FITTING A WIIKEY MODCHIP

[Steve]

This guide assumes you have some experience of soldering. If you don't, I strongly advise you to get someone else to fit the chip. Fitting a WiiKey will take between 20 minutes and an hour.

 

You'll need the following: -

 

A 15W soldering iron with a fine tip

Some fine gauge solder

A razor blade

A small Philips screwdriver

A tri-wing screwdriver (get one off eBay)

Some fine gauge wire

Scissors/wire cutters

Some solder removal braid (just in case)

 

There's a guide to disassembling the Wii HERE. Use the razor blade to lift up the stickers that are covering some of the screws and there's less chance of getting kinks in them if you want to put them back afterwards.

 

Disassemble your Wii, then put a dab of solder on each of the 6 pads on the WiiKey and the 6 pads on the Wii's circuit board. Strip the end of your fine gauge wire and solder it to one of the two larger pads on the Wii's board so it's pointing straight up, then cut it off so it's about a centimetre in length. Repeat that for the other larger pad.

 

Fit the WiiKey on to the Wii's circuit board. There are two holes in the WiiKey and the two wires you've soldered to the Wii's board will poke through them. Make sure the mod chip is nicely aligned, then solder the two wires to the WiiKey and snip off any excess wire using the scissors/wire cutters. The WiiKey should now be attached to the board. That leaves you with the 4 smaller points to solder. You can bridge the gap between each pad on the WiiKey and the appropriate pad on the Wii's board using solder as they are so close together. Just make sure that there are no crossed connections.

 

You can download the WiiKey setup disc from THIS page. Test your Wii with a legit game first to make sure it's OK, then insert the WiiKey setup disc. It should show up as a GameCube disc. If it does, you've fitted the chip successfully and copied games will run just the same as regular games. If regular Wii games work, but copies don't, first try re-burning the game at a slower speed or using different media.

 

A list of WiiKey resellers is available HERE. Make sure you buy from one of those, because there are WiiKey clones available that are not made to as high a standard and may not work.

[TBearOne8III]

too bad you guys dont live in the states. i solder for a living. i could easily hook that up for you.

 

without even seeing the chip or the board. im assuming its an 8 pin suface mount IC. the wire you want to use is 30 guage solid core wire wrap. you could use stranded wire, but you have to remember to twist the ends after striping the jacket and then tin (or add solder) to the wire. i dont know what type of electronic stores you guys have over the pond. we have radio shack out here. they sell the wire wrap and stripers. you want to make sure you dont have a dull solder iron tip. keep it shiny or tinned. if its dull, then you need to re tin it by adding solder all around the tip. you can wipe the excess solder off of the tip with a wet sponge. if it still does not tin then you gotta scape the tip with the razor blade and re tin. or just start off with a new tip. they sell tip cleaners/tinners but if your not gonna make a habit of soldering, its not worth it.

 

oh, another soldering tip. you dont need to apply any pressure with the soldering iron. just put a bead of solder on on the iron and touch that bead to the pad. you dont want to apply too much heat on that pad. you'll end up burning the board and lifting the pad.

 

if any of you guys need any help, just ask me. i know its hard to describe or help with soldering over a forum, but you never know.

[Liam]

TB, when I've bought modchips in the past the wires were pre-soldered.

 

Also, bear in mind that new Wii's have legs clipped from the chips to prevent soldering of modchips.

[Liam]

Also, does the Wii need any pot adjustments like the GC?

 

My modded GC had trouble reading the cheaper DVD-R's I had, but a little tweaking of the laser pot allowed it to read everything I threw at it fine.

[Steve]

oh, another soldering tip. you dont need to apply any pressure with the soldering iron. just put a bead of solder on on the iron and touch that bead to the pad. you dont want to apply too much heat on that pad. you'll end up burning the board and lifting the pad.

Good advice man. I used to have a job as a PCB assembler myself, but that was over 10 years ago, haha.

 

Also, does the Wii need any pot adjustments like the GC?

Shouldn't do mate. I've been using Infiniti discs - medium priced shite really, and I've burned 10 games and all of them work.

[Steve]

Nintendo are starting to address the mod chip problem. New Wiis come with these legs cut on one of the chips: -

 

 

This makes modding a console way more difficult, although still possible. Once the older boards are all used up, Nintendo will be using a new board with a chip that doesn't have those 3 legs at all, making all current mod chips defunct (until someone figures a way round it, which will probably take all of 24 hours, haha).

[d00ban]

wish i could do this i got an old wii so guess i could hook it up no worries (if i knew how)