Solved Potentially Bricked Ashida (magic smoke)

[ColdSolderJoint]

After lurking on this forum for the past few years, I finally decided to order the necessary parts to build an Ashida. I have tested my trim twice with it getting video out over composite both times. While soldering some of the audio wires, I noticed one of the little resistor things got stuck to my iron, and I watched it disintegrate before my eyes. When I then tried to boot the Wii back up, I was getting a black screen on video output (signal detected but no picture). When I checked the battery voltage with my multimeter, a quick puff of pure white smoke came from the Wii. Now all of the voltage wires, which were previously fine, are reading very low, with U10 being around 2.8 volts, 1.5 volts giving me 0.9, 1 volt giving me 0.5, etc... I have a feeling it's not my wires because I haven't touched them since my last successful boot. While I originally thought my batteries were too low, the voltages coming out of the PMS are fine. When I tested the Wii voltages with the batteries ground instead of the Wiis, I got quite better readings but still not perfect.

Is the WII dead?

Edit: Charged the batteries to full, exact same behavior. Is there another capacitor on the main mother board or disc drive board that I could drop in?

 

[Stitches]

If you saw magic smoke, something has kill. There's a good chance the Wii is done for, but we can try anyway.

My eye is immediately drawn to the 3 marked shorts. You need to resolve these before trying anything else.

 

[Mrak408]

(Judging by the only image provided) Desolder and remove all the things wired up to the Wii (such as the PMS voltage rails). Remove the shorts as stitches pointed out and scrub off all the flux with Isopropyl alcohol and a toothbrush. Once you're left with a clean and bare board again, check all of the board resistances. Additionally, you should measure the voltages coming from the disconnected PMS. Report back with these findings, along with more pictures.

 

[ColdSolderJoint]

Thanks @Stitches and @Mrak408 cleaned up the shorts and unsoldered all of the Wii wires. All my resistances are good if not a little high would say about 1-2k over for 3.3v and 100-200 over for the other values. I do have a 5 dollar multimeter so my readings were not great. All of my PMS output voltages are perfect down to the wire. But when the voltages arrived at the Wii they were way lower about .1-.3v. I re-soldered all my joints because I few were cold but that made no difference. I think the magic smoke was from me bumping my multimeter into the edge of the board shorting ground. This leaves me with a few questions,

1. If I shorted ground could it effect my voltage readings on the Wii itself.
2. Would knocking the component off make a difference to the Wii booting
3. If so is there another component on the Wii I could transplant to replace it

Also here are some pictures as requested by @Mrak408.

 

[Stitches]

A minor voltage drop under load is normal. You should also clean up all that burnt flux on the Wii with some isoproly alcohol and a toothbrush. The burnt bits are conductive and can cause boot issues.

Can you specify exactly where you were probing at the time of the magic smoke?

 

[ColdSolderJoint]

I was checking my battery voltage on the right side of the Ashida when I think I bumped the power pin into the edge of the Wii. It was just a quick puff of smoke and then it went away. Nothing was super hot on the board afterwards and nothing was burnt. I'll clean up the board tomorrow and redo my voltage wires to see if I can get it to boot back up.

 

[Stitches]

Also, the cap you destroyed is C181, which is a 1uf cap. You can harvest a replacement from the C291 spot on the top side of the trimmed off section of the mobo

Remove it carefully. As far as I can see from the cap measurement spreadsheet, it's the only non-essential matching cap. If you break this one, there are no other replacements to be had without a donor Wii.

 

[ColdSolderJoint]

Thanks @Stiches I'll try the cap relocation later today. If I have a larger breadboard-style 1uf cap at home could I also use that?

Update: Bad news, my iron destroyed the capacitor again.... I got to get myself some smaller tweezers so I can actually grip it. There are some identical looking capacitors on the disc drive but my multimeter isn't measuring them. Considering I already shorted power to ground I'm not even sure the board will work with the capacitor.

 

[Stitches]

Shorting voltage to GND usually doesn't kill things. It's shorting a voltage line into another voltage line that is guaranteed to kill something. My guess would be that's what you did. May as well get another Wii and try again.

For the future, a cheap hot air station would make relocating SMD components easier. Cloned 858-D hot air stations are quite cheap on Amazon

 

[ColdSolderJoint]

Thanks for all your help @Stitches. I already got another Wii coming in so I should be back up and running just in time for the end of my semester. Just wanted to triple check that I could use the MX chip from my old trim with the new one.

 

[Stitches]

Thanks for all your help @Stitches. I already got another Wii coming in so I should be back up and running just in time for the end of my semester. Just wanted to triple check that I could use the MX chip from my old trim with the new one.

You can indeed. MX chips, wifi modules, BT modules, and disc drives are all intercompatible with all Wii revisions aside from the Mini

 

[ColdSolderJoint]

Thanks stitches!