Wii DVD/Wiikey Fusion/WODE + GC Portable Discussion

[Ashen]

Some interesting findings today.

Firstly, Pin 12 on GC if grounded gives lid closed signal. So yea 3.3v out (ungrounded)= lid open, 0v (grounded)= lid closed. Note that if jumped directly to ground that the GC will no longer boot (black screen). It needs to be switchable.

Secondly, I tried the viper extreme thing = no go (always give "please wait" msg forever on boot... meh).


Unsure what to make of this atm but there are 2 plausible scenarios:

1: Our Wii pinout diagram is (slightly) incorrect (how reliable is the source of this pinout emu?)
2: Some of the wires we have left unconnected or that I have disconnected recently need hooked up elsewhere to some unknown spots.

More in a bit. My brain hurts so I'm taking a break.

[emu_kidid]

hmm, quite interesting. the source of the diagram is quite reliable but I'll hunt around for another too. Do you know what the switches on the Sundriver do? is perhaps one toggling the disc inserted/removed? (the one closest to the LED)

[Ashen]

The switches on the sundriver are supposed to allow game selection somehow. But google turns up nothing on the subject and the sunkey/sundriver website has no info on how they work either. I'm just leaving them away from the led for now.

[emu_kidid]

Alright. Also, the connector pinout is from someone who developed their own Wii DVD Drive replacement, so it should be reliable enough for this. I'll dig around, perhaps even if I have to find the sundriver author :p

[Ashen]

Awesome man . Again I really appreciate all of your effort helping me out getting this working. I know we are soooooo freakin close! I'm gonna do some more tweeking in a bit. Let ya know how I make out.

[emu_kidid]

I managed to connect to it on the PC and copy the boot menu to it but i'm still not getting anything on the GC even with the switches all away from the LED.

I'm going to remove all the connections and see how it goes to see if this cube can actually boot at all

[Ashen]

I've hit a roadblock as far as where to go with this now so i'll post what info I have. Just so everyone else keeping up with this know's Emu has gotten confirmation that our Wii pinout is correct. This is where I stand currently:

All wires are hooked up correctly (double and triple checked) except:

Pins coming from sundiver:
Pin 23 (DISC_IN) - This pin was originally hooked up when I started (to pin 12 on GC). I would get the GC toggling between the "please insert disc" and "reading disc" messages when it was hooked up. This one confuses me a bit because when I tested the Wii mainboard output voltages I got 3.3v going to this line from the mainboard (DVD drive unhooked). After reading this site: http://wiki.nintendo-scene.com/Gamecube ... col#Pinout and understanding how the GC handles lid open(high)/closed(low) I'm assuming that the Wii treats this signal the same way. But now when I test my mod'd GC/Sundriver setup I'm getting a 2-3v output from this line FROM the sundriver (line not hooked up). Dont know what to make of this.
Pin 29 (DISC_EJECT) - outputs 0.1-0.2v from sundriver
Pin 30 (DOOR_SNSR) - 0v from sundriver, when I tested my Wii I got 3.3v out from the Wii mainboard on this line (DVD drive hooked up, no disc inserted). Unsure if this line is needed or not for our application.
Pin 31 (Unknown) - outputs 0.1-0.2v from sundriver

Pins on GC mainboard:
Pin 12 (DICOVER) - Pin currently hooked to a switch that goes to GC mainboard ground. When switch is toggled GC switches between lid open(high)/closed(low). Open gives message "please insert disc" and closed gives "reading disc". It should be noted that with the "lid closed" (switch active to ground) at GC power on the GC wont boot until switch is toggled. So I may not have this hooked up right.

Referencing the voltage pinouts I posted above it seems to me that some communication is not happening between the GC and sundriver to tell it to turn the bidirectional lines on and start "reading the disc". Stuck for now I guess :/

[gtmtnbiker]

Interesting discussion here that I enjoy following. I might be mistaken but I wonder if it would be better to hook the SunDriver to the Wii and trace the pins/voltages there before trying to hook it to the GC. I would think that a Wii drive wouldn't have a lid sensor. It would always be set to 0 or 1. Instead, it would have disc present or not present.

[Ashen]

I am going to test the Wii extensively later. Without drive hooked up. With drive hooked up with and without a disc inserted. Emu and I were thinking that the DICOVER and DISC_IN pins did the same thing between the two consoles, maybe not. We'll find out later

[emu_kidid]

Ashen, so I figured out why I had a black screen, the pinout diagram was outdated with regards to pin 12. I'm going to wire up a modchip and poke at the device with some homebrew code to see what status it's returning..

[Ashen]

Sweet! So you got it to boot up? I'm wiring up a new flat ribbon cable to see if maybe i messed up the first one. Checking continuity now. How was pin 12 outdated? Pin 12 on GC? Or on Wii?

[emu_kidid]

I have gc pin 12 going to wii pin 23 (3.3v) which you mentioned is a big no-no and makes the GC not boot? When I get home I'll have to snip it and add in a switch.

[Ashen]

My GC still booted up when i had those pins connected. It just toggled between the insert disc and reading disc screens. It may very well be the correct way to connect it, i'm not 100% positive.. i just found that pin 12 GC 0v = lid closed. I have pin 12 GC now run to GC ground with a on/off switch wired in between.

I have my new ribbon cable all wired up. Continuity on all pins. I didnt check my first attempt. Doh! Lol... I will wire it to my cube after work. Update then.

Edit: First cable had continuity on all pins after all. Oh well... Now I have 2 wired up... hehe.

[Ashen]

Haven't updated in a few days due to lack of time so sorry if this gets rather long...

First off, Thanks Emu for getting with the Wode guys and confirming (more or less) our pinout for the Wii.

Like I said, I haven't had a lot of time these past days to compare all this info and make any deductions but I did punch it all into a spreadsheet quick and here it is for all to view. I also dug up a bunch of info about most of these signals and what they do here: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2007/0197291.html I wont repost all the info here because it takes up about 4 pages but it's there if anyone cares to read it. The explanation of the signals we're concerned with starts about 1/5th of the way down the webpage. The GC/Wii disc drives appear to operate on a SCSI type interface. Anyway I think at least knowing what actions these signals are supposed to be performing may aid us in troubleshooting somewhat.

Lastly, While doing all the voltage testing on my Wii I figured I would hook up my sundrivers (both have been hooked to my GC mod) to my Wii just to make sure I haven't fried anything in this process. I hooked both of them up and I cant get either sundriver to load up a disc in the disc channel. I get a msg saying "cant read disc" or something along those lines after it makes a few atempts to try and read the disc. The sundriver still acts like its working though and I can still connect to my PC and upload games/channels and change settings sucessfully. I'm thinking they may not be working because my Wii is already softmod'd with bootmii installed as boot2 and a few custom IOS's... unsure though. It may also be because I have 12v hooked up and I'm not sure the sundriver really needs it? I can't imagine them actually being fried as they've had nothing more than 3.3v going into the actual data lines from the GC and everything has always stayed properly grounded. If in the end I cant get them to boot on my Wii I'm going to order 1 or 2 more just to see... sigh..

Thats it for now. Stay tuned ;P

[emu_kidid]

I bought 2 more sundrivers and they've arrived. I'm going to try one out on the Wii before anything else

[Ashen]

Sweet! I'm going to do the same next time. Hook up to my Wii and make sure things are working beforehand that is. I'm still not completely sure mine are fried but thats what it looks like at the moment. I'm going to order 2 more on payday Tested my sundriver without 12v power supply and i'm 100% sure it needs this now. The Hard disk attached to the sundriver just made a loud clicking noise without 12v going to it. Also as far as the WODE guys telling you that pin24(wii)(dibrk) can be left unconnected i'm not so sure going by this description of what it does:

DI Break: DIBRK is an input/output signal and is an open
OD drain output, externally a pull-up resistor is required.
Normally this signal is driven low by the DI, in preparation
for a Break cycle. This signal is driven both by the DI and
the mass storage access device 106. When the DI sends a
break, it releases control of the DIBRK signal and the signal
rises to active level due to an external pull-up. The mass
access storage device 106 is now the master of the signal.
To acknowledge the break signal, the mass access storage
device 106 pulses the signal low. The DI recognizes the
rising edge of DIBRK as a break acknowledge. After break
acknowledge, the DI drives DIBRK low again, in
preparation for the next break cycle. The DI controller will
delay sending the break signal until the whole command
packet has been transferred.

It seems to me that this signal would be needed. Maybe this signal is emulated somehow in the WODE? I doubt those guys would lie to you but it seems odd to leave it disconnected, I could be wrong though.

It also has occurred to me that when matching up the bidirectional data lines (DID0-7) from the Wii to the GC that these may not exactly correspond to the matching pins on each controller. That is to say that DID7 coming from the Wii may actually be DID0 on the GC... Again this is just me speculating, they very well may match up exactly, but maybe not.

I'm wondering Emu would you mind if I posted some info about our progress here on the benheck and modretro forums and redirect anyone interested here? I'm not at all opposed to having people smarter than me (such as yourself ;P) aboard this project (and there are people there who i'm sure would love to see this working). But I want your consent to redirect people here first.

[emu_kidid]

Yeah, redirecting people here is fine, after all, we all can share our knowledge.

So I've got to find a spare Wii now to get this Sundriver tested out :p

[Ashen]

Just a quick update on the pin outs and pin match up in case we have anyone from other forums checking in. The Gamecube pin out was taken from "Yet Another Gamecube Documentation" and has been confirmed to be accurate. The Wii pinouts are both obtained by emu_kidid. The first pin out listed in the picture below is from a Wii DVD drive replacement author and the second is from the developers of the WODE. There are some inconsistency's between the two mainly in regards to pin 24 (DIBRK) otherwise just some inconsistency's in naming convention. I have cleaned up what I can as far as naming goes but have left things that I'm unsure of alone.

I think where we need to go from here is to firstly identify what exactly pins 23(DISC_IN) and 30(DOOR_SNSR) are doing on the Wii and find out what information they are expecting to get so we can try to match that information coming from the GC. Secondly we need to somehow confirm that DID0 on the Wii actually corresponds to DID0 on the GC and so forth down the line... I dont have an o-scope or access to one or I would check myself. Thoughts?

[randomguy737]

Great work here! I just registered off of a link from the benheck forums, if anyone's interested.

I don't know if you've seen this; some people at benheck were working on an IDE interface at one time; I guess they all disappeared off of the internet (and so did Dextrose :/ ).
http://forums.benheck.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=18006
(^ Lots of good info ^)

Also there's here, good info (and don't miss the small text stuff)

Hope I helped!

[liquitt]

yeah, every other solution than emu's on the internet seems to be about the CZN diagrams. i've seen one or two of these built but thats it.
too bad nobody worked on that a bit more, usb connection!

[Ashen]

Ordered 2 more sundrivers today Since the holidays are coming I dont know how much time I'll be devoting to this over the next two weeks or so. Maybe more, maybe less. Depends on what the wife tells me the game plan is over the holidays... lol. Anyway when my new sundrivers arrive I will be testing them in my Wii first and then analyzing them using something like this: http://www.micahcarrick.com/pc-sound-ca ... linux.html or http://www.ehow.com/how_2278973_use-sou ... scope.html Which will be my new project for the next few days to get working. Hope everyone has a nice holiday. Update when I can.

[gtmtnbiker]

You might want to consider a logic analyzer instead of a scope.

http://hackaday.com/2009/07/23/open-sou ... -analyzer/

[Ashen]

Well, like I said earlier... I am no electronics engineer... besides being able to process multiple streams at once what more would a logic analyzer tell me that an o-scope wouldn't? How much harder would this information be to interpret?

[gtmtnbiker]

A logic analyzer allows you to see multiple signals at once in relation to each other. It tells you if it's high or low. An oscilloscope is more of an analog tool. You can see how high or how low the voltage might be but you only have one line.

My thought is that you would put the logic analyzer on all of the pins of the SunDriver and confirm the pinout and what exactly it does when the disc is in or out and playing, etc. Ditto for a gamecube and the Wii. A logic analyzer will give you the big picture.

Also, there's nothing wrong with having both. A guy can never have too many tools, right?

[Ashen]

Too True, I will look into it, thx for the info for sure. For now I'm going to play with my freshly conceived 'scope and see what I get from that. If I hit another roadblock I may consider something like this: http://www.saleae.com/home/ I'm already in way over my head but hey, I'm learning new stuff every day now. Even considering going back to school for electronics when the place I work at closes in 6 months or so.