Discussion ZOMG: Beyond OMEGA

[YveltalGriffin]

I don't usually post projects that were abject failures, but this one's special.

The ZOMG trim is best summarized by @Shank here:

Score the top of the board. Board bend the RAM over onto the back of the board, leaving the back 2 layers connected. Use very short magnet wire to jumper the top RAM traces, and short thick wire to reconnect severed internal plane. It's something I've been thinking of for years but lack the willpower to execute it. Would be quite thick, probably too thick to be practical, but a hell of a meme. Working Wii with the footprint of (pretty much) just the CPU and GPU.

I proved out the 1V filter bypass stuff beforehand, and confirmed that it did not impact boot.

Unfortunately, many of the RAM traces broke when I folded the board.

At this point, my only remaining option was to handwire everything.

loopj said he counted 68 wires. I'm just a monkey with a soldering iron and didn't count.

Unfortunately, the trim refused to boot. It draws the correct amount of power but clearly the RAM signal integrity isn't good enough for it to function. I guess not having a GND/power plane beneath the traces really does break GDDR3. The only other reason I can think of is that the 1v daisychain wiring isn't robust enough for 1A, but I'm pretty sure it is.

Oh well! I never really expected it to work anyway. It only took 2 days and was fun soldering practice. @Customledmods is working on something similar with RAM rewiring-- I invited him to post his progress here, so this can be a centralized "ZOMG R&D Thread"!

 

[Stitches]

Dude if only.......

 

[Wesk]

It's beautiful

 

[loopj]

You have way more patience than me dude! I really thought this was going to work! So very cool.

Something to note about this trim, it fits almost perfectly into an Altoids Smalls tin…

 

[Shank]

Jesus fucking christ

 

[CrispModz]

Something to note about this trim, it fits almost perfectly into an Altoids Smalls tin…

Hmm... Guess it won't be happening again-- yet.

 

[Customledmods]

Here’s my progress so far it’s going slow due to me having to cut the trace then powering on the Wii to see if it boots,(just for research purposes) then I’m soldering via to via power on again if it boots I move onto the next via.

so far I’ve rewired 20 of 37 vias on bottom side and everything seems to be working, I don’t know if it’s just me but I noticed my Wii is taking a couple seconds longer to boot now it’s at 9 seconds then it’ll boot to Rvloader.

I’ve only done the vias not the ground/power wires so we’ll see if it boots when I get to that point, also I’m trying my best to keep the wires length close to original trace.

 

[Mc moron mods]

This scares me

 

[Shank]

everything seems to be working

RAM bending is real. Looking forward to having concrete proof to show my therapist she was wrong.

 

[Mc moron mods]

wait you have a therapist

 

[CrazyGadget]

 

[Customledmods]

RAM bending is real. Looking forward to having concrete proof to show my therapist she was wrong.

Once I rewire everything and cut the board we’ll find out if it’ll work haha

 

[CrispModz]

Something to note about this trim, it fits almost perfectly into an Altoids Smalls tin…

So, I was looking at the current size of the ZOMG compared to an Altoids Smalls tin, and I found that it's still a bit too big to fit in a tin.

If you were to try and make it fit, you would need to trim the edges of the board further somehow.

The furthest I would see it going would be almost right up against the edges of the tin...

Even then, you need to keep the thickness of all the extra parts in mind.

If you were to make this a portable the thickness might be a bit over how much the tin would be able to hold.

And even then, all the required parts will just barely fit, with some of the parts being trimmed themselves.

I guess we both beat each other to it... ; )
(I made this design about a year ago)

 

[Shank]

Kill Mii Too

 

[thedrew]

Been wanting to try this for ages! May jump in on this as well. ULTRAOMEGA™

 

[Customledmods]

Been wanting to try this for ages! May jump in on this as well. ULTRAOMEGA™

Do it!

 

[the nintendo nerd]

you could also portably design a smaller board for the ram and move the rame onto it and wire it up to the wii to save a little bit of space (if you want to make something that is very small)

 

[Viilmo]

Im fairly certaim most were joking about ram relocation/bending

What the actual fuck

 

[tealflip]

what in the jesus h christ is this...
*jokes aside this is INSANELY impressive, and I hope this can be made to work, despite how insanely unviable it is*

 

[CrispModz]

So, I made a small concept of an idea for a flex board to help with soldering the RAM's top traces back on, and it might help with latency. Probably not the best solution but if you did it right it might help significantly with reattaching the RAM. Also, as @cy suggested in the Kill Mii Too thread, adding a ground plane through the flex might fix the problems with the trim not booting properly?

(I didn't put much effort into designing it)