Wii circuitry changed to thwart modchips?
by Eric Caoili 
{ Mar 27th 2007 at 11:30AM }
Reports are coming in from Taiwan and Germany that Nintendo has updated the Wii's motherboard with its latest shipments of the console. According to MaxConsole, one of the solder points has been removed from the altered board, shutting out quicksolder modification chips like WiiKey. Other similar tools that don't use the missing solder point should not be affected. DigiTimes suggests that these changes to the circuit layout were made with the sole intent of preventing piracy by blocking these warranty-voiding installations. If that's the case however, why did Nintendo only take steps to block just the WiiKey, a modchip that was released only several weeks ago?
There were similar concerns in the past about Mario Kart DS updating the Nintendo DS' firmware as an anti-piracy measure, but it was quickly discovered that the handheld was only saving its WiFi settings. It seems far more likely that Nintendo has had the Wii's revised motherboard planned for months, and that locking out any modification methods was an unintended result.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
hvnlysoldr @ Mar 27th 2007 12:29PM
Nintendo's trying to pump Wiis out as quickly as possible so they would have to plan out any changes to any of the lines carefully to reduce any impact on production. It probably is just a coincidence since they probably would have also tried to prevent other modchips if they were planning for WiiKey.
ConstyXIV @ Mar 27th 2007 1:09PM
Something tells me that it's very much like the rev4 DS's, where they changed it to require signed code in the DS slot and over netboot, locking out the PassMe and WiFiMe boot methods. And the thing with MarioKart was that FlashMe was using the part of the ROM that Nintendo chose for saving WFC data, which FlashMe then changed themselves to move out of the WFC data's way. If Nintendo was trying to stamp out homebrew/piracy, my NoPass would haved stopped working in my DSLite.
Glossary for those confused:
PassMe: the first gizmo that was used to run code from the GBA slot, required you to stick a "donor" game on the other end of the PassMe, patched over in rev4, but a PassMe2 came up to work around this
WiFiMe: special network drivers for a PC to send unsigned code to a DS, patched over in rev4, re-enabled by FlashMe
FlashMe: an alternate firmware that lets you run code from the GBA slot w/o a PassMe
NoPass: a card that's very similar to a DS rom card that lets you run code from the GBA slot
lynch @ Mar 27th 2007 4:14PM
Don't you think it would be for Nintendo to do System updates(at the most, every day), to 'disable' these chips. I mean for mod chip owners, how shitty would it be to have to update your Wii every day, to fix your mod chip.
____________
http://www.howtogetfreewiipoints.com
hvnlysoldr @ Mar 27th 2007 5:28PM
Do constant firmware upgrades really work for Sony though? And Windows constantly updates too...
Dan Elkayam @ Mar 27th 2007 6:40PM
I think Nintendo should just accept the fact that there will be piracy. And try to reduce the amount of it by supporting homebrew.
Mr Khan @ Mar 27th 2007 7:17PM
I think this is just a standard motherboard upgrade
like the article said, Wiikey was released too near to the upgrade, and i don't think Nintendo would take such a drastic measure as overhauling its motherboard for something so insignificant (i'd never heard of it)
Besides, i only think Sony is so focused on the firmware upgrades because freeware is so prevelant on the platform, it's probably only in the single digit percent of the PSP's userbase, but significant enough that they would go to such lenghts.