The impossible Wii
May 31st, 2025 - scudoAs you can see from here, I own a first motherboard revision
Wii
console.
I have had this console since 2009 - and I almost bricked it several times. Originally it had an Argon II modchip,
which is
an absolute trainwreck on its own, but I have since removed it and gave it to a friend of mine.
Now, all consoles made before 2009 had a version of boot1 that was vulnerable to a
pretty huge bug that allowed BootMii to be
installed as boot2.
Given that my console was bought sometimes before August 2009, and given that it's a RVL-CPU-01, it was probably
manufactured sometimes before 2008, which would make it a likely candidate to have an exploitable version of boot1.
And yet it doesn't!
Every time I hack this console - which I had to do several times by the way - I can only ever install BootMii
as IOS and never as boot2. This should be
impossible!
My personal guess is that my console was part of what's known as a bonepile inventory (in a similar fashion as
to what was mentioned in the official Xbox 360
documentary); basically, a console that failed factory tests and was put aside to be fixed later.
Since boot1's hash is written into Hollywood's OTP late in production,
it is completely possible that this happened:
- The console was manufactured around 2006 or 2007, and it failed factory tests, so it was put aside to focus on shipping working units around the time of release;
- As an effort to clear the bonepile inventory, Nintendo's manufacturing plant recovered my board, fixed whatever was wrong with it, wrote the new OTP, flashed the NAND with System Menu 3.2/3.3 (I don't remember exactly what version it had) and shipped the console to be sold at retail.
And it doesn't end here!
For a few years, this console has exibited another unusual behiavor: every time a new title is loaded, the console
hangs
on a black screen, no matter what title.
This console is capable of booting a single title once every boot-up, and every subsequent title load (be it
Nintendo
software or homebrew stuff) it always hangs.
This is after I reformatted the console and rebuilt its NAND from scratch. Also, Wilbrand, its older variation LetterBomb, and BlueBomb
crash
the console with the same black screen issue; only str2hax works reliably.
The only likely explanation I have is that since titles are stored in the NAND, an IOS syscall is made to the
Starlet to read the title and load it into memory, and the Starlet somehow completely fumbles itself somewhere
(maybe TMD verification? maybe a hardware failure? I have no idea),
throws an exception and hangs the console. But without a debugger (such as an USBGecko), I have no way to know.
Also: the SD card reader despises SDHC/SDXC cards, and the disc drive is likely completely dead due to having to
read a lot of DVD-Rs in the past (and I'm sure you can figure out why).
If you have any ideas, contact me.
