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Datel tries its hand at Wii mods
by Eric Caoili 
{ May 16th 2007 at 5:00PM }
Nevermind the product's name -- Datel's Wii Drive Doctor isn't a tool meant for diagnosing and remedying your console's ailments. There should be laws regulating these misleading medical monikers. How many have suffered the embarrassment of consulting Dr. Dre about their disorders, only to find that the gangsta rapper prescribes phat beats, and not actual medicine? The Drive Doctor is pitched as a "straightforward way for amateur programmers and techie tinkerers to get inside the game." With the mod in place, users can hook their Wii to a PC with a USB cable, allowing them to monitor the system's status and add data to running software. Homebrew applications and games are also playable through the $34.95 device.
Datel's homebrew and cheat tools usually boast low barriers to entry, making them accessible to even the most inexperienced users, but installing the Drive Doctor will require soldering. We've never been too keen on voiding our consoles' warranties, so hearing that requirement was enough to scare us away. Until something cheap and hassle-free comes along, we're going to live a boring, risk-free life with our unmodded Wiis.
Solderless Wii modchips on the way?
by Eric Caoili { May 7th 2007 at 4:40PM }
If you've been curious about fixing your Wii to dabble with homebrew or play titles from other regions, but don't trust your abilities enough to mess with the console's innards, there might be a solution in the works for you. WiiNewz forum member Takrin recently posted photos of his hardware project in progress, a prototype modchip that requires no soldering to install. With nothing to attach the modchip to though, how does it stay in place? Takrin suggests "double sided tape on one side" and "foam which presses it to your drive on the other." That doesn't sound like a very stable setup, but we hope to see this development spawn more sophisticated and accessible mods in the future. To be honest, if a monkey can't install it, we probably wouldn't be able to either.
[Via MaxConsole]
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.
