this video is sponsored by PCB way more
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welcome to another behind the scenes
video today we're going to be taking
apart this donor Wii not going to leave
that in there and this is the one that's
going to be used in the GameCube shell
Wii project where I'm going to be taking
the motherboard of
this week and shoving it into a GameCube
shell and the point of that project is
literally just because I thought it
would be funny to troll all the people
that kept complaining that I didn't use
a Wii motherboard for the GameCube mini
because then I could have made it even
smaller and while that is true I don't
really care I'm going to put a we
motherboard which can be extremely small
into a Game Cube shell which is
extremely large logically and then I'm
going to kind of just run through all
the different Hardware that's in here if
you've never seen the inside of a Wii
before it'll be slightly educational and
if you've seen one inside before then um
it's a good Nostalgia trip I suppose
anyway I'm gonna have to start with a
little Phillips
oh we have gotten to the try Wings these
screws are actually no big deal all you
need is one of these little wacky uh
screwdrivers you can buy off eBay or
Amazon and a ton of Nintendo stuff uses
this so if you're going to be doing
stuff like this it's really good to have
on hand
okay I couldn't really remember which of
these feet was hiding screws but it's
these two right here
um along the bottom hidden screw holes
in there there's a couple of tri-wings
that you got to take out
okay so this compartment is where the
BIOS battery lives and this just keeps
the date and time for the Wii it's
literally like a tiny little battery
um the same one that's on a motherboard
for a PC
um and inside of here it's uh is where
you find out which revision Wii you have
if you don't want to look directly at
the motherboard but there's just a
little code in there that lets you uh
see which kind of revision we this is
and I'm able to read it here and it says
f b 0 1 and I don't know if the top of
my head which revision that is but I'm
gonna go ahead and put it in and post
for you guys to see
if I remember correctly there's some
more sneaky little
screw holes holy crap that hit me in the
face but yeah there's some more in here
there's a good mix of Phillips and
tri-wing weirdly
so now if you come around to the front
panel
on this side there are a couple more
secret little screws I'm pretty sure
under these stickers
all right looks like we got two tri-wing
screws right there
okay
front panel comes off now and then
there's a little plug that you can undo
here you got to be a little careful
taking this out
shouldn't really be doing it by the
wires like I'm doing it doesn't really
matter for me because if it breaks I can
just re-solder it back on but obviously
not everyone has that option
so you might want to be careful with
this
there we go
she gone
all right so if I got everything else
then now it should just be a matter of
taking the shell off I Believe been a
while since I've taken apart a Wii so
could be wrong could be a little more um
secret hiding places oh you know what
there's one of these
yep yep there's one right there I always
forget something
now it comes right off
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oh my God look at this fan it's so
freaking tiny the GameCube fan is bigger
than that but anyway we'll do a little
bit of Wii Anatomy here so obviously USB
port0 and one got the cooling fan AV
Port
um sensor bar Jack Power Jack
super basic there is a wireless antenna
right here one of these is Wi-Fi one of
these is Bluetooth I don't know which
one it is but those are the wireless
controller antennas for the Wi-Fi and
the Bluetooth chips and you do need the
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips installed in
order to get the thing to boot but I'm
pretty sure there are some mods that let
you do away with those uh however I will
probably be leaving them in because I
want to leave the Wii as completely
functional as possible for this mod
[Music]
foreign
I can't seem to get this black shroud
off for whatever reason and the spirit
of not being incredibly destructive I'm
gonna just leave it for now and move on
to this Shield
okay upon further inspection it appears
that this should just kind of come off
yep never mind not much to do there and
I actually took a couple screws out of
the DVD drive on accident so let me go
ahead and put those back okay so we are
left with the DVD drive some exhaust
ducting and the motherboard which is
under it there's not much left to
disassemble I believe although the Wii
is so much more complicated than the
game key this is why I prefer the
GameCube it's just so much simpler to
open up and do stuff too
okay so the DVD drive is loose but I can
feel that it's still connected
by something by a ribbon cable I'm just
gonna very carefully
unplug that okay there goes the power
cable and here is the data cable
or the DVD drive let me go get oh is
there there was a screw in there oh
there's another screw in there
there we go so let me go ahead and grab
a GameCube shell real quick I'm gonna do
some brainstorming on how I might be
able to fit this okay so here's most of
the shell of a GameCube
here's the bottom half
here's the top half
come together like that
Bob's your uncle so the idea there's a
couple ideas here so we can take the DVD
drive oh my God wait hold on
oh no way oh my god It just fits it
actually just fits no freaking way dude
okay so hold on let me grab a disc I'm
gonna see if we can put it in through
the controller ports wait never mind
hold on hold on I got ahead of myself we
still need to have the controller Port
thing here uh because I want it to
aesthetically look exactly like a
GameCube on the outside but I feel like
it's a good thing that this just fits in
there God that fits perfect that's like
it's supposed to be in there that's
crazy it's like there's a lot of volume
to the GameCube but there's also not at
the same time because a lot of it gets
taken up
by this bottom portion and then buy the
disc loading mechanism so there's
actually like not a lot of room to work
with in here it's going to be tougher
than I thought okay so what if I just
I'm just kind of spitballing here I'm
just seeing
what works obviously there's these pegs
in the way that's going to stop this
from working I wonder if like this
and then you put the games in through
the hole I don't think it's quite there
yeah that's that's a little tough
okay well what if we can slim down the
DVD drive there might be some
unnecessary junk in here that we can get
rid of because if I can slim it down to
the point that it'll fit in the
footprint oh wait but no because we got
to put a full-size disc in here for uh
Wii games okay so this is going to be
incredibly destructive but what I could
do
is like bore out all of this
so I have
um room to put it in there and then I'll
just Dremel a slot right there to put
the DVDs in and that's actually not a
bad idea at all it's just gonna like
Mega suck because I'm gonna have to get
rid of like all of this oh man I don't
even
know if that's feasible I can definitely
lose some material on the drive itself I
can lose these mounting points for sure
because they just stick out other than
that though there's not much else I can
get rid of here okay so that is the
incredibly destructive option maybe we
could do that where it mounts front
facing like that but on the top instead
but there's all of this crap in here and
I'd have to also Dremel out most of all
this I don't know if there's going to be
a way around not dremeling out a ton of
that just blows my mind how well this
fits though it's crazy but we need those
controller ports so
and like I said I wanted to include the
DVD drive but if it doesn't work out
then you know it doesn't work out I
don't even want to play games from a
disc to be honest with you I prefer USB
and SD card loading so much more over
Optical media man it's just so much
simpler well simpler to me a lot of
people disagree on that I don't know
maybe I'll brainstorm a little bit more
about the disc for now let us get back
to the board here
all right we've got the other massive
Shield off now let's take a closer look
at the board here let me
holy crap we're losing Parts left and
right let me go over um what you guys
are looking at here okay so this is
Wi-Fi or Bluetooth chip one or the other
again I'm not sure this is also another
wireless chip I think this one's Wi-Fi
and this one's Bluetooth SD card slot
right here here's the heatsink for the
CPU and GPU I believe I don't know I
haven't taken it off yet I actually
haven't disassembled a Wii years so I'm
a little rusty GameCube memory card
slots GameCube uh controller ports these
are coming off and I'm going to solder
in the stock GameCube front plate which
has both of these I'm just going to
solder all the connections to where they
need to go on the board that's pretty
much it I mean miscellaneous Electronics
going on for power management
all that uh man this heatsink is real
small though compared to the GameCube
one that's kind of nuts it's like way
smaller but anyway let's keep going on
our disassembly Journey
oh okay so it turns out that the
heatsink screws are the only thing
holding the board into the rest of the
chassis okay yeah so the CPU and GPU are
underneath um that heatsink I wasn't
sure if they were on the back and then
it just used this to kind of spread the
heat along with this on the back that
kind of would have been stupid so not
surprised that that's not how they did
it so we can get rid of this now and we
are just left with the board and we got
a little tiny um I'm guessing this is a
thermal transfer pad to kind of conduct
some of this ground plane to the chassis
I think that's what that's for CMOS
battery slot right here that's where
this little battery that was right here
originally was obviously this is not
going to fit into a GameCube as is I'm
gonna have to look at doing trims
obviously I don't even know if most of
the front of this board is necessary and
I'm probably not going to go with the
smallest room I can get away with just
because I don't need to so I don't have
to um relocate as much stuff and solder
to little tiny crappy places I don't
want to solder to can we include the DVD
drive
uh I don't know I have no idea probably
no okay anyway that's gonna be it for
this video thanks for joining me on some
of my thoughts on how I'm gonna be doing
this one and uh the general disassembly
and commentary and all that good stuff
anyway that's gonna be it for this one
and before I go I wanted to give a
specific shout out to patreon members
Tyler Shepard and his navier systems for
being 10 bringus Council board members I
always appreciate the support that I get
from my audience and I'm really thankful
for those of you that choose to show it
with a patreon membership you can get
small progress updates over there weeks
in advance of when I show things off on
YouTube so if that sounds like something
you'd want to see then click the link in
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sponsor in the sponsor of today's video
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that's it for this video and I'll see
you in the next one
thank you