Worklog New to Wii potabilization

[Brosome1015]

Hello, my name is Garrett or by my username Brosome1015. I've been infatuated by the Wii potabilization community for years now, starting with Shank Mods PiiWii he built all the way back in 2018. When i first watched his video it sparked a new interest leading me down the rabbit hole of Wii portables and console hacking. The only problem was I was 12 at the time and had no money. But now since I'm older with a income I want to start to make my childhood dream come true, building a portable Wii.

Now this is something I know from lurking on this forum that it's not an easy thing to do, especially for a beginner who has zero experience with soldering but I am very determined to learn and make this thing work. If there are anyone with tips for absolute beginners please feel free to post on here or message me on discord, I will usually respond pretty fast. But anyhow I do have a couple of Questions to start off with.

1. What is the difference between the Rvl-DD and the driver board that comes with the 5" widescreen
2. Is there any guides for the steps of wiring of the portable
3. Whats better the U-Amp 2 or the Rvl-Amp

That's all i can think of for now I will respond asap but i may be busy, thank you for taking the time to read and respond.

 

[JamesPi]

Hi Garrett, welcome to the BitBuilt community! I'm glad you're now able to make your childhood dream of creating a portable Wii come true. I can tell you that the feeling when it all finally works will absolutely be worth the long wait.

This project is totally doable by determined beginners, but you'd definitely need to get used to your tools first and learn how to create a good solder joint. Cy has a wonderful guide here on the forums for the types of soldering you'll be doing to create your first Wii portable.

As far as your questions go,

1. The difference is that RVL-DD takes the GPU signals and takes them natively as a digital signal and then directly drives (heh, DD) the screen from that FPGA. Using a driver board uses analog output that the Wii already outputs. This method can vary in quality depending on the specific AVE that your Wii has. The best quality comes from the AVE-RVL BU9055 chip. No matter what chip you have though, it will be going through multiple conversations to eventually display on the screen. First it comes from the GPU as a digital signal. Then it is converted to analog VGA by the AVE-RVL. From there, it is fed into the driver board which converts the signal back into a digital picture to display on the screen of the portable. There is some slight quality loss and delay from all of these steps, but it's not noticable to most people. The main reason people choose the RVL-DD is because it can be controlled directly from RVLoader. So rather than manually having to adjust the screen for each game you play, RVLoader can do that adjustment automatically. If you have a 16:9 screen then it can automatically change to displaying in 4:3 for GameCube games.
2. Yes, see The Definitive Wii Trimming Guide
3. U-Amp 2 is intended for multiple different consoles and RVL-Amp is specifically specifically designed for the Wii so it's cheaper. Since you're making a Wii portable, they will work identically so just get the RVL-Amp.

Hope this helps! If you have any more questions, please let me know. I hope you have a great time building your first portable.