to use the tact button to switch it back to VGA which is the only input hooked up.
So it's one step forward but two steps back. I could cut a little mount in the case for my button but man, it should be easier than this haha.
It defaulting back to AV is not normal, that driver board may be a little buggy. Maybe wire the AV switch to the left Z button as that isn't currently used by RVLoader.
 
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Yeah, I was thinking that it might be a bit buggy too. Wasn't doing this from the start though so definitely a beginner screw up. Overall, happy that it's the driver board and not the PMS or anything. I'll probably order another driver board at some stage but the Z button works for now
So VGA working, wii working, USB working.

Everything except for audio. A headphone jack didn't come with my order so I have just been sort of winging it, hoping that everything would just end up working out with the speakers.
I'll have to get this sorted over the next few days by checking my joints for the wires linking the ashida controller boards and of course the joints to the vias on the wii itself.
If I'm missing anything or there are any tips, let me know but otherwise thanks to everyone for their help so far.
Ashida surely incoming!
Here's a photo I took when the console was trapped on AV and displaying some groovy colors.
 

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Hey guys, sorry to keep bumping this thread. I have a completely sorted ashida with everything except for sound. I have checked continuity between the uamp and the pins on the AVE for the digital audio and I get continuity with no bridges or shorts.
I also went and re soldered my voltage but no dice. I had it working once for a moment but then had to open up the case and fix something else which caused one of the wires to come for digital audio.
I will attach a photo of the wiring but was also curious because I want to check all possible options - is it possible to wire analog audio to the uamp? Like, can I wire it from the wii board directly to certain points on the uamp and obtain sound that way or is the uamp and analog slider only usable with digital?
Feeling close. Officially the last mystery of the build as long as I don't drop a screw on the board while running or something!
 

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