Super Smash Bros. Brawl + WiiKey = Bad Medicine

Keith Gable — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:01:00 -0500

I bought Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I expected it to run on my drivechipped Wii (chipped for homebrew btw). Well, it’s the first Wii game that’s dual layer, and the WiiKey incorrectly assumes that all dual layer discs are GameCube multi-game discs. Great assumption, as it was true. Now it’s not. And unfortunately, WiiKey’s Website is showing the default RHEL test page and apparently has been for some time now.

Shit.

So Googling around, I found out that the WiiKey is compatible with the OpenWii firmware. Great! Except the sucky part is that OpenWii requires programming the chip directly rather than using a DVD. Not that big of a problem, I guess. The biggest problem I’m going to encounter in swapping my WiiKey to run OpenWii is the fact I have to solder on SMD chips and I don’t have good enough magnification (I could probably use a jewelers magnification thingy). Also my soldering iron tip is quite large and my soldering iron doesn’t really have a selection of bits for it with a finer point than what I have. Meh. Also I have to take apart the Wii again, which is an adventure in itself…

So… What am I going to do? I could just desolder the WiiKey and say “screw it”, but that defeats the purpose of it (especially since huge strides have been made in homebrew). So, I think I’m going to do this:

Using this guide I’m going to rewire my WiiKey (yes, I’ll take pictures) and put a port on the back of my Wii which will connect to a modified parallel port cable.
While I have the Wii open, I’ll take it apart the rest of the way and put it in a new awesome case.
I’ll also install a switch on the Wii so that I can turn off the modchip if needed (this switch would be required because the diagram shows that the WiiKey requires power from the parallel port during programming, and I don’t want the possibility of shorting the Wii - so I’ll probably install two switches, one for programmer power ON/OFF and one for DVDROM power ON/OFF). This will avoid this problem from ever occuring again.

Though, like an idiot, I “quicksoldered” the thing to my Wii. In hindsight, it would have been faster to actually use wire, since I ended up tearing a trace off the drive and had to solder to the actual drive chip (luckily the “debug port” pins that were left on the drive are just shortcuts to the pins on the actual chip).

I’ll keep everyone posted with updates.

The Ignition Project: Tag wiikey

Super Smash Bros. Brawl + WiiKey = Bad Medicine