Worklog My First Portable (Wii)

[Gonjona]

12/19/2017
I've been working on this for a few months, but only in the past couple weeks have I started getting really into it. My case was inspired by one of Gman's older portables, here. I will be doing a landscape design meant to stand up at an angle, looking like the amazon echo show or something of that nature, so I wont be doing a laptop like he did there. The main thing was hig use of the original Wii housing for the controller ports on the side of the ZN-45. So my case will be entirely the ZN-45. I will only be doing some light trimming to allow it to fit in the case a bit better, shown below.

It will use four panasonic 18650 cells (CGR18650CE) that I salvaged from an old laptop. There isn't anything to see other than the trim as of yet, so this concludes the log for now.






Board after trim:

UPDATE 1/4/2018


So I originally did not want to trim my board because my screen runs off 12v, but a user on the forums (BocuD) showed me that my screen can run off of 5v. So now I intend to do the recommended OMGWTF trim. Will have to look into the custom reg stuff though. Will post more after trim.

 

[BocuD]

Do you plan on using this wii or will you replace it with a 4 layer one? If I was you I would buy a new BLACK wii on eBay for 15-20$ since those use much less power and your battery will last much longer, even if you don't trim your wii. Also, before testing your wii, sand it with 200 - 800 grit sandpaper. If you don't do this you might kill the wii by shorting out internal layers. The board should be smoother then treated furniture wood after you sanded it.

 

[Gonjona]

After nearly a year of fucking around with custom regulators due to a poor understanding of how they work, I finally have resumed work on this wii. I have as suggested above, went with a 4 layer board. I successfully performed the u10 relocation before the trim. I then proceeded to do the default trim, and sanded it until it felt polished. The voltage outputs from my regs are as follows (all values are without load) 1.15v reg outputs 1.47V, 3.3 output 3.26, and 1v reg outputs about 0.98v. That being said, when I attempt to boot a wii, it gives a white screen. I checked continuity on all of the power rails with ground, and 1.15V had around 28 ohms to ground, which was said to be within tolerance. I would sometimes breifly get a beep on 3.3v, but it would go away and read over 8k ohms. When I power on the wii, the 1.15v reg drops to 0.6V and I'm curious if this is normal or not. If it matters, i seem to have trimmed through C110, right at the corner of the board on the bottom side. Regarding that, since it is only half trimmed and still attached, should I remove it or leave it (is it even needed)?

I'm just trying to get a display output at the moment, using two 18650 cells and the red board.
Any help getting a boot is appreciated.

 

[jefflongo]

No the 1.15v reg dropping to 0.6v is certainly abnormal. I'n also assuming when you said the 1.15v reg outputs 1.47v normally you meant 1.147v. I can't really tell what's going on in the picture but you should investigate that regulator, maybe clean up the wiring a bit. You may also try temporarily using the Wii power supply to power your regulators to eliminate the batteries as a source of error.

 

[Gonjona]

No the 1.15v reg dropping to 0.6v is certainly abnormal. I'n also assuming when you said the 1.15v reg outputs 1.47v normally you meant 1.147v. I can't really tell what's going on in the picture but you should investigate that regulator, maybe clean up the wiring a bit. You may also try temporarily using the Wii power supply to power your regulators to eliminate the batteries as a source of error.

Yeah so I wired the wii power supply directly into the regulators. Around the same voltage values, with the 1.15v reg is outputting about 1.3v and that is not a typo. When i turned on the wii this time, the lines were all ok, but the 1.15v line dropped even lower to about 0.2 volts, and that is not a typo either. I removed the capacitor I spoke of earlier (C110) because it was shorted (is that one necessary? because I have a donor board). Hopefully this picture of the display output might help also:




The screen looks like that with the black line flickering to different heights very quickly

 

[jefflongo]

Well if the regulator is outputting 1.3v that is definitely not within tolerance. You should go no higher than .05v above 1.15v. It's definitely not going to work if the 1.15v regulator isn't spot on. The fact that it's dropping so drastically means you should investigate whether there's any short on the 1.15v line.