Worklog First portable and first Ashida build

[Pez Blast]

Try wiring composite and make sure your u10 is solid. Also make sure to clean near the scw and sdw pads on the pms and everything else in general.

Okay sounds good I'll try it, thanks!

 

[Pez Blast]

So update! I now have a working and fully functional Ashida, fan, LED, audio, video, bluetooth, MX chip and buttons are all working wonderfully and it boots consistently everytime. I did end up wiring the audio lines over the wii because I could not route them away from the voltage lines the other way to get rid of the interference but its fine. I am stoked.

The last problem I am having is I do not know how to set the RTC. Whenver I try to boot into the wii system home menu, I can get a wiimote to sync up, and I hear the wii home menu theme but no video comes out. I thought maybe I could change a setting in Priiloader but the system menu hacks wont load, keeps giving me a "cant find hacks_hash.ini" error. I also cant find any homebrew to set the RTC that would work without wifi so I am at a bit of a loss about that. And everytime I boot the thing I need to recalibrate my left stick because it wont go to the left

 

[Stitches]

So update! I now have a working and fully functional Ashida, fan, LED, audio, video, bluetooth, MX chip and buttons are all working wonderfully and it boots consistently everytime. I did end up wiring the audio lines over the wii because I could not route them away from the voltage lines the other way to get rid of the interference but its fine. I am stoked.

The last problem I am having is I do not know how to set the RTC. Whenver I try to boot into the wii system home menu, I can get a wiimote to sync up, and I hear the wii home menu theme but no video comes out. I thought maybe I could change a setting in Priiloader but the system menu hacks wont load, keeps giving me a "cant find hacks_hash.ini" error. I also cant find any homebrew to set the RTC that would work without wifi so I am at a bit of a loss about that. And everytime I boot the thing I need to recalibrate my left stick because it wont go to the left

Did you relocate the RTC battery?

 

[Pez Blast]

I did! I just dont know how to set it without getting to the wii home menu lol

 

[Stitches]

I did! I just dont know how to set it without getting to the wii home menu lol

I'm afraid I don't know how either. Settings Editor GUI lets you change almost everything, but the system clock isn't on its function list

 

[CrazyGadget]

Wire up composite to the screen and temporarily disconnect mode from 3v3, switch the screen to AV and then go to the home menu. Set the time, then you can undo the composite wiring and reconnect mode to 3v3.

 

[Pez Blast]

Wire up composite to the screen and temporarily disconnect mode from 3v3, switch the screen to AV and then go to the home menu. Set the time, then you can undo the composite wiring and reconnect mode to 3v3.

ooo that's a good call, okay I will try that! thanks!

 

[Vrtxspltr]

Hi Pez Blast. Great worklog! I was able to reference a lot and fix a bunch of issues I had on my own build.

How did you fix the audio issue you were having earlier?

So update! I now have a working and fully functional Ashida, fan, LED, audio, video, bluetooth, MX chip and buttons are all working wonderfully and it boots consistently everytime.

 

[Pez Blast]

Hi Pez Blast. Great worklog! I was able to reference a lot and fix a bunch of issues I had on my own build.

How did you fix the audio issue you were having earlier?

Sorry for the really late reply, I hope you were able to fix up yours but for record's sake, i fixed the audio issues by shortening the MC, D, C and WS wires, twisting MC with ground and then wiring them over the wii and it worked great. Only issue is if i want to get to the underside of the wii by flipping it up i gotta desolder those wires.

 

[Pez Blast]

Alright I have been in the discord a bit trying to troubleshoot but figured I would post here. I finished my Ashida last summer and it was in excellent working order (shout out to Stitches and Crazy Gadget and everyone else). I decided to upgrade to an RVL-DD over the blue driver board but it has been an odyssey

for anyone else upgrading make sure you update your RVLoader to at least 2.1 because it has the LCD driver in it otherwise the DD will not be able to connect to the screen (i did not do this and was ripping hair out confused as hell)

But i managed to hook everything up okay (looks amazing, shout out to Aurelio) but i was having issue with the i2c data wires (SDW and SCW) as i would lose battery and temperature indication after about 15s. Aurelio says this may be a bug and not a wiring issue so fingers crossed but I fussed with it a lot and re routed SDW and SCW a couple times and hooked up my blue driver board again and i2c stabilized again but then my screen started blacking out (not sure if i damaged Hsync or Vsync legs on AVE) so i went back to the RVL-DD and rewired everything annnnddd now im getting this. anyone have any ideas as to why the screen is like this? possible misalignment on the DD flex cable to vias? screen damage? USB data lines not connected properly? short between flex pads underneath RVL-DD? my 3.3V wiring not providing adequate power?

 

[fdraghi]

Aurelio says this may be a bug and not a wiring issue so fingers crossed

Hope it is because it's been driving me insane lol.

As for your issue, yeah it might be the flex soldering. Try using this diagram and check continuity from the AVE pins to the RVL-DD pins (NOT the flex). Also make sure you didn't accidentally bridged any of the pads on the DD board. I accidentally did that underneath the pad so it wasn't visible from the side.

EDIT: oh yeah, use this to see which pins you actually care about checking, of course.

 

[Pez Blast]

So quick update, I resoldered the DD to the flex as well as completely resoldering the flex to the corresponding vias on the wii and managed to stabilize the image temporarily. On subsequent boots however, i began to have slight green tint flickering across the screen every other second or so and then on subsequent boots i began to lose image completely (got pics of it below). i resoldered 3.3V on the DD itself and moved the 3.3V power cable from the GC+ to the DD using 30AWG and used a 26AWG wire from the 3.3V via below RA1 to the 3.3V pad on the flex cable and that seemed to stabilize it a little. I then checked resistances like your suggestion fdraghi between the DD and the legs on the AVE according to the link you shared and my resistances for all V0, V1, V2, V3, V4, V5, V6, V7, 54mhz, and SDA were all 0ohms which was encouraging. CS and SCL were 20-50 ohms and im still getting weird green bars and screen jumps after being powered on for about 30s. There is a picture of my set up below as well.

in regards to my i2c issues, I twisted SDW and SCW with ground using the ground pads on the RVL-AMP and then soldered the ground to the ground pad on the flex breakout hoping to stabilize i2c and was semi successful. Aurelio is working on fixing the LCDdriver bit file so hopefully that helps with that.

I am going to try to resolder the flex to the vias and maybe try to scrape solder mask off of SCL and CS and perhaps use a different flex cable so we'll see if that helps

 

[fdraghi]

CS and SCL were 20-50 ohms

Hmmm they should be all direct connections though... Also did you check for bridges? The symptoms you describe make me think there's a sketchy connection on the flex. maybe when the board heats up after being on for a while, something bends eeeever so slightly and it's enough to break a connecition or make it unstable.

As for 3v3, I simply ran a wire from the 3v3 pad on the front of the wii board.

Also why is there 2 wires on CK and DI? is it used for a different relocation? EDIT: nvm just saw that it's used on the MX relocation.

Maybe you can apply some pressure on the flex with like a curved tweezer or something in order to hold it down, and, with patience, go with the soldering iron and heat up every point that connects to a via, one by one. A good connection should result in a shinny ball.

 

[Pez Blast]

I fixed the green bars and screen jumping and fade to black issue, there was an absolutely minuscule ball of solder that attached itself somewhere between pins 3 and 7 on the AVE and bridged it. screen looks great now, i did go back to my old i2c set up (untwisted magnet wire from RVL-AMP to PMS and PMS to Wii, which worked perfectly when I had the blue driver board installed) and i2c signal is still cuttin out so twisting the SDW and SCW wires with ground did seem to help a lot in stabilizing that signal but not perfect. Hopefully Aurelio can squash whatever bug is happening! i am now getting red tinting and purple/white/blue lines flashing across the screen after it has been on for about 3min and then most of the screen goes black so I am not sure what is happening there. Any help is greatly appreciated, i got pictures of what's happening and my set up below. Not sure if i have damaged something on the wii or what. resistances between DD and corresponding legs on AVE for V0-7, 54 mhz, SCL, SDA and CS are all 0-1ohms

 

[Pez Blast]

Hmmm they should be all direct connections though... Also did you check for bridges? The symptoms you describe make me think there's a sketchy connection on the flex. maybe when the board heats up after being on for a while, something bends eeeever so slightly and it's enough to break a connecition or make it unstable.

As for 3v3, I simply ran a wire from the 3v3 pad on the front of the wii board.

Also why is there 2 wires on CK and DI? is it used for a different relocation? EDIT: nvm just saw that it's used on the MX relocation.

Maybe you can apply some pressure on the flex with like a curved tweezer or something in order to hold it down, and, with patience, go with the soldering iron and heat up every point that connects to a via, one by one. A good connection should result in a shinny ball.

I did try to apply some pressure on the flex and do just that and i think I got it pretty good, idk what's happening now but i am sad lol

 

[fdraghi]

Keep going, it is frustrating but you're getting there... There must be a microscopic short somewhere... Take a break and come back later with a fresh mind. I'm sure you'll manage to sort it out.

About the SDW SCW issue, what you should be seeing, which is the same as the rest of us, is RVLoader randomly crashing. I did manage to stabilize it A LOT by using twisted pairs with ground, and trying out different routing options... But I never had any graphical glitches or anything like that. Also I never experienced crashes during gameplay and I'm already at 20+ hours of gameplay with mine.

 

[Pez Blast]

Keep going, it is frustrating but you're getting there... There must be a microscopic short somewhere... Take a break and come back later with a fresh mind. I'm sure you'll manage to sort it out.

About the SDW SCW issue, what you should be seeing, which is the same as the rest of us, is RVLoader randomly crashing. I did manage to stabilize it A LOT by using twisted pairs with ground, and trying out different routing options... But I never had any graphical glitches or anything like that. Also I never experienced crashes during gameplay and I'm already at 20+ hours of gameplay with mine.

Twisting with ground and rerouting helped significantly. The new LCD driver bit Aurelio is working on seems to be fixing the RVLoader crashes which is good. Ill try to keep looking at it, really not sure what the hell is going on or if i damaged something on the wii itself. Might have to wait until next week however, life stuff coming up, ill try to keep updating this worklog though for future reference

 

[deesil]

I tried out the new bitstream that Aurelio is working on. It seems to have completely resolved my issues with no hardware changes.

I'm still testing. But I ran a full battery to empty in RVLoader with no lock ups. We'll see.

 

[fdraghi]

Interesting... So it was a software issue after all... Kinda puzzled about that. I sorta assumed it was related to wiring since everybody has reported on this issue and it was accepted that changing the routing solved the crash... And in fact I've seen this first hand, although now I'm incredibly curious as to what the issue ACTUALLY was and how it correlates to how I managed to mitigate it. Maybe it was just plain luck?

 

[deesil]

Routing IS important. I think one of the things I was trying to say earlier is that we're blind people stabbing in the dark. We make a change, observe a small set of data, and then draw a conclusion. So moving a wire may have a positive impact, and it may not. But if you sample an hours worth of play time, and you don't see an issue, you think that you've made progress. It's really easy to fall into that trap, especially when that's all we have to go on.

When I was first told that it was likely routing, I redid my wires and took extreme care to keep them clear of any interference points. When I saw the exact same behavior continue after that change, I figured routing wasn't the issue. It could be something else hardware related, but it likely wasn't routing. I thought thermal expansion, cold solder joints, etc... but I couldn't find any evidence of that and redid joints to prove it. In fact, at one point, I WAS having controller issues, and I used a different via to redo that line. I haven't seen an issue since. Maybe that really needed a hardware fix.

Anyway, we'll see if this is the end game. The fact that there were so many people reporting the same problem that I was seeing, and that many had working Ashidas that they upgraded to the DD and then saw I2C problems, seemed telling.

I'm one day in on the patch from Aurelio. We'll give it a weekend and see what we get. I'd love to see other people try it out, if possible too, and see if their problems go away. FWIW, this was the first patch he sent me and it seems to have worked. Which definitely points to "He looked, saw something that could be the problem, adjusted it, and it is, in fact, the problem."

We'll see. I'm really excited for this thing to run perfectly. I've got a few other ideas for some mods/upgrades but I haven't wanted to add any more variables into the mix yet.